Nigeria has produced two of history’s most demonic, evil political parties. Any Nigerian who doesn’t feel a complete sense of outrage and revulsion against the two parties is not a normal person. The Nigerian is not fit to be part of 21st-century society.
 
Any Nigerian who fails to condemn and denounce the two parties for having the audacity to field candidates for the presidency is with no moral purpose in life. In all the years of the two parties at the helm at the centre, they exhibited a barefaced display of degenerate, sadistic immorality. There’s no parallel for such political viciousness in our political history.

The two parties are filled with the nastiest and most vicious bastards. Both are in a dysfunctional symbiotic relationship. Every failure is blamed on the other party. There’s no end to the sociopathic behaviour of members of both parties. The two parties keep themselves relevant by perpetuating problems, not resolving them. Both parties are not interested in the progress, peace, and prosperity of Nigerians because it’s not in their best interests. They are only interested in the economic and political lynching of Nigerians.
 
The two parties are two sides of the same coin. They are concerned about how government should control our lives and which rights should be infringed upon. Regardless of who was president of the two parties in the past, our rights were infringed upon. Our treasury was looted. Jobs lost. Utilities dead. Infrastructures moribund. Healthcare is a mirage. The education system is comatose. Hunger unabated. Terrorism and kidnapping are the new normal. Neither party really cares about the poor. They care about making you think they care about you. At the end of each voting circle, nothing seems to get better for the poor. The two parties like revolving doors control the centre but nothing else seems to change.
 
At best, they are parties of bad ideas; at worst, parties of no ideas. The two parties are willing to destroy and undermine the fundamental pillars of our democracy to retain power. They keep Nigeria fractured, fragmented, and divided under the flag of shared greed, corruption, wickedness, and bigotry. Both parties keep poor Nigerians split vertically so the poor cannot fight their common oppressors.
 
They create artificial controversies that create a distracting, endless show of diversion for the poor masses. Both want the same thing: wealth and power. They treat Nigerians as useful idiots. Both parties know the moment the poor unite to fight the ruling oligarchy, the system will collapse and make way for a revolution. Sadly, the poor remain their own worst enemies. Going by the records, the oppressed poor will still vote one of the demonic, evil political parties into power if Nigeria survived a breakup on or before 2023.
 
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Almost ten years ago, I wrote the first part of this article(http://saharareporters.com/2012/12/11/jesus-businessman-rudolf-ogoo-okonkwo). In it, I narrated my encounter with the introduction of Bruce Barton’s 1925 book titled, The Man Nobody Knows: A Discovery of the Real Jesus Christ.
In the book, Bruce Barton evaluated Jesus’ ministry on Earth using the eye of an advert executive and concluded that it followed the structures of modern businesses. The author pointed out how Jesus used today’s marketing tools and advertisement strategies to build a formidable business empire. One overlooked aspect of the piece was Barton’s assessment of Jesus’ ministry on how he picked his workers and how he appointed his successor.

Ten years later, as the leaders of the second generation of Pentecostal churches in Nigeria face inevitable retirement, how church leaders pick successors is now front and centre in the backrooms of these churches. Sometimes, it spills out to the front office, as we recently saw in a schism in the Pastor Enoch Adeboye-led Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG).
In the piece, I also looked at the then outrageous utterances of Bishop David Oyedepo concerning how he independently built Covenant University and other investments allied to Living Faith Church Worldwide (aka Winners’ Chapel International) without using tithes, offerings, donations and money from members of his church. The piece also touched on Oyedepo’s bragging about not receiving any salary from the church since 1987 and his wife not receiving from him money for feeding since 1988. The man of God did not reveal how he was sustaining himself and his lifestyle. The piece showed how the whole operation of the Winners’ Chapel fitted in well with this new commodification of the ministry of Jesus.
 
