KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
With REMI AKANO
e-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com
It can bear repetition. Alhaji Umar Musa Yar’Adua does smell like roses after the phosphorus-like odour that used to ooze from Nigeria’s seat of power in Abuja. So as I recall saying recently, he would be my idea of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria under normal circumstances.
The now suspended general strike was certainly unnecessary and the suffering and losses at all levels avoidable, but it offered us an opportunity to appraise the style of the new “king” on the block. And I personally liked what I saw. I liked the “presidential” reticence which left him room for his “intervention” at the crucial last minute. It’s the way it ought to be. I also noticed the restraint of the Police which ordinarily should be the case but which had become such an exception under the previous dispensation. That I am sure was the “instruction from above.” My hope is that it would become the norm for the citizen’s right of dissent is respected. Did you also note the language of spokesmen for government – temperate and civil; a far cry from the abrasive and abusive effusions that we’ve been forced to live with? There is one little exception though.
Incidentally, that little exception came from Segun Adeniyi, the new presidential spokesman, who in his well-written insider report on what went on and who did what inside Aso Villa during the crisis, inadvertently, I believe, described those who were urging Yar’Adua to “disown Obasanjo” as “the mob.” I cannot find it in me to believe that this was anything but a slip; so, we’ll give that part of his statement a miss.
However, his write-up, informative as it is, does offer an insight into the emerging mindset of the administration. And it shows a glaring lack of appreciation of the key issue in national governance today. In spite of the seeming sincerity and honesty being affected by the new leadership, there is this nagging feeling that they are still missing the point, the “koko” as fans of music star D’Banj would put it. And that “koko”, whether we like or not, is due process, leading to justice, equity and enthronement of righteousness in the land. To play around this, is to misread the mood of the nation and backstep to an era we’ll love to forget in hurry.
Let’s explore this together. Segun Adeniyi wrote and I quote: “…he (Yar’Adua) is also of the view that any government policy that impacts directly on the welfare of the people must meet the criteria of rule of law and public morality.” Adeniyi went on to report how the President directed officials to look into those controversial issues even before Labour’s 14-day ultimatum. He intimated that on the issue of Value Added Tax, for instance, the question asked was whether it could be sustained on the basis of legality? The 15% salary increase, according to Adeniyi was treated as an issue of honour and so Yar’Adua ruled that “government just has to honour its obligations” I am sure you’ll join me in applauding all of that.
But let’s read on: “Now to the issue of fuel price hike done shortly before the administration came in. There were presentations by Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency PPPRA, NNPC and other stakeholders on all the indices that informed the decision…What should government do in the face of harsh economic realities? …The consensus remains that in a democracy, the people have to be consulted and the relevant stakeholders carried along on important decisions that would affect their welfare. Taking into account the hardship that normally goes with fuel price hike, which has been rather evident in across the nation, the president decided tat since kerosene and diesel are more essential for the vulnerable elements of our society, prices of such products should be reversed to the old rates. As for petrol, having factored in the economic indices, a reduction of five naira was also approved even as this would go against the projections of NNPC and PPPRA.”
Adeniyi continued: “Of course it is politically expedient to just reverse everything, but one fact often ignored is that Nigeria is a poor country with the potential for changing our fortunes if we do the correct things, though the problem remains that the people, for good reasons, do not trust those in power to act in their interest. That explains why public opinion is today against government on the vexatious issue of petroleum pricing…”
This is the beginning of my point of departure with Adeniyi and his principals. They admit that “the consensus remains that in a democracy, the people have to be consulted and the relevant stakeholders carried along on important decisions that would affect their welfare” but proceeded to act unilaterally. “There were presentations by Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency PPPRA, NNPC and other stakeholders on all the indices that informed the decision…” The question here was to whom were these presentations done? They decided to bypass the one body, the PPPRA Board, a government dominated body through which some semblance of consultation could have been done. The indices were prepared by the NNPC and PPPRA and other stakeholders. Obviously some stakeholders are more stakeholder than others!
He spoke about how politically expedient it would have been for his principal to simply reverse everything. We are therefore supposed to applaud his courage for taking a difficult decision. I say, on the contrary it was expediency to dispense with the consensus “that in a democracy, the people have to be consulted and the relevant stakeholders carried along on important decisions that would affect their welfare.”
At the heart of the matter is that decisions were taken in the twilight days of a government run by the Peoples Democratic Party, to which Yar’Adua belongs. The correct thing was for the outgoing president to have intimated him with the decision before it was taken. In the process of such intimation, he should have had all the facts and figures. If he had, it should have enabled him prepare for the fall-outs. Adeniyi’s write-up gave no hint of that. In fact that pointed issue has been studiously avoided. So if he was not briefed, why was it difficult for him to suspend those decisions when they became contentious and proceed to institute consultations with all stakeholders and thus be able to take decisions from a position of knowledge, which he could rightly own?
Or are we dealing here with the kind of position Adeniyi himself foresaw in his ThisDay column last year? In a piece titled, “Where are the Davids”, he had written: “From Abuja to virtually all the states, the outgoing public officials are thinking, not in terms of what is best for the people but rather scheming for self-preservation as we see the unsettling prospects of incumbents and other tin gods seeking to install their wives, their sons, their cousins, their concubines and other cronies in power…Having wasted the past, they have now taken it upon themselves to also legislate on our future by imposing on us their puppets so they can continue to rule beyond their tenure.”
Obviously Adeniyi was so irked by any thought of Yar’Adua as a puppet that it was at this point that he committed the faux pas of describing those who dared to hint at it, as members of a mob. But what followed that particular slip incidentally talks to the heart of the state of our nation. Wrote Adeniyi: “The pundits who argue that the (then) outstanding issues on ground can be resolved simply by Yar’Adua disowning Obasanjo clearly miss the point. Even if he does that to please the mob, it would still not obliterate the fact that the April elections were messed up, a fact he has admitted and made a solemn commitment to redressing by reforming the electoral process so as to bring integrity to the ballot box…”
That is the “koko” that Aso Villa has gotten and yet not gotten. The man or woman who runs Nigeria has to have been the one who polled the highest number of votes cast in a free, fair and credible election. The gentleman currently attempting to call the shots does not exactly answer to that description. Conjectures by certain well-meaning people, including Adeniyi before he joined the administration that Yar’Adua would still have won were the elections “not messed up”, remain just that – conjectures, not empirically provable. He does not hold a mandate, properly so called; what he has is the result of fraud, brazen robbery and violence. He needs to understand that and let it inform his choices! I once had occasion to offer suggestions in this column.
But I doubt that he does, going by his characterization, according to Adeniyi in his last ThisDay column, of his election victory as a low-score lead in an examination that had no passes. No sir, it is actually like scoring very high grades through “expo”. And you know what JAMB and WAEC do to such results? They are cancelled.
To everybody who professes Christianity, due process must be non-negotiable! I said it here before. God had to go through the painful due process of allowing his son to die on the cross that he may retrieve control of the earth given away to satan by Adam! He could have done it any other way. He did not, because he would not violate his own law. Yar’Adua may not know this, but I am sure Vice President Jonathan and Adeniyi do. Let’s face the “koko” please. (thegreatcompany.blogspot.com)
Thursday 28 June 2007
UPON THIS ROCK…
KINGDOM Perspective June 24, 2007
It easy to reconstruct the scenario. A certain powerful man finally came to terms with the fact that he could no longer remain in power. He looked lovingly into the eyes of one his sons. He recalled the many late nights the not-so-young man had had to keep on account of he, the father, being a nocturnal animal who was not averse to working and playing afterhours. He recalled how many personal, possibly intimate issues he had efficiently handled to his pleasure. He could not forget that this dutiful son was the last person he saw at night as well as first thing in the morning.
This good and faithful son, he told himself must be amply compensated and he assured his son so. He must have sworn by himself to the son like God the Almighty who finding no one higher to swear by swore by himself to Abraham in the bible. This powerful man loves to play God, you see.
Anyway, he set about fulfilling his promise. His son has to become Governor of his (the son’s) home state at whatever cost. After all the state had then only recently been prised out of the vice-grip of his brother. He had literally been licensed to maim, kill, raze down properties and do whatever else caught his fancy in order to recoup his investment from the erstwhile custodian of the mandate they stole in 2003.
Fortunately, the man who would supervise the election was already beholden to his son, anyway – he holds office through the persuasive power of his beloved son. So that part of the grand scheme was all but sorted out. But this father, being a war general versed in the strategies and tactics of war by other means, visited the incumbent governor to serve him notice: “no second term for you, ok?” And just in case he was hard at hearing he applied a bit of visible and physical pressure, by way of causing the gale of impeachment to blow in that direction. Let him feel it, so he can know it, he must have thought.
As if in parody of the lawyer’s concept of “covering the field”, the umpire either operating out of the abundance of his thankful heart, or under orders, or both, decided to clear the field of any other potent opposition. He identified two and promptly pronounced them “disqualified by the constitution”. Nothing was being left to chances. Even the famous “G-Factor” was considered; a mass was said to have been booked at a certain church in Abuja to pray for the victory of the favoured child of his powerful father.
In spite of all these elaborate planning; the war-room was still not satisfied that all ends had been tied up. So somebody came up with this wonderfully effective idea: “have only symbolic election in this particular state; disenfranchise as many of the people. The worst case scenario, they’ll go to the tribunal and when we get to that bridge, we’ll cross it. “The author of this idea must have received a standing ovation. They did exactly that and before you could say “nba”, the favourite son had been declared winner of the non-election and eventually sworn in as Executive Governor.
A very satisfied father must have told himself, “I have delivered on my promise and we can both now live happily forever; albeit apart!” But that was not to be.
You see, while that plot was being executed, a sub-plot was unfolding in parallel. A certain well-known eagle-eyed lawyer had spotted an innocuous, harmless-looking clause in the laws of the land and flown a little kite. Ignored at first, the favoured son’s opponent caught a whiff of the sweet scent of victory through that clause. Through the usual tortuous route he had become familiar with, he persevered and 17 days after, Papa’s son was scampering out of Government House.
No prizes for identifying the actors in this drama: Father is Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, immediate past President, Federal Republic of Nigeria while the son is Dr Andy Uba. You also know that the great umpire is Professor Maurice Iwu, chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the hero is Mr Peter Obi, reinstated Governor of Anambra State.
Since the April elections which served as a rude wake-up call for many of us to open our eyes to the extent of evil that’s being perpetrated in our land under the guise of nurturing our “nascent democracy” and “moving the nation forward”, many spiritually sensitive people have sensed that God was set to move against the flood of evil.
In a recent piece, one had dared to intimate that a flood of righteousness was on the way. That flood, we said then, would sweep away the authors and beneficiaries of evil and uplift the victims of these evil machinations. As was implied in that piece based on the events before the Flood in the days of Noah, God will identify the righteous, protect them and assign them to fulfil his purpose for our nation. Without any equivocation, Peter Obi is one such person. And his reinstatement is but the early days of that flood.
Thankfully, he seems to know it. In an interview with Sunday Independent, which was held before the Supreme Court judgment that correctly put his tenure as enduring till 2010, but which was not published until after it, Obi was quoted as saying the following prophetic words:
"Mark my word, I will return to the Government House, Awka, to complete my tenure. I say so because the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria makes it imperative that I serve out my term as elected governor of the state. Besides, I see myself as a child of destiny raised by God to salvage my people and, as a Christian, I know that God does not lie…At the appointed time, the will of God concerning me and Anambra State will be made manifest. It may seem that justice is being delayed now, but definitely, it cannot be denied when that time comes…I have asked just one thing from my people, and that is: that they should continue to pray for the will of God to prevail in my situation and in the situation of Anambra. God, in his infinite mercy, should give the Supreme Court justices the wisdom and courage to do the right thing whenever they will take the final decision on his matter."
He did not have any doubt whatsoever about the triumph of good over evil. He was fully persuaded of the victory of righteousness over wickedness. And he did not mince words. As those of the school of political correctness would have cynically put it, he was “wearing his faith on his sleeves” or “playing the religion card.” But a man, any man who would swim against the swift current of evil flooding our land and stay the course must stand firm on his faith. That is what Obi has done and is doing. That is the secret of his success.
For this columnist, Obi’s statement on arrival on Monday was simply out of this world. It was simply Christ-like and I believe it came from a heart sold out to God. Listen to him: “This is not a time for division, but a time for unity .It is not a time for war, but a time for peace. This is a time for our perceived differences and difficulties to act as instruments of making us join hands together as a people with a common destiny. This landmark victory underscores the fact that our God is faithful. He has answered our prayers and indeed Anambra State is the light of the nation. We have continued to master our challenges without recourse to violence and bloodshed”
Is anybody out there as ecstatic as I am about this man’s comportment and what he currently represents; a new move of God in our politics and governance? Let’s together lift him up in prayer that he does not derail on the long journey to 2010 and beyond. I am so excited I want to mimic the Master’s words to an earlier Peter, Peter the Apostle in the bible, “you are Peter and upon this rock of revelation, of righteousness and of decency shall we rebuild our nation.”
You see, in my relatively short walk with God, I have found how the word of God amazingly always comes true. For Peter Obi, it is certainly true that: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19).
Thrice the forces of evil were arrayed against him; thrice he vanquished them.
As for the trio of ex-President Obasanjo, INEC chairman Iwu, and 17-day governor, Andy Uba, the scriptures did prove true too! Check out Job 5:12: “He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise” or Proverbs 19:21: “There are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand; or even Psalm 33:10: “The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect.”
Are you a professing Christian? Don’t toy with the Word. Please.
*KINGDOM Perspective is published weekly in the Faith section of Sunday Independent, a Lagos, Nigeria-based quality newspaper.
It easy to reconstruct the scenario. A certain powerful man finally came to terms with the fact that he could no longer remain in power. He looked lovingly into the eyes of one his sons. He recalled the many late nights the not-so-young man had had to keep on account of he, the father, being a nocturnal animal who was not averse to working and playing afterhours. He recalled how many personal, possibly intimate issues he had efficiently handled to his pleasure. He could not forget that this dutiful son was the last person he saw at night as well as first thing in the morning.
This good and faithful son, he told himself must be amply compensated and he assured his son so. He must have sworn by himself to the son like God the Almighty who finding no one higher to swear by swore by himself to Abraham in the bible. This powerful man loves to play God, you see.
