KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
with Remi Akano
Passion Sunday, which in the Catholic world, commemorates the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ before and during his crucifixion has come and gone. Easter is therefore round the corner. In fact by the time you read this, it will be only a week away. It’s that the season therefore for every Christian to reflect on the great price paid for our salvation and be sure that we are not, by our thoughts, words or deeds, “nailing” the Lord on the cross again and again.
And if there is any area we all need to pay great attention this season, it is our politics. In my view those most urgently in need of soul-searching are those Christians either currently in office or on the hustings seeking office. For, as the Scriptures exhort, “if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged (1Corinthians. 11:31).
I feel constrained, however, to focus on the ways of one man who, in the opinion of this columnist, has a lot of soul-searching to do, Chief Matthew Olusegun Obasanjo, out-going President of the Federal Republic. That is because his every action and omission does have significant impact upon the temperature of the polity as elections draw nearer, and could have far-reaching results, for good or for ill - long after.
Many informed commentators have ascribed the threat to a peaceful, free and fair election to the ongoing travail of Vice President Atiku Abubakar. The travails, they contend, is the result of the President’s determination to prevent his erstwhile confidant from contesting the elections. So, the accusation of corruption is dismissed as contrived and simply designed as the third-term project by other means because
Obasanjo is reluctant to hand over the reins of power on May 29. Some have said that since Obasanjo cannot now continue in person, he has perfected his strategy for remaining in office by proxy. His almost brazen manipulation of the PDP presidential primary to produce a seemingly pliable candidate in Umar Yar’Adua, the younger brother of his late friend and very loyal deputy in his military rulership days, is widely seen as one of such strategies. The amendment to the party’s constitution to make him life Chairman of the Board of Trustees with a kind of supervising authority over those in government is the other.
One was tempted to dismiss all of that as mere speculation. But the President’s general comportment; the seeming determination to keep Atiku out of the election and some statements credited to him, all at least, hint at a desperate do-or-die, win-at-all-costs tendency.
All of which makes it an imperative for the President to take another look at things particularly from the perspective of a Christian which he says he is. And it is in order to assist him to do this that I am doing this piece, which I hope he or someone who has his ears would read.
As my contribution to what was then the third-term debate, (before it became a project of the Peoples Democratic Party), I took advantage of this column then published elsewhere to address an open letter to His Excellency.
In that letter which was headlined, “Go thou and do Likewise”, I had assured the President that I felt his pain. I had wondered how he and members of his team were supposed to feel should his successor return petrol to N30 per litre by presidential fiat just to earn instant acclaim; or ravenously descend on the foreign reserves he had so painstakingly amassed; or soft pedal on the war against corruption; or resort to indiscriminate foreign borrowing…”
I had noted that he “must feel a sense of deja vu, having traveled this road before”. “Anyone who has ever heard you talk about the number of aircraft and ships you left behind as military head of state in 1979 and what you found at the Nigeria Airways and the Nigeria National Shipping Line respectively on your return in 1999, should understand how you must feel”
I had also empathized with how short-changed he might feel were his successor to gracelessly appropriate the credit for the success of many of his programmes for which he is being vilified today. Again I had asked rhetorically: “Where would the visioner and his visionary team members be…when as a result of the Power Sector Reform programme of your administration, power outages become so rare that citizens are wondering what has gone wrong; when the combined effect of banking consolidation, lower interest rates, debt relief and exit from the stranglehold of peonage result in significant rise in the external value of the Naira; when El-Rufai’s bulldozers have given us a world class capital and Oby Ezekwesili’s MSMD brand has notched income from solid minerals nearer that from hydrocarbon; when the aviation sector reform spurred on the wings of disaster has restored flying to its pride of place; when farmer-friendly lending and other policies have resulted in rising grain reserves, billions of dollar income from the export of cassava and other produces…:
In spite of these I had then advised the President to recourse to the bible as every true Christian’s light and lamp. And in this connection, I had quoted 1Corinthians 14:40 which reads: “Let all things be done decently and in order and asked”; asking if it would be decent for him to benefit from a constitutional amendment even if it followed laid down rules? I had also urged the President to resist any temptation to claim credit for any one of his achievements in office because the bible says in Philippians 2:13 that “…it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
I had then gone on to remind the President how in 2Samuel chapter 7, good old King David had thought to crown his life’s work with the building of a magnificent tabernacle for the Lord and how God in his sovereignty had told him, no thanks; that’s your successor’s assignment. I had then concluded: “David not only gave up the assignment, he helped prepare Solomon for it! Dear Mr President and brother-in-the-Lord go thou and do likewise.”
