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Tag: prophets

  • Where have all the prophets gone?

    Where have all the prophets gone?

    Not long ago this was the season in which all manner of prophets did brisk business – shoeless tramps in the seedier parts of town and on the fringes of the beaches dispensing their wares to individuals and the collectivity, trailed by a retinue of onlookers, passers-by and pickpockets, as well as in the better neighbourhoods where they did brisk discreet business with discriminating patrons.

    Urban sprawl has shoved those of them with few assets farther and farther from the city centre, to the point when you are now most likely to find them in franchises of white-garment churches, which have to make returns to a mother church presided over by a Most Holy Primate, assisted down the line by other prophets ranked in descending order of divinity.

    They are doing roaring business and doing it largely unnoticed.  A scandal bobs up here and there usually where a high-ranking official has crossed the forbidding divide from Holy Communion to communion of the unholy kind, or has mixed up church funds with his personal bank account.

    Among the faithful, these matters are usually discussed only in hushed whispers. It may result in an expulsion, but nothing stops the erring official from founding his own church and assigning himself a higher title and rank than the last one, and the sole prerogative of handing out lucrative franchises.

    The contours of this commodification of religion were already visible in the 1970s.  The phenomenon attained its notorious height during the mid-1990s, a period overlapping what his fawning acolytes call the IBB Era.  The internet had not then become ubiquitous, and the few publications that peddled junk and smut were called by their proper names.

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    Nobody took them seriously.

    You did not need to be a research scholar or crackerjack reporter to monitor the mega-churches closely; there were only a few of them.  And they were led for the most part by colourful personalities whose end end-of-year predictions, ranging from a bulletin on the health of a political leader of consequence to the fortune of the nation’s cashew crop in the commodity market, were eagerly awaited by policy-makers and producers.

    Not a few invested them with the sanctity of Holy Writ.   The major newspapers and some of their commentators paid generous attention to the predictions. So did political officials often caught up in the news, however tangentially.

    Suppose you are holder of the ticket of a major political party, and the prophet emerges from seven days and seven nights of fasting and abjuring things of the flesh and declares with critical solemnity that it had been revealed to him that the name of the winner of the coming presidential election is to be found in the Holy Bible.

    If you are a candidate and were in early life baptized as Benjamin, or Jeremiah, as Nnamdi and Obafemi Awolowo respectively were, what does that piece of intelligence do to you or your followers, or for that matter to your opponents, even though, without formally renouncing those hallowed names, you had not answered to them for more than decades?

    If, on the other hand, you were Shehu Shagari, Aminu Kano, or Waziri Ibrahim, that intelligence could not have given you much cheer nor kindled celebration in your circle.  You could hear the air seep out of the balloons at their campaign headquarters.

    In this instance, however, the joke – was on Zik and Awo.  Their baptismal names were in the Bible all right, but so also is Shamgar which, come to think of it is close enough to pass Prophet Godspower Oyewole’s test.  And it was Shagari who was declared winner and confirmed as such on appeal and at the court of last resort.

    Who, but an authentic Man of God, could have anticipated and foretold this singular outcome?

    Consider, next, this lead, wrought from sooth by a contemporary of Oyewole’s, variations of which could be heard in any street corner or read in their newsletters:   A political heavyweight from the North Central geopolitical zone will die in a ghastly motor accident during the year.  Bad news, bad news, and more bad news. Floods and earthquakes, setting off mass displacement and suffering of Biblical proportions.

    But there was always in the foreground an event, an occurrence an incident that bore a close resemblance to the prophecy.

    The Minister of Information, the theatrical Alex Akinyele, thought it was bad for national morale and development that soothsayers kept harping on negative issues instead of the positive, uplifting things happening around them instead of dredging the sewers.  He hinted darkly that if they persisted in harping on the dark side of things, government might be compelled to step in.

    A tidal wave of positive prophecies followed – bounty harvests, an appreciating, Naira, falling food prices, but it was hard to tell whether this change resulted from chance or from the exertions of the Better Women, DIFFRI, MAMSER, or the People’s Bank.  What is known for sure is that hysterical prophecies of disasters and doom ebbed dramatically.

