It’s a pity that Bishop
Matthew Kukah was the only cleric who stuck out his neck for Goodluck
Ebele Jonathan. It’s also a pity that the only one who does not want to
be a hypocrite is on the burner of fiery criticism.
It’s also a pity that corruption, the
bane of our history and cultural fabric, was played down by Nigeria’s
most intellectual man of God.
But these were not the most telling of
my experiences last week. I debated GEJ with a prominent writer, and he
defended the scum of his era. His case: Nigeria created Jonathan and
Nigeria had to live with him. Was Jonathan a corrupt man, I asked? He
wallowed into meaningless obfuscation. He would not accept that his
administration was bad. Neither would he agree that his government
misruled this country. He said he was good for Nigeria.
After that conversation and the gaffe
from Kukah, I told myself that no ruler in Nigerian history has
corrupted fine minds like Jonathan since the IBB era.
The philosopher David Hume once
asserted: “The corruption of the best produces the worst.” He reeled out
this line in respect of religion.
In the same week when all sorts of foul
charges were pelted at the door of Jonathan’s regime, the ex-president
was photographed bouncing off a private jet. He wanted to see animals at
a Games Reserve in East Africa with his wife and others who followed
him on another private jet. The same week when the Immigration boss was
suspended for corrupting the process of employment, the NPA was reported
to have spent N160 billion of N162 billion it made last year. The NPA
story also tells us that most of their dealings were undervalued, a code
word for corruption.
Kukah, a constant motif in Nigerian
debates, is a master of the rigmarole. You hardly know where he stands
on an issue. He navigates a warren of narratives, entices you with his
folky ability to spin a yarn, props up the pros and cons with almost
equal poise, and berths in a never-land. A few times he is caught in a
position, he is exposed. He did that when he profiled the ethnic groups
in the country. And now this.
He probably needs to read Jesus’ admonition that “let your yea be yea and your nay nay.”
Why Kukah’s case is sad is that I
expected all those Christian clerics who did not have enough of Jonathan
as a son of God to say something. Did Jonathan not visit all of them?
Did they not endorse him? Was it not because of them that his numbers
went up in the Southwest? Was he not doling out prophet’s offerings in
dollars?
Are they not aware of all the revelations now? Is curse not in the house of the thief, according to scriptures?
Why did they leave Kukah alone to say
what all of them probably thought? Did they not robe Buhari in Boko
Haram clothing? Was Buhari not the devil? Or have they changed their
minds, or are they rethinking them? Many of them who claimed to hear
from God, did they hear wrong?
“He that hath my word, let him speak it
faithfully,” wrote Prophet Jeremiah. “What is the chaff from the wheat?”
Did Jesus not say, “I have not sent them, depart from me, ye that work
iniquity?”
Was it a mistake? Why not repent openly?
Prophets can err, but they owe it to their flocks to own up. None of
them has gone back to their flock to discuss what happened in the
Jonathan era? Was it the veil of Satan, or they said what they did not
hear?
Why has any of them not asked the CAN
leader Ayo Oritsejafor to speak in the spirit of contrition about the
waywardness of their prophesies and injunctions.
Kukah’s peace committee, as Tatalo Alamu
noted, was not intended to shoo Jonathan out of power. It boomeranged
with Buhari victory. They erred by asking Buhari to follow the rule of
law. He had not flouted it or shown any sign he was going to. When
outrage was bursting out ears about the sums of money allegedly stolen,
it was out of sync with the Gospels and human dignity to use rule of law
as veneer. Then Kukah showed their true colour when he said Jonathan
did a spectacular thing, so we should move on.
The good voice of the week came from the
Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar III, when he asked that all thieves
should go to jail. That is the sort of thing Jesus would have said.
History is replete with men of God who
associated with rulers of decay. Recently, the era of George W. Bush was
marked by clerics who paraded the White House. Eventually his ranking
among people fell. The man who had mentioned Jesus as his role model
left office as a liar and “murderer.” The same clerics fell into moral
filth and disgrace.
Kukah did not lose his way, I think. The
fog just cleared and our eyes just opened to his vision of Nigeria.
Clerics are good on the pulpit, but we should not be pupils of their
conduct. The Bible is replete with men of great revelations who erred in
conduct from Abraham to Peter the rock.
“If I had served my God as I have done
my king, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs.” Those were
the words of Cardinal Wolsey who mortgaged his sacerdotal conscience to
King Henry VIII of England. Henry VIII was a monarch for life. GEJ
reigned only for about eight years. So the clerics returned to their
duties. Shakespeare’s rendition of the quote hits the bull’s eye. Since
most of the clerics have not ruined their callings. Here is
Shakespeare’s rendering in his play Henry VIII: “Had I but served my God
with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age have left
me naked to my enemies.”
The bard of Avon anticipated Kukah who
is now being roasted by his enemies. Wolsey did not follow the law.
Henry the VIII who wanted to break with the Catholic Church to have a
divorce and marry a Boleyn sister, met resistance in Thomas More as
Robert Bolt’s dramatised in his play, A Man for All Seasons. Thomas
Cromwell was More’s counterpoise as shown in Hilary Mantel’s novel,
Bring Up the Bodies. Both books shed light on the critical time in
English and world history. It pitted men of God against worldly
opportunists and their kings. Robert More alone survives today as a man
of conscience.
I enlist this column with the Sultan.
Probe and jail. The Jonathan era was a corpulent corpse. It stinks and
infects. Ebenezer Babatope, no role model, says Jonathan was pure.
Technically maybe. But not morally. If you preside over rottenness, you
cannot be free of its stench. But if there was a law against foolishness
in leadership, GEJ will go to jail. But he will have to explain to us
as a people how all of these happened on his watch. Just as the CAN and
its members should explain how their ‘eyes of understanding’ did not see
what the lay voter saw of the corpulent corpse of the GEJ era. Lying is
corruption. It’s time for all to be true to themselves. As Shakespeare
wrote in Henry VIII: “Corruption wins not more than honesty.”
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