By Suyi Ayodele

They gave us civilisation and then said our forebears were wrong in speaking truth to power. A child of God, they reasoned, should pray “for kings and those in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and honesty (1Timothy 2:2). We accepted the strange doctrines, and our leaders grew wings and became our tormentors.

While our forebears challenged kings and whipped them back to line, the new ‘civilisation’ asked us to raise our hands “first of all, (in) supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks…” (1 Timothy 2:1). By the time we opened our eyes, those whom our forebears used to command to go join their ancestors for bad rulership had become our masters. Through their bad leadership, they send us to early graves. Sadly, the modern-day spiritual fathers and mothers-in-Israel drowned our cries in ‘signs and ‘wonders’ that have neither been significant nor wonderful!

I may soon be ordained a pastor. Read that again and believe me. The time is close. Why? My Father-in-the-Lord, Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, the General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), is doing what the church is called to do at critical moments.

I am happy with Daddy G.O.’s message at the November Holy Ghost Service held last Friday. Now, we can boldly say that the Church is alive to its responsibility. I am faintly proud to be a member of the RCCG in recent times.

Before those who claimed to have given us ‘civilisation’ came, men and women who occupied high spiritual positions were a check on the African indigenous thrones. The Yoruba traditional administrative setting that I am familiar with places a premium on religion and religious leaders.

Ifa priests and our mothers played important roles in bringing orderliness to the society. Kings in those good old days would not do anything without the input of the knowledgeable. Our mothers, the very owners of the night, then, had a way of getting the thrones to act appropriately.

But when modernity came, they tagged our nocturnal esoteric gatherings as ‘coven’. Then they went ahead and replaced the ‘coven’ meetings with vigils, forgetting that covens and vigils are businesses of the night! They told us to stop chanting esoteric words and ‘impacted’ us with the Holy Spirit. They asked us to speak in tongues and do away with ayajo (evocation); two coded languages that are not easily sussed! They took away our gbere (incision) and gave us anointing oil. We accepted.

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Africa’s fortune dipped because we suddenly became complacent. Nigeria, for instance, has suffered great misfortunes over the last three decades because we relied more on the dictates from the pulpits rather than taking our destiny in our own hands. Those we elected turned around to become our taskmasters, using the very resources they stole from us to buy our consciences. In all this, the Church universal – indeed, the strange religions imported from the West and the East – became accomplices.

Save for the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, which, to a large extent, has shown that the prophets of old were not power pleasers, the Nigerian cassock club has been partners-in-crime with the lethargic leadership that has been the bane of development in Nigeria. Clerics of the two dominant religions (Christianity and Islam) turned a blind eye when the Nigerian political class began this journey to the bottomless pit. Many of them found it difficult to distinguish between the pulpits and the campaign podiums. The compromise from the religious leaders is so much that nowadays, most crusades, homilies, messages and recitation sessions have become political campaign rallies!

Our leaders, the locusts, became emboldened because they know that the faithful-in-the-Lord have gotten their share of the national cake. We cannot forget easily how religious leaders, having attracted huge part of our patrimony to their faiths’ coffers, declared their support for the then President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan for the 2015 general election.

Or should we talk about the college of Bishops that endorsed the candidacy of the incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2023, wearing their funny cassocks as they filed to collect their alawee? For the eight ruinous years of General Mohammadu Buhari, who among us can recall a whimper from any of our Pentecostal pastors or Islamic clerics?

This is why the latest message of Daddy G.O. during the November 2025 Holy Ghost Service of the RCCG became instructive. I did not watch Pastor Adeboye preach at the service. But I have read the transcript of his message at the service. It is worthy of commendation, not because I am a member of the RCCG family, but because it appears that the Church, under the leadership of Daddy G.O., appears to be waking up from its pretentious slumber! We may well be returning to those epochs when the prophets of old spoke truth to power at the risk of their lives.

In his message that night, the preacher said: “This is not the time to joke. This is not the time for grammar, not time to argue, is it suicide or kidnapping? This is not the time to say it’s not Christians alone; Muslims are also involved. Innocent people are dying.” I read him over again to be sure that Daddy G.O. actually uttered those words. They are wonderful words no matter how late they are coming. The time a man wakes up is his morning, so, they say. If it has taken the threat from President Donald Trump of America to get our religious leaders to speak, so be it.