    It was bruited by the usual conspiracy theorists that officials who had a huge stake in playing up the brighter side of things had induced the soothsayers to put their often-doleful imaginations for once where their hungry mouths were, and then sit back and enjoy the dividends.

    That was then. Today, the political and social climates are vastly different.  Even if you could induce the traditional media to hew to a particular line or creed, could you get an alternative media that are not even social in name to do the same?

    I had done a column in which I had dismissed the most of temperate and urbane of the tribe, Dr Gabriel Okunzua, whose authority derived from communion with spirits and witches and wizards and plants, as little more than a con artist like the rest of them.

    One day, a student in my journalism class at the University of Lagos brought me an invitation from the parapsychologist himself.  He said he would like to meet with me at my earliest convenience.

    My mind raced back to a story a colleague told me long ago.  The colleague, a staffer on another newspaper, had written an elegant and engaging puff piece about a celebrity who was famous for being, shall we say, famous, since few in the attentive audience remembered what her celebrity had consisted in, to begin with.  The story touched on her henpecked second husband, whom she had wedded in a ceremony that met every definition of excess.

    The lady worked up a rage of volcanic proportions. Brushing aside the rules, she called up a huge loan the publishing house in question was owing the bank, where she wielded considerable power and influence. Next, she demanded that the publisher bring the reporter to meet her face to explain his contumely.

    I will leave Uncle Sam to favour us in his much-awaited memoirs with a narrative of how he navigated that treacherous passage.

    To return to the main story:

    Not to worry.  The student assured me that Okunzua had had taught my older brother and pioneering paediatric surgeon, Professor Paul Omo-Dare at the old CMS Grammar School, Lagos, and was an avid reader of my column.

    One Sunday afternoon, after service at the Protestant Chapel at the University of Lagos, I drove to the tidy arboretum that served him as home.  There he was in the midst of shrubs and plants of all shapes and sizes, doing what he did best:  talking to and listening to them.

    His welcome was disarming.  How is Paul these days?” he asked.  I am so glad that he fulfilled the vast promise he showed at the Grammar School.  Tell him to feel free to stop by whenever he is in the neighbourhood

    Not a word about my article that I thought had offended him gravely.  Not a word then, nor at any point during my 45-minute visit.

    After whispering to a plant for about a minute, he told me calmly that nothing would come out of my application for a position with a New York-based international agency, though I was better qualified than most of the applicants.   How he came to know this quest which I had shared with only my closest friends baffles me to this day.

    Then he struck a note that was even more jarring.  The way things were shaping up, he said, I would have to return to the United States soon with my family.  In the ten years since I returned from doctoral studies at Indiana University, I had never seriously contemplated such a move.

    Three years later I was headed to Illinois, where I have lived ever since.

  • Insecurity: When will our prophets speak out?

    SIR: In Nigeria, it has become a norm to visit seers or fortune tellers or prophets or some sorts of spiritualists to foreknow distant events and happenings. This foreknowledge is either for the seeker’s good or perhaps his community or even the nation.

    It is a usual practice to hear prophecies (and predictions) by spiritualists on who becomes either the president or governor or senator as the case may be. After every four years, diverse contradictory predictions and declarations are made. In fact, some of them go as far as declaring the party to be on the watch out for and also, anointing aspirants vying for political positions and foretelling political events with their timings.

    Those whose prophecies or predictions come to pass were seen as ‘gods’ and are often revered and held in high esteem. Some are even worshipped and rewarded with huge sums or favors.

    From 2009 when the Boko Haram (BH) terrorist group came to limelight, nobody imagined they would sooner constitute a major threat to Nigeria and the neighboring countries up north. With the accolades, recognition and good recommendations given to Nigeria military especially by the international community, no one ever thought that BH would last this long. It was believed that the military would flush them out within days or at most months.

    Eventually, thousands of lives have been, and are still being lost to BH terrorists, without any hope of their defeat at sight. Also, the Kaduna-Zamfara-Katsina-Sokoto axis has become another hotspot for the congregation of bandits and kidnappers who operate at will. They kill, maim, kidnap, harass, rape, steal and commit all manner of atrocities with little or no confrontation by the security forces.