After the publication, Nigerian readers’ reaction to the piece was quite predictable. They condemned it and condemned me and predicted that I was heading to instant hellfire and certain and sudden death. They regurgitated the standard lines of “God cannot be mocked,” “do not judge,” “do not touch my anointed,” and “do not use the things of the world to judge spiritual things.” In fact, some even argued that churches are private businesses and people outside a church should not interrogate the activities of any church and its leaders.
As Easter approached, I reread the article. I wanted to know where things stood with the men and women involved in the business of Jesus. Instead of things getting better, I fear that they are getting worse.
Since the publication, we have seen the explosion of more and more establishments of these opaque organizations and churches like the Winners’ Chapel. There are now characters like Apostle Johnson Suleman who swim in and out of the most sordid scandals imaginable. He can be the subject of one week, one scandal novel. Some emerging churches have despicable leaders like Onyeozi Jesus operating out of Nkpor in Anambra State. There are entertainers like Prophet Chukwuemeka Ohanaemere, aka Odumeje or Indaboski Bahose, operating out of Onitsha. Apart from muddying up the waters, these characters found across Nigeria and Africa have a tremendous influence on the traditional churches that must compete with them to retain members. We have seen Catholic and Anglican churches and their leaderships picking up traits these merchants of Jesus have normalized. To compete with these charlatans, some Bishops in Catholic and Anglican churches across Nigeria have become original gangsters.
Ten years ago, when I wrote the original article, I did not know that Bishop Oyedepo had contracted Business Centrum Limited in London to help him set up a company in Jersey tax heaven to hide money for his wife and children. I did not know that Trident Trust Group, described as “one of the world’s leading secrecy enablers and one of the most notorious providers of offshore corporate and financial services,” was already working with Bishop Oyedepo. Trident set up Zadok Investments Limited for Oyedepo on August 20, 2007. The company started with 50,000 ordinary shares, each valued at $1.00. Zadok had Bishop David Oyedepo and his two sons, David Jr. and Isaac, as its directors. Other members of the family constituted the shareholders. David Jr. had 10% shares, Isaac another 10%. While David Jr. is a pastor at the church’s headquarters at Faith Tabernacle, Isaac heads a church in Maryland, USA. Love and Joy, the two daughters of Bishop Oyedepo, were also given 10% shares each. According to Premium Times, which looked at the documents as part of the global International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)-led Pandora Papers project, “the documents did not reveal the exact businesses and transactions the offshore company was set up to conduct. The entity however appears to be the family’s investments vehicle under which the family’s wealth is warehoused for offshore management.”
Last year, when the Pandora Papers’ story broke, we knew very little about how much money the Oyedepos stashed away in these offshore accounts and from where he got the money. Despite the embarrassment those involved in the Pandora Papers felt, Bishop David Oyedepo did not attempt to clear his name and his family’s name. He believed that it is one of those scandals, like his slapping of the young lady who said she was a witch for Jesus, and all the other controversies and questions about his ministries, that would breeze away and life would continue as usual. And to a large extent, it has fizzled out even though the damage it did to the ministry of Jesus will be evident in years to come.
Ten years ago, I was worried that the schools set up by churches were not owned by these churches but by leaders of these churches and their families. I was concerned that most church members who thought they contributed money to build these schools could not send their children to these schools. Things have changed so much that those issues have become ancient matters. What is important at this moment is that corrupt money from every sector of the Nigerian society gets funnelled into these churches through tithes, offerings and donations. Without any question raised, children of the astonishingly corrupt members of our society send their kids to these expensive schools in a fantastic money-laundering scheme nobody notices. And while they do this, the children of the poor are aggregated inside collapsing strike-ridden public-school systems where they could spend as much as two extra years before graduating while their age mates at the private universities would have finished and taken up the very few desirable jobs available. In a generation, the gap between the rich and the poor would have widened so much that there would be little or no interactions between them. When the government finishes the Lekki airport, these “fantastically corrupt” lots would fly in through the Lekki airport and go straight into their mansions in Banana Island, while the rest of us would keep strangling each other in the old country where Jesus is the answer.
Ten years ago, when I wrote the original piece, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor was still riding high with his full-throttle romance of President Goodluck Jonathan and Jonathanian politics. Most people did not see the dangers, even when the man of God was renting his private jet to security agents to use in transporting money into South Africa to purchase weapons for the government. Advocates of anything-goes–let-God-judge-his-apostles in Christendom all looked away. Where is Ayo Oritsejafor today? What happened to his business model? Is he still flying high with his private jet?
 