The most important thing now is that the pulpit is talking when it should. Pastor Adeboye said that when he heard President Tinubu beat his chest on October 1, 2025, that he had defeated insurgency, he knew that the President is surrounded by those who don’t like him. He added that hours after Tinubu declared Nigeria free of insecurity, “…The following day, we read that a traditional ruler was killed in Kwara or Kogi.” Then the clincher: “Somebody wrote it (the speech), but it was the President who read it.” What the clergy man did not say is that though, “There are several people around Tinubu who are not telling him the truth”, the president should be blamed for the choices he made in his aides. Daddy G.O. is right!

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This is how men of God should speak during a crisis. The cassock must not be part of the President’s clappers’ club. Enough of diplomacy, enough of prevarication. Our leaders are surrounded by sycophants who would rather marinate the truth in a sauce of lies just to please the President. If not, there is no way Tinubu would have declared as Adeboye quoted that “displaced people have returned to their villages.” Thank the gracious God that Daddy G.O. did not quip, as an average Ijesha man would have done, kà íbi e rè (where was that)?

He went ahead to call on President Tinubu to be decisive on the steps to take to arrest the situation. Adeboye asked Tinubu not to be like his predecessor, Buhari, who shouted the order at his own parade but went back to sleep without ensuring that the colour party obeyed him.

This time around, the RCCG big shot said that the President must give the directives to his services chiefs, follow them up, set time limit for them “not only to eliminate the terrorists but also eliminate the sponsors, no matter how influential they may be” and fire the services chiefs if there were no results after the time frame! Wonderful counsel!

It appears the fear of Trump is the beginning of wisdom for us. In the last two weeks that the American President issued the threat of an invasion, our armed forces appeared to have gotten their mojo back. Bandits and other criminal elements, they told us, were being killed in their scores. That is the type of response we want from the Commander-in-Chief. Ragtag soldiers should not be making meals of our trained and sophisticated soldiers.

What Pastor Adeboye said on Friday is what other leaders of other faiths and sects should do. Nigeria must first be safe and peaceful for any meaningful crusade to take place. There is no point asking people to surrender to Jesus or be converted to Islam when there is no guarantee that the converts will live to see the light of the following days because bandits, kidnappers and other bad elements wait in the corner to waste them! No matter how beautiful heaven and Aljannah are, we should be allowed to live and enjoy the good things of life before we go to meet our makers. After all, “all things bright and beautiful, the Lord God made them all”, the choir sing!

The time to rescue Nigeria is now. This is the message the Supreme Council for Shari’ah in Nigeria (SCSN) should imbibe rather than its recent voyage of discovery of who sent legal brief to the United Nations on the genocide of Christians.

It is bad for the SCSN, which urged “all Nigerians, Muslims and Christians alike, to reject narratives that seek to pit one faith against another”, asserting that the nation’s “common enemies are injustice, corruption, poverty, and insecurity”, to now look for a scapegoat to sacrifice for the activities of some bad elements in its midst.

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The SCSN, rather than asking for the head of Professor Joshua Ojo Amupitan, the newly appointed Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on the platter because of his 2020 brief, should look for the Sheik Ahmad Gumis in its camp and caution them. The havoc the likes of Sheik Ahmad Gumi have wrecked in Nigeria through flippancy and intemperate utterances, can sink the peace which the SCSN seeks. Elements like Gumi are the reason why we have so much mistrust among the followers of the differing faiths!

It, therefore, baffles every rational mind that amid the present crisis, the SCSN would still drape its ‘genuine’ clamour for peace and religious harmony in Nigeria with the flag of politics! The religious body, like its Christian counterparts, should separate the hijab from the politicians’ babariga. Asking for the removal of Amupitan as INEC Chairman on account of the 2020 paper speaks volumes. It sounds like making a mountain out of a molehill while ignoring the more important matter of genocide which has become the concern of the Trump administration.

