While I was busy celebrating the many and varied strides of giant proportions being taking globally to achieve the heart of Christ for His Church – THAT THEY MAY BE ONE – the body that could be described as an instrument of church unity in Nigeria was threatening to come unstuck.
While, I was talking excitedly about how thousands of church leaders gathered for Edinburgh 2010 in the Scottish capital to find unity through missions; and how 1300 churches across the earth were participating in global pulpit swap, hearing the same message and raising funds to plant new congregations in China and Cambodia etc through the One Prayer initiative of an US-based church, and gleefully announcing the merger of the Reformed Churches into one big happy family, the Christian Association of Nigeria was pulling in the opposite direction.
While I was thanking God for using Bro Cyprian Agbazue and the ministry of International Foundation for Church Unity to jolt me back from underplaying the church unity mandate of the about-to-return KINGDOMPeople, the magazine for all who name the name of the Lord in truth and scolding myself for nearly missing it, CAN was in the news not for uniting Christ’s Church, but for threatening to tear it apart. How ironic, how so, so tragically so.
But thanks be to God that, as I write this, there were indications that by the time you read it, we would be only two days away from a resolution of the leadership issue that brought the association so very close to the brink.
For those who might not have heard it; yes, leadership, or, if you like, the struggle for office or power was at the centre of the crisis. In other words, flawed elections, which has been the torment of our nation and, for which politicians and umpires have been vilified, has clawed its way into the church’s highest body. In the event, reports of intrigues, external interference, use of operatives of the State Security Service, and umpire partisanship have been making the rounds. Deliberate attempt to exclude one of the aspirants has been alleged. To drive home the unenviable similarity between what’s happening on the political scene and in the church, a newspaper two-part series on the exercise that has been on since March, was headlined “Like PDP, Like CAN? as Succession War Tears Christian Body Apart.”
Now, if you thought that was unfair comparison, let’s review the facts as we have pieced them together from several sources together. The incumbent President, Most Rev John Onaiyekan, Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, wants a second term, which is well within his right under CAN constitution. Two others, the incumbent Vice-President, Archbishop Daniel Okoh, General Superintendent of Christ Holy Church International, CHCI and the president of Organisation of African Instituted Churches (OAIC), and Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, President, Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) wanted a shot at the seat.
According to CAN’s electoral laws, an Electoral College had to meet and by vote reduce the number of aspirants to two. This college was met in March but did not vote. Reason? The Electoral College headed by an OIAC member, Evangelist S.O. Usu, refused to conduct the election unless the PFN candidate, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor was disqualified because Oritsejafor was said to have failed to get a consensus nomination from his CPFN/PFN group.
Those who should know say this position of the Electoral College was strange, because the so-called CPFN arm of the group which had earlier written a letter to the Secretary-General of CAN stating that its members would vote for Onaiyekan, also indicated they were not opposed to the nomination of Oritsejafor. Also, there were precedents and the college chairman was said to have been reminded of the most recent. According to sources, the situation was not different from when Bishop Mike Okonkwo, then PFN president contested the CAN presidency in 2004. He came third in that election. This same Archbishop Onaiyekan returned second while his then Anglican counterpart, Most Rev. Peter Jasper Akinola emerged victorious. Okonkwo went on to serve as vice president Onaiyekan declined the office which was automatically his as the second placer.
It seemed that neither counter argument had any impression on the Electoral College chairman Apostle S. O. Usu, as a result of which the body failed to carry out its assignment on the three occasions it convened. By this time, it was already being insinuated that somebody, somewhere was bent on excluding Oritsejafor from the ballot, in the same way that the then vice-president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, was excluded, until the very last minute, from contesting the 2007 presidential elections.
Why would anyone want to do that, you ask, and those of this persuasion would point out to you that the PFN President was too activist for some people’s comfort! One newspaper report quoted an unnamed stakeholder as stating the case for Oritsejafor, and why he is being opposed by certain powerful elements as saying: “The position of Oritsejafor on the perennial violent eruptions in the North is very well known though it is not popular with very powerful people…The violent killing of pastors and other innocent Christians in parts of the North is religiously motivated…If not, why are political party offices not targeted? If the crisis is political and ethnic, why are pastors and their followers are the prime target always?"
The report also quoted the PFN deputy president in charge of North East, Rev. Steve Agbana as saying that Oritsejafor remains the only Christian leader at the national level, to visit Maiduguri to empathize with the victims of the Boko Haram mayhem of last year. He was there on Easter Monday with relief materials where he also donated the sum of N3 million to them.
Interestingly, while it is being implied that Onaiyekan is the intended beneficiary of the crisis; impeccable sources state that he is personally not overly excited about a second term. If only, they would let me be, he was reported to have told some confidants. It is not clear, who “they” is, but it does imply that external forces might be at work.
To properly understand the interplay of forces in CAN elections, however, it would be necessary to take a closer look at the history, structure, achievements and potentials of this “instrument of unity”. I shall attempt to do so next week.
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