    It is common knowledge that communities and highways are no longer safe in Nigeria’s northwest, especially Abuja-Kaduna highway. These bandits have also captured several rural communities and had long set up rulers who receive tax from the poor peasants while the government looks the other way.

    Also, herdsmen terrorize, attack, kill, kidnap and even destroy farmlands in north-central states and some parts of the northeast, southeast, south-south and even the far southwest. The continuous and unabated high-level attacks launched by these herdsmen in several communities in southern Kaduna, Plateau, Nasarawa, Benue, Taraba and Adamawa states have long been classified as genocidal.

    Every day in Nigeria, hundreds of lives are wasted. Nigeria is gradually becoming a killing field. All these deaths are avoidable, but the governments at different levels are doing very little or nothing about them. Some governors and leaders have openly declared their helplessness to this carnage and evil without resigning their positions.

    Where are the prophets, seers and spiritualists? As long as we keep hearing of revelations and prophecies and predictions on who becomes what on the political space, our ears now long to hear prophecies and predictions on when the killings in Nigeria will stop.

    Dear Nigerian prophets, seers, and spiritualists, our security space are also very important. In fact, more important than our politics.  As you may know, our security forces and military are overstretched and tired already.

    With the 2019 elections over, let the attention of the spiritualists be poised on the killings. The same energy, vigor, and enthusiasm they had in making known their predictions during the electioneering, I humbly request that they put same in letting us know when these killings will stop.

    The lives lost daily are worth far more than mere political aspirations of few individuals. As you always prophesied and predicted to our politicians after every four years, please, prophets, seers, and spiritualists prophesy NOW.

    • Reuben Rine, kalomovaah@yahoo.com

  • Spiritual cleansing: Two prophets remanded in Kirikiri prisons

    An Ikeja Chief Magistrates’ Court Monday remanded a prophet and prophetess in Kirikiri Medium and Female Prisons respectively for  allegedly forcing  a 16-year-old domestic staff (name withheld) to swallow an iron cross for spiritual cleansing.

    The defendants, Kehinde Salami, 25, and Yetunde Akinola, 42, of No 20 Adeyemi Street, Ifako-Ijaiye, Agege are facing a four count charge bordering on conspiracy, breach of peace, false pretenses and attempted murder before Chief Magistrate, Mrs T.A. Ojo.

    Prosecuting Sergeant Kenrich Nomayo told the court the defendants committed the offence on March 24 at about 4 p.m., at their Ifako-Ijaye residence.

    Nomayo told the court that Salami and Akinola allegedly attempted to kill their victim by forcing her to swallow an iron cross against her wish.

    Nomayo alleged that the defendants conducted themselves in a manner likely to cause a breach of peace when they claimed to see a vision in which the complainant was alleged to be a witch.

    READ ALSO: Prophetess duped me of N134m, lawyer tells court

    He claimed that the defendants gave the complainant an iron cross to swallow on the pretext that they were delivering her from witchcraft, a representation, he said, they knew to be false.

    He further informed the court that the state of the health of the complainant was not known as she was reportedly said to be receiving treatment at an undisclosed hospital.

    The defendants however pleaded not guilty to the charges preferred against them.

    Chief Magistrate, Mrs Ojo, ordered that they be remanded in Kirikiri Prison, pending the fulfillment of their bail conditions.

    Ojo granted them bail in the sum of N200, 000 each.

    She also ordered that the case file be duplicated and sent to the Department of Public Prosecution (DPP), for advice.

    She adjourned the case till April 30.

  • Of politicians and prophets

    She is now a royal. But for some who share her original faith, she has dumped one royalty for new loyalty. An ethereal damsel now earthbound. She has parlayed Zion for an earthly palace. I refer, of course, to the new queen on the Ife throne. Her picture, now viral, portrays her stepping on a map of blood spill as part of her wedding rites.

    It signals her transition to a Yoruba regal.  The blood could have emanated from any mammal or bird. But those who cherish her as a Christian evangelist are griping away over why she has abandoned the blood of Christ for the body waste of a mere beast. For them, she degraded the entrails of the highest. She disintegrated from a royal priesthood. She is no longer heavenly by stepping up to a lesser deity, less commanding than her former grandeur.