Nigeria is in a grave moment. Every man and woman of good conscience must be involved in the rescue mission. The nation’s traditional institution must lend its voice. Many of them have been victims of the malady, and many more will become so unless the drift is halted. The Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja, hinted at this a few days ago when he cautioned that “…terrorists don’t know the difference between Muslims and Christians. They see everybody as a prey, while they are the predator.”

Oba Ladoja, who received the President of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), Bishop Francis Wale Oke, at the Olubadan Palace, over the weekend, said that the period the nation is now in is the time for Nigerians to come together to fight terrorism and appease those who had fallen victim of the crisis.

According to the Ibadan king, “Many people have been killed and property worth an inestimable amount of money destroyed. Multitudes of families, particularly women and children, have been displaced. Kidnappings have taken place. Successive administrations have spent trillions to fight insecurity. When you look at this scenario over the past ten years, people are bound to feel aggrieved and resort to self-help.” He therefore recommended the prototype of the harmonious relationship that exists between the two major religions in the South-west to other parts of the country.

President Tinubu is lucky that in the face of the threat from President Trump, Nigerians of worth are offering him pieces of advice that could help him to navigate the current situation unscathed. I commend Oba Ladoja’s royal stance to other monarchs in the country. Rather than strutting the red carpets on the fashion runways, our monarchs should sit back and think of how they can add value and help solve the current national debacle.

From the Sultan of Sokoto to the Obi of Onitsha; from the Oba of Benin to the Agadagba of Arogbo Izon, our palaces should take a break from the narratives of those destined to be president and those not so fortunate to devote time to tangibles that will bring lasting peace to the nation.

The Church must not rest; the Mosque must not drop the megaphone. President Tinubu himself must walk the talk. It is not enough for us to consider Trump’s threat as an insult. Nigeria, particularly the President, must demonstrate that he indeed understands that the job he applied for is not hard as bricklaying, but one that requires him to think outside the box, harnessing geniuses around him to achieve lasting peace in the country.

Lastly, President Tinubu must not cower to the dictates of the sponsors of this evil just so he could extend his presidency beyond 2027. The realisation of that ambition is not worth the life of even a single Nigerian. The entire nation is, by now, tired of viewing gory videos of mindless killings all over the social media. We are tired of hearing muffled cries of widows and fatherless children whose benefactors have been incinerated in their own homes! We have had enough of reports of neonates and toddlers who are dispatched in cold blood back to their Maker alongside their helpless parents! Enough is enough!

The Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room (Situation Room) has released its findings on the just concluded Anambra State Governorship Election, calling for strict enforcement of laws that will reduce the “widespread vote buying in our elections.”

Situation Room, in a post-election statement released on Monday, and made available to INFO DAILY, also called on the National Assembly to quickly accelerate pending legislative actions for electoral reforms designed to enhance political participation, improve election management, and effectively address the prosecution of electoral offenses.

The post-election statement was signed by Yunusa Z. Ya’u, Convener, Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room; Mimidoo Achakpa, Co-Convener, Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, and Franklin Oloniju, Co-Convener, Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room.

Situation Room, while adjudging the
2025 Anambra State Governorship election as “largely peaceful,” lamented that it was “marred by what may be attributed to lingering public distrust in public institutions and governance.”

“Many citizens still seemed uninterested in the process and were seen carrying on with their trading in the markets,” Situation Room said.

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The election monitoring CSO, while decrying the low turnout of voters across the state, which it estimated at about 21% of PVCs collected which stood at 2,769,137, said it was, however, “an improvement from the 10% that was recorded in the 2021 Governorship Election.”

“This still calls for deeper reflection on how we can overcome voter apathy and disillusionment with the political process. Situation Room commends Civil Society Organisations for their voter education and mobilization efforts in rural communities ahead of the election particularly its partner, Social and Integral Development Centre (SIDEC) that carried out its sensitization activities in fifteen major markets and in the media,” the organisation said in the statement.

Situation Room, however, expressed worry that “our elections are continually being driven by motivations and actions that are strongly diametrically opposed to the ideals of democracy as a socio-economic political phenomenon that has its origin and destination in the service of the people.”