Anyway, he set about fulfilling his promise. His son has to become Governor of his (the son’s) home state at whatever cost. After all the state had then only recently been prised out of the vice-grip of his brother. He had literally been licensed to maim, kill, raze down properties and do whatever else caught his fancy in order to recoup his investment from the erstwhile custodian of the mandate they stole in 2003.
Fortunately, the man who would supervise the election was already beholden to his son, anyway – he holds office through the persuasive power of his beloved son. So that part of the grand scheme was all but sorted out. But this father, being a war general versed in the strategies and tactics of war by other means, visited the incumbent governor to serve him notice: “no second term for you, ok?” And just in case he was hard at hearing he applied a bit of visible and physical pressure, by way of causing the gale of impeachment to blow in that direction. Let him feel it, so he can know it, he must have thought.
As if in parody of the lawyer’s concept of “covering the field”, the umpire either operating out of the abundance of his thankful heart, or under orders, or both, decided to clear the field of any other potent opposition. He identified two and promptly pronounced them “disqualified by the constitution”. Nothing was being left to chances. Even the famous “G-Factor” was considered; a mass was said to have been booked at a certain church in Abuja to pray for the victory of the favoured child of his powerful father.
In spite of all these elaborate planning; the war-room was still not satisfied that all ends had been tied up. So somebody came up with this wonderfully effective idea: “have only symbolic election in this particular state; disenfranchise as many of the people. The worst case scenario, they’ll go to the tribunal and when we get to that bridge, we’ll cross it. “The author of this idea must have received a standing ovation. They did exactly that and before you could say “nba”, the favourite son had been declared winner of the non-election and eventually sworn in as Executive Governor.
A very satisfied father must have told himself, “I have delivered on my promise and we can both now live happily forever; albeit apart!” But that was not to be.
You see, while that plot was being executed, a sub-plot was unfolding in parallel. A certain well-known eagle-eyed lawyer had spotted an innocuous, harmless-looking clause in the laws of the land and flown a little kite. Ignored at first, the favoured son’s opponent caught a whiff of the sweet scent of victory through that clause. Through the usual tortuous route he had become familiar with, he persevered and 17 days after, Papa’s son was scampering out of Government House.
No prizes for identifying the actors in this drama: Father is Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, immediate past President, Federal Republic of Nigeria while the son is Dr Andy Uba. You also know that the great umpire is Professor Maurice Iwu, chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the hero is Mr Peter Obi, reinstated Governor of Anambra State.
Since the April elections which served as a rude wake-up call for many of us to open our eyes to the extent of evil that’s being perpetrated in our land under the guise of nurturing our “nascent democracy” and “moving the nation forward”, many spiritually sensitive people have sensed that God was set to move against the flood of evil.
In a recent piece, one had dared to intimate that a flood of righteousness was on the way. That flood, we said then, would sweep away the authors and beneficiaries of evil and uplift the victims of these evil machinations. As was implied in that piece based on the events before the Flood in the days of Noah, God will identify the righteous, protect them and assign them to fulfil his purpose for our nation. Without any equivocation, Peter Obi is one such person. And his reinstatement is but the early days of that flood.
Thankfully, he seems to know it. In an interview with Sunday Independent, which was held before the Supreme Court judgment that correctly put his tenure as enduring till 2010, but which was not published until after it, Obi was quoted as saying the following prophetic words:
"Mark my word, I will return to the Government House, Awka, to complete my tenure. I say so because the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria makes it imperative that I serve out my term as elected governor of the state. Besides, I see myself as a child of destiny raised by God to salvage my people and, as a Christian, I know that God does not lie…At the appointed time, the will of God concerning me and Anambra State will be made manifest. It may seem that justice is being delayed now, but definitely, it cannot be denied when that time comes…I have asked just one thing from my people, and that is: that they should continue to pray for the will of God to prevail in my situation and in the situation of Anambra. God, in his infinite mercy, should give the Supreme Court justices the wisdom and courage to do the right thing whenever they will take the final decision on his matter."
He did not have any doubt whatsoever about the triumph of good over evil. He was fully persuaded of the victory of righteousness over wickedness. And he did not mince words. As those of the school of political correctness would have cynically put it, he was “wearing his faith on his sleeves” or “playing the religion card.” But a man, any man who would swim against the swift current of evil flooding our land and stay the course must stand firm on his faith. That is what Obi has done and is doing. That is the secret of his success.
For this columnist, Obi’s statement on arrival on Monday was simply out of this world. It was simply Christ-like and I believe it came from a heart sold out to God. Listen to him: “This is not a time for division, but a time for unity .It is not a time for war, but a time for peace. This is a time for our perceived differences and difficulties to act as instruments of making us join hands together as a people with a common destiny. This landmark victory underscores the fact that our God is faithful. He has answered our prayers and indeed Anambra State is the light of the nation. We have continued to master our challenges without recourse to violence and bloodshed”
Is anybody out there as ecstatic as I am about this man’s comportment and what he currently represents; a new move of God in our politics and governance? Let’s together lift him up in prayer that he does not derail on the long journey to 2010 and beyond. I am so excited I want to mimic the Master’s words to an earlier Peter, Peter the Apostle in the bible, “you are Peter and upon this rock of revelation, of righteousness and of decency shall we rebuild our nation.”
You see, in my relatively short walk with God, I have found how the word of God amazingly always comes true. For Peter Obi, it is certainly true that: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19).
Thrice the forces of evil were arrayed against him; thrice he vanquished them.
As for the trio of ex-President Obasanjo, INEC chairman Iwu, and 17-day governor, Andy Uba, the scriptures did prove true too! Check out Job 5:12: “He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise” or Proverbs 19:21: “There are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand; or even Psalm 33:10: “The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect.”
Are you a professing Christian? Don’t toy with the Word. Please.
*KINGDOM Perspective is published weekly in the Faith section of Sunday Independent, a Lagos, Nigeria-based quality newspaper.
Friday 15 June 2007
OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT: THINK ON THESE THINGS, PRESIDENT YAR’ADUA
KPerspective June 17, 2007
KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
with Remi Akano
e-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com
Dear Mr President. I know I have your permission to dispense with all the fawning genuflections that I understand you find a bit irritating in spite of your aristocratic pedigree. I sense too that you must have had so much to read and listen to about your divine call to lead Nigeria to some kind of Promised Land. All of which, is the lot of men of power, men in position to dispense largess. Your predecessor was reputed to have loved that particular perquisite of office so much that some cynical wit complained about the “babarisation” of governance.
This notwithstanding, I shall be in denial, were I to fail to acknowledge your reputation for frugality, incorruptibility and general decency for which I truly count among your admirers. I might even say that at NTP (normal temperature and pressure; if you permit my recourse to the language of science) you would be my idea of a President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. You sure come across like a breath of fresh air after the suffocating stuffiness of the recent past.
But these are not normal times in our nation. These are indeed times which, as the cliché goes, try the souls of men; men who have not sold their souls to the devil, that is. And I am sure you know what I am talking about: the gargantuan nature of the evil perpetrated in the name of election and democracy by those who decided to put you in office at all costs. You couldn’t have forgotten the do-or-die characterization of that exercise, could you?
It is against this background that I have had the unpleasant task of alluding to you in some not-so-flattering manner on this page. On one occasion I described you as a “reasonably good builder (being contracted) to build on quicksand…” On another, I raised the question: “Should we be encouraging a man who admits to being in possession of stolen goods to enjoy the loot, just because he seems a decent man enough to begin the process of making stealing more difficult in future?”
In this latter connection, certain newspaper reports have left many of your admirers, including this writer, wondering whether amnesia is already setting in about the status of the last election – within so short a time. A newspaper report of your interview with TIME magazine said that you “argued that contrary to the claim by some foreign media, his election had no credibility problem,” and quoted you as follows: “Elections in Nigeria have never been without problems. We have made a commitment to review the electoral process. We are keen to correct some of the inadequacies that have created problems for our elections, but I am absolutely certain I was duly and fairly elected.”
It is easy to spot the difference between this and your earlier statement at inauguration in which you stated: “We acknowledge that our elections had some shortcomings. Thankfully, we have well-established legal avenues of redress, and I urge anyone aggrieved to pursue them. I also believe that our experiences represent an opportunity to learn from our mistakes. Accordingly, I will set up a panel to examine the entire electoral process with a view to ensuring that we raise the quality and standard of our general elections, and thereby deepen our democracy.”
Revisionism, my dear President, will only chip at your integrity bit by bit until only something skimpy is left; which God forbid.
These lead me to the real substance of this letter. Permit me to explain sir that this column’s modus operandi is to examine issues from the lens of the word of God as contained in the bible. Because you are a Moslem, I was reluctant to engage with you on this platform, but then I remembered that you cannot be averse to listening to the Kingdom perspective of things since you had the grace to visit one or two men of God in the run-down to the elections. As for whether you’ll feel obliged to run your government the scriptural way, I thought that with Dr Goodluck Jonathan as your assistant, the bible cannot but get the occasional look-in.
The matter at hand, Mr President is how to exercise the highly disputed mandate that you have in your custody. You see sir; the history of our nation has shown that we have so far built our political house on the quicksand of electoral fraud and manipulations and watered it with the blood of very many innocent citizens. In 1999, it was tolerated out of the expediency of getting the military off our backs. In 2003, the extent of the fraud was so benumbing that only a few people with doubtful democratic credentials saw the need for protest. Somebody characterized what happened in 2003 as the plight of a woman who having found herself in a position where rape had become inevitable wisely decided to derive whatever fun she could from it! 2007 therefore became more brazen; more dastardly; more violent. So bad was it that even our acquaintances were ashamed for us!
Now, an edifice, any edifice built on a weak foundation cannot stand. And there is no weaker foundation to build upon than that of evil! No matter how hard we try, it is bound to unravel someday. As one wise man has said, no matter how long you have travelled, no matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back.
Mr President, I know you do not lack for advice and advisers. Many of them would be well-meaning too. But as my senior pastor, Dr Tunde Joda would say, you can be sincere, but sincerely wrong. I also know that many of them, clergy men from both Christianity and your own faith not excluded, would be self serving. It is not unheard of. Ask Dr Jonathan, examples abound in the bible. A classical one featured two kings, Jehoshaphat of Judah and Ahab of Israel who desirous of guidance on a planned expedition invited all the prophets they could assemble. All but one of them saw the truth and spoke the truth. He got a jail sentence for his effort but Ahab did not survive the war (see 2 Kings 22). Mr President, beware who you listen to! A simple rule of thumb in this matter for those who are yet to sell out to that intellectual hocus pocus called relativism is this: “…Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good “ (Romans 12:9).
Now to the vexed issue of the real way forward. Some have suggested an Interim National Government. This has been shot down by those who equate it with military president Ibrahim Babangida’s disingenuously constructed booby trap. According to those who argue this way, if it goes by the same name, it must have the same content and end up the same way! Many of this same people say that the ING has no place in our constitution. How simplistic! In a particularly disappointing intervention, a respected constitutional law teacher and columnist, writing in a respected newspaper on two different occasions hid his personal preferences under so much intellectual verbiage and ended up speaking from both sides of the mouth. ING, goes his argument cannot hold because it is unknown to our constitution which is our grundnorm. Then faced with examining whether Nigeria as was being run could be described as a constitutional democracy, he deadpanned: not quite! Now this later is the truth, the unemotional truth that must guide our search for solution to the existing situation.
A time like this calls for men; leaders with vision, able to see beyond self and own-group interests. The Lord Jesus Christ, who for us Christians, is the model (or ought to be) is the best known example of true leadership. He gave up himself for the good of mankind. In the men’s ministry in which I am deeply involved, it is said that “manhood and Christ-likeness are synonymous”. And believe me it is true. You have to resort to self sacrifice in this matter.
One of the Lord’s counsels, which I consider appropriate, in this case reads: “And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain” (Matthew 5:41). To appreciate the import of this advice one needs to understand that at the time Jesus was speaking it was customary for soldiers of the Roman colonial army to randomly pick a Jew on his way to work or wherever and order him to carry his bag for the next mile. It was mandatory.
Mr President, you may not agree with me, but everything you have announced as your plans; an inclusive government, electoral reforms and even your promise of servant-leadership which the method of your election negates conceptually all belong in the first compulsory mile. They are the minimum made inevitable by the manner of your arrival in the saddle. You must now take the voluntary next mile.
You must now voluntarily go out of your way to vigorously work for restructuring of this blighted federation. Our current constitution is faulty; it is a rickety foundation built upon evil and sustained by evil and can lead us nowhere. You must find it in yourself to engage with civil society, the opposition and conscientious elements in the international community to put something more concrete, more enduring in place. You must do it quickly; within the shortest possible time, possibly within 18 months. We can then hold fresh elections. If the new arrangement allows you to run and you wish to, I am sure your people will give a clean mandate. On the other hand, if the new arrangement excludes you or you decide not to run, you would not have been the longest serving President in Nigeria, but you would be her greatest. Think on these things, Mr President.
KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
with Remi Akano
e-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com
Dear Mr President. I know I have your permission to dispense with all the fawning genuflections that I understand you find a bit irritating in spite of your aristocratic pedigree. I sense too that you must have had so much to read and listen to about your divine call to lead Nigeria to some kind of Promised Land. All of which, is the lot of men of power, men in position to dispense largess. Your predecessor was reputed to have loved that particular perquisite of office so much that some cynical wit complained about the “babarisation” of governance.
This notwithstanding, I shall be in denial, were I to fail to acknowledge your reputation for frugality, incorruptibility and general decency for which I truly count among your admirers. I might even say that at NTP (normal temperature and pressure; if you permit my recourse to the language of science) you would be my idea of a President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. You sure come across like a breath of fresh air after the suffocating stuffiness of the recent past.
But these are not normal times in our nation. These are indeed times which, as the cliché goes, try the souls of men; men who have not sold their souls to the devil, that is. And I am sure you know what I am talking about: the gargantuan nature of the evil perpetrated in the name of election and democracy by those who decided to put you in office at all costs. You couldn’t have forgotten the do-or-die characterization of that exercise, could you?
It is against this background that I have had the unpleasant task of alluding to you in some not-so-flattering manner on this page. On one occasion I described you as a “reasonably good builder (being contracted) to build on quicksand…” On another, I raised the question: “Should we be encouraging a man who admits to being in possession of stolen goods to enjoy the loot, just because he seems a decent man enough to begin the process of making stealing more difficult in future?”
