The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Prophecy

  • A season of fake prophecy

    A season of fake prophecy

    Preamble

    This is the season of fake prophecies in Nigeria, the season in which some obvious fraudsters bask in the empty euphoria of delusion. This is the season when Nigerian fraudsters give the impression that prediction and prophecy are one and the same and therefore take undue advantage of people’s ignorance to dupe them in the name of prophecy under the cover of religion.

    Whereas prediction is about imagination just as foresight is about intuition, both are evidently human while prophecy is divine.

    There is something strange about prophecy which continues to remain a puzzle to rightly guided human beings. It is like the night that is invisibly pregnant but which miraculously delivers wonders in the day. Genuine prophecy is neither by fabrication nor by pretext. Its roots are firmly planted in the rich soil of divinity and its agents were divinely chosen and called messengers of God. The last of such messengers was Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who left this earth almost 1500 years ago. Anybody whoever claimed or is claiming to be a prophet after the demise of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is surely a fraudster and an agent of the Lucifer.

     

    Appointment of prophets

    Only Allah appoints prophets for an appropriate nation with an appropriate mission at an appropriate time. But this has been bastardized by self-styled ‘prophets’ of the modern world especially in Nigerian who see prophecy as an umbrella of fortune under which they can hide to mine gold and silver. Such people only sooth-tell satanic dreams to their ignorant and parochial victims who are callously milked in the name of prophecy.

     

    Wealthy prophets

    Except for King Daud (David) and his son King Sulayman (Solomon) who were divinely guided to show the world how wealth is legitimately acquired and managed, no prophet of Allah was ever stupendously rich. This can be compared with today’s situation where prophecy is measured in terms of wealth in the possession of the fraudsters who are parading themselves as prophets. Today, mere prediction has been deliberately turned into prophecy which in turn has become a major platform for preaching prosperity rather than posterity at the expense of godliness and humanitarianism.

     

    Genuine prophecy

    It is not by clandestinely predicting the number of Kings who will die in a locality in the coming year or the governors who will lose their seats to opponents or even the number of people who will lose their lives in various accidents that a person can proclaim self a prophet. Genuine prophets are known not by words of mouth alone or amount of wealth they possess but by the exemplary actions that may serve humanity in good stead for many, many centuries or even millennia after their demise. Prophets Isa (Jesus) and Muhammad (SAW) are good examples of such genuine Prophets.

    Prophecy, therefore, is not to be judged by yearly predictions of fraudsters who satanically claim to be prophets. Virtually all the religious tenets and regulations in Christianity and Islam today are reflections of the prophecies of the two great men mentioned above in the past two millennia or thereabout. Both men (Jesus and Muhammad) never pretended to be able to do what they were not divinely assigned to do. They never sought wealth and thus, they had no cause to be fraudulent.

     

     Today’s fake ‘prophets’

    In contrast, however, fake prophecy today is a product which finds a large market in Nigeria for which ignorant and parochial people queue up in multitudes before fraudsters with the intention of gaining fraudulently what they are not divinely destined to gain in life. Such people only fabricate satanic dream about their future and look for fraudsters who can authenticate such dreams for them satanically to suit their wishes or to solve certain insuperable problems. Thus, in the process, they are forced to carry out satanic instructions that may eventually bring ruins to them and pave ways for those fraudsters to zoom into material fortune without any care for conscience. Most broken homes and criminal activities of Nigerians particularly corruption today are traceable to fake prophecies and insensitive display of wealth in Churches and Mosques in this country. It is evident that the ridiculously stolen amounts of public funds by public officials end up in the pockets of the Charge de Affairs of those religious sanctuaries.

     

    A prophetic warning

    Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had forewarned the Muslim Ummah, about 1400 years ago, against the calamity that false prophecy could bring to mankind. Addressing his companions on a particular occasion at that time, he said:

    “There will be calamity!” He repeated this three times. But rather than asking him of its cause, his Companions simply asked for the solution. They had no cause to doubt him. And he told them to look for the solution in the legacy he was leaving behind. That legacy is the rule of law contained in the Qur’an and Sunnah.

     

    The Rule of Law

    The Prophet emphasized to his Companions that nothing besides the rule of law would ever bring the needed harmony to the world. He described the Qur’an as the all-time permanent solution to the various problems of all people and concluded that only individuals, groups or nations that hold it (Qur’an) tenaciously would escape the mentioned calamity.