“Increasingly, the dominant trait of the political class and elites in our country seems to be bordering on a Machiavellian understanding of the end ‘justifies the means’: a dangerous political philosophy that relegates the ideals and fine points of democracy as people-driven to the background. Situation Room insists that the guardrails that help define the democratic experience must not be subverted by the political elites.

“In this regard, Situation Room notes that the ugly phenomenon of vote buying and vote selling, occasioned by the pauperization of the citizens have continued to thrive, and was in full swing during the 2025 Anambra State Governorship election.

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“Situation Room believes that if there is one social dynamic that clearly signals the failure of the political class to relatively deliver on the benefits of democracy, it is the unfortunate and continuous occurrence of vote selling by citizens who are yet to truly connect their living conditions to the activities of those to whom they sell their votes.”

The CSO, while lauding
INEC for a well “managed of its core processes effectively throughout the election,” also commended the election umpire particularly dor the “quick and drama-free results collation process, which was devoid of the irregularities typically associated with INEC’s vote tabulation and score recording at Collation Centres.”

“If this continues in future elections, then it will be a positive and encouraging development in electoral management.”

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Situation Room stated that “credible elections remain central to democratic governance and public accountability,” adding: “lessons from the 2025 Anambra State Governorship Election must inform deeper reforms and stronger collaboration among INEC, security agencies, political actors, and civil society to safeguard Nigeria’s democracy.

“These lessons must be applied to the upcoming Area Council Elections in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as well as the Ekiti and Osun States Governorship Elections – all to be conducted in 2026.

“There is also a need to take forward conversations on the credibility of the voter’s register, welfare of security agencies and voter apathy in Nigeria’s elections as we head towards the 2027 General elections.”

By Lasisi Olagunju

Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi (1924 –1992) was shocked when he got to Mecca for the first time in 1955 and discovered that the city had no streetlights. Sheikh Gumi was an Islamic scholar and Grand Khadi of the Northern Region from 1962 to 1967. He was the father of Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi, the man who makes waves today.

Kaduna, from where the Sheikh took off to Mecca, had a power plant built there as far back as 1929. Street lighting was introduced to Lagos in 1898 – seventeen years after London had it. History says “the first, practical, public use of electricity” in London was in 1881; it was for street lighting.

Every man’s story is a mirror of a part of the past; it is a window into the future of the world. ‘Where I Stand’ is the late Gumi’s autobiography. Gumi wrote on page 69 of that book: “I remember that during my first Hajj in 1955, there was not even electricity in the city of Mecca. The only electric lights were at the royal palaces and the Ka’aba. The streets were lit with oil lamps early in the evening every day, which were extinguished the following morning.”

An entry in William Camden’s book of proverbs published in 1605 says “the early bird gets the worm”. In electricity and other certain matters, Nigeria was that bird. The English word, ‘headstart’ means “an advantage granted or achieved at the beginning of a race, a chase, or a competition.” If development was a race, Nigeria had a headstart over Saudi Arabia 70 years ago. Nigeria also had it over the UAE; Lagos had it over Dubai. The very first power generator came alive in Dubai in 1952. That was the moment the city first tasted electric light and shook hands with modernity. Dubai had its first hospital, Al Maktoum, in 1951; by 1979, it built its first skyscraper. When was Cocoa House, Nigeria’s first skyscraper, built in Ibadan?

Mecca, the holy city that lit its streets with oil lamps in 1955 is today one of the world’s celebrated smart cities. Check the Smart Cities Index released in 2023, 2024 and 2025 by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD). What makes a city the most livable in 2025? In its World Competitiveness Ranking, IMD lists Dubai as the fourth smartest city in the world, and Mecca the 39th out of 146 cities globally. Where are Nigerian cities? Check.

The past was not this hopeless. In several areas, Nigeria started well. So, what happened to us? Or what has made a difference between our stunted growth and the grown/ growing nations? Quality of leadership and quality of ideas ruling. To be blessed with a good head is good, but a good head without character ruins. We say lack of character ruins good head.

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There is the story of a swift young man who was well ahead of his peers in all races. Well-endowed with talents but lacking in character, the fast-footed went for a race. His feet were swift, but his head grew heavy with pride and prejudice. He stumbled, fell, and was overtaken by all; even the lame boy he once mocked left him behind. Then elders started telling their children: “When a good head forgets character, it runs itself backward, and that is how great heads go bad.”

