Tunde Odesola

Wracked by a head-splitting fever and a head-aching red eye, this article may not see the light of day. But if it’s ever published, dear reader, know that this article is a product of pain, lethargy, tiresomeness and hissing. The meaning of headache is truly a pain in the head.

When I woke up early Monday morning, the pain in my right eye was tormenting. I couldn’t differentiate between a comma and a full stop. The wider I opened my eyes to tell the difference between the two punctuation marks, the more the tail of the comma disappeared, leaving behind a dot that looked exactly like a full stop. By 11 a.m., my body felt like it had been run over by a bus. I took some pain-relieving tablets, got an eye-drop medication and headed into the day, all the same.

On Tuesday morning, I couldn’t open my bloodshot right eye. I felt my hands and legs were bound to a rock, like Oedipus. For relief, I felt like closing my aching eye all day, but work had sounded its worship bell, so I headed to answer the roll call. As I drove to work, I struggled to keep my right eye open, setting my eyes water to flow freely, and the left eye, in kinship sympathy, had joined the right eye to tear.

I hurt like a man under whose right eye three alligator pepper seeds had been tucked. By who? I shall reveal that later. Alone, I suffered seven plagues – headache, eyeache, runny nose, fever, tearing, sleepiness and lethargy. Do note that the whole of biblical Egypt suffered just 10 plagues in the hands of Moses.

The fast sequence of bad news breaking in Nigeria could be tricky for a columnist to follow, more so for a columnist outside Nigerian shores. Therefore, a columnist worth his salt will be on the news trail all day, every week, taking notes of newsy issues and zeroing down on one, two or more en route to the deadline.

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On Wednesday morning, I had no eyes to follow Nigerian news, so I said to myself, “I cannot come and kill myself o; I will not write any article this week.” My only desire was just to shut my eyes in perpetuity. By the time I returned from work on Wednesday night, my enervated body was a little energised as butterflies from the nectarean Muse flew along my way. Briefly, I shook off my lethargy and started to monitor trending news from Nigeria.

Terrible news, as usual, sat snugly on the front pew. My news monitoring revealed that in the last few days, over 70 Nigerian Christians were reportedly killed in the Middle Belt region by suspected Muslim herders.

In the dying minutes of Wednesday night, I checked various talking points on Nigeria’s socio-political scene. There was no condemnation of the massacre by any big-name Nigerian cleric. However, there were get-rich-quick blasphemies by some church leaders. The blasphemies caught my attention. Instinctively, I felt like grabbing my laptop and scribbling. But while the spirit was willing, the body was weak as my head pounded and my eye peppered. I sat at my table, but the only request my body members were making was sleep, sleep, sleep while my eyes teared away, steadily.

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“Why the silence from the Nigerian clergy? They don’t want to heat the polity? Did the government reach out to them not to speak up publicly? To whom do Nigerian clergy owe their allegiance? To God or Bola Tinubu administration? Or to Mammon?” Questions cascaded down my journalistic mind. Savage country, savage leadership.

Thursday afternoon, none had changed for the better among my troubled body parts. Headache. Eyeache. Runny nose and tiredness. Guess what? I never stopped going to work for a day. But I booked an appointment to see the doctor. Because I didn’t book an emergency appointment, I was scheduled to see the doctor on Friday. Today is Thursday – my deadline to submit my article, and I’m going to work in less than three hours. Can I still make it? I’ll try. I’ll try because I don’t want no thief-looking pastor to claim his god of Mammon struck me with sickness. However, if the article fails to make it to the newsstand, it’s not the god of the fake pastor who stopped it; it’s stress-induced fever, lest any thief should boast. I don’t have lip blisters as telltales of sickness. For me, the telltale signs of fever or any sickness in general are inflamed eyelids and reddish eyeballs. I’ve been like that since my years of innocence.

My red eye drips tears unabated. All the eye wants to do is shut down. It’s utterly painful opening it. Pastor Ibiyeo-money, who has never healed any known disability in any person, would claim his god afflicted me with a sight problem, and his congregation would roar, “Hallelujah!!!”

In an outrageous video, Ibiyeo-money said Jesus Christ hated poverty and that Christ never associated with the poor. The cold-blooded way Ibiyeo-money twisted the Holy Bible to assert his warped teaching belonged only in hell.

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A fake surgeon clutching a scalpel, Ibiyeo-money grabs the balls of a man looking for the fruit of the womb, cuts open his scrotum, throws his testicles in a bottle, gives the bottle to him, and tells him his prayers are answered. But Ibiyeo-money himself sees a doctor monthly. He assures his congregation that his prayer was sufficient for their security while he goes about in bulletproof cars and a horde of armed security men. Ibiyeo-money is the healer who cannot heal himself. In looks and deeds, Ibiyeo-money is the archetypal Agba Yahoo. He talks slowly and self-assuredly – almost in a whisper – like a man of wisdom, age and grace, but will bow down on his face and worship Satan if he sees 30 shekels of silver. I didn’t have a clear picture of those Jesus chased out of the temple until now.

In his atrocious sermon, I suspect Ibiyeo-money was talking about Jesus of Port Harcourt, and not Jesus of Nazareth, who was born in a manger by a poor carpenter father and who rode on a donkey into Jerusalem, instead of a horse. Because I don’t worship money like Ibiyeo-money, I solemnly offer to teach him for free the importance of Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem.

Preached on a Mount of Beatitudes, Jesus’ seminal sermon called “The Beatitudes,” was an opportunity to overplay wealth acquisition, but He downplayed it by emphasising poorness, meekness, righteousness, mercifulness and peacefulness. In the sermon, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit; For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” I can see Ibiyeo-money is rich in spirit.

In ‘The Beatitudes’, if Jesus was averse to poverty, He wouldn’t have rewarded the poor in spirit with the kingdom of heaven. He would’ve preferred people like Ibiyeo-money who are rich in spirit.

Since all these donkey’s years of professed anointing, miracles, signs and worship, hasn’t the man of god come across the teaching of Jesus which says in Matthew 19:24, “I’ll say it again–-it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God!” If Jesus glamorised riches as Ibiyeo-money does, he wouldn’t speak against wealth acquisition.

Both the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible contain 1,189 chapters. Ibiyeo-money just needs to daily read four chapters of the big Bible he carries about like a signboard, and about nine and a half months, he would have read all the references I pointed out to him.

I’ll close with these passing shots. Jesus told some of those He healed or taught to sell all their earthly property and follow him. If Ibiyeo-money was the one taken to the peak of the world by Satan, and told to bow down and worship, what would he do? I hear him shout, Get beside me, Satan!

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

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