    But traditionalists see her as a convert. Secularists see her as a realist. Some may say she is assimilated but not converted. Or vice versa. A few see her as a mere hybrid of faith, one who has seen her rite as a glorious nexus of two worlds: a marriage within a marriage. By being the wife of the Ooni of Ife, Naomi is trying to wed Jesus to Orunmila, in the spirit of the Yoruba ancestors.

    For some Yoruba, this is nothing novel. History has shown the Yoruba nation to be inevitably syncretic, a soul where faiths conjoin in peace and harmony. Hence, it was easy for the Yoruba to embrace Islam and Christianity without rancour or philosophical remorse. Where some others saw a breach, the Yoruba felt at ease. Some Christian sects display this paradox of worship in the southwest in their modes and rituals.

    Those who have read Wole Soyinka’s translation of Fagunwa’s A Forest of A thousand Daemons, see how Christian and Yoruba worldviews segue. But many have failed to understand that Naomi, the evangelist Yoruba queen, only reflects how, as a people, we have not crested the 21st century’s materialist wave. We have first to look at our political elite to grasp this.

    It is the power of pastors, marabouts, babalawos, dibias, etc. In the last PDP presidential primaries, some contestants relied less on what they saw than on the eyes of their seers. To one aspirant, a marabout fleshed out the vision. He saw the aspirant smothered in his voluminous babaringa swearing in ministers.

    Naomi walking on blood during the ritual
    Naomi walking on blood during the ritual

    Another marabout saw another aspirant hanging his suit in the presidential office. The first was a man awash in ceremonial glory; the other in a grand grind of presidential duty.

    Nor is it restricted to marabouts. Pastors con many with rose-tinted visions. A few years ago, one politician bucked crystal-clear evidence by insisting a sitting governor would hand over to him because his prophetess saw the vision. An older politician counselled him, half in derision, to return to the prophetess for clarity. A few years ago, a prophetess could not foresee the assassination of a politician barely an hour after he left the woman of God in wee hours.

    Are they gullible or desperate? It reflects an underrated market that flatters ambitions. They invest politicians with hope. Hope emboldens them to action. After paying the seers, they move into the battle fray. All but they can see they have no chance. But they pooh-pooh advisers, pundits, the robust mockery of hard reality. They hear, like Joan of Arc in Bernard Shaw’s play, the mellifluous falseness of their voices. The seer at work.

    They are men of faith. They yield to the destiny of heaven. They already know their foot soldiers. They craft their path to power. They develop a sense of their human uniqueness. They are, like Queen Naomi, royals set apart by the Almighty. The flatterers who gulp their money also wonder. But they follow the candidate because it is bread and butter. Sometimes, the candidate infects them with his confidence because the candidate is fired by a celestial vision. His veins rise. His eyes shine. God glows over them. He walks on high winds. His belief cows any doubt. Everyone is on board the train to the presidential, gubernatorial, senatorial saddle.

    These candidates don’t have to wait for the miracles first or else they won’t contest. They hope for miracles. They are believers as risk takers. The marabouts and co. know that. As Dostoyevsky noted, seers possess three qualities that enthral people: miracle, mystery and authority. For the candidates, they wield authority with their sense of mystery, and so miracle must come. For other believers, miracles affirm their mystery and authority. Not like Jesus who said, blessed are those who believe even if they don’t see.

    It is the power of faith. Faith is the best friend of destiny.  Some people want miracles before they have faith. Those are the worst of believers. Even Jesus did not like people who wait for miracles before believing. Hence he poured woe on some followers: “You wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign. But I shall not show you any sign except that of prophet Jonah.”  Paul mocked the Jews for seeking signs. Paul defined faith as hope without evidence.

    Jesus did not yield to the miracle of the Satan, who wanted to give him the world. Rather, in his fleshly status, he endured for heaven’s command and succumbed to a shameful death. Our pastors and mallams these days want our people to believe them only if they perform miracles, even though the scriptures show that the devil also performs miracles. In his massive novel, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky writes, “Faith does not, in a realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith.”

