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T. B. Joshua: Let The Dead Rest [OPINION]

Published

4 months ago

January 16, 2024

Editor

By Suyi Ayodele

A few years ago, the self-acclaimed ‘Living Perfect Master’, Sat Guru Maharaj Ji visited the Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo, Oba of Benin, Oba Erediauwa, of blessed memory. The visitor arrived late. God bless Oba Erediauwa. He did not cancel the visit. After all, the palace goes nowhere, the people say. The monarch waited till Guru Maharaj Ji arrived. Palace functionaries went to inform the Omo N’Oba that his guest had arrived. A diplomat to the core, Oba Erediauwa came out of the inner recess to receive the visitor from Ibadan.

After the traditional formalities, Guru Maharaj Ji was asked to speak. He apologised to Uku Akpolokpolo for coming late. Then he gave the excuse for the delay. The vehicle conveying him from Ibadan to Benin had broken down on the way, and it took quite a time before it was fixed. The Omo N’Oba listened to him with rapt attention. He betrayed no emotion. That is what makes him the Uku Akpolokpolo! Done, the microphone was taken to the Oba. He welcomed his guest with his signature tripod “thank you, thank you; thank you.” The Benin monarch said some other wonderful things about Guru Maharaj Ji. Finally, the Omo N’Oba showed why he is hailed as the Ogidigan. He asked:

“By the way, did I hear you say that your vehicle broke down on the way to Benin?” The Living Perfect Master affirmed that. The Oba said: “Well, that’s strange. I don’t know that the Living Perfect Master also suffers the same fate as those of us mere mortals. I don’t know that the vehicle of the Living Perfect Master can also break down.” The entire Benin in the palace chorused “Oba Agha to pere e, Ise”. End of story. The Omo N’Oba rose and retired to his inner recess amidst laughter from the crowd. Sat Guru Maharaj Ji and his entourage also left. How and in what form? Like my late boss, Ayo Asagba, would say: “I don’t talk to the press!” The message was delivered in the most royal way. There is no Living Perfect Master anywhere. May Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo Oba Erediauwa continue to occupy his prime position among his ancestors and gods. Ise!

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Fake prophets do exist. Fake miracle workers abound. Many call themselves God here on earth. We have had Jesus of Oyingbo before. At a time, one Reverend King was the miracle worker of Lagos. In the Western World, there was once a Reverend Jim Jones, who claimed to have a God-given healing power and convinced hundreds of his devotees to commit mass suicide before he killed himself on November 18, 1978 in jungles of Guyana, South America. The wisdom of the Omo N’Oba in his encounter with Sat Guru Maharaj Ji was that no man should judge another man. The Benin monarch never called the ‘Living Perfect Master fake. The Oba merely expressed surprise that someone who is ‘God’ himself could also suffer the same human misfortune like the case of a broken-down vehicle. The deductions were left for the audience to make. That is African wisdom in its undiluted form. It requires no ‘investigative journalism’ of the so-called ‘civilised’ world to point that out!

Africans lived a normal lifestyle before the Europeans came with their ‘civilisation’. Africans had no banks before the Western world introduced banking systems. There were no certified accountants in a typical African setting before the coming of the whites. Yet, in those African societies, ‘accounts’ were always balanced and there were no negative ledgers. The White man came and told our forebears to throw away everything that made their lives easy and pleasant. The Whites called the beautiful sculptures and artefacts made by those African legends of old, “graven images”. They told our fathers not to pour libations to the gods and ancestors. Our forebears listened to the White man. But at any opportunity the White man had, he stole the objects he tagged earthen, took them to his museums in Europe and asked the children of the original owners to come and pay to see the creative works of their fathers! What a civilisation!. As recent as year 2022, the entire Benin Kingdom was still asking the United Kingdom and other European countries to return the artworks the British imperialist soldiers stole when they invaded the ancient Benin Kingdom in 1897, in what is known in World History as the Benin Massacre. E. Ola Abiola, one of the greatest historians of this generation, introduced the 1897 Benin Massacre as “one of the unpardonable atrocities perpetrated by the agents of the Royal Niger Company in their bid to secure for Britain the dominion over the Niger Delta” (See A Textbook of West African History: A.D 100 to Present Day, 1974). What type of civilisation encourages stealing, slave trade and complete annihilation of a people who resisted being ruled by strangers. For over a hundred years, the British people and other nefarious Europeans subjugated Africa and Africans to untold hardship. They did this through the instrumentality of religion, Christianity. Whatever education the Whites ‘gave’ the Black Race during the colonial era was not meant to liberate the race or to give them equal rights and opportunities. The Blacks were educated to work in the colonial offices; nothing more.

