The
news media, print and electronic, were awash with the news of the
acquisition of a Private Jet by Pastor Ayodele Joseph Oritsejafor, the
current President of the Christian Association of Nigeria founding
Pastor of Word of Life Bible Church, Warri, Delta state. The news had it
that the special occasion, which had President Goodluck Jonathan in
attendance, was a double-header- birthday and 40th anniversary on the
pulpit.
We were also told that it was a hugely exhilarated Pastor Oritsejafor
that informed his congregants, for which they danced and sang for
several minutes, that their money had given him a Private Jet, a
10-seater bombardier/challenger 601 plane. Unconfirmed reports put the
cost of the aviation bird (excluding fuelling, hangar charges and
pilots’ fees) as ranging between N2Billion and N8Billion, depending on
the age, model and fittings. The report further had it that this
effectively put the flamboyant Pastor as a member of the crème de la
crème of super rich folks in the nation’s polity. However, what was not
clearly stated was whether, as the case with many
Nigerian Pastors, there is any difference between the church funds and
Oritsejafor’s personal money.
I met Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor for the first time in 1981 as a student
of University of Ife. A Christian musical group had invited him to
preach at its campus-wide outreach program. First, he asked if we knew
how to get excited. He went on to jump up a few times before settling
down to preach. He told us about his escapades with the ganja-smoking
gangs in Lagos Island before his conversion.
That day, Pastor Oritsejafor made such great impression on our young
minds that we clapped excitedly. Later, in the late eighties, I read
about the relationship turned sour with his erstwhile Mentor and
Spiritual Father, Late Arch-Bishop Benson Idahosa. This unmanaged
disagreement ultimately led to his exit from Pastoral work at the
Warri branch of Idahosa’s Church of God Mission.
Indeed, Pastor Oritsejafor’s jet is just another statistic in the fad
among Gospel preachers in the materialistic lusts that bear no biblical
basis. These avaricious desires have often been explained away as
necessary to facilitate the movement of the founding pastors for the
work of evangelization. Time and again, this argument has
often been defeated by the fact: the Queen of England and the British
Prime Minister, the heads of government of Britain – where most of the
missionaries that brought the gospel to Africa came from – do not even
have official private jets! It is part of the behavior of man to
rationalize obscenity. It does not occur to these pastors that, with a
burgeoning army of unemployed youths and deliberate government policy
to pauperize the citizenry, the only place of succor for the people
should be the church! There is hardly any church with sustained and
sustainable welfare program to cater for the peasants that form the
preponderant population as congregants. It is incredibly callous to
imagine the level of inequality that is cultivated and sustained in most
Nigerian churches. In his speech at Stanford University in 2005, the
late co-founder of Apple Computer said: “I would walk the 7 miles across
town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna
temple. I loved it” That aptly explains the indelible impression that a
devoted, selfless and well-entrenched welfare
program of religious bodies can have on peasants. When the Nigerian
Pastor adorns himself with the most expensive garment from famous
designers, he deludes himself with the same worn-out rhetoric: only the
best is good for my God! The unfortunate thing is that this mindset is
at variance with the biblical principles. From the Old Testament
scriptures, the LORD had firmly established the principle of
the-strong-helping-weak as a basis for continued national blessing. Of
course, it is diametrically opposed to the world’s economic system –
predicated on the ‘strong devouring the weak’.
In the book of Deuteronomy chapter 15, the LORD, having established
that the poor would always exist at any instantaneous time, went to
establish their sustenance by the rich, as a basis for continued
blessings. The LORD reasoned that, by this mindset in HIS people,
poverty would, inexorably, be banished in the Land. Also, this was the
principle that the early believers showed in ‘Acts of the Apostles’ that
distinguished them and caused such mighty miracles that was the
magnetizing basis for numerical growth!
