KINGDOMPerspective July 29, 2007
Inspiration for this piece came from two sources as different and apart as chalk and cheese. The first source is Tony Oganah, a lawyer, publisher and politician. Although, he once ran for office on the platform of one of so-called conservative parties, he is of the Tony Enahoro School of Politics, even if he does not necessarily agree with every detail of the new constitution being spearheaded by the veteran nationalist and politician. Of course, he is a PRONACO activist.
The other source is "my president." By that I mean the man of God who heads the umbrella body of Pentecostal and charismatic churches, the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor. A man I respect so much but do not always agree with, Oritsejafor came out of the "come-as-you-are" generation of pastors who would not have anyone link their faith with their hairstyle. Like my Senior Pastor, he still dons his punk hairstyle, decades of "going-ye" later.
On a visit by my wife and I to the Oganah family, last Sunday, Tony and I got talking about the state of the nation. Everything from the nature of the last charade called elections to the controversial sales of refineries to Obasanjo’s blue-eyed boys whose special-purpose vehicle for the deal was appropriately named Bluestar Petroleum. After all, if you are a powerful potentate’s blue-eyed boy, you cannot be anything but a blue star!
What resonated with me as we drove out of the estate where Tony and his wonderful wife (Nkechi) and their children live was his comment on the role of the Church in the affairs of our nation. He noted that the church has had no influence on governance and felt that this should not be so. I agreed with him but put it down to disunity in the body. I explained to him that I should know, because of the great challenges we have faced trying to publish a non-denominational magazine known as KINGDOMPeople and how we have had to start a One Church Campaign as a project of the magazine. I also sought to let him see the worldwide nature of the disunity citing the recent statement by Pope Benedict XVI to the effect that non-Catholics may be styled "Christian communities", but they do not belong to the one and only one catholic and apostolic church established by the Lord Jesus under the leadership of Apostle Peter (more on this at a later date). Tony did agree that disunity was an issue but he went on to posit that the problem may lie more in the fact that many of those in leadership of the various bodies "have been compromised."
That of course got me thinking and wondering until, back at home, "my president" weighed in on the issue. In an extensive interview with Aramide Oikelome who heads the Faith Desk of this newspaper, Pastor Oritsejafor expressed surprise that the Church was not being involved in finding solutions to that blight on the national conscience, the Niger Delta crisis. He argued that majority of the citizens of that region of Nigeria are Christians and implied therefore that they should be quite responsive to the intervention of their spiritual leaders.
His words: "In my own opinion, one of the mistakes they have always made is that when they call the supposed stakeholders of the Niger Delta, they never bring in the church and it has always baffled me why they don’t do this…the Niger Delta is basically composed of Christian states…Everybody you see there (if they want to be honest with you) is a Christian one way or the other. They may not be committed, but they are Christians; they were baptized in church…"
Rationalising the need to involve the church further, he said: "Not only are we organising prayers at the moment (which is very important), but also we want to be further involved; we want to be involved in negotiations in the sense that some of these boys (militants) do not trust a lot of government officials. On the other hand there are people they believe are credible"
Then, he came to the issue that had been tugging at my heartstring since my discussion with Tony earlier, the issue of credibility. Said "my president": "We can become the bridge. We can talk to these boys and reach a truce with them to stop the fighting and the kidnapping for a year and let the government fulfill its part. If they don’t, then nobody can blame them. Then we can go to the government and tell them that our credibility is at stake and if they don’t perform, we would come out publicly to condemn them. I don’t need any money or anything from the government. No governor has given me any money because, I don’t want it, I don’t need it. So, if they don’t perform we will come out and tell the whole world and when we start talking, people will listen because they know we are not politicians…"
Making the case that credibility is the rock upon which church leadership is (or should be) built, he admitted that "a lot of institutions in the country have been bastardised. Many do not have credibility, but I think to some extent there are still people in the church who have credibility and can stand up against injustice. We know that if we do not do what we say, then we are in trouble because we have nothing to preach to anybody. My members can walk out of the church because truth, justice and equity are directly related to what we preach. So, if I don’t stick to what I say, it goes completely against everything that I am doing. That means that I have no platform again. A politician can divorce his wife and still remain a politician or even become the president, but I can’t do that; I can’t drive my wife away and then open the Bible to preach…"
I wanted to shout: "tell them pastor, tell them my president", but somehow, I didn’t get the release in my spirit. Yes, Pastor Oritsejafor was right, the church should go beyond praying and get involved at least as intermediaries and peace brokers. And possibly there is nowhere needing that kind of intervention now more than the Niger Delta. And yes, he can flaunt his own credentials as a credible man who has not received any money from any governor, but can he really speak for others? The fact that he needed to declare that openly suggests that either there are people out there who have received money from governors or, there are governors willing to give in order to compromise men of God or, both. So there is a credibility challenge that the church must confront and deal with.
More important than the credibility problem in the leadership cadre of the church implied in all of these, is the issue of the credibility of politicians, many of whom fly the Christianity flag and are therefore products of the church led by Pastor Oritsejafor and his other revered colleagues in Christian Association of Nigeria.
When the PFN president made the distinction between those in the church and politicians, he sounded like politicians dropped from some unknown planet. Yet we know better, don’t we? When the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), after smartly selling the public and our erstwhile immunity-protected governors the dummy of unwillingness to carry out its threat to prosecute them after their tenure, finally got cracking recently a discernible trend seem to have begun. The profile of the five already arraigned, at the time of writing this, should be food for thought to all Christians and in particular, the leadership. Four of them, are to use Pastor Oritsejafor’s words quoted above are, "…christian(s) one way or the other. They may not be committed, but they are Christians; they were baptized in church."
Although, these men are innocent until proven guilty, it is still instructive that they could be accused of that much evil! Plateau State’s Joshua Dariye never tired of thanking God for his many court victories each time EFCC’s exuberance pitched them against due process. Yet he has never really denied wrong-doing, at least, that he is a fugitive from justice in the United Kingdom. Orji Uzor Kalu presided over "God’s Own State" and his presidential campaigns in the run-down to the last "elections" were like crusades for the amount of praise and worship that featured in many of them. There is fine-boy, and seemingly cerebral Chimaroke Nnamani, the "Ebeano" governor whose catch phrase was "Enugu is working…to God be the glory." And horror of horrors there is Governor Jolly Nyame who still carries the title of reverend and who, if media reports are to be believed, has offered to return "part of his loot."
My dear President, I suggest that the church’s involvement in the Niger Delta and everywhere else must transcend prayers and direct intervention as peace brokers; it must extend to, if not primarily be, ensuring that those who go to government naming the name of the Lord, must have the rest of Christ’s family to contend with each time they step out of line in the course of serving Christ through the nation. That, in my humble opinion is the urgent challenge to church leadership today.
First published in a Nigerian Daily, the Sunday Independent, published in Lagos Nigeria.
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