    These candidates are not waiting for the miracles first. Hence some people believed in Father Mbaka and others of his ilk. Miracles are prophecies that happen only if you want them. Prophet Habakkuk says to run with the vision. To fulfil, you must act. Apostle Paul confirms it. You can derail prophesies like Macbeth. Or fall into woe like Oedipus. Prophecies are not cast in stone, even Jesus’ birth was about prophecies reinforced by prophecies of persecution.

    These faithful politicians exhaust their faiths before getting into power. When they get there, there is little faith left to fix roads, feed the poor or furnish schools to enlighten us and hospitals to heal us. With faith gone, no morality is left. They lose the fear of God. And as Dostoyevsky noted, “when there is no God, everything is permitted,” including and especially bad governance

     

    From error to a new era

    Governor John Kayode Fayemi soared into office with one of the best speeches ever delivered in our democratic experience. In rhythm, diction, evocations and content, Fayemi blended poetry with rage to rouse a people from an era he characterised as an error. My only complaint was in his “never again” part of the speech. It should have replaced “should” with “shall” to match the grandeur and intensity of the hour. No matter. He promises to bring back a governance of high principles and high dreams against Fayose’s cynically grovelling stomach infrastructure.

    But the new governor must blend that with a “common touch,” a charge that may have been exaggerated about his first coming but nonetheless a potent counsel as he recharges his people to cancel an error. He must note that he won with a thin margin, and he has to bind the wounds of the followers of the stomach.  It is no mean task. He will have to elevate a people of PHD to a realm of ideas from a pedestrian mentality. I wish him the best.

     

    Not presidential

    Bukola “Eleyinmi” Saraki came back to another storm. This time, he did the last thing first and first thing last. Rather than ask the Senate Clerk whether he granted Godswill Akpabio a permit to sit, Saraki asked him to change his seat. Again, he knew new sitting arrangement had not been resolved, so what seat was he asking Akpabio to take? Eventually the former Akwa Ibom governor spoke, and Saraki only created a convulsion in a healthy body. Was it an effect of his presidential snafu in Port Harcourt? He did not act presidential in the Senate.

     

    The Peacemakers

    Rev Kukah
    Rev Kukah

    The peacemakers said it was nothing partisan. But Atiku belongs to one divide. So, I want the trio of Bishops Kukah and Oyedepo as well as Alhaji Gumi to reconcile the other side. They should begin with Gumi, who loathes Buhari. Then they can reconcile Danjuma with Buhari. Their mission will be complete. Until they do it or, at least try, their mission remains partisan in my book. After all, Apostle said “follow peace with all men.” Peace beckons the clerics.

  • Professional Prophets: can’t they prophesy even the presidential primary winners? With just one known candidate, we are needing some divine leading

    Professional Prophets: can’t they prophesy even the presidential primary winners? With just one known candidate, we are needing some divine leading

    Recall that even with all the lies of former Finance Minister and World Bank official Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Nigeria still slumped into recession – just like all the economists that the then-government refused to listen to, had warned. So where were the Prophets?

    True to type, OBJ handed his ‘parcel bomb’ to the mass media, and not the horse rider!  In 2013, former President Obansanjo OBJ released his open letter to then President Goodluck Jonathan titled ‘Before It Is Too Late’.  The gist of the letter was don’t you put yourself forward for another term in office; quit now.

    A check shows that ever since he left office in 1979 as military head of state nobody has sat as president without receiving an Obasanjo ‘red card’.  They come either as open letters in the media or they are timed, then delivered at public lectures, something at which OBJ is heavily in demand and so strikes from that platform.

    What is irritating today is that we are in the second month of 2018; we have just 10 months to presidential primaries and only 1 year to general elections – why are our professional prophets keeping silent?

    AREN’T THEY HEARING ANYTHING ALL FROM GOD?!

    These OBJ letters I mention as the unnerving case in point.  Though OBJ tagged his latest offering (The Way Out) a special statement, it was as predictable as night precedes day.