Events moved very rapidly after that open letter. And I found myself shortly after Easter last year doing another piece from which I have borrowed today’s headline, “The Passion of the President”
Permit me to quote relevant parts of that piece which opened like this: “If like me you have watched the film, the Passion of the Christ, you will see the Lord Jesus at His most human in the Gethsemane scene which opened the Mel Gibson epic. Here was the Lord Jesus Christ who knew why he came to the world; knew beforehand that his time was short and operated with that awareness. Yet when the time came, what happened?
“The bible recorded it as follows: Going a little ahead, he fell on his face, praying, "My Father, if there is any way, get me out of this … (Matthew 26:39). And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly. And His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground (Luke 22:44). And yet he had confidently prophesied the same thing he was now praying against in Matthew 20:18 when he told His disciples: “Listen to me carefully. We are on our way up to Jerusalem. When we get there, the Son of Man will be betrayed to the religious leaders and scholars. They will sentence him to death.”
What was going on?! Was the Lord seeking to amend His contract with the Father? Had He begun to love His earthly status that He didn’t want a change? Or was it the suffering that awaited Him on the way to and on the cross that became such a great scare? Whatever it was, the Lord certainly did not relish the cup!
Thank God, the Lord Jesus very quickly snapped out of it, such that even as He pleaded with the Father for a reprieve, He added in the same (Matthew 26:39). But please, not what I want. You, what do you want? His second prayer was in fact much less earnestly against the cup: Again he prayed, "My Father, if there is no other way than this, drinking this cup to the dregs, I'm ready. Do it your way." (Matthew 26:42).”
I went on to relate the scene to what might have been President Obasanjo’s state of mind at that time. The President, I wrote “must be going through his own Gethsemane experience. He knew his contract with the people of Nigeria would end in 2007. He had publicly told members of his team so. He had spoken about missing his chicken at Otta and even assured an international audience in Germany that he would not succumb to any pressure to stay longer. It would be most charitable thing to say that as the days draw nearer he is having second thoughts. Like the Lord however, he must snap out of it! He must join the Lord to declare: But please, not what I want. You, what do you want?”
Continuing, I wrote: “The Lord Jesus had Peter to contend with on his way to the cross. But he didn’t allow them to derail him. That was why he rebuked Peter in Mark 8:33: Turning and seeing his disciples wavering, wondering what to believe, Jesus confronted Peter. "Peter, get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works." The President must do the same to those who are lovingly urging him on, whether they be politicians or businessmen, no matter how seemingly well-meaning they are.
“Like the Lord despised the shame on the cross for the glory that’s ahead; so must the President despise the temporary set-back of seemingly failing to conclude some of the things he started, for the glory of keeping his international statesman’s status. It is well worth it. Above all he would be following the footsteps of his self-confessed Lord.”
That was then. The scenario, if analysts are to be believed, has changed. The President has, by force of Legislative non-acquiesce, been weaned of the milk of direct self-perpetuation and now feeds with relish on the food-drink of becoming the guiding spirit behind the throne and a kind of king of kings! Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu calls it self-deification! Many discerning people unfortunately agree. But what the president needs is the strong meat of humility and surrender to the sovereignty of God as contained in the Bible. He must seize the opportunity of this season to rethink, revaluate his tactics and strategies; reach deep down inside to examine his motives.
Christian that he is, he must know that even God, the all-knowing creator, does not force his will on those he created; he counsels us! That is the import of Deuteronomy 30:19 which reads in part: “…I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed may live”. He must never forget that it is only God that “… changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings … (Daniel 2:21). He must be reminded that God is “…the only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords (1 Timothy 6:15). The bible also says “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise (Proverbs 12:15). I trust that Mr President is wise.
with Remi Akano
Passion Sunday, which in the Catholic world, commemorates the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ before and during his crucifixion has come and gone. Easter is therefore round the corner. In fact by the time you read this, it will be only a week away. It’s that the season therefore for every Christian to reflect on the great price paid for our salvation and be sure that we are not, by our thoughts, words or deeds, “nailing” the Lord on the cross again and again.
