Opinion
POEM Pinpoints…
“LET’s forget the past, this is a new day and I believe; we believe that we are going to see new things for our country through our president and the members of his cabinet. Good things will happen”. The above pontification by one the several ‘men of God’ presently gyrating around Nigerian political arena is as audaciously provoking as it lacks verity. “I believe; we believe” not “I know; we know” readily situates the statement within the context of building a castle in the air.
More provoking is the urge for angry Nigerians to forget the past; an election riddled with obvious rigging and fallacious cover-up claims. This once famous pastor, fast crossing the Rubicon of notoriety, among others, is not new on the terrain of making spurious political remarks, just to be seen as a good man by governmental pole vaulters. And so it’s not surprising that while addressing the press prior to his churches global crusade on Tuesday August 22, 2023, he went his usual way.
But some salient questions await the renowned ‘holiness and sincerity’ preacher: What did you say when Nigerians were robbed on the 25th of February, 2023? What have you said since the ensuing storm that followed the election rigging started? Is this about some clandestine camaraderie unknown to Nigerians? You and many like you fanning ethnic embers in God’s name, kept quiet since February 25th, when the past was in the present but now you are asking Nigerians to forget the past .
Nigerians are used to leaders whose utterances are always entwined in confiscating impropriety, one may say, but it pains in the marrow when a clergyman habitually cracks off utterances of sectional bias, just to sugar-coat evil. No doubt, Nigeria is also blessed with very bold clergymen who stand to condemn evil when the need arises, to such men we doff our hats big time.
There was a time when this very pastor told his members to do away with their television sets because such electronics would lead them to hell, and they fell to it. Today he is preaching on television and cable stations, even using same to support civilian coups. Let us not talk about the use of GSM phones, computers and flying aircrafts, such were sinful before. Shall we forget in a hurry when at the close of 2016 he declared that God would give Buhari the solution to Nigeria’s problems?
Nigerians can tell better the contestations that followed the politically motivated utterance by some of these our so-called men of God and how some fanatics dutifully shouted “touch not my anointed and do my prophet no harm”, the Bible verse readily employed to cover the errors of the clergy in Nigeria. Anyway, till today we are still waiting for the solution God gave Nigeria through Buhari. Who can forget in a hurry the spates of kidnapping, cattle rustling, banditry, robbery and brutality that signposted the Buhari administration?
Now, again, in 2023 they have come again to pronounce calamity. Why on earth do some clergymen like playing God? Anybody trying to play down the tempestuous theft concocted by Prof Yakubu Mahmood on February 25 is nothing but an accomplice. The thieves asked their victims to go to court and we obeyed, now awaiting the verdict, what are these clergymen asking us to forget, and what new things are in the offing?
Eulogising an obvious pack of stolen government brings the renowned preacher of holiness to the question room of Nigerians as it was in 2016 and 2017. What does he mean by forget the past? Is this another case of using church incursion to buy off the consciences of angry Nigerians or an implosive mechanism planted to give a good name to election thievery?
God, the God we know as the Almighty, does not wish evil. Rigging elections, forgery, perjury, ordering ethnic profiling that degenerated to several murders are all evil. This pastor and his likes are drawing the wrath of the Almighty by painting Him as not caring for the people of Nigeria.
“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes” – Mark Twain
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August 29, 2023 @ 11:25 GMT|
Tags: Mark Twain
