Politicians And Pastors: O God, When Will You Kill Us?-By Bimbo Manuel

Today’s version of the Ol’time Religion challenges the truth. Even the Holy Book challenges those among us who are without sin to cast the first stone. Yet, we hypocritically turn our noses up at the weak fellow, sighing in deep sympathy at their intransigence forgetting that in reality, there is no bad person and there is none entirely good and free of fault. I am quick to confess my own moral and religious frailty.

We have connived, fed full on the righteousness from the pulpit every Sunday, to create our own list of sins we are sure are in offence of the righteous sensibilities of the God we think we now know. Familiarity founded only on assumptions and misinterpretation. We inoculate ourselves against the real truth; if God were to require our sins of us, who can stand?

Like our political space, we have polluted our churches with our the religions we pledged to leave behind and follow only Jesus. After years of draconian and benevolent dictatorship, we demanded democracy, fair, representative and independent of dictatorial aspirations yet, we look back now in longing at the ‘good old days’ when we were whipped on the streets to stay in line, those who speak the truth are quickly locked up, ruthlessly beaten and chased into exile. We have forgotten and forgiven the past so much now that we sigh in deep nostalgia ‘oh, the days of Abacha…Babangida…hmm’.

The same energy we expend when we argue about the purity of others’ doctrine of Christianity and Islam, we apply to conversations that demand truth and national patriotism, not asinine ethnic justification. Peace eludes us because we have sold truth cheaply and bought deceit and failure at the value of precious stones. Politics and religion are banned on most social media groups because the administrators cannot trust us not to tear one another to bloody, vitriolic shreds when only the truth is required. We have become immune to natural rationality and silenced truth.

If all the faculties are working correctly, how cannot we see that it is wrong (at least morally), disgraceful and unrighteous (we are not God, o) for a man of God to lead a congregation in Mushin and aspire to live the posh, unreal life of opulence found only on Banana Island, Ikoyi and Lekki, wickedly raising the hopes of the woman who sells pepper at Tejuosho that she will live in Ikoyi the following year. A prophesy ‘in the name of the Lord’ and who among us can argue with God? So, no one ever challenges them. We are not allowed. ‘Unless God did not call me!’, they say.

And we pour out frustrations on one another in vituperation, violent words, pummeling fists and weapons of war, on the streets, in buses and at home when the ‘prophesies’ of the man of God and the politician fail. It usually soothes us with momentary relief.

In governance and politics, we also forget that as we have the power that resides in the Bible and the Quran to disprove the lies of our religious leaders, so do we have the power over our leaders at the polls on election day and while in office through all sorts of instrumentality of law and constitution to test their boasts and impractical promises. It is easy but we are cowed and have resigned to fate because we have been reprogrammed to so behave.

A pastor got mixed up in an international gun running deal, another was somehow caught up in rash of serial rape accusations while yet another is rumored to run a Pool of Bathsheba at fifty thousand naira per dip to cure all issues and if that is too high a price for healing, you can order something more your size in a bottle of anointed ‘holy’ water for ten thousand naira only. (No one has confirmed that they have the same efficacy). Are we even okay, sef? The religion that denies you liberty is anti-Christ, the faith that shackles you to the judgment, manipulation and warped indoctrination of your religious leader denies God. It enslaves you, makes you ready for the picking of all others including the politician. The gullible is almost certain bound for hell fire.

Men who wantonly dine with power by night and castigate it by day, apology letter ready in hand, are unworthy of my trust. The politician at least expects me to question him though he knows that I will not. It is better than giving my trust to one who forbids me from asking questions.

The congregation knows that their man of God does not do any other honest work to feed himself and his tastes beyond their offerings, tithes (where it is mandatory too pay it) and the many ‘special’ offerings and pledges yet they say nothing when the man of God appears for service sporting a made-in-Italy Gucci ensemble and a top of the range SUV. If they dare speak, it will be to ‘praise tha Lord’ for him. It instantly becomes a bragging point with other congregations, ‘our pastor’s car is better and bigger than yours’. The people believe him when he tells them that the same God who did his can do more for them even when they know that it is beyond their realistic dream. Congregational idiocy, offspring of mass brainwashing. One-man, prosperity gospel has forced its way into mainstream, structured orthodox Christianity is in retreating despair, unable to connect with young people in a congregation where creaky, old men nod sagely in sleep and those who cannot find choice in the dichotomy stay at home on Sundays to drink tea and watch omnibus Netflix shows. Olorun de maa judge gbogbo yin!

It is in the same way that we believe a politician when he campaigns to build skyscrapers and sail ships to Yobe to rival Lagos, all in four years. The people believe because they have seen leaders before him who lived ostentatiously, leaving the impression that government is indeed wealthy enough to achieve anything and only the incompetence and corruption of those before their man made the people’s dream impossible. Even Fashola could not aspire to rival Johannesburg in his eight years in office. Eeh, it is an hour glass o, it will soon be full for them all.

In the church, the reason miracles promised by the pastor do not come to pass is the believer’s sin or family curse. In politics and governance, the reason is usually ‘no money’, ‘Federal Government is withholding allocations’, ‘the past government left an empty treasury’ and other vagueness coated in sweet words, self-pity that begs the empathy of the people, redirects anger at others and deflects attention from their own clueless inadequacies, thievery and ostentation. Neither pastor nor politician ever takes any responsibility that demystifies them.

God cannot just leave us like this, delivered into the hands of those who want us for slaves, insistent that we drink only from the well of religious and political lies that they dug. God has to deliver us from the poverty that they have imposed on us. We are a people deliberately pauperized to keep us silent, without will or intellect to question their actions or words. We are denied quality education to rob us of true knowledge, denied choice to compel us to choose only them. When will our own God deliver us?

We have asked rhetorically, privately, on the streets, beer parlors where we go to drown our sorrows, ‘what have we done to offend God, sef’?’ Most of us are not given to crime, yet we are labeled frauds across the world, driven from country after country, banned by the civilizations of the world like rabid dogs gone past redemption, laughed at by those we are better than and even our best is questioned. Why?

When will God just kill us all and remake another generation to fill this space? The story of Osas comes to mind again. Osas who at five years old understood what he needed to do to attract the favors of his nursery class teachers and minders. He insisted that his father visit his school to bribe his teachers and truly, right after the father’s reluctant visit, things changed and life took a far better turn for the little boy in school. He will grow up into a politician, a lecturer, businessman or anything else for that matter, bribing his way through life and taking from any source to oil his way on. Those will be the leaders of tomorrow. God has to kill us all, the Osas generation to the oldest among us and create a new people who will be called the true Nigerians, people who understand what nationhood is, men and women of honor, vision and will, pursuing the greater good, in fairness to all, constantly inspired to aim for the greatness of one and all. A people who will grow their own leaders with genuine power to hold them to account. God has to kill us all and reboot this nation.

He did it in Sodom and Gomorrah, He did it when they laughed at Noah and if the stories of Atlantis are in any way true, He did it there too. He even confused the builders of the Tower of Babel.

Even if He is reluctant to wipe us out, let Him at least just do something. It has to be soon, abeg!

• Bimbo Manuel, Nov 2019