That is how Nigeria’s Lagos which had electricity as early as 1898, became, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) 2025 report, the fifth most difficult city to live in globally (168th out of 173 cities).

But are we doomed to forever run ourselves backward?

I was in the audience at Dr Reuben Abati’s 60th birthday lecture and book launch on Friday in Lagos. I sat up when Bishop Matthew Kukah who delivered the birthday keynote, thoroughly trashed Nigeria for abandoning rational inquiry for magical thinking. Any country that abandons science for sorcery cannot be Saudi Arabia, cannot be United Arab Emirates and definitely cannot be Japan, or South Korea. It cannot have Copenhagen, the reigning best city to live in the world.

Bishop Kukah mentioned “marabouts” as our country’s guardian angels and the instructors of our pilots. Kukah’s imageries and metaphors point at the “spiritualists” as the compass we deploy for our journey of destiny. Superstition rots a nation; irrational beliefs corrode critical thinking; it poisons policy decisions and stunts progress. So, when we search for our golden years, they are always in the past. It is the reason the future increasingly becomes like the moon, unattainable for the moon catcher.

In the lecture entitled ‘Nigeria: Time to Reload’, Bishop Kukah made a striking connection between Nigeria’s underdevelopment and its deep entanglement with superstition, maraboutism, and the misuse of religion. He argued that one of the greatest obstacles to Nigeria’s progress is the replacement of reason and science with fear, fatalism, and spiritual manipulation. For Kukah, this overdependence on marabouts, prophets, and self-styled miracle workers reflects a dysfuntional national mindset. Kukah warned that “all this idea of government by marabouts, shamans, all this blood of sacrifice of protective gear against enemies, slaughtering of cross-bred cows, donkeys, camels, cats with three legs, one eye, no tail, black tongue and so on, will not cut it.” They have never, and will not.

The bishop observed and reminded us that Asian societies built their modernization on moral philosophy and scientific reasoning. He told us that those people drew on the teachings of Confucius, the Mahabharata, and the Japanese ethic of honour. He said Nigeria’s political and social life remained trapped in the orbit of primitive spirituality. He said we are a nation of shortcut takers and jilters of institutional solutions. With a dubious reputation of substitution of superstition for intellect, and of prophecy for planning, the only direction of the national vehicle is backwards. That is why everyone is leaving us behind in all spheres.

Bishop Kukah’s recommendation is that for Nigeria to attain greatness, it must “reload” and rediscover its moral compass; it must rebuild national cohesion, and renew trust in democracy by learning from past mistakes, reclaiming ethical and cultural values, and forging a unifying national spirit rooted in justice, integrity, and shared purpose. He said we must retrieve our country from religious extremists, marabouts and merchants of spirits.

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What does it mean to have one’s destiny in the hand of conjurers and manipulators? What Kukah painted is a portrait of the black man trapped forever in the hole of nonsense. The black man outsources his life to men who claim to be God. He does it out of fear. Fear of visible man and invisible spirit. But, the value that is called excellence does not stay in the house of jitters. If you see a black man eating his pounded yam in the dark, it is not moderation, it is the fear of the world who always wants man to eat his pounded yam as boiled yam, soupless.

Swiss linguist, Heli Chatelain, left the United States for Luanda, the capital of Angola, in the year 1885. He was twenty five years old when he was employed to assist missionaries in producing a grammar and a dictionary of a major language in that area. The man soon saw the moral nakedness of his hosts so much that by 1895, he was no longer in doubt on the reason for the black man’s backwardness: “No serious progress is possible as long as this belief and practice (witchcraft) exists,” Chatelain wrote in his ‘Causes of the Retardation of African Progress’, published in September, 1895.

The Swiss told an interesting story: At a point between 1885 and 1895, he met a slave who learnt carpentry on a plantation in Luanda, Angola. The slave was one very intelligent man who laced his competence with diligence. He soon gained his freedom. In freedom, the carpenter quietly set to work on building a brand, and a business, and he was very successful. He became very rich and bought six or seven local houses. He made more money and bought two expensive stone houses which he rented out to white tenants. From the rent, the man’s riches blossomed and were in multiples.

