Tunde Odesola

Inhumanity was an unknown word in humanity until some white perverts, backed by racist European royals, sailed all the way from Europe to motherland Africa under the darkness of commerce and christianisation, before drawing the guns of colonialism from under their cassocks to enslave Africa, despoil its minerals, loot its artefacts, condemn its culture and shatter its soul.

Since that singular misadventure and miscarriage of global sociocultural order about 200 years ago, the four cardinal directions of the compass – North, South, East and West – have, more than ever, pointed to insecurity, poverty, diseases and suspicion.

Before the last chains of colonalism were broken, the West had murdered sleep, keeping an eye on the world, especially Africa. The West, like an old church bell in a concrete tower, despite its far-reaching sound, still needs the human hand to nudge it to perform its ringing function. The West looks pleasant and prosperous to the eye but it is indeed poor in soul and broken in spirit.

The West: rightly calls Adolf Hitler’s killing of six million Jews pogrom. This West: made a place for Israel in the Middle East. But their West has no name for the centuries-old forceful uprooting and shipping of millions of Africans from their aboriginal habitats to lands of harshest weathers, unfamiliar foods, foreign tongues and strange God.

That West has gone back to the West. But its footprints on the soul of Africa have congealed like the pawprints of the lion coagulate in the blood of its prey. The East is no better. To assuage the sorrows, tears and blood of Africans colonised and forced into slavery, the West needs to seek remission from Africa and embark on reparation. This will soothe the years of colonial hurt and assuage the economic imbalance prevalent in Africa. One wonders why African leacders can’t speak in one voice to demand reparation.

But will the Nigerian government spend such a windfall judiciously if it ever comes? I won’t risk a bet on that, not in these hard times when a litre of petrol goes for N1,200, amid empty ‘e lo f’okan bale reassurance’. However, I believe Rwanda, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Ghana and some other serious African countries will spend theirs gazillion-dollar windfalls appropriately. If it ever comes.

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The importation of Christianity to Africa by Europeans, with its attendant fortes and foibles, was, essentially, a manipulative tool in the hands of the enslaving Europeans, to make Africans stupid enough to exploit, and not to win souls for Christ. How would a race preaching to save the African continent from hellfire also loot and enslave it? The boa constrictor does not cuddle for love’s sake.

Christianity, I believe, would still have found its way to Africa without being escorted by colonisation, commerce and slavery because true western gospellers abound in Europe who would have brought Christianity to Africa with no strings attached.

Sixty-three years after independence, the wheel of religion has turned full cycle in Nigeria. The same end to which Europeans deployed religion as a tool of colonisation is the same end many Christian and Muslim clerics are today deploying religion as an opium to zombify worshippers. Particularly irritating are the actions of many Christian clerics that border on the absurd. Many Nigerian churches no longer preach hope and salvation to worshippers singed by government policies. Churches are now wrestling rings where pastors engage worshippers in body slams, takedowns, kicks and chokeholds to perform healings. Church services now provoke louder laughter than Tom and Jerry cartoons or ‘Visa On Arrival’ – a Nigerian TV series. The church is now a laughing stock.

But I didn’t laugh when I watched the video of one fellow in Auchi, Johnson Suleiman, who goes by the title of an apostle. Each time I wached the video, I shook my head in pity for the deceit that has engulfed Nigerian christendom. I watched it more than 20 times, hissing at each viewing.

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In the video, Suleiman claimed he raised the dead, that’s no problem; the snail once showed up in the gathering of horned creatures.

Suleiman told his jubilant congregation, “Three days ago, someone sent me a text from Monrovia, Monrovia is in Liberia, and he said, ‘My sister just died’. I said, ‘Oh, too bad, too bad, sorry about that’. He said, ‘My sister was your daughter’. I said, ‘Whose daughter?’ He said, ‘Your daughter.’ I said, ‘I don’t know,’ and he began to describe (her), ‘She comes to the headquarters, and (he) said a lot of things…I said, ‘Wait, wait, I know, I know that face; yes, that person you’ve mentioned gave me a seed and brought some stuff. He said, ‘Yes, she’s dead.’