    The Qur’an, according to Prophet Muhammad (SAW), is the mirror with which to view the past retrospectively and draw a lesson from its experience. It is the effective compass with which to find the way in the hazy wilderness of the present. It is also the impeccable telescope with which to view the future and escape its dangerous satanic dragnet. In other words, the Qur’an is an everlasting prophecy recalling the occurrences of the past, serving as the guidance of the present and turning focus on the future expectations with a view to clearing the way for the pious ones.

    By asking the world to follow the rule of law in all their ways, the Prophet never aimed at rising from his grave one day to govern any particular nation or region of the world. Neither did he leave any heir behind who would inherit the governance of the world. His objective, according to the mission he bore, was for the world to be in harmony through divine guidance.

    And, it is only in the interest of mankind to uphold the rule of law for the sake of their harmonious co-existence.

    To marry according to the rule of law; to divorce, if need be, according to the rule of law; to raise families according to the rule of law; to transact businesses according to the rule of law; to play politics according to the rule of law; to give judgment according to the rule of law; to conduct elections according to the rule of law; to legislate according to the rule of law; to govern according to the rule of law, these and more are the elements of the mission preached by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and there has never been an alternative to it since his demise about one and a half millennia ago.

    Today, is there any individual, group or nation not affected positively by the rule of law in the world?

    Every aspect of life has its rule of law. We work in the day and rest in the night not by our own volition but in accordance with the natural rule of law that guide our existence as human beings. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West to obey the rule of law that controls its operations. Fishes live in water. Plants grow generically and are fed through their roots in accordance with the natural rule of law that governs them. Disharmony prevails only when deviation occurs from the rule of law. And such is often caused by human beings. Carnivores like lions, vipers and eagles never voluntarily feed on plants. Herbivores like elephants, camels and goats never feed on flesh. To force them to do otherwise, in the name of experiment, is to cause disharmony in the animal kingdom.

     

    Causes of disharmony

    The world is in disharmony today because of deliberate deviation from the rule of law by those in power. Stronger nations want to usurp or dominate weaker nations as in the case of America in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

    Governments want to enslave the governed as in the case of Nigeria since independence in 1960. It is all an evidence of dogs eating dogs in the stable of greed. Why won’t disharmony prevail?

    But Allah so much loves mankind that He does not leave them permanently in the hands of devilish predators. From time to time, Allah sends conscientious individuals either as rulers or as counselors to rescue the oppressed. That was the fortune of Nigeria when Umaru Musa Yar’Adua emerged as President.

    His insistence on rule of law first sounded odd to some lawless elements who took such stand for granted because they never experienced rule of law in Nigeria before his coming. But that was the blessing that our country needed as a solid foundation for a strong building. Rule of law is the first sign of sanity in a society. It is an evidence of decency in a people. It is a thorn on the way of certain fraudsters who claim to be Prophets.

     

    Remembering Yar’Adua

    In beaming the light of rule of law on Nigeria, Yar’Adua was not a mere touch-bearer he also recognized the fact that one did not necessarily have to be governed by Shari’ah or canonical law to abide by the rule of law.

    What the Qur’an teaches which the Prophet emphasized is for everybody to follow the rule of law by which he or she is governed. To do this is to follow the guidance of the Qur’an or that of the Bible.

    If we had a President in Yar’Adua who could voluntarily return his annual security vote of about 2 billion naira to the national treasury because he did not see the need to pocket it as he did not see it as a personal booty; if we had a President in him who could return the federal budget to the National Assembly for amendment because he felt it was unnecessarily inflated at the expense of the populace; if we had a President in him who could promptly react positively to the cry of the people on high cost of food items in the market; if he could cause the price of cement to crash in favour of the downtrodden masses and suspend any increase on price of petrol indefinitely until his death, it was only because he had the fear of Allah at heart and strongly adhered to the rule of law. Thus with him in power it was becoming crystal clear that Nigerians were beginning to appreciate the fact that harmony was truly in sight through the rule of law. And such great gestures which had eluded this country for a long time before he became President came to add greater values to the lives of Nigerians. Rule of law is about conscience and decency of character. It marks the difference between man and beast. If Yar’Adua did not achieve anything beyond establishing the rule of law in Nigeria, that singular achievement was great enough for posterity. And what is more, he achieved much more by bringing a ray of hope to millions of Nigerians in less than two years of his leadership in a country where the sky had been dangerously cloudy before his assumption of office as President. When Yar’Adua was President, no sane person could sensibly compare sleep with death.