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Thankfully, the few educated Africans began the agitation for the end of colonialism. Those early nationalists saw through the hypocrisy of the Western education and the new religion, Christianity. They therefore rose, using the weapon of education, to demand for self-rule for the subjugated Africans. For instance, David Diop, the Senegalese poet (1927-1960), in his poem, The Vultures, described Christianity as a form of “civilisation” that “kicked us in the face”. The practice of baptism, he says, is “holy water”, which “slapped our cringing brows”. The Whites, he rightly describes, as “The vultures” that “built in the shadow of their talons/The bloodstained monument of tutelage”. He goes further to express the hypocrisy of the early missionaries, who sang, and “drowned the howling on the plantations”, and who also engaged in “extorted kisses”, leaving the new ‘converts’ with “bitter memories of promises broken at the point of gun”. He describes the White missionaries cum colonial masters as “foreigners who did not seem human/Who knew all the books did not know love”. David Diop’s imagery of the vulture speaks volume of the atrocities of that era, when the Whites who claimed to be on liberation mission to the dark world, did the most appalling! Diop ends the poem on a positive note by expressing the confidence that “In spite of the desolate villages of torn Africa/ Hope was preserved in us as in a fortress.” Since Africans gained independence from the Europeans, the Western World has not been the same. And all they do is try to bring down Africa at all cost. Everything from the Back Race is never considered good in the eyes of the White man. It is like the case of the rival wife and her set of twins. Those beautiful creatures are never regarded as “two bouncing babies in the eyes of the other wife, but two tiny things.” Unfortunate for Africans, our leaders have not helped matters. They have, through their perfidy, sold us to second slavery. The only difference is that we have no padlocks yet on our lips.

It is this idea of bringing down anything African that informed, to a larger extent, the documentary by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), on the late Nigerian tele-evangelist, Temitope Balogun Joshua, otherwise known as T. B. Joshua, the founder of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN). T.B. Joshua passed on June 5, 2021. While alive, the preacher never enjoyed the best of public relations. Many of his ‘fellow Christians’ never loved him and they did not hide it. At his death in 2021, many preachers rose in his condemnation. He was called all sorts of names. His ministry was branded ‘satanic’. His ‘anointing’ was interrogated. Some could not stand the fact that T.B. Joshua did not have a “spiritual godfather”, who “poured the anointing on him” as if that is the ticket to heaven! I did a piece with the title: “T.B. Joshua and the gatekeepers of heaven”, published on this page on June 22, 2021. The major accusation against T.B. Joshua was that he performed some of his miracles using other forces other than the name of the Lord. For the purpose of this discourse, let us agree that it was true then that all the “miracles” the late preacher performed were procured through the devil itself. The question we should ask is, how is that the problem of any mortal? Why are we fighting a battle that belongs to God for Him? If Joshua claimed that he healed people through the name of Jesus, and it turned out to be false, are we Jesus? The Lord, in whose name the late preacher claimed to have ‘healed’, and ‘delivered’ people is not dead. Can’t we wait for the expected day of judgement to see if the miracles of T.B. Joshua were of the Lord or not?

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The most cowardly of all the attacks on the person of T.B. Joshua, came last week from the BBC, which claimed among other things that the miracles were fake, and that he tortured and raped women. The British broadcasting station equally alleged that T.B. Joshua was a serial abortionist. Why on earth did it take the BBC over two years to come up with these allegations? Why were these grievous allegations levelled against a dead man who is no longer in any position to defend himself? Who does that but a coward? I don’t want to hold any brief for Joshua on his miracles. I was never a participant in his miracle sessions. But like I pointed out in the piece referenced above, I saw one of those miracles with my korokoro eyes. And I say this, even if the devil itself was the one that gave the healing potion to T. B. Joshua in that instance, I think, without prejudice to what my Sunday School teacher will say, that the devil deserves accolades for that singular act!