“I said, ‘Ehn!? Who permitted her to die!? I said where is the body? He said it’s in Enugu State. He said she died in the fiance’s house. I said give the boy my number, and the boy sent me text. I said where is she now? He said ‘we are taking her to the mortuary’. I said ‘turn back’. He said, ‘Sir, what do you mean?’ I said, ‘Turn back, go back home. When you get home, don’t send me a text, call’. And he called.

“And I said, ‘Put one hand on her and just hold the phone. And I said, ‘Lord, IT IS BETTER for 1,000 STINGY PEOPLE TO DIE THAN FOR ONE GIVER TO DIE! And I shouted, ‘Abigail, this is not your time, in the name of Jesus….”

This was how Suleiman raised the unknown dead woman, who didn’t deem it fit to come out openly for thanksgiving days after she was raised. There’s no video of the formerly dead Abigail in the public space; no one knows her, what an ingrate she probably is for melting into thin air like a fart. That Suleiman raised the dead because she wasn’t stingy is a classical example of transactional gospel which is anti-Christ. In the wisdom of Suleiman, it’s better for 1,000 stingy people to die than for him to pray for their forgiveness.

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I wonder if the God of Suleiman travelled to Baal when armed men attacked his convoy along the Benin-Auchi Road about two years, killing seven persons, including three policemen and four others. Suleiman, who was in a bulletproof car with his wife and children during the attack, said, “The truth of the matter is this, you can’t kill me. My life is in the hand of God.” The excort vehicles used by the police and the other persons killed in the attack were not bulltproof.

This Suleiman was the one who proclaimed he didn’t want COVID to end because he bought a jet during COVID lockdown a few years ago. Hear him, “In COVID, I bought a jet. The third one, I have three…I was praying for COVID not to end because I was resting. While people were complaining, my wife asked me, ‘Can life be this sweet?”

Although Suleiman later came out in another video to say the statement was a slip of the tongue, claiming he never meant to say he was praying for COVID not to end, the questions that come to mind include: was the ‘can life be this sweet’ remark by his wife also a slip of the tongue? Or was he lying with his wife’s name? What life was his wife referring to as sweet – buying a plane when the whole world was on lockdown? Why did Suleiman have to wait till his reckless speech attracted a backlash before he renounced it? If he didn’t mean every word of his imprudent statement, he should have long repudiated it before it boomeranged.

Do you know what the street calls lamba? This is it. I don’t know how Suleiman’s congregation sat down calmly through this lie of a testimony which he delivered with so much braggadocio. If I was in his church, I would have shouted, “Oluwa mi, eyi o wa po ju!?,” and Gbenga Adeboye, the late fabulist and extraordinary comedian, would have turned in his grave. I don’t have the power to wake the dead.

Hear Suleiman’s lamba, “I got a jet and after three months, I noticed I need to service the jet. I sent the jet for servicing. As the people got the jet, it was very fine, the company that’s to service it, they didn’t touch it, they refused to service it, we would call them, call them, call them, they refused, for one year, they didn’t touch it, they made sure all the parts, because an aircraft, the way it works, every part of an aircraft has a timeframe, whether you use it or you don’t use it, if it’s more than one year, you have to change, they didn’t touch it, they made sure all the parts ran out of time. I struggled and bought the parts again. When they fixed the new parts, they were not picking call(s) again, they didn’t touch it…”

“For three years, they were begging, they said ‘this plane is fine, please, sell it for us’. I said, ‘Are you people ok? Ok, don’t fix it again, give me’. But you cannot fly it when it is not in shape. I begged, I pleaded, I almost started crying…(I said) give me, they said, ‘sell it (to) us’, (I said), ‘give me’, they said, ‘sell it (to) us’…”

To be continued.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

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