     

     Lost paradise

    Prophet Muhammad never spoke in a vacuum. His utterances were divinely guided. And the Qur’an confirms this thus: “He (Muhammad) never spoke out of sheer whim; his expressions are no other than inspired revelations; he is taught by the One who is mighty in power…”

    Nigerians of today have become like the Israelis of yore who after being rescued by Prophet Musa (Moses) from the scourge of Pharaoh, showed ingratitude to Allah and were thrown into the wilderness of life. Having suffered in the hands of a blind and deaf Nigerian Pharaoh for eight terrible years and having been liberated by an unexpected Musa (Moses), it only behoved conscientious people to be grateful not necessarily to that Musa (Moses) but to God who used him for this divine gesture. The sharp difference between the road to hell and the one to paradise which Nigerians experienced within the first decade of the fourth republic had shown how wonderful Allah could be in His deeds. It also confirmed the genuineness of Prophet Muhammad’s prophecy as divinely attested in Chapter 20, Verse 24 of the Qur’an thus:

    “When my guidance is revealed to you, (Muhammad) whoever follows it shall never err nor be afflicted; but he who gives no heed to My warning shall live in distress and be raised blind on the Day of Resurrection…”

    In his message to the nation on the occasion of Mawlidu-n-Nabiyy and Easter of 2008 (one year after assuming the office), President Yar’Adua appealed to Nigerians, with humility, to exercise patience with his administration saying there was blueprint for thoroughness and decency to take off governance in earnest. He neither used any abusive language that was the hall-mark of his predecessor nor did he ask Nigerians to continue to bear the unbearable while his own family lived aristocratically.

    Having a man like him at the helm of affairs while he was alive was a special blessing of Allah which Nigerians only came to realize after his demise. And shortly after his demise, that reality became a lost paradise. The Qur’anic verse quoted above must always be a reference point for all decent, law-abiding people. From all indications during his tenure, there was a sign of light at the end of our tunnel as a nation. A serious assessment of the governing style in Nigeria since 1999 will surely reveal that with the demise of President Yar’Adua, a template of governance in Nigeria has been lost. For both the rulers and the ruled to rediscover that template, the only panacea for Nigeria’s plight, especially in a situation where ordinary feeding has become a luxury, is the rule of law. Anything contrary may only pave the country’s way to waterloo. For politicians, professionals and artisans to rely on fake prophesy in the name of religion, as now prevalent in Nigeria, is to cling desperately to a sinking straw. Those who did it in the past are now part of the debris of a dormant history. The fraudsters of today who are parading themselves as ‘Prophets’ will surely not be different those of the past who have now been consigned to a permanent historical oblivion. Let those who have ears heed this axiomatic warning. Materialism is a mere vanity which has a limited time.

    “Allah does not change a people’s lot unless they change what is in their hearts. If He seeks to afflict them with a misfortune, no one else can ward it off. Besides Him, there is no protector (for any rational being).” Q.13:11. God save Nigeria from the evil antics of fraudsters wearing religious robes!

  • Engaging the wonders of praise for fulfilment of prophecy!

    Welcome to December, our month of fulfilment of prophecy.  Be rest assured that whatever is still missing in your life, God is more than able to complete it in Jesus’ name!

    All through this month, Praise shall be the focus of our teaching and as we engage with all our heart, we shall surely experience Supernatural Breakthroughs! Today, I want to take us through what I have captioned, Engaging the Wonders of Praise for Fulfilment of Prophecy! We recognise from scriptures that every prophetic word is a spiritual seed. According to the parable of the sower, the seed is the Word of God, which is also defined as the incorruptible seed. As it is written: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever (1 Peter 1:23; see also Luke 8:11).