T. B. Joshua could be fake and devilish. That is not my business. I am just like that blind man who was healed by Jesus and he declared, when he was asked if he knew that Jesus was a sinner thus: “Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not; one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.” Why do I push this position? My Lord Jesus Christ Himself was not spared of the allegation of procuring miracles by other means. And when He was confronted, this was how Jesus responded as recorded in Luke 11:18-19: “If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? because ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub. Now, if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your followers drive them out? So then, they will be your judge.” I think this is apt for the BBC and its hate-filled documentary. If T.B. Joshua’s miracles were fake, let the BBC go and perform genuine miracles! As for the ‘victims of serial rape, abortion and tortures’, they have my ‘sympathy’. I wish they could go and press charges. If there is any one of them in Nigeria, I volunteer to foot the litigation bills provided they have not washed off the evidence! What a way to accuse a man! I sincerely hope Mrs. Evelyn Joshua, the widow of T. B. Joshua, is not in any way moved by these ‘new’ allegations. Madam Joshua, if I may counsel, should be consoled by the admonition by Gamaliel in Acts 5: 38-39: “…for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; But if if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.” The BBC can hold on to its documentary, I preach no more on this matter! Let the dead rest!

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Minimum Wage: Why We May Not Accept N100,000 – Organised Labour

Published

5 hours ago

May 20, 2024

Editor

The organised labour has told the government to perish any idea of offering N100,000 as the new minimum wage.

The labour has also told the government to be serious with the negotiations on the issue of workers wages, insisting that it used the lowest minimum in arriving at the N615,000 as new minimum wage.

Recall that the organised labour comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC and the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, pulled out of the negotiation meeting last week Wednesday when the government offered N48,000 as the new minimum wage.

However, Chairman of the Tripartite Committee on the National Minimum wage, Alhaji Bukar Goni in a letter to the organized labour for a meeting tomorrow indicated interest that the government will shift ground and asked the organised labour to also shift ground.

Speaking to Vanguard in Abuja, the NLC Head of Information and Public Affairs, Benson Upah, said that the organised labour would honour the invitation tomorrow but he advised the government to be serious.

He said, “Our expectations are that the government should be serious this time around. We expect them to take more seriously the issue of wages of workers.”

On whether labour would accept N100,000 as being insinuated, he said, “Well, it will not be fair and these are the reasons. The first reason is that when we demanded for N615,000, we broke that down. In fact, we used the barest minimum.

“For instance we put accommodation for N40,000, we also use for feeding N500, tell me where you are going to get food for N500 with a family of six. As I said, we used barest estimate but beyond that, government hiked electricity tariff by two hundred and fifty percent after we made our demand and that has introduced new cost and expenses. So if government is serious, it should not be thinking about a hundred thousand naira.

“You know that when you create poor citizens, you create a poorer county.” On his part, a member of the NLC delegation on the Tripartite Committee, Prof Theophilus Ndubuaku, said it would not be kind of the government to offer N100,000.

He said, “I don’t think one hundred thousand naira is a kind of thing we want because it’s far below expectation, we will accept something that can at least keep somebody alive. I don’t think a hundred thousand naira will keep a worker alive in this country a man with a family of six because our computation is based on the size of family.

“So, if they come up with that kind of amount, I don’t think we will appreciate it. In the private sector even artisans are not taking one hundred thousand a month. Whatever we accept we will look what is the income, what are they collecting, what is available to government because if government is collecting one trillion naira, we cannot ask them to pay two trillion.

“We are responsible people but the same government should know that people are suffering they will have to agree with us that there is crisis, that something needs to be done to create wealth, that something needs to be done for Nigeria to be a producing country and not a consuming nation.

“Something needs to be done to reduce the cost of governance. We are supposed to be partners in governance, after all we are the labourers.”

Asked to give reason why labour may not accept one hundred thousand, he said, “If we see that that hundred thousand is affordable, if we see that they can afford more, we will reject it. They have to tell us why they cannot pay N615,000, the onus is on them to tell us why, then we will sit down and say okay you don’t have the money but we will also know why you don’t have the money because Nigeria is a country that is naturally endowed but something is wrong, how do you make sure you get the money so that when we come again in two years time, you won’t tell us the same story?