In this latter connection, certain newspaper reports have left many of your admirers, including this writer, wondering whether amnesia is already setting in about the status of the last election – within so short a time. A newspaper report of your interview with TIME magazine said that you “argued that contrary to the claim by some foreign media, his election had no credibility problem,” and quoted you as follows: “Elections in Nigeria have never been without problems. We have made a commitment to review the electoral process. We are keen to correct some of the inadequacies that have created problems for our elections, but I am absolutely certain I was duly and fairly elected.”
It is easy to spot the difference between this and your earlier statement at inauguration in which you stated: “We acknowledge that our elections had some shortcomings. Thankfully, we have well-established legal avenues of redress, and I urge anyone aggrieved to pursue them. I also believe that our experiences represent an opportunity to learn from our mistakes. Accordingly, I will set up a panel to examine the entire electoral process with a view to ensuring that we raise the quality and standard of our general elections, and thereby deepen our democracy.”
Revisionism, my dear President, will only chip at your integrity bit by bit until only something skimpy is left; which God forbid.
These lead me to the real substance of this letter. Permit me to explain sir that this column’s modus operandi is to examine issues from the lens of the word of God as contained in the bible. Because you are a Moslem, I was reluctant to engage with you on this platform, but then I remembered that you cannot be averse to listening to the Kingdom perspective of things since you had the grace to visit one or two men of God in the run-down to the elections. As for whether you’ll feel obliged to run your government the scriptural way, I thought that with Dr Goodluck Jonathan as your assistant, the bible cannot but get the occasional look-in.
The matter at hand, Mr President is how to exercise the highly disputed mandate that you have in your custody. You see sir; the history of our nation has shown that we have so far built our political house on the quicksand of electoral fraud and manipulations and watered it with the blood of very many innocent citizens. In 1999, it was tolerated out of the expediency of getting the military off our backs. In 2003, the extent of the fraud was so benumbing that only a few people with doubtful democratic credentials saw the need for protest. Somebody characterized what happened in 2003 as the plight of a woman who having found herself in a position where rape had become inevitable wisely decided to derive whatever fun she could from it! 2007 therefore became more brazen; more dastardly; more violent. So bad was it that even our acquaintances were ashamed for us!
Now, an edifice, any edifice built on a weak foundation cannot stand. And there is no weaker foundation to build upon than that of evil! No matter how hard we try, it is bound to unravel someday. As one wise man has said, no matter how long you have travelled, no matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back.
Mr President, I know you do not lack for advice and advisers. Many of them would be well-meaning too. But as my senior pastor, Dr Tunde Joda would say, you can be sincere, but sincerely wrong. I also know that many of them, clergy men from both Christianity and your own faith not excluded, would be self serving. It is not unheard of. Ask Dr Jonathan, examples abound in the bible. A classical one featured two kings, Jehoshaphat of Judah and Ahab of Israel who desirous of guidance on a planned expedition invited all the prophets they could assemble. All but one of them saw the truth and spoke the truth. He got a jail sentence for his effort but Ahab did not survive the war (see 2 Kings 22). Mr President, beware who you listen to! A simple rule of thumb in this matter for those who are yet to sell out to that intellectual hocus pocus called relativism is this: “…Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good “ (Romans 12:9).
Now to the vexed issue of the real way forward. Some have suggested an Interim National Government. This has been shot down by those who equate it with military president Ibrahim Babangida’s disingenuously constructed booby trap. According to those who argue this way, if it goes by the same name, it must have the same content and end up the same way! Many of this same people say that the ING has no place in our constitution. How simplistic! In a particularly disappointing intervention, a respected constitutional law teacher and columnist, writing in a respected newspaper on two different occasions hid his personal preferences under so much intellectual verbiage and ended up speaking from both sides of the mouth. ING, goes his argument cannot hold because it is unknown to our constitution which is our grundnorm. Then faced with examining whether Nigeria as was being run could be described as a constitutional democracy, he deadpanned: not quite! Now this later is the truth, the unemotional truth that must guide our search for solution to the existing situation.
A time like this calls for men; leaders with vision, able to see beyond self and own-group interests. The Lord Jesus Christ, who for us Christians, is the model (or ought to be) is the best known example of true leadership. He gave up himself for the good of mankind. In the men’s ministry in which I am deeply involved, it is said that “manhood and Christ-likeness are synonymous”. And believe me it is true. You have to resort to self sacrifice in this matter.
One of the Lord’s counsels, which I consider appropriate, in this case reads: “And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain” (Matthew 5:41). To appreciate the import of this advice one needs to understand that at the time Jesus was speaking it was customary for soldiers of the Roman colonial army to randomly pick a Jew on his way to work or wherever and order him to carry his bag for the next mile. It was mandatory.
Mr President, you may not agree with me, but everything you have announced as your plans; an inclusive government, electoral reforms and even your promise of servant-leadership which the method of your election negates conceptually all belong in the first compulsory mile. They are the minimum made inevitable by the manner of your arrival in the saddle. You must now take the voluntary next mile.
You must now voluntarily go out of your way to vigorously work for restructuring of this blighted federation. Our current constitution is faulty; it is a rickety foundation built upon evil and sustained by evil and can lead us nowhere. You must find it in yourself to engage with civil society, the opposition and conscientious elements in the international community to put something more concrete, more enduring in place. You must do it quickly; within the shortest possible time, possibly within 18 months. We can then hold fresh elections. If the new arrangement allows you to run and you wish to, I am sure your people will give a clean mandate. On the other hand, if the new arrangement excludes you or you decide not to run, you would not have been the longest serving President in Nigeria, but you would be her greatest. Think on these things, Mr President.
THE STATE OF THE NATION
KPerspective June 10, 2007
KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
with Remi Akano
e-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com
State of the Nation addresses are normally reserved for presidents and/or heads of states and I am neither. That it why I have carefully omitted the word ‘address’ from the headline of this piece; lest somebody smells treason. But we really need to engage ourselves in a continuous dialogue over the state of Nigeria and I am concerned enough, driven enough or as some might think, conceited enough to want to be part of that dialogue.
I know that many of my compatriots are doing just that, at the pubs and sundry watering holes (yes, I used to be part of that scene too!); in the comfort of our homes; after church services on Sundays; some through newspaper articles like this, and many more on several forums and blogs on the internet. So it is tempting to not want to get lost in the crowd; it is attractive to not want to be one of a cacophony of voices and; if, like me, you believe that so many of the brilliant solutions being proffered to our national malaise are lacking in the discernment of the deep things of God, it is perhaps the expedient thing to stay away from the fray. And for very long, one had succumbed to that temptation and expedience. But no more!
The more I surf the net and burrow through newspapers and magazines, the more I read our experts in politics and policies, constitutional historians and legal minds - all of them - brilliant minds, the more persuaded I am that the voice of righteousness, hitherto restricted to the matter of life after death and matters related to it, has to become louder in the running of the affairs of our nation. And I have become more persuaded that the matter is urgent, made very urgent by the magnitude of iniquities visited upon the national psyche at the April elections. That is why I seem to have been unable to stop talking about it.
You see, I have this strong knowing in my spirit that now, more than at any other time in our history, this nation is on the threshold of a breakthrough, a new beginning of peace and the abundant life for the Nigerian. But I also know that like the Jews in biblical times, we are being hindered by the selfsame five-man army that kept the Israelites out of the Promised Land.
In his book, Maximized Manhood, the late Edwin Louis Cole, acknowledged as founder of the modern international Christian men’s movement, identified the big bad five as, lust, idolatory, fornication, tempting Christ and murmuring. Extracted from I Corinthians chapter 10, which I urge you to read, these are the things keeping us from fulfilling our destiny as a nation, recognized by many men of God worldwide as, crucial to the end-time plans of God.
As a servant of God, who is involved in the men’s ministry and who does not claim to “have apprehended”, I know that these five deadly sins are present in many of our lives and hindering the fulfillment of many individual destinies. I also know that they are present to varying degrees in the conduct of affairs of state. It is therefore my thesis that for our nation to fulfill her destiny, we must expunge these infamous five from our lives – beginning from the leadership. We must identify them wherever they exist, call them by their names, condemn them and refuse to stomach them.
Someday I believe we shall have the opportunity of examining all of them, but I’d like to dwell a bit on what I consider the deadliest of the five, which is pervasive in the nation and which seems to enjoy the tacit approval of even the Church I Tempting Christ.
Let be explain that assertion about the seeming tacit approval of the church in tempting Christ. In a piece that was meant for this column two weeks ago but which found its way in part to the letter’s page two days later, I tried to expressed my exasperation with the amoral attitude of most of the church in Nigeria to Election 2007 and its aftermath. I quoted copiously from the statement made on behalf of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria by its president, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor.
Among other things the respected founder and Pastor of Word of Faith Bible Church, Warri, Delta State was reported to have said: “What we wanted to see is not exactly what we saw. We’d have wanted a better, more organised and smoother election but that is not exactly what we got. That is true but we are still saying even at that we should thank God because we still have Nigeria after the fears generated before the elections".
He continued: “(Though) the elections were not particularly smooth the results should be accepted in good faith in the interest of the nation. Nigeria is greater than individuals...Yes, there were problems but they were not enough to say everything should be cancelled…Aggrieved politicians should explore constitutional means in seeking redress, (and) avoid actions that will truncate the transition programme. Winners should also form all-inclusive governments by reaching out to others on a broad spectrum.”
The statement, in my understanding translates thus: yes there may have been something akin to evil, but we can live with it in the interest of peace and survival of our “nascent democracy. In other words, we should thank God that through some clearly ungodly methods, we still have Nigeria!”
And if you thought the statement was the result of poor draftsmanship, no less a cleric than the vice-president of this umbrella body for all Pentecostals, Rev Dr Wilson Badejo offered evidence that this was the opinion in the top cadre of the Pentecostal group in Nigeria.
Speaking after a thanksgiving service to mark his 60th birthday soon after, Badejo said: “We appeal to those who lost in the elections to accept it in good faith. There will always be another opportunity. 2011 is round the corner. They should wait for their time. Abraham Lincoln contested 10 times before becoming President of America. We must be patient.” My translation: all of this is about politicians angling for office. It has got nothing to do with good or evil.
One cannot but be puzzled, at least, when you recall that in a statement jointly issued by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), the very first round of the elections drew a sharp rebuke of the process and a call on INEC to “purge itself of iniquity, partiality and inefficiency before the federal ballot…”
Well, some of the churches, particularly the big denominational ones and their leadership also weighed in with their opinions. All were united in finding fault with the election, yet only the Catholic Church managed to resist the temptation to urge Nigerian voters to accept the rape of their rights as an act of God. At a press conference addressed by Most Rev Felix Alaba Job, President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, the Church said among other things: “Nigerians must in a constitutional and dignified manner come together to resist any form of dictatorship, domination and subversion of their rights. We must defend our political rights as a people.”
On his part, Most Rev Dr Sunday Ola Makinde, Prelate, Methodist Church Nigeria has since led a delegation of his church on a solidarity visit to President-elect Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua during which he assured him: “God has chosen you and He will not disappoint you.”
Now as I said in that piece, I dare not criticize servants of God. The bible has said very clearly: “Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand” Romans 14:4.
But I know that God will forgive me for thinking aloud. I am sure I can be forgiving for wondering if we are not tempting Christ when we put the stamp of God on fraud; when we pray to God to sustain the custodians of stolen goods; when we seem all too eager to fraternize with the perpetrators and beneficiaries of ungodly activities.
Dr Cole said in his Maximized Manhood, “Tempting God is demanding that God do what is contrary to his will or inconsistent with his character…Lying and cheating in business and demanding that God bless and prosper it is tempting Christ…” Should we be encouraging a man who admits to being in possession of stolen goods to enjoy the loot, just because he seems a decent man enough to begin the process of making stealing more difficult in future?
I am truly at sea about our values; about whether having recognized and pronounced something as evil we should still romance it. I am just wondering whether the biblical injunction to “abstain from all appearance of evil (1 Thessalonians 5:22)“ can be rightly varied in the interest of an amoral larger picture such as national interest. What I do not wonder about, however, is that evil must bow before the good; and the wicked at the gates of the righteous (see Proverbs 14:19).
KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
with Remi Akano
e-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com
State of the Nation addresses are normally reserved for presidents and/or heads of states and I am neither. That it why I have carefully omitted the word ‘address’ from the headline of this piece; lest somebody smells treason. But we really need to engage ourselves in a continuous dialogue over the state of Nigeria and I am concerned enough, driven enough or as some might think, conceited enough to want to be part of that dialogue.
I know that many of my compatriots are doing just that, at the pubs and sundry watering holes (yes, I used to be part of that scene too!); in the comfort of our homes; after church services on Sundays; some through newspaper articles like this, and many more on several forums and blogs on the internet. So it is tempting to not want to get lost in the crowd; it is attractive to not want to be one of a cacophony of voices and; if, like me, you believe that so many of the brilliant solutions being proffered to our national malaise are lacking in the discernment of the deep things of God, it is perhaps the expedient thing to stay away from the fray. And for very long, one had succumbed to that temptation and expedience. But no more!
The more I surf the net and burrow through newspapers and magazines, the more I read our experts in politics and policies, constitutional historians and legal minds - all of them - brilliant minds, the more persuaded I am that the voice of righteousness, hitherto restricted to the matter of life after death and matters related to it, has to become louder in the running of the affairs of our nation. And I have become more persuaded that the matter is urgent, made very urgent by the magnitude of iniquities visited upon the national psyche at the April elections. That is why I seem to have been unable to stop talking about it.
You see, I have this strong knowing in my spirit that now, more than at any other time in our history, this nation is on the threshold of a breakthrough, a new beginning of peace and the abundant life for the Nigerian. But I also know that like the Jews in biblical times, we are being hindered by the selfsame five-man army that kept the Israelites out of the Promised Land.
In his book, Maximized Manhood, the late Edwin Louis Cole, acknowledged as founder of the modern international Christian men’s movement, identified the big bad five as, lust, idolatory, fornication, tempting Christ and murmuring. Extracted from I Corinthians chapter 10, which I urge you to read, these are the things keeping us from fulfilling our destiny as a nation, recognized by many men of God worldwide as, crucial to the end-time plans of God.
As a servant of God, who is involved in the men’s ministry and who does not claim to “have apprehended”, I know that these five deadly sins are present in many of our lives and hindering the fulfillment of many individual destinies. I also know that they are present to varying degrees in the conduct of affairs of state. It is therefore my thesis that for our nation to fulfill her destiny, we must expunge these infamous five from our lives – beginning from the leadership. We must identify them wherever they exist, call them by their names, condemn them and refuse to stomach them.