James ‘Jim’ Bakker is an American Tele-evangelist, former host with
his then wife (Tammy Faye Bakker), now late, of the PTL Club, a popular
evangelical Christian television program. By the early 1980s,the Bakkers
had built Heritage USA in Fort Mill, South Carolina,(south of
Charlotte), then the third most successful theme park in the US, and a
satellite system to distribute their network 24 hours a day across the
country. Contributions requested from viewers were estimated to exceed
$1 million a week, with proceeds to go to expanding the theme park and
mission of PTL. In their success, the Bakkers took conspicuous
consumption to an unusual level for a non-profit organization. PTL’s
fund raising activities between 1984 and 1987 underwent scrutiny by The
Charlotte Observer newspaper, eventually leading to criminal charges
against Jim Bakker. From 1984 to 1987, Bakker and his PTL associates
sold $1,000 “lifetime
memberships”, which entitled buyers to a three-night stay annually at a
luxury hotel at Heritage USA. According to the prosecution at Bakker’s
later fraud trial, tens of thousands of memberships had been sold, but
only one 500-room hotel was ever completed. Bakker “sold” more
“exclusive partnerships” than could be accommodated, while raising more
than twice the money needed to build the actual hotel. A good deal of
the money went into Heritage USA’s operating expenses, and Bakker kept
$3.4 million in bonuses for himself. Following a 16-month Federal grand
jury probe, Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud,
15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy.
In 1989, after a five-week trial which began on August 28 in
Charlotte, the jury found him guilty on all 24 counts, and Judge Robert
Potter sentenced him to 45 years in Federal prison and a $500,000 fine.
According to Frances FitzGerald in an April 1987 New Yorker article,
“They epitomized the excesses of the 1980s; the greed, the love of
glitz, and the shamelessness; which in their case was so pure as to
almost amount to a kind of innocence.” Detractors often said the PTL,
acronym for Praise The Lord, as meaning: Pass The Loot.
I have often believed that if the same kind of scrutiny that Jim Bakker
passed through is allowed in Nigeria, many of the Pastors on the pulpit
now in our Churches would be in Jail or on their way to Jail!
Churches are exempted from paying taxes because they are categorized
as non-profit organizations. However, if a supposed non-profit
organization procures an asset worth hundreds of millions of naira for
assuaging the luxurious indulgence of an individual, the State should,
by fiscal policy, be made to eke some revenue from such transactions.
The ‘non-profit’ status conferred on any organization should subsist so
long they exist to ensure that the preponderance of the people find
meaning to life; if the purpose of a supposed non-profit organization
changes to promoting ostentation, the status should equally be reviewed.
A closer look at this Oritsejafor’s Plane connotes other things. The
conspicuous presence of Mr President on the day has its portent.
Ordinarily, it can be said that, owing to the fierce closeness of the
twosome, there is nothing strange in the President’s presence. Before
the April 2011 Presidential election, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor had used
his privileged position as CAN President to promote candidate Goodluck
Jonathan as ‘the anointed of the LORD’ among Nigerian Christians.
Following the post-election violence, like a bolt out of the blues,
Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor held a Press Conference on April 25, 2011 and
called for the arrest of General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB). It did not
matter to the obscenely flamboyant pastor that his incoherent and
unverifiable allusions are unsupportable in any organized human
establishment. Sensing that this may be a prelude to his formal arrest
by the Jonathan regime, GMB (through his spokesman, Yinka Odumakin) said
inter-alia: “Our attention has been drawn to a totally misguided call
for the arrest of General Muhammadu Buhari by Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor in a
reckless abuse of the office of the President of Christian Association
of Nigeria (CAN) for a purely political consultancy for Aso Rock.
”It is unfortunate that he has chosen the Easter day, when most
Christian leaders were espousing the message of love which the risen
Christ symbolizes, to make a satanic call capable of only pouring
gasoline into a burning flame which casts him in the mould of a PDP goon
rather than a responsible faith leader whose words at the moment
should be of healing and reconciliation.
”In all his sound and fury, Pastor Oritsejafor did not provide any
evidence to link Gen. Buhari to the wave of unfortunate spontaneous
revolt against vote theft in parts of the country beyond playing the
role of a “false accuser of the brethren”.
