The image of President Goodluck Jonathan kneeling, as if in complete surrender, before the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, marks an epochal moment in the process of the pentecostalisation of our national life. We should be attentive to its sociological ramifications.
President Jonathan is not the first Nigerian leader to court the favour of Pastor Adeboye. Actually, it is easier to compile a list of Nigerian politicians who have never visited the Redemption Camp. A visit to the Redeemed Camp is, in effect, the beginning of political wisdom for political wannabes.
But this in itself is a paradox because, if there is one thing that pastor Adeboye has tried to do consistently, it is to rise above (if not stand away from) the jab and punch of partisan politics. This personal philosophy, I think, explains his ‘no sinner left behind’ approach to the Nigerian political and corporate elites. Or how else is one to explain a partial list of recent visitors that includes: the chairperson of the EFCC, Mrs Farida Waziri, former military head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari, Lagos State governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, former governor of Delta State, James Ibori, former MD of Oceanic Bank, Ms Cecilia Ibru, former Managing Director of Intercontinental Bank, Mr. Erastus Akingbola, and Kano State governor, Ibrahim Shekarau?
Defenders of Pastor Adeboye’s approach point out that as a man of God, he is sworn to the theological equivalent of a Hippocratic oath. This is a persuasive argument. But it carries a fatal flaw. True, Jesus did sup with the Pharisees, and even allowed a prostitute to smother his divine feet in alabaster. But we are also told that when he came upon traders using a temple for buying and selling, he overturned their tables and drove them away.
Our country stands at a similar conjuncture today- a conjuncture where anger at what is going on in is a moral imperative. We run a mono-cultural economy in which manufacturing has all but ground to a halt. Our universities have become a global password for intellectual mediocrity. Our young men and women frequently debate whether to join criminal or prostitution gangs. Our roads, including the Lagos-Ibadan expressway where Pastor Adeboye’s church is located, are death traps. Our politicians live a life of criminal impunity.
Policemen openly rob the same citizens that they are paid to protect. In short, our country has become, as Wale Adebanwi captures it in his withering new book on corruption in Nigeria, a paradise for maggots.
What is a man of conscience to do in this situation? My simple answer is that whatever he does, he should not be seen to give succour to those who produce and benefit from this situation. Sartre put it most eloquently: It is not enough to be against the war; one must also be for the resistance.
In the Nigerian context, there is no doubt who the war mongers, and who the resisters, are. The warmongers are members of the political class, cobbled together from every region of the country. The resistance comprises the majority of Nigerians who have been condemned to a life of undeserved abjection by the rapacity of the warmongers, the Nigerian elite.
My grudge against Pastor Adeboye- and this applies to majority of the Nigerian theocratic elite as well, is that he has pitched his tent with the war mongers- and against the resistance. He does it every time he welcomes a head of state, a governor, a bank managing director, without asking those visitors questions about the source of their wealth. He does it every time he receives offerings from the same people on behalf of his church.
I should stress that Pastor Adeboye is not alone in fostering this grandest of all delusions. The anticipation that things would be all right if only we could all drop to our knees in prayer (this is where the image of a kneeling president attains its most powerful symbolism) is not just an illusion- it is a particularly sinister one.
As I write, millions of Nigerians are subjecting themselves to various forms of needless personal denial, praying and fasting for those things a well administered state easily guarantees in other parts of the world. Politicians striving to purchase divine indulgence at Adeboye’s feet are aware of this.
They know from their frequent visits to other countries, including those governed by self-confessed atheists (Julia Gillard of Australia is one example) that economic development is not a matter of prayer.
Nigeria is a “Republic of Churches”, and as the number of churches has grown, so have all the economic indicators plummeted. President Jonathan may well spend two full terms at the feet of Pastor Adeboye. It will be to no avail if we as a people do not knuckle down, like all serious societies throughout human history have done, and tackle our problems head on.
I suspect that deep down, Pastor Adeboye himself must know this. As an avid reader of the Bible, he must have come across this passage: “God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows....”
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