Someday I believe we shall have the opportunity of examining all of them, but I’d like to dwell a bit on what I consider the deadliest of the five, which is pervasive in the nation and which seems to enjoy the tacit approval of even the Church I Tempting Christ.
Let be explain that assertion about the seeming tacit approval of the church in tempting Christ. In a piece that was meant for this column two weeks ago but which found its way in part to the letter’s page two days later, I tried to expressed my exasperation with the amoral attitude of most of the church in Nigeria to Election 2007 and its aftermath. I quoted copiously from the statement made on behalf of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria by its president, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor.
Among other things the respected founder and Pastor of Word of Faith Bible Church, Warri, Delta State was reported to have said: “What we wanted to see is not exactly what we saw. We’d have wanted a better, more organised and smoother election but that is not exactly what we got. That is true but we are still saying even at that we should thank God because we still have Nigeria after the fears generated before the elections".
He continued: “(Though) the elections were not particularly smooth the results should be accepted in good faith in the interest of the nation. Nigeria is greater than individuals...Yes, there were problems but they were not enough to say everything should be cancelled…Aggrieved politicians should explore constitutional means in seeking redress, (and) avoid actions that will truncate the transition programme. Winners should also form all-inclusive governments by reaching out to others on a broad spectrum.”
The statement, in my understanding translates thus: yes there may have been something akin to evil, but we can live with it in the interest of peace and survival of our “nascent democracy. In other words, we should thank God that through some clearly ungodly methods, we still have Nigeria!”
And if you thought the statement was the result of poor draftsmanship, no less a cleric than the vice-president of this umbrella body for all Pentecostals, Rev Dr Wilson Badejo offered evidence that this was the opinion in the top cadre of the Pentecostal group in Nigeria.
Speaking after a thanksgiving service to mark his 60th birthday soon after, Badejo said: “We appeal to those who lost in the elections to accept it in good faith. There will always be another opportunity. 2011 is round the corner. They should wait for their time. Abraham Lincoln contested 10 times before becoming President of America. We must be patient.” My translation: all of this is about politicians angling for office. It has got nothing to do with good or evil.
One cannot but be puzzled, at least, when you recall that in a statement jointly issued by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), the very first round of the elections drew a sharp rebuke of the process and a call on INEC to “purge itself of iniquity, partiality and inefficiency before the federal ballot…”
Well, some of the churches, particularly the big denominational ones and their leadership also weighed in with their opinions. All were united in finding fault with the election, yet only the Catholic Church managed to resist the temptation to urge Nigerian voters to accept the rape of their rights as an act of God. At a press conference addressed by Most Rev Felix Alaba Job, President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, the Church said among other things: “Nigerians must in a constitutional and dignified manner come together to resist any form of dictatorship, domination and subversion of their rights. We must defend our political rights as a people.”
On his part, Most Rev Dr Sunday Ola Makinde, Prelate, Methodist Church Nigeria has since led a delegation of his church on a solidarity visit to President-elect Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua during which he assured him: “God has chosen you and He will not disappoint you.”
Now as I said in that piece, I dare not criticize servants of God. The bible has said very clearly: “Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand” Romans 14:4.
But I know that God will forgive me for thinking aloud. I am sure I can be forgiving for wondering if we are not tempting Christ when we put the stamp of God on fraud; when we pray to God to sustain the custodians of stolen goods; when we seem all too eager to fraternize with the perpetrators and beneficiaries of ungodly activities.
Dr Cole said in his Maximized Manhood, “Tempting God is demanding that God do what is contrary to his will or inconsistent with his character…Lying and cheating in business and demanding that God bless and prosper it is tempting Christ…” Should we be encouraging a man who admits to being in possession of stolen goods to enjoy the loot, just because he seems a decent man enough to begin the process of making stealing more difficult in future?
I am truly at sea about our values; about whether having recognized and pronounced something as evil we should still romance it. I am just wondering whether the biblical injunction to “abstain from all appearance of evil (1 Thessalonians 5:22)“ can be rightly varied in the interest of an amoral larger picture such as national interest. What I do not wonder about, however, is that evil must bow before the good; and the wicked at the gates of the righteous (see Proverbs 14:19).
Wednesday 6 June 2007
ON THE WINGS OF SACRILEGE
KingdomPerspective
with Remi Akano
E-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com
I feel constrained to return to the sad and sickening story of the Obasanjo-Iwu civilian-to-civilian transition elections this week. And that is because, the duo of President Matthew Obasanjo, and electoral commission chairman Professor Maurice Iwu have not stopped offending the sensibilities of all decent, God-fearing people with their God rhetoric.
The President as you may know is Baptist by nurture and a born-again Christian by confession after his experience in Abacha’s gulag. Chairman Iwu, on the other hand, is said to be a mass-booking, possibly mass-attending Catholic. And they must be aware of a certain warning in the bible against calling the name of God in vain. Yet they would not stop.
The INEC chairman has been particularly consistent on this issue; as consistent as he was in promising the nation that he would conduct “free, fair and credible elections even if it is the last thing I do.” I‘ll cite two instances.
At what is certainly one of his most infamous outing since he announced the winner of the presidential election, Iwu had so many complimentary things to say about the virtues of the elections or more correctly, non-elections that he conducted, when he presented a certificate of return to the president-elect, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. But he had one adjective for critics of the charade of April 14, 21 and 28: UNGODLY! It is not clear whether it is his critics or their criticism that is ungodly or both. But its certainly one when whatever little caution he professor had left went with the wind.
Of course his performance at that event has drawn several comments. For me however the most appropriate came from a well-known columnist and I quote: “…Is it the way Iwu's men conducted the elections in which election materials got to polling stations at about 4pm on Election Day that is godly? Is it the way election results were announced where there was no voting that is godly? Is it the fact that all the electronic gadgets which Iwu promised and said the commission had invested in never worked on Election Day that is a godly act? Is it godly that in the face of violence inflicted on the voters by people who were snatching ballot boxes and stuffing them with already thumb-printed ballot papers or those who simply wrote election results and took them to INEC office to be announced by the commission, yet Iwu and his men refused to cancel the elections in those places?”
I cannot agree more with those words of ThisDay’s Yusuph Olaniyonu. As lawyers would say, you cannot come to equity with soiled hands! How dare Iwu bring God into his tragic drama written, produced and directed by King of Hades; co-starring, Balogun Do-or-die and Professor Last Thing and possibly titled April Fool
But if you thought that was Iwu’s nadir, you’ve got another think coming. On one occasion, he received a group of women from his Imo home state. Led by a certain Theresa Udenwa who is probably also a regular mass-attending, and confessing catholic, the group told chairman Iwu they were at INEC headquarters to felicitate with the commission ”for achieving for Nigeria what nobody else had done…that after a careful appraisal of the election …we have come to the conclusion that you did your best, given the circumstances under which you operated.”
That was all that Iwu needed to wax spiritual once again. According to a newspaper report, he said in his response: “God loves this country in a very special way. Without God, this election would not have taken place. There is something the commission now calls the miracle of April 20. It was a miracle because for some reasons, we were compelled to print 65 million ballot papers in 48 hours. These ballot papers were printed in South Africa and we had logistic nightmare bringing them into the country. They arrived the country at 10pm on Friday. For the first time in my adult life, I now appreciate why every country should have a purposeful leadership and robust armed forces. Within 10 hours, the leadership of this country backed INEC to use our Air Force to distribute these materials to every part of the country.
”The decision we had to make was whether we should face the logistic problem and work hard to overcome it so that our country could grow or succumb to the elegance of allowing the election to start on time and risk the continuous existence of Nigeria. We took that hard decision that election must take place so that we do not play into the hands of the detractors of this country. For now, we are satisfied that we did our best for our country. That in the circumstances we found ourselves, we were collectively able to rise up to the occasion was only made possible by God‘s intervention. It was difficult to believe that we could have moved 350 tonnes of materials to 120,000 polling units across difficult terrains within such a short time.”
Thank God that we are in this wonderful dispensation of grace! Like I believe I’ve said on this page before, Iwu allowed himself to be drawn away by his own pathological desire to do his master’s bidding in the exclusion of candidate Atiku Abubakar; attempted to play God by foreclosing the man’s participation in the presidential race and when a just, due-process committed God upturned their plan, he turns round to pat himself on the back for expensively half-solving the problem! And horror of horrors, he brings the name of God into it! Now how close to sacrilege can you get!
But as I said in the beginning, Iwu is not alone in ascribing to God the so called success of their perfidious enterprise. His principal, Mr President himself had occasion to receive Christian leaders recently in Aso Rock. Of course he had the right rhetoric. You know the thank-God-for-his mercies-and-for-your-spiritual-support kind. I am not sure he was able to sing his favourite song, “I have a God who never fails”, but he was quoted as saying: “although sceptics had doubted the conduct of the 2007 elections, it has come and gone and that to a majority of Nigerians and God the results are acceptable.”
Well, I would not go as far as saying the president lied. But I know that he could not be telling the truth unless we have a too-far-gone case of delusion on our hands! Perhaps the president has pressed NOI-Gallup Poll into action over this matter, and have somehow found so a la April Fool, it still won’t erase the truth! It is clear even to the blind that majority of Nigerian do not find the elections acceptable. As for God finding the result of fraud and brazen manipulation acceptable, all I can say is “which god?” Certainly not the God that many of know and worship. He is too holy, too just to part of the massive rigging of April 2007.
Surely as a Sunday school teacher, the president would certainly know that one of the most basic things taught children in churches is “thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7). One bible scholar explains that this commandment is not only against false swearing, but also against “all profane, trivial, and irreverent uses of God's name.” Can anything be more profane and irreverent than these? Lord have mercy.
ARE YOU STANDING UP FOR RIGHTEOUNESS?
We have less than ten legislative days left for the current National Assembly. The Anti-Same Sex Marriages Bill has, as I write this, not receive attention. If it is not passed before this Assembly winds up, the bill, like every other bill yet to be passed, ceases to be on the legislative agenda unless re-presented. Then it has to begin the journey all over! Will a National Assembly peopled by recipients of largely stolen mandates be inclined to work for righteousness? I have my doubts! So, if you are yet to call your representative and senator, please stand up for righteousness; do so TODAY. Also if you know any one in the hierarchy of the Christian Association of Nigeria and Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria or any other such umbrella bodies, you may wish to alert them to this pressing duty. God bless you as you do.
with Remi Akano
E-mail: remiakanosr@believeandrepent.com
I feel constrained to return to the sad and sickening story of the Obasanjo-Iwu civilian-to-civilian transition elections this week. And that is because, the duo of President Matthew Obasanjo, and electoral commission chairman Professor Maurice Iwu have not stopped offending the sensibilities of all decent, God-fearing people with their God rhetoric.
The President as you may know is Baptist by nurture and a born-again Christian by confession after his experience in Abacha’s gulag. Chairman Iwu, on the other hand, is said to be a mass-booking, possibly mass-attending Catholic. And they must be aware of a certain warning in the bible against calling the name of God in vain. Yet they would not stop.
The INEC chairman has been particularly consistent on this issue; as consistent as he was in promising the nation that he would conduct “free, fair and credible elections even if it is the last thing I do.” I‘ll cite two instances.
At what is certainly one of his most infamous outing since he announced the winner of the presidential election, Iwu had so many complimentary things to say about the virtues of the elections or more correctly, non-elections that he conducted, when he presented a certificate of return to the president-elect, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. But he had one adjective for critics of the charade of April 14, 21 and 28: UNGODLY! It is not clear whether it is his critics or their criticism that is ungodly or both. But its certainly one when whatever little caution he professor had left went with the wind.
Of course his performance at that event has drawn several comments. For me however the most appropriate came from a well-known columnist and I quote: “…Is it the way Iwu's men conducted the elections in which election materials got to polling stations at about 4pm on Election Day that is godly? Is it the way election results were announced where there was no voting that is godly? Is it the fact that all the electronic gadgets which Iwu promised and said the commission had invested in never worked on Election Day that is a godly act? Is it godly that in the face of violence inflicted on the voters by people who were snatching ballot boxes and stuffing them with already thumb-printed ballot papers or those who simply wrote election results and took them to INEC office to be announced by the commission, yet Iwu and his men refused to cancel the elections in those places?”
I cannot agree more with those words of ThisDay’s Yusuph Olaniyonu. As lawyers would say, you cannot come to equity with soiled hands! How dare Iwu bring God into his tragic drama written, produced and directed by King of Hades; co-starring, Balogun Do-or-die and Professor Last Thing and possibly titled April Fool
But if you thought that was Iwu’s nadir, you’ve got another think coming. On one occasion, he received a group of women from his Imo home state. Led by a certain Theresa Udenwa who is probably also a regular mass-attending, and confessing catholic, the group told chairman Iwu they were at INEC headquarters to felicitate with the commission ”for achieving for Nigeria what nobody else had done…that after a careful appraisal of the election …we have come to the conclusion that you did your best, given the circumstances under which you operated.”
That was all that Iwu needed to wax spiritual once again. According to a newspaper report, he said in his response: “God loves this country in a very special way. Without God, this election would not have taken place. There is something the commission now calls the miracle of April 20. It was a miracle because for some reasons, we were compelled to print 65 million ballot papers in 48 hours. These ballot papers were printed in South Africa and we had logistic nightmare bringing them into the country. They arrived the country at 10pm on Friday. For the first time in my adult life, I now appreciate why every country should have a purposeful leadership and robust armed forces. Within 10 hours, the leadership of this country backed INEC to use our Air Force to distribute these materials to every part of the country.
”The decision we had to make was whether we should face the logistic problem and work hard to overcome it so that our country could grow or succumb to the elegance of allowing the election to start on time and risk the continuous existence of Nigeria. We took that hard decision that election must take place so that we do not play into the hands of the detractors of this country. For now, we are satisfied that we did our best for our country. That in the circumstances we found ourselves, we were collectively able to rise up to the occasion was only made possible by God‘s intervention. It was difficult to believe that we could have moved 350 tonnes of materials to 120,000 polling units across difficult terrains within such a short time.”
Thank God that we are in this wonderful dispensation of grace! Like I believe I’ve said on this page before, Iwu allowed himself to be drawn away by his own pathological desire to do his master’s bidding in the exclusion of candidate Atiku Abubakar; attempted to play God by foreclosing the man’s participation in the presidential race and when a just, due-process committed God upturned their plan, he turns round to pat himself on the back for expensively half-solving the problem! And horror of horrors, he brings the name of God into it! Now how close to sacrilege can you get!