However, despite his wealth, the man moved about in shabby, ragged clothes. He constantly made excuses and told small lies to make people think he was not as rich as they believed. When asked by Chatelain why he behaved that way, he explained: “If I lived well and dressed nicely, people would become jealous, and their envy could bring me harm through witchcraft.” To reinforce his fears, the wealthy carpenter wasted a chunk of his wealth on powerful charms to protect himself from evil spirits which he thought his jealous enemies might send against him. The short narrative ends with the carpenter’s growth severely limited by his belief and his fears.

Why is Nigeria increasingly left behind? Heli Chatelain told more than the carpenter story. There was no system of writing when he arrived his part of Africa in about 1885. His reading the why was that “a genius or innovator in Africa is almost sure to be accused of witchcraft and to suffer death.” He added that “if a man shows any spark of genius, either by an invention or more rational conceptions, his superior talents may be ascribed to an enlisted spirit.” Chatelain ended that point with a declaration that unless the rich was generous with his money “the man who dared to be richer than his neighbours” risked envy which “is as dangerous as revenge.”

Anambra State governorship election was held on Saturday. I am almost certain that all candidates in that election were told by dibias that they would win. A winner has emerged. What happened to the ‘holy’ words of the seers? Governorship elections come up next year in Ekiti and Osun states. Marabouts must have whispered to every aspirant in our states that they are the anointed one, the next governor. Already, tremors and quakes are rumbling the political landscape; old walls are cracking; familiar trees are losing their roots and branches. Even if the heavens were to fall, no aspirant would yield ground for another. Brothers will fight brothers; friends will square up against friends. It is happening already. None, not even the most hopeless among them, will step aside or step down. Each has probably been told a vision that the crown is theirs to seize, take and flee with.

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You and I know that the ‘gods’ can only be right if each state were to have more than one ruler. But who will dare tell the desperate to pause and think before the storm comes for all?

For the 2027 presidential election, keep an eye on the main opposition parties. You heard that in the ADC no one will step down for no one, no matter how old. The rumble in their jungle is probably rooted in spiritual assurances from marabouts in Niger, Senegal, Egypt, Morocco etc that each of them is the next president. Some politicians take their hope from the same spiritual tray, yet the prophecy of electoral success is the same for all who bow before the seers.

Keep an eye on the ruling party, the APC. No one is contesting the ticket with the incumbent president. But, if you find persons angling to be vice president and displace the incumbent number two, find out which dibia or cleric ‘sees’ for them. They know that the incumbent president will have only one running mate, yet all of them are sure that they will be that person. Robert J. Sternberg, the author of ‘Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid’, says “the stupid should wear signs so we know not to rely on them.” Unfortunately, they don’t wear signs and some get voted in as our leaders.

Why are smart persons stupid as politicians? They believe what the seers serially tell them. What is the meaning of stupidity? I read Lewis Anthony Dexter’s ‘Politics and Sociology of Stupidity’ (1962). The author writes about what to do to help the stupid get out of their stupid hole. He writes about introducing technology as a way of “teaching the stupid not to be stupid” or to be “less stupid.” But I also read the frustration of the author at the stupid insisting on remaining “fundamentally” stupid.

As I listened to Bishop Kukah’s lecture on Friday in Lagos, my mind went straight to what a top politician from the north told me recently. The big man said to me that the real problem of Nigeria are the mystics; the seers, prophets and marabouts to whom politicians have outsourced the running of the country and its politics. Our husbands in the political parties seek and woo clerics as the real electorate. Your votes and mine are mere dummies set up to mask what the ‘gods’ have resolved to do on election day. After the election, the oracles rule, they dictate policies and projects; they decide who gets blessed, and who gets damned. They make and unmake the throne and those who sit on it. “That is where we are; the reason we are far behind our past,” the top politician told me.

I believe him. Man won’t learn. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Banquo asks the witches to speak if they “can look into the seeds of time, / And say which grain will grow and which will not.” The seers speak to Banquo and more to Macbeth. They tell Macbeth he will be king, and he becomes king. But what is that that we read as the end of King Macbeth?