A columnist recently asked a pertinent question. He asked, “Who would replace Desmond Tutu?”. He crisscrossed the hierarchy of the various major denomination of churches in Nigeria and he was not able to settle for any clergyman who could fit the bill and do what Archbishop Desmond Tutu did with his call as a man of God for South Africa and South Africans. His analysis made me to start thinking of the stewardship of the major men of God in Nigeria in the last two decades. This analysis or comparison with Desmond Tutu has become necessary because of some similarities of what Black South Africans faced in the Apartheid years and what many Nigerians are still presently facing in the twenty-first century, in their own country, with leaders who are their kinsmen. If you look at the genocide and land grabbing that has been going on in the middle belt from Plateau to Adamawa state, from the activities of Fulani herdsmen and bandits, you will conclude that Nigerians in the middle belt, are even encountering a worse situation than what South Africans experienced in term of mortality and other key indexes. If you take a closer look at criminal activities of the unknown gunmen in the Southeast including the killing of a monarch, you will also come to the South African comparison and weep for what Nigeria has become. The wholesale kidnapping going on in all parts of Nigeria, particularly in the North where schools and whole villages are sacked would ordinarily create a situation where Nigeria’s clergymen would unanimously call for the outright impeachment of Buhari in line with what Desmond Tutu would have done if he were in their shoes.

The need to write about Nigeria’s clergy and the state of the nation was impressed in my mind when I read the statement allegedly made by Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA). Fatoyinbo said, “The Igbo believe in God. It takes God for an Igbo guy to give. They have a large heart, but they believe you shouldn’t work their mind… Igbos are 90 percent Christians but no megachurch. You need to tear backgrounds to enter some testimonies.” One of the ironies of this statement is that COZA is not a megachurch. However, the truth is that COZA could have been a megachurch. The first time I listened to Pastor Fatoyinbo in person, I was impressed beyond words, and I concluded that this guy is fully in control of his life and would accomplish anything he set out to achieve. Fast forward about ten years after, I no longer have such expectations. It would take a miracle for his church to become a megachurch because of all the cookies following him. The cookies include the rape allegations and the continuous controversy that might not stop, because of the character of the man with great charisma. I told myself, a young pastor like him could have been someone who could have championed the new Nigeria.

I finally made up my mind to write this piece after another statement credited to Nigeria’s most influential minister of the gospel – Daddy G.O., the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). Daddy G.O. said, “Who will be the next president of Nigeria…I don’t know.” I went into soliloquy by this and other remarks with the backdrop that the plague called Buhari presently plaguing Nigeria with the continuous support and whitewashing of their sins by his vice president Pastor Yemi Osinbajo is a direct or indirect consequence of the support the Buhari/Osinbajo team received from the pastorate of RCCG. I painted a picture unsuccessfully of Desmond Tutu supporting a tyrant from the Apartheid era to become president of the new South Africa, which is similar to what the Redeemed Christian Church of God did in 2015. Electioneering has started for 2023, I will not be surprised if the church unofficially endorses Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) because his wife is an ordained Pastor of the RCCG and also because he is Yoruba. If you look eastward to Father Mbaka, you will be ashamed of his conduct and utterances and realize many “men of God” do not know the weight, implications, and influence of their office. We are in very trying times, and those who serve JEHOVAH in Spirit and in Truth must speak up like Martin Luther who wrote about the malfeasance of the Roman Catholic Church fearlessly to the glory of God to reform the church from the corruption of gods of men.

Ata Ukuta, Editor – Towncryyers