“What are you doing to create wealth, how are you going to partner with us to create wealth instead of being wasteful, how are you going to partner with us to reduce cost of governance. If a father comes home and says the only money he has is one thousand naira and you know that the father is not wasting the money, you will manage but if it is when the father comes and he is eating food bought from the fast food joint and it cost N10,000 and he gives one thousand to the entire family to go and look for food and cook for themselves, he may be beaten up, the family may refuse it.

“The letter they wrote to us they said that both parties should shift ground, that means they will shift ground and they are expecting us to shift ground but the question is, what ground are they shifting, are they going to shift ground by two naira or two thousand naira to make it N50,000 or are they going to shift ground by N62,000 to make it N100,000 or by N150,000 or N200,000 to make it N300,000 plus.

“The point here is, this thing we are doing is not rocket science, the government should sit down and calculate how much it will cost, what is a befitting wage for an average Nigeria? They should breakdown what they are giving us because even in salaries, you break everything down. So when you break it down, they will tell us whether they are going to put one thousand naira per month for transport and two thousand naira per month for food.

“That N48,000 they are offering, they should have broken it down so if there are certain things they don’t want to make provision for, for instance health, if they say if any worker is sick they person should go and die or they don’t want to make provision for food, let them just put standard things.

“The problem here is that, you asked someone to tighten his belt, you said there is no money but you removed subsidy. Since they removed subsidy, FAAC has been collecting almost three times of what they were collecting before subsidy. That money you are collecting, what are you doing with it?

“You now said you want to build coastal highway when the existing roads to the same location are not passable, you are budgeting trillions of naira, you want to build Lagos-Sokoto brand new Highway, you want to put billions for hajj subsidy, you bought 200 vehicles for Customs and this is somebody that is complaining that naira is having issues but you now want to spend hundreds billions to import Toyota cars for Customs, why can’t you buy made-in Nigeria vehicles?

“This whole thing doesn’t make any meaning, we don’t even understand it. They are behaving as if they have money but they don’t know what to do with it like General Yakubu Gowon said in the 70s. You bought 200 Toyota Jeeps for Customs, it means you really do have the money but you don’t know what to do with it. But one thing you don’t want to do with the money is to feed Nigerians, feed your workers, make your workers comfortable.

“And as you can see, they are not even giving anybody hope. There is no programme for agriculture, government is not declaring emergency on power, food security, transportation.

“So what we are expecting is that, if they tell us they cannot pay N625,000, they should tell us why they cannot pay, this is negotiation. If we have told them to pay N615,000, what we expect government to calculate how many workers that are expected to receive this minimum wage.

“We did our research, you now say each state has this workforce, this is what they are now getting as revenue forget the fact that some of them are not doing anything to increase their IGR. Whatever they are getting now from the money coming from the federal revenue account, the federal government should say, this is the number of workers that we have, this is how much that you are asking, at the end of the day, this is how much we are expected to spend as salary and this is how much we have.

“So, NLC please look at it, we don’t want to spend this percent on salary, we will then sit down and ask, if you don’t want to spend it on salary, you want to spend it by importing vehicles for Customs when you have locally manufactured vehicles that won’t cost capital flight.”

He, however said that if the government comes out with something”relevant “, the organised labour will shift ground as asked.

“We must discuss with them that the figure presented is realistic and based on facts and statistics as the organised labour has done,” he said.

He said, “For provision of food for one person, we put N500 but there is a survey carried out by the National Bureau for Statistics covering all parts of the country, NBS is the custodian of statistics and it came out with that in today Nigeria, the average you can spend for a meal is N900.

“But we went low, we took the minimum. Their average is N900 but we took the minimum of N500, that is you cannot go below the N500. So you can see how realistic we are. So we will insist that government breakdown every item. Food, hospital, accommodation, transportation etc.

