By Reno Omokri
Three weeks ago, Pastor Enoch Adeboye was in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti state and while there, he praised Governor Ayo Fayose for defending his people from foreign Fulani herdsmen. The next day, the All Progressives Congress insulted Pastor Adeboye in the media and accused him of commending Fayose for pecuniary reasons, claiming he may have been bribed (you see, the only weapon the APC has is anti corruption, and when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail).
Shortly thereafter, the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria forced Pastor Adeboye to retire as General Oversee of the Redeemed Christian Church of God.
Connect the dots. Let us not be disunited. If Professor Yemi Osinbajo is afraid to say it, I Reno Omokri, am not afraid to say it. I love and respect the Muslim Ummah having read and understood Qur’an (unlike many other Christians) so do not misunderstand me. I stand with Pastor Adeboye. Now, more than ever, Nigerian Christians and minorities need unity and leaders like Adeboye and Fayose!
Many Nigerians and the media as a whole regale in insulting Ayo Fayose, yet he was able to stop Fulani herdsmen killings in Ekiti. Of what good are our own sophisticated Governors if they cannot protect your life? An average Ekiti man knows that Fayose will fight for him. Can we say the same about our own individual Governors? Fayose will never go to Abuja to cry to President Muhammadu Buhari if Fulani herdsmen kill Ekiti people unlike a so called Governor who went crying like a baby to Buhari when foreign Fulani herdsmen raped, maimed, butchered then savagely and barbarically ended the lives of his people. If the first responsibility of a government is the protection of life and property, I challenge any Nigerian to name a Governor who does this better than Fayose!
And then after the outcry and the big to do raised by the public, President Muhammadu Buhari dialed back on the move against Pastor Adeboye and then sacked the secretary of the FRCN, Mr. Jim Obazee and ‘suspended’ (not revoked) the controversial policy of tenure used by the FRCN to target Pastor Adeboye.
I have been in government and I do not believe that Mr. Obazee could have acted as he did without being ordered to do so. This is my opinion and it is not a fact. I have no proof to back this up, however, I believe that Mr. Obazee was just a fall guy, a patsy, a small fry that was expendable as collateral damage after the deed had been done.
And for the army of e-agents this administration has on social media who keep falsely blaming former President Goodluck Jonathan for the policy used in removing Pastor Adeboye as GO of RCCG, please be aware that though the FRCN was established under Jonathan, this new policy was introduced on the 17th of October 2016 by the Muhammadu Buhari administration. If you care to check on my Twitter or facebook profiles, you would see photographic proof of this there.
Never before in the history of Nigeria as a United and independent nation has the church of Jesus Christ the Son of God been under such a coordinated attack as it is being attacked today.
For weeks, I and other like minds have been screaming to all who care to listen that the President must do something to stop the carnage and harvest of death visited on the Christian minorities of Southern Kaduna. We have all been in deep pain and agony as the pictures of women with intestines and wombs wrenched out of their body, children in horrific death poses and men with machete cuts all over their bodies circulated in the new and traditional media.
It was our expectation that all men of good will would stand up and be counted in the condemnation of such barbaric acts, but none of us were prepared for the call by the Council of Imams in Kaduna state on President Muhammadu Buhari to arrest the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Reverend Samson Ayokunle, over the Southern Kaduna killings!
My mouth is too heavy for words! Have we all seen what we have used our own hands to do to ourselves? The other day it was the 77 year old head of Afenifere, Olu Falae, that was kidnapped, flogged and made to kneel down and beg by foreign Fulani herdsmen. Then only last year the king of Ubulu-Ukwu in Delta state, HRM Akaeze Edward Ofulue III, was kidnapped then killed and his body left to decompose in the bush without burial by foreign Fulani herdsmen.
Then we had the agatu killings, the Enugu killings and a multiplicity of killings by foreign Fulani herdsmen leading up to the Southern Kaduna killings, but rather than sympathize with the people of Southern Kaduna and other people killed, these Imams want President Buhari to arrest their sympathizers. Welcome to the new and improved Nigeria under President Buhari!