    This means that every prophetic word is an incorruptible seed. Interestingly, every seed delivers on praise. As it is written: Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth yield her increase… (Psalms 67:5-7; see also 2 Peter 1:20-21). Therefore, every prophecy requires praise to be fulfilled. However, it is important to know that every prophecy attracts oppositions. It is written: Rise ye up, take your journey, and pass over the river Arnon: behold, I have given into thine hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land: begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle (Deuteronomy 2:24; see also 1 Corinthians 16:9). Erroneously, for a long time, the church has seen warfare as principally engaging in prayer and fasting; but praise warfare is a principal factor in securing fulfilment of prophecies.

    Let us examine some scriptural examples where praise warfare engendered the fulfilment of prophecies:

    First, we must understand that praise is a platform through which God intervenes in the affairs of our lives. For instance, it took God coming down for His agenda to be fulfilled concerning the Israelites. Prior to that time, God said to Abraham: And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age (Genesis 15:13-15).

    However, since every divine agenda naturally attracts opposition from hell, the gods of Egypt withstood that prophetic agenda through a resistance from Pharaoh and the taskmasters. Thus, there was 30 years delay; but when God came down, that prophetic word was fulfilled. God did not only deliver them, He remained in their midst (Deuteronomy 26:8; see also Exodus 12:41-42; Psalms 114:1-7).

    The presence of God that dwelt with the Israelites was the big factor that ensured their entry into the Promised Land.  As a result of God’s presence with them, they enjoyed supernatural supplies in the wilderness for 40 years till they got to the Promised Land. To retain God’s presence is to see prophecies fulfilled without sweat; but to secure God’s presence, we must engage in praise as a lifestyle, which guarantees constant fulfilment of prophecies in our lives.

    Moreover, when Jehoshaphat inquired from God what they needed to do, to win the battle against their enemies, God instructed them not to fight but to engage in praise warfare. As they obeyed, God set ‘ambushment’ against their enemies and they were all smitten, thus fulfilling the prophetic word from the Lord. Furthermore, it was a combination of a ‘long blast’ trumpet and a ‘long blast’ shout of praise as instructed by God, that brought down the wall of Jericho (2 Chronicles 20:17-23; Joshua 6:20).

    God will only come down in response to our praises, and until God comes down, prophecies may not be fully fulfilled. That means, until we engage in praise warfare, we may not experience full delivery of prophecies (Psalm 22:3).

    This was the weapon used by Paul and Silas. Though they prayed but at the instance of their praise, the foundation of the prison shook because of God’s presence in their midst and their liberty was established (Acts 16:25).

    Furthermore, when God promised Abraham that he would give birth to a son in his old age, the Bible records that: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform (Romans 4:20-21; see also Genesis 22:16-18).

    As a result, the prophecy was fulfilled with the birth of Isaac. However, before the arrival of God’s promise to Abraham, he was not a casual believer. Rather, he was fully engaged with God and was dedicated to Him. This shows that no prophecy will be fulfilled in our depressed state; rather, every prophecy must meet us actively engaged for them to deliver. Therefore, as you engage the weapon of high praises to secure God’s presence into your circumstances, you will experience ‘fearful’ fulfilment of every prophetic word concerning you in Jesus’ name! Remain ever blessed!

    Friend, no matter how hard you try, prophecy will never be fulfilled in your life, until you are born again. Are you born again? If you are not, this is an opportunity to do so. Simply say the following prayer: Lord Jesus, I come to You today. I am a sinner. Forgive me my sins. Cleanse me with Your precious Blood. Today, I accept You as my Lord and personal Saviour. Thank You Jesus for saving me! Now I know I am born again!”  For further reading, please get my books: *Understanding the Power of Praise and Wonders of Praise. I invite you to come and fellowship with us at the Faith Tabernacle, Canaanland, Ota, the covenant home of Winners. We have five services on Sundays, holding at 6:00 a.m., 7:50 a.m., 9:40 a.m., 11:30 a.m. and 1:20 p.m. respectively. I know this teaching has blessed you. Write and share your testimony with me through: Faith Tabernacle, Canaanland, Ota, P.M.B. 21688, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria; or call 01-4548070, 01-4548280; or E-mail: feedback@lfcww.org

  • Ebora’s prophecy on Lagos

    Today, Hardball remembers his late father — God bless his soul!  Indeed, there are many things to remember the old man for.  But this time, it is about a particular counsel, hinged on iron conviction.