But as I said in the beginning, Iwu is not alone in ascribing to God the so called success of their perfidious enterprise. His principal, Mr President himself had occasion to receive Christian leaders recently in Aso Rock. Of course he had the right rhetoric. You know the thank-God-for-his mercies-and-for-your-spiritual-support kind. I am not sure he was able to sing his favourite song, “I have a God who never fails”, but he was quoted as saying: “although sceptics had doubted the conduct of the 2007 elections, it has come and gone and that to a majority of Nigerians and God the results are acceptable.”
Well, I would not go as far as saying the president lied. But I know that he could not be telling the truth unless we have a too-far-gone case of delusion on our hands! Perhaps the president has pressed NOI-Gallup Poll into action over this matter, and have somehow found so a la April Fool, it still won’t erase the truth! It is clear even to the blind that majority of Nigerian do not find the elections acceptable. As for God finding the result of fraud and brazen manipulation acceptable, all I can say is “which god?” Certainly not the God that many of know and worship. He is too holy, too just to part of the massive rigging of April 2007.
Surely as a Sunday school teacher, the president would certainly know that one of the most basic things taught children in churches is “thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7). One bible scholar explains that this commandment is not only against false swearing, but also against “all profane, trivial, and irreverent uses of God's name.” Can anything be more profane and irreverent than these? Lord have mercy.
ARE YOU STANDING UP FOR RIGHTEOUNESS?
We have less than ten legislative days left for the current National Assembly. The Anti-Same Sex Marriages Bill has, as I write this, not receive attention. If it is not passed before this Assembly winds up, the bill, like every other bill yet to be passed, ceases to be on the legislative agenda unless re-presented. Then it has to begin the journey all over! Will a National Assembly peopled by recipients of largely stolen mandates be inclined to work for righteousness? I have my doubts! So, if you are yet to call your representative and senator, please stand up for righteousness; do so TODAY. Also if you know any one in the hierarchy of the Christian Association of Nigeria and Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria or any other such umbrella bodies, you may wish to alert them to this pressing duty. God bless you as you do.
SOMETHING TO CHEER
KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
With REMI AKANO
In this season of perfidy, when bare-faced falsehood and injustice are being paraded as high virtues worthy of celebration; when crude despotism is being touted as solid foundation upon which democracy and good governance can be built, it is yet another evidence of God’s goodness that some good news is coming from abroad. At a time when Nigeria’s presence in the international media consists in the main of video footages of ballot-snatching elites; of ballot papers printed with taxpayers money and abandoned in foreign lands; and of condescending congratulatory messages from world leaders left with the Hobson’s choice of either trying to work with Umaru Musa Yar’Ardua, the virtuous man with a poisoned chalice, or risk loss of access to crude oil, glory to God for a Peter Akinola.
KINGDOM Perspective joyfully joins other Nigerians in celebrating one of our own, Most Rev Dr Peter Jasper Akinola, Primate and Metropolitan, Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) and President, Christian Association of Nigeria. For the second time in three years, he has been named in The TIME 100, a TIME magazine list of the 100 most influential persons in the world. These are people, in the words of TIME’s Managing Director, Mr. Richard Stengel who “by virtue of their character, their drives and their dreams change the world and make history”. He first made the list last year”.
Like year, he is listed among the Leaders and Revolutionaries; a category that includes such individuals as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of former President Bill Clinton and a front-runner for the United States presidency, Condoleezza Rice current US Secretary of State, Queen Elizabeth 11 of England and; Pope Benedict XVI. Incidentally Osama Bin Laden also made this list.
In a three-paragraph piece by David Van Biema explaining Akinola’s the magazine wrote as follows:
”If the Anglican Communion, the 400-plus-year-old, 78 million-member fellowship of churches that the British empire seeded around the globe, falls apart, Peter Akinola, the Archbishop of Nigeria, will have been a catalyst, even if he does not end up prince of one of the pieces.
”Akinola, 63, has been a harsh critic of the Episcopal Church (U.S.A.), which elected an openly gay bishop in 2003. The communion‘s current rancorous disunion bears his imprint. When Anglicanism‘s 38 primates recently presented the Episcopalians with demands for a retreat on sexuality and direct communion involvement in Episcopal governance, the church leaders were echoing Akinola‘s impatience with earlier, more deliberate measures.
”Unless the trend reverses, Episcopalianism may be headed toward a break with the communion. Or perhaps a larger group of liberal provinces will calf off. Full schism would be achieved if Anglicanism‘s conservative southern provinces decided that even the Anglican Church‘s top official, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is too liberal and chose their own leader-perhaps Akinola. The Nigerian cleric has denied any leadership ambition, and the more extreme his postures, the slimmer his chances. But even if he never becomes the Canterbury of the global south, he will have sparked a shift in Christianity‘s world order.”
What makes Akinola’s award very significant and much more worthy of celebration is the enduring nature of the value for which the man of God is standing and for which even a largely cynical secular publication like TIME could not ignore him. It’s the war against gay ascendancy in the leadership cadre of the church. It is a war for the soul of the church and society that has been lost largely in many parts of the world, particularly in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and even next door, South Africa.
For this columnist it is a war that must be fought and won by Nigeria for the benefit of the rest of Africa and the so-called conservative, evangelical section of the church. That was the import of a recent piece titled, “One Bill the National Assembly Must Pass!” Please permit me to quote key portions of that article for elucidation purposes.
“Some readers may know that on November 1, 2003, the international gay movement struck its deadliest blow yet with the installation of Gene Robinson, an openly gay cleric as the Episcopal Church of United States of America (ECUSA) Bishop of New Hampshire. It was a well-attended ceremony with at least 3,000 persons and 54 bishops in attendance. Gene had separated from Isabella, his wife with whom he had two daughters, in 1986 upon concluding that he was gay, and had been partnering with a certain Mark Andrew.
“Although KINGDOMPeople magazine reported at the time that ‘within the USA, protests against the consecration were massive…with some churches within New Hampshire severing relationship with ECUSA,’ easily the most powerful voice of dissent came from Most Rev Peter Jasper Akinola…In a statement issued on behalf of the 50million-strong Global South, a body of Anglican Churches in the Africa, Asia and Latin America immediately after the so-called consecration, Akinola…it and pointedly declared that the consecration had created a state of impaired communion within the worldwide Anglican family.
“Akinola… has not relented since then. At every level he has had the privilege of serving; he has been a loud, forceful voice against this vice. He has been leading a determined resistance against those who, in the garb of liberalism and relativism, have sought not only to rationalize homosexuality as an orientation or preference to which human rights apply, but also go the giant step further of installing themselves in position of influence and leadership in the church of Jesus Christ.
“In the Church of Nigeria for example, Akinola and his team have taken very creative steps to ensure that the Nigerian church’s freedom of choice in its relationship with other parts of the Anglican Communion is not impaired by any legal encumbrance.
“A statement after the Church’s General Synod in 2004 was unequivocal. The triennial Synod of the church, the statement announced, “amended the language of our constitution so that those who are bent on creating a new religion in which anything goes, and have thereby chosen to walk a different path, may do so without us…”
“Explaining the standpoint of the church, the statement continued, ‘the Church of Nigeria is evangelical and its adherence to the holy scripture is paramount and non-negotiable…In matters of faith and practice, the holy scripture provides sufficient warrant for what is considered right and what is judged to be wrong and the word of God cannot be compromised…If we say we are bound together by the same common faith and this faith says a man shall marry a woman and some people come out to say that a man can marry a man and a woman is free to marry a woman, it means we no longer share common faith’…”
That is the background to the honour TIME has done the Archbishop and for the second time too! And it is a mark of the consistency of the man and his marathoner attribute that 2005 citation by best selling author of Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren could as well have written yesterday.
In it, Rick Warren while acknowledging that Akinola “captured headlines last year for leading the worldwide revolt of evangelical Anglicans against the ordination of gay bishops in the U.S. by the Episcopal Church” said, “but to caricature his ministry with that one issue would severely underestimate his importance.”
“Akinola”, he continued, “personifies the epochal change in the Christian church, namely that the leadership, influence, growth and center of gravity in Christianity is shifting from the northern hemisphere to the southern. New African, Asian and Latin American church leaders like Akinola, 61 (then), are bright, biblical, courageous and willing to point out the inconsistencies, weaknesses and theological drift in Western churches.”
Emphasizing Akinola’s far reaching influence and international clout, Warren reminded his readers: “With nearly 18 million active Anglicans in Nigeria, Akinola’s flock dwarfs the mother Church of England’s membership. And since he is chairman of the 37 million-member Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa, when he speaks, far more than just Anglicans pay attention.”
Warren said of the man, Akinola “he has the strength of a lion, useful in confronting Third World fundamentalism and First World relativism.” He noted that he had been criticized “for recent remarks of frustration that some felt exacerbated Muslim-Christian clashes in his country.” But he rose to his defence, as it were: Christians are routinely attacked in parts of Nigeria, and his anger was no more characteristic than Nelson Mandela’s apartheid-era statement that “sooner or later this violence is going to spread to whites.”
In a conclusion that must be seen by all admirers of Akinola as vindication of his style and commitment and, as a challenge which he must be encouraged to accept and live up to, Warren declared: “I believe he, like Mandela, is a man of peace and his leadership is a model for Christians around the world.”
Which brings me to one urgent matter; will the National Assembly honour this man’s struggle by passing the Executive Anti-gay Marriages Bill before they wind down in June? Readers are requested to join in pressuring them to. Visit, call or mail, or text your senator or representative and tell him to vote for righteousness this once, at least!. God bless you as you do.
IS THERE A PROPHET IN THE LAND?
KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
With REMI AKANO
Did you see the picture on the front page of last week’s edition of this paper? It spoke volumes for the grand finale of the Obasanjo-Iwu landmark civilian-to-civilian transition elections! The two electoral officers were literally caught napping. Wise guys; they thought they might as well make up for the sleep they lost at home to the heat and unwanted music of the Hummer’s Band led by Mosquito Charlie - both by kind courtesy of the super efficient power holders otherwise known as PHCN. And both for which Nigerians are so grateful to the largest party in Africa that they are rushing to return it to power by landslides.
But let’s not make too much out of the essay quality of the picture lest we incur the wrath of the Honourable Minister of Information and Communication, Mr Frank Nweke Jr who may already be in possession of incontrovertible evidence that the picture was stage-managed or arranged or organized like the Cable News Network (CNN) report on militancy in the Niger Delta. Remember what happened to CNN thereafter? They have become so broke that they might soon close shop because Nweke ordered the withdrawal of his Heart of Africa campaign, which was being aired on that station. I certainly don’t want that kind of faith for my dear Sunday Independent.
But pardon me for that digression. It’s just that Election 2007 has taken on the characteristics of a hunchback. As Ray Ekpu once put it, the hunch back, that is, whichever way you touch it, it hurts. And the pain it accentuated daily by the general attitude of major actors in the macabre drama playing to a world-wide audience.
By now you probably have had it up to your throat, I mean right to the point of nausea, by the role played by Professor Maurice Iwu and his highneck, sorry INEC outfit in bungling an historic assignment. But while we are at it let me just note two or three things in passing.
Iwu says to congratulate him for printing, air freighting to Nigeria and distributing several tonnes of ballot papers within a few days and early enough for the Presidential elections. How more brazenly insulting to our collective intelligence can any one be! First you create an avoidable problem through partisanship, blow about seven billion Naira to solve it and then congratulate yourself for it!
Next Iwu said what his INEC has in place has laid a foundation for future elections. If that is true then we all better kiss democracy goodbye and probably send an understudy team to the jungle preparatory to learning their ways!
Lastly I understand that the Professor is a Christian; a catholic who I understand even booked a mass at an Abuja Church for his benefactor, Dr Andy Uba so that he might win the Anambra governorship elections. He would therefore have read or at least heard about this bible passage: “These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren” (Proverbs 6:16-19).
Whether he is acquainted with the passage or not, there it is and I just wonder whether he could recognize any of his activities and those of some of the people he had been hand-in-gloves with in the last year or so in those abominable seven! For instance when Dr Tom Ikimi and Alhaji Sule Hamma, representatives of Candidates Atiku Abubakar and Muhammadu Buhari respectively said collation of results was not even halfway when Chairman Iwu announced the Umaru musa Yar’Adua’s landslide victory, were they lying? Or did the chaiman manifest some of the items on the Lord’s “hate-list” above? After reading that presidential election returns, many who watched it live on television including this writer noticed that the professor stumbled as he read the date the result was issued. Was that a kind of Freudian slip?
Of course the lead actor in the drama, our beloved out-going president may also want to peruse the list in Proverbs 6! And I say that very regrettably because here was a man whose integrity many people could swear by before 1999 now becoming enmeshed in this dirty and dirtying power play. Those days when Comfort Obi used to run the “CAN YOU TRUST THIS MAN” query in her magazine on account of the doctored Electoral Act of 2002, many dismissed it as making an integrity issue out of a mistake. Then the third term issue came and not a few people could swear he knew nothing about it, even when his uncharacteristic silence spoke volumes otherwise. And now he is expressing disappointment at the malpractices and violence which characterized the elections and which he pinned at the door of all the parties. In other words he knows nothing about whatever proportion of these criminal activities could be traced to his party! I doubt if there’s anyone out there taken in by that.
In saying all that I have said, I am simply asserting that this nation’s democracy has been brazenly raped; that grave injustices have been done that requires to be remedied. I am asserting that nothing good or enduring can come out of the Yar’Adua/Goodluck government being steamrolled into place, in spite of whatever sterling personal qualities the two gentlemen may possess. This is simply because you cannot but reap whatever you sow.
Many have suggested to let bye-gone be bye-gone. Let the aggrieved go to the tribunals and accept whatever comes from it. That, they argue, is the constitutional thing to do. On the other side are those who have rejected the elections and have instituted a series of mass action to push through their view point. That is extra-constitutional.
Predictably, majority of my brethren and “sisthren” (apologies Funmi Iyanda) belong to the former group. The position as always is that we need peace in this land. We should just continue to pray and believe that God will intervene to right the wrongs. But I beg to differ. God in many instances depend on us!
The Orange Revolution that reversed a similar situation in Ukraine recently was spearheaded by the Church. In fact a Nigerian Pastor, Rev Sunday Adelaja was in the vanguard of it. Nuns led to final rally that saw Ferdinand Marcos scampering out of the Philippines in the eighties. I am sure they prayed and then acted. Biblical examples abound of God sanctioning resistance, even war! David’s experience at Ziklag may help illustrate my point.