Do these Imams think they are the only ones who have read the Quran or the Hadiths of the prophet? I have read them too.
In one of the Hadiths the prophet said ‘- “None of you [truly] believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself’. Are these imams living by this adage?
Or do they not know that Christians are ‘people of the Book’ in Islam.
What does this council of Imam want to achieve by this highly provocative and insensitive call?
Cry my beloved country! It seems the beautiful ones are not yet born!
But going back to President Buhari and his actions and inactions, my question is this-How come President Buhari can investigate and fire Mr. Jim Obaze of the FRC very quickly yet he is still awaiting ‘further investigation’ before acting on Babachir Lawal? The way the President drags his foot when those around him are accused of corruption puts a question mark on his anti corruption crusade. What about the investigation of the Supreme Court Justice visiting Rotimi Amaechi, the grass cutting Secretary to the Government of the Federation and the budget padding civil servants?
And President Buhari is beginning to export his double standards beyond Nigeria’s borders. With all due regards, President Buhari is acting hypocritically in The Gambia! He refuses to confirm Justice Walter Onoghen as Chief Justice of Nigeria yet asks Jammeh to confirm Barrow as President! Since 1987, the most senior Justice of the Supreme Court automatically became Chief Justice of Nigeria. After 30 years of Northern Chief Justices of Nigeria, it became the turn of a minority Southerner and all of a sudden President Buhari refuses to nominate him as substantive CJN. Is that any different from what Jammeh is up to in The Gambia?
What moral right does a President who refuses to obey the judgment of an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) court ordering him to release Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) have to tell Jammeh to obey ECOWAS?
Both President Buhari and the new Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo plagiarized speeches by American Presidents but the similarities between them ends there.
The same day it was revealed that Ghanaian President Akufo-Addo’s speech was plagiarized is the same day he fired the man behind the speech. Fired mind you, not ‘redeployed’. In President Buhari’s own case of stealing President Obama’s speech it took two weeks before he ‘redeployed’ (not sack) the director involved. And this is a man who claims to have zero tolerance for corruption. I think the President mistakes zero tolerance for opposition for zero tolerance for corruption.
To show the value Nigeria places on human life, we sacked Obazee for embarrassing government over the Adeboye resignation but sacked no one because of the Southern Kaduna killings. We acquitted the suspected murderers of the beheaded Christian evangelist, Bridget Agbahime, but are diligently prosecuting Joe Chinakwe, who named his dog after his hero, President Buhari. We wait for public outcry before belatedly sending troops to help victims of foreign Fulani herdsmen but send out troops to catch and display alleged cattle rustlers on TV. What has happened to our humanity over the past 18 months? What have we used our hands to do to ourselves?
This past week we saw four Israelis killed in a terror attack in Jerusalem and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was at the ground zero of the attacks within an hour. An untold number of Nigerians were killed in Southern Kaduna and neither President Buhari or his vice has thought it wise to visit the area for an on the spot analysis or even to personally commiserate with the victims.
President Buhari has forgotten that on October 13, 2000 after some Fulanis were killed during clashes with local farmers in Shaki, Oyo State, that he physically went to the Ibadan office of the then Governor of Oyo state, Lam Adesina, and passionately protested against the killings and insisted that Governor Lam Adesina put an end to them.
Why is it that sixteen years after he did that, he has not been able to find the time to do for the people of Southern Kaduna what he did for the Fulani people in 2000?
But it is not all bad news though. There is hope for Nigeria. A young patriotic Nigerian, Mubarak Maishanu, recognized me at Istanbul airport. He is a Fulani from Bauchi state and a fan of former President Goodluck Jonathan. He has a picture of the former President as his screen saver. I made sure he spoke to the former President on phone and made his day. We need people like this to complete the handshake across the Niger! My prayer is that someday we will have more Mubaraks who want to shake hands over the Niger than those whose intentions across the Niger have more to do with hegemony than with harmony.
Omokri is the founder of the Mind of Christ Christian Center in California, author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God and Why Jesus Wept and the host of Transformation with Reno Omokri