Defenders of the absurdity in Nigerian churches today are definitely scared of looking inwards and asking the very question they often tout: what would Jesus do? They should ask that pertinent question in all things. They are scared of looking at things Benson Idahosa left when he died in 1998. They are scared of remembering what fights followed after the man of God died and who owns the schools, the businesses and other investments left behind. It is the same story when Samuel Oshoffa, the founder of the Celestial Church of Christ died in 1985. If they dare to look, what they will see is worse than what will happen in ten years when the current crop of leaders, like the Oyedepos, the Kumuyis, the Adeboyes, the Okonkwos, Olukoyas, give way. When Benson Idahosa strode this world unchallenged and unaccountable to anyone, at least, vehicles to hide money in offshore tax heavens had not become common as they are today. When Benson Idahosa marketed prosperity preaching, greed was still simply greed. Now, it is obscene.
Ten years ago, I ended the piece by saying, “we have to get the politics of religion right if we are ever going to get the religion of politics right.” I argued that we are stakeholders of whatever group we belong to. And there is a responsibility that comes with being a stakeholder. It means that we have to hold those who manage the affairs of our institutions responsible. We cannot wash our hands like Pontius Pilate.
Our nonchalant attitude in politics, our churches, or our personal lives sets the stage for the inevitable scandals that ultimately cripple the same institutions to which we lend our names, fortune, and honour. We can cowardly escape the responsibilities associated with being a stakeholder, but we cannot escape the inevitable judgment associated with the failure of our institutions. Abandonment of our responsibilities is a form of abuse. And abuse that we fail to report comes back to haunt us and generations yet unborn.

Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is also the host of Dr. Damages Show. His books include “This American Life Sef” and “Children of a Retired God”.

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Pastor Femi Adesina, the spokesperson for President Muhammadu Buhari, is at it again, disparaging and impugning President Olusegun Obasanjo and other high valued Nigerian leaders in a so-called defence of his principal. 
Adesina, in an article he published last Friday, asserted that President Obasanjo and other senior leaders of the country, including all former living Heads of State, except General Yakubu Gowon, are hiding under the umbrella of insecurity to display their hatred for President Buhari. Adesina might as well have added former Chief Justices of the Federation, former Chiefs of Defence Staff, former Service Chiefs, former Inspectors General of Police, former SGFs, leaders of all the country’s major socio-cultural organisations such as Afenifere, Ohanaeze, PANDEF, Northern Elders Forum, Arewa Consultation Forum, Middle Belt Forum, Inter-faith Group, and a host of other critical groups across the country. These are the leaders President Obasanjo actively mobilised to come together and take a common position on the debilitating political, economic, social and security situation that the Buhari-led government plunged the country into and advise the president accordingly. That was what President Obasanjo and all these leaders did – to meet, X-ray the issues, proffer solutions and advise the president; and that is just what all self-respecting patriotic statesmen would do! 
Instead of being commended for a job well done, Adesina came out disparaging the former leaders of the country. As a pastor, Adesina should at least have a moral benchmark to operate upon; he cannot mount the pulpit and preach falsehood! And that is just what he seems to have done – preaching falsehood on the pulpit in defence of his principal!  

Now, the Hausa people, the father-tongue of Adesina’s principal, have a saying that: duk wanda ya so ka da safe, amma da rana ya qi ka to haqiqa laifin daga gun ka ne (whosoever likes you in the morning but dislikes you in the afternoon, then definitely the fault is from you). This saying, to me, perfectly fits this very situation between President Obasanjo and President Buhari. First and foremost, Obasanjo is Buhari’s senior both in age and in the military profession both of them served.  While Obasanjo came to the national and international limelight during the Nigeria-Biafra civil war when as the commander of the 3rd Marine Commando he received the instrument of surrender from the Biafran side that ended the war in January 1970, Buhari first came into the national limelight when he was appointed Military Governor of Northeastern State by the Murtala/Obasanjo regime in July 1975. 
Even in this capacity as a military governor, Buhari was responsible to Obasanjo as Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters, through whom he had access to the Head of State on all official matters. At the assassination of the Head of State, General Murtala Muhammed, General Olusegun Obasanjo became Head of State and Commander-in-Chief, in which capacity he magnanimously appointed Buhari as Minister of Petroleum and Chairman of the newly established NNPC. This is the appointment that catapulted Buhari to the international scene, representing Nigeria at OPEC. To this end, Obasanjo was Buhari’s benefactor. If the former had hated the latter, he would not have given him this uncommon privilege and prestige. Obasanjo, therefore, liked Buhari from the early hours of the morning. Point number one.