    “Son, if the whole of Lagos goes this way,” he was wont to say, “and you’re convinced the opposite direction is the way the way to go, just stick to your guns.  It is only a matter of time,” he would add, “when the crowd would make a u-turn, and queue behind you.”

    So, it is with former President Olusegun Obasanjo aka Ebora Owu.  The other day, he made the equivalent of a prophecy, on the plane of political economy, swearing Lagos would become the third biggest economy in Africa before he died! Geez, everyone loves a winner!

    Flashback to Obasanjo’s imperial days at the Nigerian presidency.  A time, perhaps consumed by presidential hubris, Obasanjo exploded: “Lagos is a jungle” — and indeed it was — and the presidential emperor had no apologies over his declaration.

    Another: the Lagos Bar Beach front, with its umpteenth overflow of ocean waves, was an open window for Obasanjo’s presidential bumbling, when Tony Anenih, Obasanjo’s first Works minister, would order truck loads of sand to combat intruding ocean waves!  Cutting edge solution to ocean encroachment, wasn’t that?  Or just a soulless growth area for PDP-era corruption, that hit a monstrous scale under Jonathan?

    Ah, lest we forget: the Ebora Owu, newfound hot lover of Lagos, withheld local governments’ funds, just because the Tinubu government had the audacity to create additional local governments, as prescribed by the Constitution, and the presidential emperor declared himself above the grundnorm!

    Well, thank God, a committed corps of Lagosians, starting with the Tinubu governorship (1999-2007), followed up by the Fashola tenure (2007-2015) and now, the Ambode administration (2015-date), have been hard at work, turning Obasanjo’s Lagos “jungle” into a success story.  Glory be to God — and to punishing thinking, relentless innovation and iron determination!

    By the way, before Obasanjo went on his power wild goose chase, didn’t Governor Tinubu implement the Enron power scheme for Lagos, an initiative supposed to be embedded, to light up Lagos?  What did Obasanjo do as president?  Insist it must pass through the national grid — and Lagos was the worse for it.

    Obasanjo and Lagos are reminiscent of the Nigerian Christian, if mischievous, prayer: May God not kill my enemies, so they can proclaim, with own mouths, the glory of God in my life!

    Now, Obasanjo is proclaiming the glory of Lagos — the Lagos he fought tooth-and-nail as misguided president!  Shout halleluyah somebody!

    Had Obasanjo, as Nigerian president, shown the grit and vision Bola Tinubu showed as governor of Lagos, perhaps his brag about the Lagos economy would be the Nigerian story.  But alas!

  • Prophecy

    Prophecy

    For the first time since this column’s debut in 2006, I will not install a new article. Rather I am re-printing the column I wrote on April 18, 2011, a few days after Goodluck Jonathan won the presidential election. I confessed my worries about the man’s victory and its implications for Nigeria. The column’s prophetic insights do not make me gloat, but are a cautionary tale to fellow Nigerians to look before they leap as we enter another election cycle. While apparently making me a seer, the prophecies do not make me a special prophet. In his novel Blindness, Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago says it is not blindness but refusal to see that ails our civilisation. I saw the wreck of the Jonathan presidency coming because I decided to see. The following article, titled: “No excuse,” is re-published whole. Read on and reflect.

    No Excuse

    The system worked, and we can say that Attahiru Jega has so far overthrown the fears of sceptics and ululations of cynics. After his initial bumbling, he is gradually becoming Nigeria’s model of an electoral mastermind, acquitting himself with aplomb, grace and calculation. He still has a few acts to pull off, and I have to wait to deliver the final and definitive verdict at the end of the election cycle.

    So, as the tallies came in yesterday, it was clear Goodluck Jonathan would emerge the winner in the election for Nigeria’s top post. Even though I voted differently, I must hand him my congratulations. But the congratulations come not from my belief in the wisdom of the majority but in the majesty of the democratic process. Democracy is the voice of the people, and although the people have not always voted wisely or understood the import of their votes, no superior system topples it as the pulse of the people.

    Let us not make any mistake about this, Nigerians did not vote for Jonathan because he has any plans to redeem the nation from its protracted woes. Jonathan has never staked himself out as a transformational leader. Few of those who voted for him think of him as a man of vision, as a man of competence, or as a president of executive gallantry. They think of him only in sentimental terms.