He and his men of war had returned to their camp after an abortive attempt to fight on the side of the Philistines against Saul. He wanted to show gratitude to a king who had accommodated him while his own king was hell bent on hunting him down. What they found on their return was devastating. The place had been raided by the Amalekites and David’s two wives, his children and those of his soldiers had been taken into slavery! I tell you, you are no better than a slave when you don’t have a say in who rules you; when your vote does not count and you are rudely, violently told so!
David burst into tears, naturally, you’ll say. And anyone who truly loves this country should be as saddened by the cavalier, in your face manner of PDP’s conquest of the national political space. But when David had cried to his heart’s content, he called in the prophet. Is there a prophet in this land?! Or is everybody hiding under the guise of praying for peace? Anyway David did not call in the priest to pray any of those peace in the land prayers. He asked God a direct question: The bible records the story this way: “And David said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech's son, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abiathar brought thither the ephod to David. [8] And David enquired at the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? “(1 Samuel 30:7-8). Neither did God equivocate; He didn’t tell him to “seek peace and pursue it!” Verse 8 of that passage ended thus: “And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all. “
David pursued and recovered all! So can we; provided we ask God first. But like I asked earlier, is there a prophet in the land to lead the inquiry? Is there a David in the land to lead the pursuit once the answer comes in the affirmative?
With REMI AKANO
Did you see the picture on the front page of last week’s edition of this paper? It spoke volumes for the grand finale of the Obasanjo-Iwu landmark civilian-to-civilian transition elections! The two electoral officers were literally caught napping. Wise guys; they thought they might as well make up for the sleep they lost at home to the heat and unwanted music of the Hummer’s Band led by Mosquito Charlie - both by kind courtesy of the super efficient power holders otherwise known as PHCN. And both for which Nigerians are so grateful to the largest party in Africa that they are rushing to return it to power by landslides.
But let’s not make too much out of the essay quality of the picture lest we incur the wrath of the Honourable Minister of Information and Communication, Mr Frank Nweke Jr who may already be in possession of incontrovertible evidence that the picture was stage-managed or arranged or organized like the Cable News Network (CNN) report on militancy in the Niger Delta. Remember what happened to CNN thereafter? They have become so broke that they might soon close shop because Nweke ordered the withdrawal of his Heart of Africa campaign, which was being aired on that station. I certainly don’t want that kind of faith for my dear Sunday Independent.
But pardon me for that digression. It’s just that Election 2007 has taken on the characteristics of a hunchback. As Ray Ekpu once put it, the hunch back, that is, whichever way you touch it, it hurts. And the pain it accentuated daily by the general attitude of major actors in the macabre drama playing to a world-wide audience.
By now you probably have had it up to your throat, I mean right to the point of nausea, by the role played by Professor Maurice Iwu and his highneck, sorry INEC outfit in bungling an historic assignment. But while we are at it let me just note two or three things in passing.
Iwu says to congratulate him for printing, air freighting to Nigeria and distributing several tonnes of ballot papers within a few days and early enough for the Presidential elections. How more brazenly insulting to our collective intelligence can any one be! First you create an avoidable problem through partisanship, blow about seven billion Naira to solve it and then congratulate yourself for it!
Next Iwu said what his INEC has in place has laid a foundation for future elections. If that is true then we all better kiss democracy goodbye and probably send an understudy team to the jungle preparatory to learning their ways!
Lastly I understand that the Professor is a Christian; a catholic who I understand even booked a mass at an Abuja Church for his benefactor, Dr Andy Uba so that he might win the Anambra governorship elections. He would therefore have read or at least heard about this bible passage: “These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren” (Proverbs 6:16-19).
Whether he is acquainted with the passage or not, there it is and I just wonder whether he could recognize any of his activities and those of some of the people he had been hand-in-gloves with in the last year or so in those abominable seven! For instance when Dr Tom Ikimi and Alhaji Sule Hamma, representatives of Candidates Atiku Abubakar and Muhammadu Buhari respectively said collation of results was not even halfway when Chairman Iwu announced the Umaru musa Yar’Adua’s landslide victory, were they lying? Or did the chaiman manifest some of the items on the Lord’s “hate-list” above? After reading that presidential election returns, many who watched it live on television including this writer noticed that the professor stumbled as he read the date the result was issued. Was that a kind of Freudian slip?
Of course the lead actor in the drama, our beloved out-going president may also want to peruse the list in Proverbs 6! And I say that very regrettably because here was a man whose integrity many people could swear by before 1999 now becoming enmeshed in this dirty and dirtying power play. Those days when Comfort Obi used to run the “CAN YOU TRUST THIS MAN” query in her magazine on account of the doctored Electoral Act of 2002, many dismissed it as making an integrity issue out of a mistake. Then the third term issue came and not a few people could swear he knew nothing about it, even when his uncharacteristic silence spoke volumes otherwise. And now he is expressing disappointment at the malpractices and violence which characterized the elections and which he pinned at the door of all the parties. In other words he knows nothing about whatever proportion of these criminal activities could be traced to his party! I doubt if there’s anyone out there taken in by that.
In saying all that I have said, I am simply asserting that this nation’s democracy has been brazenly raped; that grave injustices have been done that requires to be remedied. I am asserting that nothing good or enduring can come out of the Yar’Adua/Goodluck government being steamrolled into place, in spite of whatever sterling personal qualities the two gentlemen may possess. This is simply because you cannot but reap whatever you sow.
Many have suggested to let bye-gone be bye-gone. Let the aggrieved go to the tribunals and accept whatever comes from it. That, they argue, is the constitutional thing to do. On the other side are those who have rejected the elections and have instituted a series of mass action to push through their view point. That is extra-constitutional.
Predictably, majority of my brethren and “sisthren” (apologies Funmi Iyanda) belong to the former group. The position as always is that we need peace in this land. We should just continue to pray and believe that God will intervene to right the wrongs. But I beg to differ. God in many instances depend on us!
The Orange Revolution that reversed a similar situation in Ukraine recently was spearheaded by the Church. In fact a Nigerian Pastor, Rev Sunday Adelaja was in the vanguard of it. Nuns led to final rally that saw Ferdinand Marcos scampering out of the Philippines in the eighties. I am sure they prayed and then acted. Biblical examples abound of God sanctioning resistance, even war! David’s experience at Ziklag may help illustrate my point.
He and his men of war had returned to their camp after an abortive attempt to fight on the side of the Philistines against Saul. He wanted to show gratitude to a king who had accommodated him while his own king was hell bent on hunting him down. What they found on their return was devastating. The place had been raided by the Amalekites and David’s two wives, his children and those of his soldiers had been taken into slavery! I tell you, you are no better than a slave when you don’t have a say in who rules you; when your vote does not count and you are rudely, violently told so!
David burst into tears, naturally, you’ll say. And anyone who truly loves this country should be as saddened by the cavalier, in your face manner of PDP’s conquest of the national political space. But when David had cried to his heart’s content, he called in the prophet. Is there a prophet in this land?! Or is everybody hiding under the guise of praying for peace? Anyway David did not call in the priest to pray any of those peace in the land prayers. He asked God a direct question: The bible records the story this way: “And David said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech's son, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abiathar brought thither the ephod to David. [8] And David enquired at the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? “(1 Samuel 30:7-8). Neither did God equivocate; He didn’t tell him to “seek peace and pursue it!” Verse 8 of that passage ended thus: “And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all. “
David pursued and recovered all! So can we; provided we ask God first. But like I asked earlier, is there a prophet in the land to lead the inquiry? Is there a David in the land to lead the pursuit once the answer comes in the affirmative?
THE LORD’S DOING? NO SIR!
KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
With REMI AKANO
As one of my brothers would say, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the declaration of Mallam Umar Musa Yar’Adua of Obasanjo’s Peoples Democratic Party as the president-elect would be received with a yawn in many parts of the country. The script had lost its suspense since the governorship election on April 14. The déjà vu feeling that had pervaded the air was so thick you could slice it with a knife! So, for many, it’s a case of thanks for the interlude, can we now go on with our lives; if the drudgery that daily living in Nigeria had tended to be could be so dignified?
As we said on this page last week the elections have left our nation deeply divided but at peace; a restive, testy kind of peace, but peace nonetheless. It is peace made possible by the prayer of the saints and the typical helpless surrender of the Nigerian to the rapacious instinct of a so-called ruling class.
But can this peace be sustained? That would seem a most incongruous question to ask in this column because its very raison d'être is the enthronement and entrenchment of the ways and will of the Prince of Peace. It is however an appropriate question because, you see, even the Lord Jesus himself did not mince words about the kind of peace that is sustainable. In Matthew 10:34, he said “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
He continued: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. (Matthew 10:35).
A clear understanding of what Jesus Christ said here should give us, all of us including all those patriots who have been calling for calm, food for thought. He is saying my mission is not peace at any cost; my mission is peace anchored on the sword; the sword being the word of God which brooks no injustice, as well as, a symbol of judgment. As one bible commentator explains it, “the gospel brings division and strife in families and nations, because some love and chose to remain in darkness, rather than embrace the light.” So whenever and wherever a section of the people chose not only to embrace evil, but also to impose its rule over the others, division comes and peace is severely threatened.
Today in our nation, the most charitable way to put the state of affairs is that evil is on all fours in our political system. The elections have not only failed to right the wrongs of the past in our leadership recruitment arrangement, spoken about last week, it has in itself become the greatest evidence of brazen injustice.
Different words have been used to describe the election process by some of the participants who felt shortchanged. Armed robbery, daylight robbery, charade, sham are some of the ones that readily come to mind. Tried as international election observers have to couch their preliminary reports in diplomatese, disappointment and disapproval drip from virtually every sentence.
The Chief Election Observer of the European Union Observer Mission, Mr Max van den Berg puts it this way: “The 2007 state and federal elections have fallen short of international and regional standards for democratic elections. They were marred by poor organization, lack of essential transparency, widespread procedural irregularities, significant evidence of fraud particularly during the election collation process, voter disenfranchisement at different stages of the process, lack of equal condition for contestants and numerous incidents of violence”
The National Democratic Institute observer team led by former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also decried the elections as a significant step backward in the conduct of elections in Nigeria.
On its part the Transition Monitoring Group, a coalition of Nigeria NGOs with the largest team of observers declared among other things that: “…Voting did not take place in many states across the federation, especially in the southeast and northeast and yet results were produced for those states and criminal intents in the depriving those whose mandates were stolen of effective judicial remedy by denying them the result sheets which can be used in the election tribunal.”
The harbinger of most of the problem himself, President Obasanjo had to begin his journey to international rehabilitation by owning up to the “imperfection” of the process. In a radio/television broadcast to the nation, shortly before the presidential election result was formally announced and which was obviously intended to preempt other reactions, he said: “Our elections could not have been said to have been perfect. Specifically, logistical failures which resulted in voting materials arriving quite late in parts of the country inadvertently deprived some voters of their right to exercise their civic responsibility.”
He continued: “Violence in parts of the country resulted in the reported deaths of some 30 policemen and over 35 civilians and the attempted bombing of the INEC headquarters….Cases of electoral fraud have also been reported from parts of the country in terms of multiple thumbing of ballot papers by individuals and groups and ballot box snatching and destruction. On my part, I am disappointed in the conduct of political parties and their candidates that have employed thugs and violent means to secure what they consider electoral victory.”
For purposes of clarification, I hold the President responsible for every one of those things that he decried above. They are all products of his do-or-die characterization of the elections which as we said last week led to violence, fraud, desperation and serial injustices such as erecting multiple barriers on the way of certain candidates in order to exclude them or at least make them ineffective.
Of course, reactions were swift in coming. Chief Tom Ikimi, a former Nigerian Foreign Minister, who represented Vice President Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of Action Congress yelled blue murder.
His words: “We have been here since yesterday to observe this collation. We only collated 11 states and the Chairman, Prof. Maurice Iwu, has been so much in a hurry to reveal to the world an election result that they have cooked up, which they believe if they don‘t release in good time, will be difficult to release. Those figures are flawed. Election did not take place in most of Nigeria. We of the ANPP and the Action Congress reject the result and we are going to take this matter legally in court …Agents of the opposition parties were not allowed to question the veracity of the figures being collated in spite of the fact that we have incontrovertible evidence from our agents in the polling booths in the states. The evidence of credible national and international observers also showed that the figures are totally flawed.” Newspaper reports said he was subsequently pushed out of INEC‘s collation centre by security agents attached to Iwu.
In his own reaction, the representative of the ANPP presidential candidate, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari, Admiral Lanre Amusu (rtd.), said, “…We were getting results from the resident electoral commissioners from the various states and collating them. We got to the 12th or 13th state when the chairman of INEC rushed out of the room to announce the result to the whole world. We were surprised that he did not give us the result sheets which were signed only by INEC officials and PDP agents.”
He went on: ”It is important to know that in most of the states, all other party agents were driven away from the collation centres. It is no surprise that only INEC officials and PDP agents signed the results from those states…Nigerians are witnesses to the level of rigging that took place this time around. Everyone has seen it. They believe they have perfected their crime but Nigerians are going to oppose it with the last drop of their blood.”
I have gone through what some might consider unnecessary reportage here in order to show how widely unacceptable the process was and, as a result, how really divided the nation currently is and how restive the peace. But as usual we are already being advised to allow peace to reign. Those who lost are being asked to go to the Election Tribunal and even Mr President has advised INEC to cooperate with the aggrieved by making documents available to them. How nice of our born-again due process president! Of course he and his disingenuous democrats know it is virtually impossible for a tribunal to find enough hard-cast evidence to nullify enough votes to affect Umar Yar’Adua’s 18million majority over Buhari, his closest rival?
It does look like a done deal therefore. Obasanjo decided that if he could not continue in office directly, he has to continue by proxy. He picked a candidate and Machiavelli-style, has achieved his goals. But has he? My answer is I sense not.
Goodluck Jonathan, the Vice President-elect says their election is Lord’s doing and I say no, it’s the doing of one man and his courtiers and that man is Obasanjo. How do I know? God is a God of justice and equity; He is also a God of due process. So committed to due process is our God that, he did not snatch control of the world from satan unilaterally when Adam foolishly handed it over to the serpent. Jesus had to come as the second Adam to pay the price for Adam’s rebellion and thus become qualified to retrieve what the first Adam lost. That is due process. Were God to want to install Yar’Adua and Jonathan, he would not use a flawed, fraud-filled and violent process. God is therefore not in this charade and because he is not in it, it cannot stand. 2007 is not like 1999 and 2003. The prophecy is out that 2007 is the year of transition’s end in Nigeria, but it would be transition God’s style. Mark my word.