“We don’t want anyone to come and say that the NLC and the TUC presented arbitrary figure.”
VANGUARD

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BREAKING: CBN Withdraws Circular On Cyber Security Levy

Published

6 hours ago

May 19, 2024

Editor

The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN has withdrawn the circular directing banks and other financial institutions to implement the 0.5 per cent cyber security levy.

The withdrawal of the circular was announced via a statement signed by Haruna Mustafa, Director, Financial Policy and Regulation, Department and Chibuzo Efobi, Director, Payment System Management Department.

The circular stated: “The Central Bank of Nigeria circular dated May 6, 2024 (Ref. PSMD/DIR/PUB/LAB/017/004) on the above subject refers. ‘

“Further to this, please be advised that the above referenced circular is hereby withdrawn.”

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JUST IN: Tinubu Appoints Spokesperson, Ngelale, As Special Envoy On Climate Action

Published

8 hours ago

May 19, 2024

Editor

President Bola Tinubu has appointed his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Ajuri Ngelale, as Nigeria’s Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Action.

This was as he established a 25-person committee to oversee the country’s green economic initiatives.

“Ngelale will serve in this role as part of a larger Presidential Committee, to be chaired by the President,” the office of the secretary to the government of the federation revealed in a statement signed Sunday by its Director of Information and Public Relations, Segun Imohiosen.

“Ngelale will retain his role as the Official Spokesperson of the President and Special Adviser to the President on Media & Publicity while serving on the committee,” it added.

The statement is titled, ‘President Tinubu establishes a committee to oversee green economic initiatives, appoints Chief Ajuri Ngelale as special envoy on climate action.’

Imohsien said the Presidential Committee on Climate Action and Green Economic Solutions will “coordinate and oversee all policies and programmes on climate action and green economic development.”

“This is to remove the constraints to coordination, foster a whole-of-government approach to climate-action programmes, provide an efficient governance architecture, and ensure that all relevant institutions in the sector are plugged into the President’s vision and are collectively implementing the Renewed Hope Agenda on climate action,” it further explained.

The new committee which has the President as its Chairman also includes the Minister of Environment, Mr. Balarabe Lawal as its Vice-Chairman, and Mr. Ajuri Ngelale as its Secretary/Special Presidential Envoy.

Members are the CEOs of, InfraCorp, Mr. Lazarus Angbazo; National Council on Climate Change, Mr. Salisu Dahiru; Infrastructure Council Regulatory Commission, Mr. Michael Ohiani, Nigeria Investment Promotion Council, Mrs. Aisha Rimi and National Social Investment Fund, Mr. Aminu Umar-Sadiq.

The committee also consists of the CEOs of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall, Mr Yusuf Maina-Bukar, Energy Commission of Nigeria, Mr Abdullahi Mustapha; Rural Electrification Agency, Abba Aliyu; CreditCorp, Uzoma Nwagba, the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, Khalil Halilu Member, Solid Minerals Development Fund, Fatima Shinkafi; CBN Deputy Governor (Deputy Governor, Corporate Services Directorate) Mr Bala Bello; UN SE4ALL, Lolade Abiola; Member and an Adviser to the NCCC Adviser, Teni Majekodunmi.

Others are representatives of the Federal Ministries of FCT, Finance, Industry, Trade & Investment, Water Resources, and Agriculture & Food Security.

The committee also consists of representatives from the Federal Inland Revenue Service and the Nigeria Customs Service.

The OSGF outlined eight objectives of the Presidential Committee. They are to:

“Identify, develop, and implement innovative non-oil & non-gas climate action initiatives.

“Coordinate all activities of relevant federal institutions towards the attainment of all agreed climate action and green economic objectives and non-oil/non-gas ambitions of the federal government.

“Collaborate with all relevant government, subnational governments, non-government, and civil society entities towards the attainment of the climate action objectives and ambitions of the federal government.

“Collaborate with national governments and multilateral institutions towards the attainment of the climate action objectives and carbon market ambitions of the federal government.

“Monitor, evaluate, and guide the progress of all climate action and renewable energy projects and activities of the federal government.

“Track and guide the implementation of initiatives and developments conducted by the Energy Transition Working Group.

“Supervise the work of the Presidential Steering Committee on Project Evergreen and

“Prepare a half-yearly green ambitions update, covering all associated climate action achievements of the federal government.”