Point number two, in his book, Not my Will, Obasanjo wrote glowingly about Buhari’s forthright character and discipline as a soldier. And, for most impressionable minds like mine in Junior Secondary School who adored the Murtala/Obasanjo regime as the highest example of idyllic leadership, such a claim and attestation made Buhari instinctively become the ideal leader to many of us. And to that extent, Obasanjo had created a positive image of Buhari that framed the minds and captured the imagination, sympathy, loyalty and support of most patriotic Nigerians like me who later became responsible for turning his perennial political misfortune into electoral victory after publicly crying and throwing in the towel in his pursuit of the presidency. Again, Obasanjo demonstrated his likeness for Buhari in the wee hours of the morning.

Point number three, after getting flustered, like most Nigerians, with the Jonathan regime, and despite Buhari indecorously challenging him personally at the polls in 2003 in which he roundly defeated him, Obasanjo in a statesmanlike manner threw his support behind Buhari’s candidacy and publicly got his PDP membership card theatrically torn as a symbol of rejection of President Jonathan’s candidacy.  This dramatic symbolic gesture was the final signal to the Nigerian electorate and especially the international community that Nigeria’s Concentric Power Circle was firmly behind Buhari’s candidature, thereby moulding both local and world opinions to actualise his victory at the polls in 2015. Again, for the 3rd time, Obasanjo revealed his likeness for Buhari at the most critical hour.  

So the question I would have to ask is: where did Obasanjo hide the hatred Adesina said he and his compatriots have against President Buhari? Adesina must have to supply the answer, because for all I see, as illustrated by the three points above, Buhari is a beneficiary of Obasanjo’s leadership benevolence. And to all intents and purposes, it was this altruism that became the vehicle Buhari later flung on to acquire popular support and drive his political campaign under the current democratic dispensation, and ultimately getting himself elected president in 2015. When all these little pieces were cobbling together to complete the jigsaw, where was Adesina? Of course, he was nowhere even within the crowd! 

The truth is that, and even his worse enemies cannot deny this fact, Obasanjo is a foremost Nigerian nationalist and patriot. As he often says, to his dying day, he will never give up on Nigeria and will fight any person, group or regime that threatens to imperil the unity and well-being of the country and her people. And it is to this end that he started opposing the Buhari regime, as he did to other regimes before it when it became glaring that President Buhari’s leadership was imperilling the unity and well-being of the Nigerian state. Judging by the spate of insecurity currently pervading the country, Nigeria can be rightly be said to have drifted inexorably into a complete failed state under the Buhari administration. All over the country, from my home state of Adamawa to Borno and Yobe in the North-east, to Benue, Niger, Nasarawa and Plateau in the North-central and Buhari’s own home state of Katsina, Kaduna, Zamfara, Kebbi and Sokoto in the North-west, to Abia, Anambra and Imo in the South East, kidnappings, killings and bloodlettings of horrifyingly unimaginable proportions have become standard daily occurrences of communities. In the Niger Delta region, oil bunkering, stealing and piracy have become so pervasive that even Buhari’s Minister of Petroleum for State had to cry out in utter resignation. While internecine genocide, communal killings and banditry are going on in villages and towns unabated, highways, airports and railways have been taken over by armed bandits, terrorists, robbers and kidnappers. As of today, hundreds of innocent citizens are held captive by murderous bandits and terrorists all over our forests with no respite. 

This is aside from the destruction of our economy, educational system, environment and ecology; the ensuing pervasive banal corruption, nepotism, unemployment, poverty and social conflicts. All these have combined to threaten the unity and very existence of the country as a sovereign state. It is thus natural that Obasanjo, whose entire life is dedicated to the service of Nigeria, would react. And he did. He had over the years met with the president several times one-on-one to advise on these key issues. Also, as a member of the National Council of State, he advised whenever the opportunity arose. And when these did not work, he resorted to writing the president open letters, as he did to other presidents. And when this failed too, he mobilised like-minds to press forth their positions. And in doing these, Obasanjo is not playing politics; he is only being his true self!

  Now, on all these scores, what offence did President Obasanjo and his fellow elder statesmen commit to warrant Adesina’s disparaging insults? As a pastor, Adesina must be guided by high-level moral values and ethics. Yes, he needs to defend his principal, but he should do so only on the bases of truth and honesty, and employing circumspection and empathy; none of which plainly, in his last Friday’s piece, he failed to employ. 

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