With REMI AKANO
As one of my brothers would say, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the declaration of Mallam Umar Musa Yar’Adua of Obasanjo’s Peoples Democratic Party as the president-elect would be received with a yawn in many parts of the country. The script had lost its suspense since the governorship election on April 14. The déjà vu feeling that had pervaded the air was so thick you could slice it with a knife! So, for many, it’s a case of thanks for the interlude, can we now go on with our lives; if the drudgery that daily living in Nigeria had tended to be could be so dignified?
As we said on this page last week the elections have left our nation deeply divided but at peace; a restive, testy kind of peace, but peace nonetheless. It is peace made possible by the prayer of the saints and the typical helpless surrender of the Nigerian to the rapacious instinct of a so-called ruling class.
But can this peace be sustained? That would seem a most incongruous question to ask in this column because its very raison d'être is the enthronement and entrenchment of the ways and will of the Prince of Peace. It is however an appropriate question because, you see, even the Lord Jesus himself did not mince words about the kind of peace that is sustainable. In Matthew 10:34, he said “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
He continued: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. (Matthew 10:35).
A clear understanding of what Jesus Christ said here should give us, all of us including all those patriots who have been calling for calm, food for thought. He is saying my mission is not peace at any cost; my mission is peace anchored on the sword; the sword being the word of God which brooks no injustice, as well as, a symbol of judgment. As one bible commentator explains it, “the gospel brings division and strife in families and nations, because some love and chose to remain in darkness, rather than embrace the light.” So whenever and wherever a section of the people chose not only to embrace evil, but also to impose its rule over the others, division comes and peace is severely threatened.
Today in our nation, the most charitable way to put the state of affairs is that evil is on all fours in our political system. The elections have not only failed to right the wrongs of the past in our leadership recruitment arrangement, spoken about last week, it has in itself become the greatest evidence of brazen injustice.
Different words have been used to describe the election process by some of the participants who felt shortchanged. Armed robbery, daylight robbery, charade, sham are some of the ones that readily come to mind. Tried as international election observers have to couch their preliminary reports in diplomatese, disappointment and disapproval drip from virtually every sentence.
The Chief Election Observer of the European Union Observer Mission, Mr Max van den Berg puts it this way: “The 2007 state and federal elections have fallen short of international and regional standards for democratic elections. They were marred by poor organization, lack of essential transparency, widespread procedural irregularities, significant evidence of fraud particularly during the election collation process, voter disenfranchisement at different stages of the process, lack of equal condition for contestants and numerous incidents of violence”
The National Democratic Institute observer team led by former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also decried the elections as a significant step backward in the conduct of elections in Nigeria.
On its part the Transition Monitoring Group, a coalition of Nigeria NGOs with the largest team of observers declared among other things that: “…Voting did not take place in many states across the federation, especially in the southeast and northeast and yet results were produced for those states and criminal intents in the depriving those whose mandates were stolen of effective judicial remedy by denying them the result sheets which can be used in the election tribunal.”
The harbinger of most of the problem himself, President Obasanjo had to begin his journey to international rehabilitation by owning up to the “imperfection” of the process. In a radio/television broadcast to the nation, shortly before the presidential election result was formally announced and which was obviously intended to preempt other reactions, he said: “Our elections could not have been said to have been perfect. Specifically, logistical failures which resulted in voting materials arriving quite late in parts of the country inadvertently deprived some voters of their right to exercise their civic responsibility.”
He continued: “Violence in parts of the country resulted in the reported deaths of some 30 policemen and over 35 civilians and the attempted bombing of the INEC headquarters….Cases of electoral fraud have also been reported from parts of the country in terms of multiple thumbing of ballot papers by individuals and groups and ballot box snatching and destruction. On my part, I am disappointed in the conduct of political parties and their candidates that have employed thugs and violent means to secure what they consider electoral victory.”
For purposes of clarification, I hold the President responsible for every one of those things that he decried above. They are all products of his do-or-die characterization of the elections which as we said last week led to violence, fraud, desperation and serial injustices such as erecting multiple barriers on the way of certain candidates in order to exclude them or at least make them ineffective.
Of course, reactions were swift in coming. Chief Tom Ikimi, a former Nigerian Foreign Minister, who represented Vice President Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of Action Congress yelled blue murder.
His words: “We have been here since yesterday to observe this collation. We only collated 11 states and the Chairman, Prof. Maurice Iwu, has been so much in a hurry to reveal to the world an election result that they have cooked up, which they believe if they don‘t release in good time, will be difficult to release. Those figures are flawed. Election did not take place in most of Nigeria. We of the ANPP and the Action Congress reject the result and we are going to take this matter legally in court …Agents of the opposition parties were not allowed to question the veracity of the figures being collated in spite of the fact that we have incontrovertible evidence from our agents in the polling booths in the states. The evidence of credible national and international observers also showed that the figures are totally flawed.” Newspaper reports said he was subsequently pushed out of INEC‘s collation centre by security agents attached to Iwu.
In his own reaction, the representative of the ANPP presidential candidate, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari, Admiral Lanre Amusu (rtd.), said, “…We were getting results from the resident electoral commissioners from the various states and collating them. We got to the 12th or 13th state when the chairman of INEC rushed out of the room to announce the result to the whole world. We were surprised that he did not give us the result sheets which were signed only by INEC officials and PDP agents.”
He went on: ”It is important to know that in most of the states, all other party agents were driven away from the collation centres. It is no surprise that only INEC officials and PDP agents signed the results from those states…Nigerians are witnesses to the level of rigging that took place this time around. Everyone has seen it. They believe they have perfected their crime but Nigerians are going to oppose it with the last drop of their blood.”
I have gone through what some might consider unnecessary reportage here in order to show how widely unacceptable the process was and, as a result, how really divided the nation currently is and how restive the peace. But as usual we are already being advised to allow peace to reign. Those who lost are being asked to go to the Election Tribunal and even Mr President has advised INEC to cooperate with the aggrieved by making documents available to them. How nice of our born-again due process president! Of course he and his disingenuous democrats know it is virtually impossible for a tribunal to find enough hard-cast evidence to nullify enough votes to affect Umar Yar’Adua’s 18million majority over Buhari, his closest rival?
It does look like a done deal therefore. Obasanjo decided that if he could not continue in office directly, he has to continue by proxy. He picked a candidate and Machiavelli-style, has achieved his goals. But has he? My answer is I sense not.
Goodluck Jonathan, the Vice President-elect says their election is Lord’s doing and I say no, it’s the doing of one man and his courtiers and that man is Obasanjo. How do I know? God is a God of justice and equity; He is also a God of due process. So committed to due process is our God that, he did not snatch control of the world from satan unilaterally when Adam foolishly handed it over to the serpent. Jesus had to come as the second Adam to pay the price for Adam’s rebellion and thus become qualified to retrieve what the first Adam lost. That is due process. Were God to want to install Yar’Adua and Jonathan, he would not use a flawed, fraud-filled and violent process. God is therefore not in this charade and because he is not in it, it cannot stand. 2007 is not like 1999 and 2003. The prophecy is out that 2007 is the year of transition’s end in Nigeria, but it would be transition God’s style. Mark my word.
JUSTICE AND EQUITY MUST REIGN
KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
With REMI AKANO
By the time you read this, the elections would have come, but certainly not gone. Balloting in the Presidential and National Assembly elections would have been concluded. Possibly, results from all the governorship and state assembly elections held the previous week would have been announced. Against all predictions, violence would have been relatively low, but our nation would unfortunately be at its most divided in her post-civil war history.
No, this is not doomsaying. This is simply stating it the way it would be – for a while. As a believer steeped in the word of God, I know that would not be the end of it, because God never ends anything on a negative; and certainly not where Nigeria with her prophetic destiny as God’s end-time tool for evangelizing the world, is concerned.
But we must do very rigorous soul-searching. We must move swiftly to set aright those things that are not right, because as one wise man has said, nothing is settled until it is settled aright. And there are so many things wrong, most of them fundamental; so many in fact that one is tempted to suggest that we consider beginning all over again. That is because, as the Chinese would say, no matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back!
The late leader of the Christian Men’s Network International, Rev Dr Edwin Louis Cole it was who said that the characteristics of a kingdom derive from the character of the king. How so apt! If you have been following the electioneering from the death of the tenure elongation project right up to now (a few days to the presidential elections), you will have little doubt that everything took on the abrasive, divisive, desperate, do-or-die character of President Matthew Obasanjo. The result, of course has been serial injustices, disdain for and manipulation of due process, misuse and abuse of virtually all the instruments of state power and violence, which but for our prayers would have been much worse.
Professor Maurice Iwu also took on the character of his principal leaving the Independent National Electoral Commission, which he heads, with no choice. In the event, those who suggested earlier that the president and his vice be impeached so that Senate President Kenechukwu Nnamani conducts elections as acting President were right, very right. Most people disagreed at the time because it seemed like an invitation to chaos. But look what we have on our hands – restive peace, without justice and equity.
Enamoured as we all are of breaking the jinx of civilian-to-civilian transition, we may be tempted to patch things up and simply say to the aggrieved: go to the election tribunals, accept your fate as the will of God but I wish to warn that God is no longer going to allow injustice to go unpunished in Nigeria. The end-times are here and all his tools have to be shaped and sharpened, and Nigeria is pivotal to the move. We must remove the scepter of injustice that we have continually allowed to hand over our nation. It is these stomaching of injustice that is working against our nation. That is why all programmes, social, economic and political, including Obasanjo’s reforms don’t achieve the desired results.
Talking about stomaching injustice, the place of the South-South region of Nigeria in the scheme of things must rank rather high as injustice and inequity writ large.
You may recall that the issue of which zone of Nigeria should produce the next president was hotly, even acrimoniously debated at the onset of preparations for Elections 2007. The South-East and the South-South zones made what was incontrovertibly a strong case for either of them to produce the next occupant of Aso Villa. And at a point it seemed almost certain that at least the People Democratic Party candidate for that top spot will come from the South-South. That party’s primary held and as the cliché goes, the rest is history! All the other big parties soon followed suit and before you could say “equity”, the two zones were already cozying up to the vice-presidential slot. And some might think that settles it.
But even as we try to close the books on Elections 2007, I remain burdened that unless yesterday’s presidential election results in either of two things that spectre of injustice and inequity will continue to hang over our nation. The first, of course is that the next president emerges from one of these zones, particularly the South-South. The second is that the candidate that we elect be one that is committed to returning Nigeria to the path of socio-economic justice through restructuring.
I am saying therefore that if by this morning we have not called the bluff of those who think might is right by having refused to vote for candidates from outside of the two disadvantaged regions, we would not have voted for equity and justice. After all there were a number of candidates to choose from. There was Professor Pat Utomi who apart from his other attributes of character, compassion, competence and freshness, uniquely meets the objective of filling the South-South/South-East slot. As a Deltan, his geo-political home is the South-South while as an Igbo, his root is in the South-East. Thus, he could even be the President that completes the rotation circle and free our nation to henceforth shop for the best from anywhere at all times.
Of course there was also Rev Chris Okotie whose grasp of our nation’s challenges is as amazing as the obviously inspired solutions that he has been proffering. His South-South origin should stand him in good stead in our bid to enthrone justice and fair play.
The alternative which, other things being equal, could also have placed us on the route to righting the wrongs of the past, of course, was the Buhari/Pronaco Option. Its attraction is the commitment to restructuring the federation along regional lines. This option has been articulated by the likes of Chief Olu Falae of the Democtratic Peoples Alliance and Rev Ajibola Oluyede of the National Advance Party, both allies of Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari, presidential candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP. The vision here is to turn the current geo-political zones into regions similar in operation to the three (later four) regions that existed during the First Republic. These regions would, by the proposal, substantially control the resources in their areas and supervise the states under them, among other things. With the Niger Delta in control of her resources, justice and equity would largely have been restored.
The bible, which is my compass and by which I have chosen to evaluate public policies and the activities of public officers who claim to subscribe to the Christian faith is very clear about equity in all issues. I’ll draw attention to only two passages to buttress my position.
In the book of Psalms chapter 82 and verse 3 is this clear directive: “Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.” Contextually directed at judges, this is in fact God’s absolute minimum in the conduct of public affairs. Whether we like to admit it or not, the South-South zone of Nigeria, in particular, qualifies to be described as poor, afflicted and needy, all on account of decades of wanton exploitation of her resources to the benefit of the rest of Nigeria but the pauperization of the people of the area.
The Message bible paraphrase of this verse brings it home a little clearer: “You're here to defend the defenseless, to make sure that underdogs get a fair break.” The Niger Delta youths may have of recent decided to shake off the toga of defenselessness – in their wrong but understandable resort to violence - but there is as yet no doubt that they remain the underdog in Nigeria’s current socio-political and economic arrangement! And the scripture says to give the underdog a fair break. The same situation applies substantially to the South-Eastern zone.
As I reflected on this and the amount of prayer and fasting of all sorts that have been going on in private and even in public including the Christian Association of Nigeria/ Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs joint effort, I am reminded of the word of God in Proverbs 21:3 which says” To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.” Again, I find the Message translation illuminating: “… justice with our neighbors mean far more to GOD than religious performance.” If we would pay more attention to doing right, we would not have to resort to the fire-fighting of calling upon one and all to fast and pray at the approach every electioneering period.
The point being made here dear reader is, if we have not used our votes to empower the disadvantaged, or put in place a political arrangement that is capable righting the wrongs of the past, our nation would be outside the will of God. If we are willing to accept the rule of the unjust because off some seemingly smart socio-economic programme based on the wisdom of man and or because we just want to move on with our lives, we would have enthroned unrighteousness and the consequences are as implied in the book of Proverbs: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn (Proverbs 29:2). It is an eternal truth that whether as individuals or groups or nations, we reap what we sow.
With REMI AKANO
By the time you read this, the elections would have come, but certainly not gone. Balloting in the Presidential and National Assembly elections would have been concluded. Possibly, results from all the governorship and state assembly elections held the previous week would have been announced. Against all predictions, violence would have been relatively low, but our nation would unfortunately be at its most divided in her post-civil war history.