And if there is any area we all need to pay great attention this season, it is our politics. In my view those most urgently in need of soul-searching are those Christians either currently in office or on the hustings seeking office. For, as the Scriptures exhort, “if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged (1Corinthians. 11:31).
I feel constrained, however, to focus on the ways of one man who, in the opinion of this columnist, has a lot of soul-searching to do, Chief Matthew Olusegun Obasanjo, out-going President of the Federal Republic. That is because his every action and omission does have significant impact upon the temperature of the polity as elections draw nearer, and could have far-reaching results, for good or for ill - long after.
Many informed commentators have ascribed the threat to a peaceful, free and fair election to the ongoing travail of Vice President Atiku Abubakar. The travails, they contend, is the result of the President’s determination to prevent his erstwhile confidant from contesting the elections. So, the accusation of corruption is dismissed as contrived and simply designed as the third-term project by other means because
Obasanjo is reluctant to hand over the reins of power on May 29. Some have said that since Obasanjo cannot now continue in person, he has perfected his strategy for remaining in office by proxy. His almost brazen manipulation of the PDP presidential primary to produce a seemingly pliable candidate in Umar Yar’Adua, the younger brother of his late friend and very loyal deputy in his military rulership days, is widely seen as one of such strategies. The amendment to the party’s constitution to make him life Chairman of the Board of Trustees with a kind of supervising authority over those in government is the other.
One was tempted to dismiss all of that as mere speculation. But the President’s general comportment; the seeming determination to keep Atiku out of the election and some statements credited to him, all at least, hint at a desperate do-or-die, win-at-all-costs tendency.
All of which makes it an imperative for the President to take another look at things particularly from the perspective of a Christian which he says he is. And it is in order to assist him to do this that I am doing this piece, which I hope he or someone who has his ears would read.
As my contribution to what was then the third-term debate, (before it became a project of the Peoples Democratic Party), I took advantage of this column then published elsewhere to address an open letter to His Excellency.
In that letter which was headlined, “Go thou and do Likewise”, I had assured the President that I felt his pain. I had wondered how he and members of his team were supposed to feel should his successor return petrol to N30 per litre by presidential fiat just to earn instant acclaim; or ravenously descend on the foreign reserves he had so painstakingly amassed; or soft pedal on the war against corruption; or resort to indiscriminate foreign borrowing…”
I had noted that he “must feel a sense of deja vu, having traveled this road before”. “Anyone who has ever heard you talk about the number of aircraft and ships you left behind as military head of state in 1979 and what you found at the Nigeria Airways and the Nigeria National Shipping Line respectively on your return in 1999, should understand how you must feel”
I had also empathized with how short-changed he might feel were his successor to gracelessly appropriate the credit for the success of many of his programmes for which he is being vilified today. Again I had asked rhetorically: “Where would the visioner and his visionary team members be…when as a result of the Power Sector Reform programme of your administration, power outages become so rare that citizens are wondering what has gone wrong; when the combined effect of banking consolidation, lower interest rates, debt relief and exit from the stranglehold of peonage result in significant rise in the external value of the Naira; when El-Rufai’s bulldozers have given us a world class capital and Oby Ezekwesili’s MSMD brand has notched income from solid minerals nearer that from hydrocarbon; when the aviation sector reform spurred on the wings of disaster has restored flying to its pride of place; when farmer-friendly lending and other policies have resulted in rising grain reserves, billions of dollar income from the export of cassava and other produces…:
In spite of these I had then advised the President to recourse to the bible as every true Christian’s light and lamp. And in this connection, I had quoted 1Corinthians 14:40 which reads: “Let all things be done decently and in order and asked”; asking if it would be decent for him to benefit from a constitutional amendment even if it followed laid down rules? I had also urged the President to resist any temptation to claim credit for any one of his achievements in office because the bible says in Philippians 2:13 that “…it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
I had then gone on to remind the President how in 2Samuel chapter 7, good old King David had thought to crown his life’s work with the building of a magnificent tabernacle for the Lord and how God in his sovereignty had told him, no thanks; that’s your successor’s assignment. I had then concluded: “David not only gave up the assignment, he helped prepare Solomon for it! Dear Mr President and brother-in-the-Lord go thou and do likewise.”