    OBJ didn’t even go to meet the ‘horse rider’ that he loudly advised to honourably dismount, return home and rest.  Meanwhile unlike the very next Nigerian President OBJ has unfettered access to Aso Rock Villa in fact privately I have crowned him Nigeria’s highest political pilgrim to Aso Rock Villa.  But, typical of him he handed his dispatch only to the press.  (Last time, he had said that Dr. Goodluck Jonathan had failed to pick his 5 calls.  So what was the obstacle in this instance?!).  This column did prophesy boldly early in January that:  OBJ does NOT like President Buhari at all.

    No, not one of OBJs letters to presidents is every for a sitting president but for the public. As a matter of fact, coming 3 years into an administration and 1 year to election THE LETTER IS EVEN LATE – don’t our seers see anything?!

    Calling himself ‘The Voice of Caution’, OBJ’s letter bomb is such that the aftershocks are reverberating continually. Hear some other writers –  Snooping Around says “OBJ struck at the appointed hour in a landmark bombshell which shook every corner of the land”.

    Levi Obijiofor put it even more bluntly when he said (What Does Obasanjo Want) that ‘OBJ’s criticism of Buhari’s government has divided the nation’.  Some other writers have promised to tackle the subject serially; and even my ½ page is swamped with reader’s reactions to that OBJ letter, inspite of all the reactions I featured last week!

    I believe heaven, probably even hell knows the extent of the heat.  OBJ’s missive has generated locally and nationally, yet no prophet predicted this fire.

    Come to think of it, neither did they prophesy the January 1st Benue Massacre or even the demise and burial this week of a one-time Vice President.  So what are they revealing to us for goodness sake?

    Recall that even with all the lies of former Finance Minister and World Bank official Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Nigeria still slumped into recession – just like all the economists that the then-government refused to listen to, had warned.

    So ‘seeing’ this – couldn’t these professional prophets have PROPHESIED Recession, so that some pre-emptive measures could have been put in place?  Joseph the Dreamer in the Bible told Pharaoh then what was coming ahead – and ended up saving not just Egypt, but the whole Middle – Eastern region!

    This pre-election period has come at perilous times, and once again our prophets are silent: with all our religiosity, won’t our prophets speak now?

    Let me now ‘prophesy’ that in the first place this OBJ letter, The Way Out, is all about the 2019 presidency and who should NOT contest (Buhari, OBJ says) – or does he mean The Way Out of Nigeria?? Of course Not!  This column did ‘prophecy’ boldly, early in January that: OBJ does not like President Buhari at all.

    I now understand what Majek Fashek, the time he was still a Rainmaker meant when he sang a song Religion  Na Politics (Religion is Politics).

    Mr. Solomon Dalung, before he was made current Sports Minister had said that from around 2003 our politics changed from issues to Religion.  He said this at one of the presidential rallies, pre-2015 general elections.

    And nature abhors a vacuum like I said in January 2017 (The Princess Files, 2017 Great Prophecies Unveiled).  No wonder now Charley Boy released his own 2018 prophecies in January.  It’s a serious thing – Religion na Politics!

    I will simply refer to my 2017 ‘prophecies’, to let you know what is still obtainable.

    Out of 3 that I ‘prophesied’ against going for a shot at the presidency in 2019, one has passed away.

    Governorship – I told Mr. Peter Obafemi that 2019 would not be worth it.  I also did warn Chief Mrs. Remi Adiukwu Bakare-Adiukwu, even in these words To Give Up on Politics before Politics gives up on Her.

    I said this after she had contested the Lagos governorship on nearly all registered political parties in the country!  Sadly, she ignored my prophesy and went ahead to contest the December PDP national deputy women leader position (a carved out post, something like: let’s create this powerless position so that there’s one more woman in the Exco, before all the women begin grumbling!).  It is the lowliest of the low among the executives – still Mrs. Adiukwu lost woefully, roundly defeated by one ‘small girl’, in PDP!