No, this is not doomsaying. This is simply stating it the way it would be – for a while. As a believer steeped in the word of God, I know that would not be the end of it, because God never ends anything on a negative; and certainly not where Nigeria with her prophetic destiny as God’s end-time tool for evangelizing the world, is concerned.
But we must do very rigorous soul-searching. We must move swiftly to set aright those things that are not right, because as one wise man has said, nothing is settled until it is settled aright. And there are so many things wrong, most of them fundamental; so many in fact that one is tempted to suggest that we consider beginning all over again. That is because, as the Chinese would say, no matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back!
The late leader of the Christian Men’s Network International, Rev Dr Edwin Louis Cole it was who said that the characteristics of a kingdom derive from the character of the king. How so apt! If you have been following the electioneering from the death of the tenure elongation project right up to now (a few days to the presidential elections), you will have little doubt that everything took on the abrasive, divisive, desperate, do-or-die character of President Matthew Obasanjo. The result, of course has been serial injustices, disdain for and manipulation of due process, misuse and abuse of virtually all the instruments of state power and violence, which but for our prayers would have been much worse.
Professor Maurice Iwu also took on the character of his principal leaving the Independent National Electoral Commission, which he heads, with no choice. In the event, those who suggested earlier that the president and his vice be impeached so that Senate President Kenechukwu Nnamani conducts elections as acting President were right, very right. Most people disagreed at the time because it seemed like an invitation to chaos. But look what we have on our hands – restive peace, without justice and equity.
Enamoured as we all are of breaking the jinx of civilian-to-civilian transition, we may be tempted to patch things up and simply say to the aggrieved: go to the election tribunals, accept your fate as the will of God but I wish to warn that God is no longer going to allow injustice to go unpunished in Nigeria. The end-times are here and all his tools have to be shaped and sharpened, and Nigeria is pivotal to the move. We must remove the scepter of injustice that we have continually allowed to hand over our nation. It is these stomaching of injustice that is working against our nation. That is why all programmes, social, economic and political, including Obasanjo’s reforms don’t achieve the desired results.
Talking about stomaching injustice, the place of the South-South region of Nigeria in the scheme of things must rank rather high as injustice and inequity writ large.
You may recall that the issue of which zone of Nigeria should produce the next president was hotly, even acrimoniously debated at the onset of preparations for Elections 2007. The South-East and the South-South zones made what was incontrovertibly a strong case for either of them to produce the next occupant of Aso Villa. And at a point it seemed almost certain that at least the People Democratic Party candidate for that top spot will come from the South-South. That party’s primary held and as the cliché goes, the rest is history! All the other big parties soon followed suit and before you could say “equity”, the two zones were already cozying up to the vice-presidential slot. And some might think that settles it.
But even as we try to close the books on Elections 2007, I remain burdened that unless yesterday’s presidential election results in either of two things that spectre of injustice and inequity will continue to hang over our nation. The first, of course is that the next president emerges from one of these zones, particularly the South-South. The second is that the candidate that we elect be one that is committed to returning Nigeria to the path of socio-economic justice through restructuring.
I am saying therefore that if by this morning we have not called the bluff of those who think might is right by having refused to vote for candidates from outside of the two disadvantaged regions, we would not have voted for equity and justice. After all there were a number of candidates to choose from. There was Professor Pat Utomi who apart from his other attributes of character, compassion, competence and freshness, uniquely meets the objective of filling the South-South/South-East slot. As a Deltan, his geo-political home is the South-South while as an Igbo, his root is in the South-East. Thus, he could even be the President that completes the rotation circle and free our nation to henceforth shop for the best from anywhere at all times.
Of course there was also Rev Chris Okotie whose grasp of our nation’s challenges is as amazing as the obviously inspired solutions that he has been proffering. His South-South origin should stand him in good stead in our bid to enthrone justice and fair play.
The alternative which, other things being equal, could also have placed us on the route to righting the wrongs of the past, of course, was the Buhari/Pronaco Option. Its attraction is the commitment to restructuring the federation along regional lines. This option has been articulated by the likes of Chief Olu Falae of the Democtratic Peoples Alliance and Rev Ajibola Oluyede of the National Advance Party, both allies of Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari, presidential candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party, ANPP. The vision here is to turn the current geo-political zones into regions similar in operation to the three (later four) regions that existed during the First Republic. These regions would, by the proposal, substantially control the resources in their areas and supervise the states under them, among other things. With the Niger Delta in control of her resources, justice and equity would largely have been restored.
The bible, which is my compass and by which I have chosen to evaluate public policies and the activities of public officers who claim to subscribe to the Christian faith is very clear about equity in all issues. I’ll draw attention to only two passages to buttress my position.
In the book of Psalms chapter 82 and verse 3 is this clear directive: “Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.” Contextually directed at judges, this is in fact God’s absolute minimum in the conduct of public affairs. Whether we like to admit it or not, the South-South zone of Nigeria, in particular, qualifies to be described as poor, afflicted and needy, all on account of decades of wanton exploitation of her resources to the benefit of the rest of Nigeria but the pauperization of the people of the area.
The Message bible paraphrase of this verse brings it home a little clearer: “You're here to defend the defenseless, to make sure that underdogs get a fair break.” The Niger Delta youths may have of recent decided to shake off the toga of defenselessness – in their wrong but understandable resort to violence - but there is as yet no doubt that they remain the underdog in Nigeria’s current socio-political and economic arrangement! And the scripture says to give the underdog a fair break. The same situation applies substantially to the South-Eastern zone.
As I reflected on this and the amount of prayer and fasting of all sorts that have been going on in private and even in public including the Christian Association of Nigeria/ Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs joint effort, I am reminded of the word of God in Proverbs 21:3 which says” To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.” Again, I find the Message translation illuminating: “… justice with our neighbors mean far more to GOD than religious performance.” If we would pay more attention to doing right, we would not have to resort to the fire-fighting of calling upon one and all to fast and pray at the approach every electioneering period.
The point being made here dear reader is, if we have not used our votes to empower the disadvantaged, or put in place a political arrangement that is capable righting the wrongs of the past, our nation would be outside the will of God. If we are willing to accept the rule of the unjust because off some seemingly smart socio-economic programme based on the wisdom of man and or because we just want to move on with our lives, we would have enthroned unrighteousness and the consequences are as implied in the book of Proverbs: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn (Proverbs 29:2). It is an eternal truth that whether as individuals or groups or nations, we reap what we sow.
THE “PASSION” OF THE PRESIDENT
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.
ONE BILL THIS NATIONAL ASSEMBLY MUST PASS!
KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE
with Remi Akano.
It doesn’t take the gift of prophesy to see that the National Assembly will not pass all the bills currently before its two chambers. It follows therefore that the assembly would be under tremendous pressure from interested parties to give priorities to bill that directly impinges upon their interests.
Incidentally such interests would include the Executive Arm. That explains President Olusegun Obasanjo’s recent trenchant call on the lawmakers to pass the Oil & Gas Bill that’s been before both houses for a while. The President has let it be known that unless the bill was passed before certain investment decisions were taken, the nation would lose money in the billions.
One such interest party is this column and the bill of interest coincidentally also originated from the Executive Branch. Rated as possibly one of the most important executive bills presented by Obasanjo’s government, in the opinion of this column, it is currently snailing its way through both legislative houses. To give it its full title, it is: “A bill [executive] for an Act to make provisions for the prohibition of sexual relationship between persons of the same sex, celebration of marriage by them and for other matters connected therewith.”
Otherwise known as the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Bill, 2006, this writer sees the proposed law as Obasanjo’s one and only “Blow for Righteousness”; the one law that has enduring, even eternal values. It is therefore one law that all who profess Christianity, all who believe in a society built and nurtured on the expressed will of God must rise to see passed.
To understand the importance of this bill, permit me to contextualize its drafting and timing. Towards the end of 2004, the Nigerian media severally reported that a group of homosexuals held its annual general meeting or a gay dinner or both somewhere in the city of Abuja. The body cynically styled itself, Changing Attitudes in Nigeria in order to appropriate the acronym CAN, which is widely recognized as that of Christian Association of Nigeria. The group, to all intent and purposes, by this action sought to bring the subject of gay rights on the front burner in Nigeria and hopefully wrest the same kind of recognition/concession their brothers and sisters have received in some parts of Europe, the United States of America, Canada and even South Africa.
It was and possibly still is quite tempting to many to dismiss that public show of deviance as the feeble action of a warp-minded minority and get on with our lives. Indeed I have reason to believe that a majority of the church in Nigeria did just that! Thank God that not all did. Thank God that there were some children and servants of God, in and around the seat of power, sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit to recognize it for what it was - the first shot in a battle for the soul of Christianity in Nigeria in particular, and through it, the soul of our nation. Most critical of all, it was and still is an international onslaught on what is now widely recognized as the bastion, the bulwark against gay ascendancy, Nigeria.
To appreciate this damning dimension to the issue, we must do a bit of retrospection and highlight the activities of Nigeria through certain Nigerians.
Some readers may know that on November 1, 2003, the international gay movement struck its deadliest blow yet with the installation of Gene Robinson, an openly gay cleric as the Episcopal Church of United States of America (ECUSA) Bishop of New Hampshire. It was a well-attended ceremony with at least 3,000 persons and 54 bishops in attendance. Gene had separated from Isabella, his wife with whom he had two daughters, in 1986 upon concluding that he was gay, and had been partnering with a certain Mark Andrew.
Although KINGDOMPeople magazine reported at the time that “within the USA, protests against the consecration were, however massive…with some churches within New Hampshire severing relationship with ECUSA,” easily the most powerful voice of dissent came from Most Rev Peter Jasper Akinola, Primate and Metropolitan Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion). In a statement issued on behalf of the 50million-strong Global South, a body of Anglican Churches in the Africa, Asia and Latin America immediately after the so-called consecration, Akinola not only condemned it, he said it had created a state of impaired communion within the worldwide Anglican family.
Akinola, who is also current President of Christian Association of Nigeria, has not relented since then. At every level he has had the privilege of serving; he has been a loud, forceful voice against this vice. He has been leading a determined resistance against those who, in the garb of liberalism and relativism, have sought not only to rationalize homosexuality as an orientation or preference to which human rights apply, but also go the giant step further of installing themselves in position of influence and leadership in the church of Jesus Christ.
In the Church of Nigeria for example, Akinola and his team have taken very creative steps to ensure that the Nigerian church’s freedom of choice in its relationship with other parts of the Anglican Communion is not impaired by any legal encumbrance.
A statement after the Church’s General Synod in 2004 was unequivocal. The triennial Synod of the church, the statement announced, “amended the language of our constitution so that those who are bent on creating a new religion in which anything goes, and have thereby chosen to walk a different path, may do so without us…”
Explaining the standpoint of the church, the statement continued, “the Church of Nigeria is evangelical and its adherence to the holy scripture is paramount and non-negotiable…In matters of faith and practice, the holy scripture provides sufficient warrant for what is considered right and what is judged to be wrong and the word of God cannot be compromised…If we say we are bound together by the same common faith and this faith says a man shall marry a woman and some people come out to say that a man can marry a man and a woman is free to marry a woman, it means we no longer share common faith…”
I have been this copious in quoting from that statement because I believe, until the contrary is proven, it represents the unspoken position of the rest of the Church in Nigeria irrespective of the denominational identity we may carry. This is not to deny that there are Christian individuals who have succumbed to the satanic lie that they are created with a gay orientation. It is simply stating that we are not at that abyss where church leadership is in gay hands. I have privately, even publicly in a mini-book, agonized about the silence of the rest of the church on this critical issue wondering if the rest of us see it as an Anglican problem when all evidence around us scream that it certainly is not.
But, I digress. The issue of church unity is a matter for another day. The point being made here is this. Akinola has become the man the international gay movement loves to hate. Check the internet; he is one of the most vilified clergy men in the world today with epithets such as “dumb as a bag of rock”, “pompous ass”, “superstitious primitive”, and “another 419 scam from Nigeria.”
For the avoidance of any doubts, this is not a public relations exercise for Akinola who was last year recognized by TIME magazine as one of the world’s “Top 100 Men Shaping the World” and listed among 21 “Leaders & Revolutionaries”, the “people with the clout and power to change our world.” And I am not Anglican, either. I am by the grace of God, a Spirit-filled, tongue-talking Pentecostal and a pastor with Christ Chapel International Churches. But I am also a Spirit-led One-Church activist, who, partly because of his calling to kingdom-wide enterprise, including publishing, has made it his duty to be interested in what goes on in the Church of God by whatsoever name it is called.
I do know therefore that Nigeria has become so critical to the gay movement precisely because it is the core of the resistance to its growth. The strategy is simple enough: take the general’s home turf and thereby remove his moral high ground to pontificate. That is why the executive anti-homosexual bill is proactive and timely.
But as I am sure we all know a bill is not a law until it has been passed by the two chambers of the National Assembly. Mercifully the House of Representatives has held a public hearing on it and the Senate has taken an interesting, eye-opening first look at it. It is unclear, as I write this, whether they will tow the line of the lower house. Even if they do, as The Independent recently reminded the nation in an Editorial, public hearings have not always translated to laws. And we are already counting down days to the end of this tenure.
That is why all Kingdom-minded Nigerians must rise in defence of this “blow for righteousness” and safeguard of our public morality. Believe it or not, the tardiness we are seeing, though a seeming characteristic of our law-making process, may be the result of subtle, underground resistance from the enemy camp to which foreign funding is always available. Also, you never know the “sexual preferences” of some of our legislators; after all, didn’t late coupist Gideon Orkar alert the nation of the presence of homosexuality in high places during the dark days of military rule? So, Senator Tokunbo Ogunbanjo who pointedly told his colleagues that he saw nothing wrong in same-sex intimacy may not be alone! By the way I hope those who elected him are listening!
We must move NOW. Every one of us must leave our representatives in no doubt where we stand. And we must all rise up in prayer to ensure that this first body blow is delivered without further delay. Christian Association of Nigeria, the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria and all such Christian bodies must rise; unite with all who wish Nigeria well to push this bill through now!
Of course it would be sheer naiveté to believe that the law will put an end to the practice, but believe me, in these days of the Civil Partnership Act in England which licensed superstar singer Elton John to have a one-million pound celebrity “wedding” with David Furnish, his male “spouse”; recognition of this vice by law in some states of the USA including California and; the recent Supreme Court-ordered amendment to the South African constitution redefining marriage to accommodate same sex liaisons, it would be a giant first step forward.
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