    So when in the next few years, things don’t get better, no one has a right to blame Jonathan. Most of us did not vote for him to tackle the epileptic malaise of the power sector. We did not vote for him to tackle the dangerous slide in education. Our universities are some of the worst in the world from competing with some of the best. Many of our young do not know the rudiments of math and basics of syntax. If they remain so, and even get worse, we don’t have to blame the man at the top. He was not voted in to sow the seeds for the wise men and women of the future.

    If our cousins or sons or fathers cannot find healing in our hospitals, we should not pour woe on the poor and ineffectual health care system. We let it be so with our own hands. If we read of huge sums of money in the centre going into waste pipe projects and dud dreams and a lack of accountability for billions of our money and patrimony, we should rather shout hallelujah.

    Today we spend about 90 percent of our money on recurrent expenditure, which means only about ten percent will go to the construction of roads, the establishment of first-class hospitals and schools for the minds of the future. This has implications for the value of the naira against major world currencies. So if in a few years the naira slides to N250 to a dollar, and the cost of akara rises from N10 to about N100, we don’t have to blame the president. He earned our votes for a different reason.

    There are four reasons I point out for Jonathan’s victory. One, the profusion of cash. Two, a class issue. Three, retreat to the rampart of tribe and primordial loyalties. Four, faith.

    No one can doubt the sheer amount of cash that went into the Jonathan campaign. Billions of naira followed billions. Across the country, it was not a matter of whether you believed in Jonathan. It was whether you were a good contractor who could deliver. Whether it was politicians, cultural icons or business moguls, you were in on it if you could make a case for Jonathan. In the media, you could not miss out on the barrage of adverts, on radio, television, newspapers and magazines. It was sheer volcano, ripping apart the budgets and presences of the opposition. It was clearly an unequal contest. One needs to know where the money came from.

    Was it NNPC, was it the money we could have spent on schools or hospitals or roads that got diverted? What of all the money reeled out by the Jonathan administration recently for some capital projects? Where are those billions? This is not a Jonathan problem alone? It is malaise of our politics. It is an undue advantage of incumbency in our politics, and it is not restricted to presidents.

    Yet, as spending goes, I don’t think we have ever witnessed this extravagance in our history or anywhere else. The campaign did not deny the charge of spending N100 million per campaign stop across the country. And for the election proper, N3 billion was deployed per state. By some estimates, the Jonathan campaign may have spent at least N250 billion. How many roads can that construct, or how many people can that take out of poverty? How many schools would become world class?

    The other issue is class. The imperative to get the Jonathan appeal across the country compelled the campaign to work with so-called leaders of thought, traditional leaders and business persons. They have one thing in common: the yen for power, privilege and pots of cash. So we had people who came to the Jonathan camp not because they loved him but because he flattered them with money to become part of the “new power circle”. It helped because Buhari and Ribadu were perceived as opposing the concept of governance as racket.

    The other issue was ethnic and primordial ties. Those in the South voted him because he is one of them. Those in the North also voted for Buhari. In all the country, Osun State seems the exception voting for Ribadu. Majorities elsewhere voted their ethnic position. In a radio programme on Saturday, somebody called in to say he voted for change. What change, asked the anchor? The person said the first time he would vote in a person who is not a northerner.

    The fourth reason is faith. Many said Jonathan is a Christian and that was enough for many. Bakare is also. But he is a maverick, a deviant manifestation of belief in Jesus. Bakare was not better or worse than his Pentecostal co-travellers who, by winks and nods and coded sermons, asked their flock to vote for a man of their faith.

    So there. None of these had to do with whether Jonathan wanted to make Nigeria a 21st century nation. It was about his humility, his willingness to tout his shoeless origins, kneel before a pastor, flesh out the smile of the meek.

    We just voted in a “nice” man, and that is good for Nigeria. If things don’t get better, they should not complain. The people can vote for their elevation and diminution. Jonathan can help their cause by transforming Nigeria. But can he? Can he free himself from all the hawks who made him president and who have entrapped him this past year?

    He can prove his critics wrong. Will he? Does he have the fire in his belly? But we just have to wait.