    Well, I ‘prophesy’ here that OBJ already has his choice, of stooge candidate!  But… most prophetically and of direct relevance, The Princess Files, writing on OBJ said in bold print 2 weeks into the new year BEFORE this OBJ special statement release, I had said: Love The Message, Not the Messenger .  Today, that is the recurrent theme, nationwide. Now I say Prophets: Prophesy – tell us who will win the Osun State Governorship elections.  Okay, I will even narrow it down – who will win the major party primaries in Osun and Ekiti coming up very soon – or I might have to prophesy it myself!

    We are really needing some divine leading.  May I tell you reader, people contact my line ALL the time (severally even this week) – they tell me how God said they should tell me how great I will be etc, I should come see them for more revelations etc.  Okay, Oh ye Prophets, JUST TELL ME WHO GOD TOLD YOU WILL CONTEST the 2019 presidential elections! Right now only one person, Ekiti Governor Ayo Fayose has declared – not even President Buhari (who is being warned not to) has declared intent!

    Seriously now, Prophets, how about telling… WHO WINS?  You know, it’s reaching the point I will be listening to hear from (if he’s still speaking): Sat Guru Maharaji!

    • 07055547031 SMS/Whatspp

     

  • ‘Beware of prophets of doom’

    ‘Beware of prophets of doom’

    The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State has warned Lagosians to be wary of attention – seeking prophets and their patronising prophecies of doom.

    Reacting to a prediction by Primate Theophilus Olabayo of the Evangelical Church of Yahweh, Maryland, Lagos that APC would lose the governorship election in the state, APC’s Publicity Secretary Joe Igbokwe said the cleric was only aiming at regaining public relevance.

    He said Olabayo’s prediction never came to the party as a surprise, following his antecedents of failed predictions in the past.

    Igbokwe said the cleric was only trying to use APC to bounce back to relevance, having suffered physical, financial and spiritual setback years ago.

    “Is it not the same man who predicted years back that George W. Bush would defeat Bill Clinton only to publicly apologise that he saw Clinton and not Bush, after Clinton became the president?

    “In 1991, the ‘man of God’ predicted the imminent death of a very prominent Nigerian who threatened to sue him for the fake prophesies. The man is still alive and kicking at over 80 years. Are these not enough to make the self-acclaimed Nostradamus cover his face?

    The APC spokesman advised the ‘cleric’ to heed the word of the Bible, which says “Healer, heal thyself”.

    He said just as his past predictions had gone into the bin, this one will not be fulfilled.

  • Between prophets and alarmists

    Between prophets and alarmists

    When prophesies come, we ignore them because we are optimists. When they come to pass, we accept them as fatalists. Only prisoners of hope accept tragedies as a routine and never worry about storm clouds. They tell themselves in their fatalistic fashion: it was to be.

    That has been the way of Nigerians. Many societies around the world have ended up like this. But here we continue to live dangerously. In this season, we have wobbled into some of such prophesies, and Nigerians seem to take them in strides.

    That is why we ignore the cries of the skinny vicar of our financial soul over a depleting treasury and balding governor’s lamentations over the atrophy of the rule of law in his state. Rather we listen to a plump graduate of Breton Woods Institution when she says only $10.8 billion is missing and shows little righteous agony over the discrepancy. Again, when the opposition says the president should invoke the best of presidential soft power to rein in the drift in Rivers State before budget and ministerial nominees, some people say it is against the people.

    They forget that the federal government can always spend outside the budget, and that the ministerial nominees and service chiefs’ matters do little to affect the affairs of state and security. The issues are political. No one asked the president why he has not extended his powers on Mbu Joseph Mbu, the commissioner of police in Rivers State. Even when a serving senator was flown abroad after the potentially fatal rubber bullet shot, not a word issued out of the president’s lips.

    Shall we ask ourselves what they did with last year’s budget? For half of last year, state governments received fractions of their entitlements. The queens of government, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Diezani Alison-Madueke, have not explained in mathematics, graphics and plain English language why we cannot pay our bills even though oil prices beat the budget benchmark by over $30 dollars per barrel. Even at that, we have almost depleted the so-called excess crude account when the price did not fall to even 80 dollars any time last year. When CBN chief Sanusi yelled, we did not go beyond quibbles over whether his math was right or wrong. We forgot the implications for the ordinary poor.