Events moved very rapidly after that open letter. And I found myself shortly after Easter last year doing another piece from which I have borrowed today’s headline, “The Passion of the President”
Permit me to quote relevant parts of that piece which opened like this: “If like me you have watched the film, the Passion of the Christ, you will see the Lord Jesus at His most human in the Gethsemane scene which opened the Mel Gibson epic. Here was the Lord Jesus Christ who knew why he came to the world; knew beforehand that his time was short and operated with that awareness. Yet when the time came, what happened?
“The bible recorded it as follows: Going a little ahead, he fell on his face, praying, "My Father, if there is any way, get me out of this … (Matthew 26:39). And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly. And His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground (Luke 22:44). And yet he had confidently prophesied the same thing he was now praying against in Matthew 20:18 when he told His disciples: “Listen to me carefully. We are on our way up to Jerusalem. When we get there, the Son of Man will be betrayed to the religious leaders and scholars. They will sentence him to death.”
What was going on?! Was the Lord seeking to amend His contract with the Father? Had He begun to love His earthly status that He didn’t want a change? Or was it the suffering that awaited Him on the way to and on the cross that became such a great scare? Whatever it was, the Lord certainly did not relish the cup!
Thank God, the Lord Jesus very quickly snapped out of it, such that even as He pleaded with the Father for a reprieve, He added in the same (Matthew 26:39). But please, not what I want. You, what do you want? His second prayer was in fact much less earnestly against the cup: Again he prayed, "My Father, if there is no other way than this, drinking this cup to the dregs, I'm ready. Do it your way." (Matthew 26:42).”
I went on to relate the scene to what might have been President Obasanjo’s state of mind at that time. The President, I wrote “must be going through his own Gethsemane experience. He knew his contract with the people of Nigeria would end in 2007. He had publicly told members of his team so. He had spoken about missing his chicken at Otta and even assured an international audience in Germany that he would not succumb to any pressure to stay longer. It would be most charitable thing to say that as the days draw nearer he is having second thoughts. Like the Lord however, he must snap out of it! He must join the Lord to declare: But please, not what I want. You, what do you want?”
Continuing, I wrote: “The Lord Jesus had Peter to contend with on his way to the cross. But he didn’t allow them to derail him. That was why he rebuked Peter in Mark 8:33: Turning and seeing his disciples wavering, wondering what to believe, Jesus confronted Peter. "Peter, get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works." The President must do the same to those who are lovingly urging him on, whether they be politicians or businessmen, no matter how seemingly well-meaning they are.
“Like the Lord despised the shame on the cross for the glory that’s ahead; so must the President despise the temporary set-back of seemingly failing to conclude some of the things he started, for the glory of keeping his international statesman’s status. It is well worth it. Above all he would be following the footsteps of his self-confessed Lord.”
That was then. The scenario, if analysts are to be believed, has changed. The President has, by force of Legislative non-acquiesce, been weaned of the milk of direct self-perpetuation and now feeds with relish on the food-drink of becoming the guiding spirit behind the throne and a kind of king of kings! Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu calls it self-deification! Many discerning people unfortunately agree. But what the president needs is the strong meat of humility and surrender to the sovereignty of God as contained in the Bible. He must seize the opportunity of this season to rethink, revaluate his tactics and strategies; reach deep down inside to examine his motives.
Christian that he is, he must know that even God, the all-knowing creator, does not force his will on those he created; he counsels us! That is the import of Deuteronomy 30:19 which reads in part: “…I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed may live”. He must never forget that it is only God that “… changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings … (Daniel 2:21). He must be reminded that God is “…the only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords (1 Timothy 6:15). The bible also says “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise (Proverbs 12:15). I trust that Mr President is wise.
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