    In Rivers State, we see Governor Rotimi Amaechi fighting with President Goodluck Jonathan. We see it as a partisan matter, so it is not important what the law says and what decency prescribes.

    We forget that every crisis in our history came with warnings over trouble to come. Here we have troubles on two fronts: politics and economy. Both spell dire consequences. A well-known priest Mathew Kukah joined the cynical crowd in a recent interview by saying that the threat to Nigeria is in the pages of the newspapers and no one will be there when the politicians solve their problems. This is another cynical way of capsizing before our elite where he has friends on both sides of the divide. Politicians always resolve their differences after so much has been lost in lives and resources. If they resolve their differences, do they resolve the nation’s?

    Our history teaches us sombre lessons. The crisis of the First Republic started in the Western region, but many saw it as simply an Awolowo and Akintola fracas. Until elections came and it strangulated the region and all of Nigeria. The larger consequence was a civil war, and the tales of deaths, starvation and misery belonged not to the Yoruba of the west but the Igbo of the east.

    As poet John Donne warned, “ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” My father Moses often said that if you throw a stone into the market, you cannot guarantee the safety of your mother. When crisis comes, it has a life of its own. Those who trigger it suffer as well as those who know little about it. If you start a bush fire, you also have to run for your life.

    That is why it is important to listen when people warn about a national drift. The danger is that we see things in rigid partisan brackets and fail to realise that not all partisan cries are without merit. We chuck them aside as paranoia. Henry Kissinger purred: “even the paranoid have enemies.” When Asari Dokubo threatened over 2015 elections, no one paid him a visit. But when Nasir el RuFai uttered his own, he was detained.

    If APC or PDP makes a case, it is inevitably partisan. But it does not mean it lacks substance, especially if the substance pries into our very existence. In the closing chapters of the Second Republic, Awo warned over the drift of the Shagari regime into tyranny, and raised the spectre of the preventive detention act that made Kwame Nkrumah notorious. He was dismissed as a partisan. A few months later, he was proved right and the republic slurred into a last song.

    We have seen this sort in other lands. Sir Winston Churchill was the disregarded prophet when as a back bencher in House of Commons he warned his country. In his grand and elegant growl, he described Hitler as the mad man of Europe. He said all of the continent should stop the tyrant before he engulfed civilisation in his Nazi holocaust. He urged Britain to start re-arming to match Germany that was building the most formidable military machine the world had ever known.

    His foes described him as an alarmist, with the peroration of partisan. When Hitler was ready, he rolled over France with his Blitzkrieg, and it took the Americans to save the world with help from nature in Russia and miscalculation by the fuehrer. England paid for ignoring Churchill when the German air force, the Luftwaffe, strafed London and other cities into a daze of apocalyptic fear.

    Even France may have been spared the humiliation of German invasion through the Ardenne Forest if the Vichy quislings had heeded Charles de Gaulle’s warning over fortifying that section and warding off the Nazis from Paris.

    Crisis comes from what many often regard as little crisis. The Boko Haram crisis might not have escalated if Yar’Adua had not regarded the death of its leader as trivial. Ironically, it is in search of justice for their leader that that region fell into the malignity of deaths, bigotry, lawlessness and state of emergency whose end is not in sight. The Owu War that ignited into what historians call the Yoruba Wars started over a fracas over cheap peppers. How many know that the First World, that conflict of butchery, began by the killing of an Arch Duke of Sarajevo. Those little things only mark tipping points of escalating tensions. It is just like a divorce that is triggered by spill of a glass of milk.

    The tragedy is that Nigerians are either facile or docile and accept injustices. So the political elite get away with any impunity. Russia wanted to impose its will on Ukraine, but the people resisted and have forced the prime minister to step down. In Turkey, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has lost popularity because of his highhanded ways. The Maghreb has shown in its Arab Springs, in spite of drawbacks, that it will stand for justice.

    If we take the rule of law and decency seriously, we shall have little tensions. Europe and America are no less contentious people than we. But they have decided to abide by rules rather and men. The worst, as poet Lord Byron once wrote, that we can expect when bad things happen is the three words: I told you so.