“It is on record that the CPC Presidential flag bearer has distanced
himself and the Party from the mayhem severally and strongly condemned
the burning of worship places and alleged killings of youth corps
members. Till date, nobody has brought out any contrary facts beyond
false innuendos and character assassination which Pastor Oritsejafor has
also been recruited into.
“The ridiculous claim by the cleric that Buhari is culpable because
there were disturbances where he won is like calling Oritsejafor a hemp
smoker because someone is seen smoking marijuana around the premises of
Word of Life Bible Church. Absurdity!
“While we concede to the Villa Priest who is widely believed to be a
beneficiary of the rot that presently defines governance in Nigeria the
right to defend the tainted victory of the PDP, we frown at the use of
the CAN mask to prosecute his Aso Rock brief.
”Our collective memory is not so short as not to know that unlike
other revered men of God who have been on that exalted seat and spoke
truth to power in the order of Samuel who put God’s command above the
fat of oxen, we don’t have a quote of Pastor “Oritsejafor on the
unbridled corruption and open banditry that has been the defining rule
of governance in the country. The images of him the people have is
roaming the villa corridors and parading government houses across
Nigeria giving spiritual succour to treasury looters.
“If Pastor Oritsejafor happens to be a sounding board for President
Jonathan’s crackdown, we strongly suspect he is, we can only say: G00D
LUCK!” Rumor mill had it that the President’s presence was actually to
deliver into Oritsejafor’s hands, the generous gift from him. Indeed,
the antecedents of Dr Goodluck Jonathan reveal his rich generosity to
those who have helped his ascendancy to the throne. Dr Reuben Abati,
after his deployment of literary prowess in skewing negative public
opinion towards GMB as the originator of the post-election violence in
his Guardian Newspaper column, was promptly rewarded with a top position
in Jonathan’s government. Confiding in his former Boss and Publisher as
the basis for desiring the Job, Abati had reasoned that
this would afford him the opportunity to travel around the world with
the President. In short, in the despicable attempt to blacken GMB, there
was a confluence of a life-long dream and a capricious lust for power!
What this obscenity in our churches portends is the disappearance of
free, passionate service by the youths. Virtually everything is now
monetized! Churches now pay handsomely the Youths (in the congregation)
to play musical instruments for the weekly services. If the Youths of
the Nation are being orientated with the mindset of constantly gauging
their services against the pecuniary returns, then the nation’s future
is blighted indeed. The wider implication of these societal anomalies is
seen in the new private universities dotting the landscape. The
preponderance of these universities is owned by religious bodies. I dare
to ask: how many children of the peasants (of the church organizations)
are in these schools that charge very prohibitive fees? In the early
90’s, I was at a book launch in which the late business mogul, Chief MKO
Abiola, was the chief launcher. He bought some copies of the book (with
a fat cheque) to be given to his alma mater, the Baptist Boys high
school, Abeokuta. He then went on to eulogize the Baptist convention for
giving him a chance for education despite his indigent status. He
further revealed that there was never
any school term that he ever paid his tuition fees in less than four
installments! So it goes to show that whilst the missionaries, that
travelled far and long to bring the gospel, came with the matra of
‘freely you have received, freely give’, the Nigerian clergy have now
reviewed this to assuage their avaricious appetites. As I was putting
finishing touches to this article, I discussed with a friend and
class-mate at the University. He narrated how the Pastor of a church
(that established a secondary school and University somewhere in Ogun
state) withdrew his son from the secondary school (on the first year)
because of inability to cope with the prohibitive tuition fees.
Meanwhile, the Pastor/Founder of the Church organization rollicks around
with at least two private Jets. Is it a tale of the Pastors prospering
while the ‘plundered’ congregants struggle to eke out decent living?
If the truth must be told, the religious bodies (especially the
church) are fast losing relevance, owing to inability to cater for the
dislocations of the people’s economy as a result of the deliberate
pauperization policies of the government. How the church moves from here
to repair its besmirched reputation is what would be evinced in the
immediate future.
Meanwhile, I wish Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor safe flights in the exquisite jet with the gold-plated interior!
Rotimi Fashakin (Engr.)
Plot 1132, Festus Okotiebo crescent, Utako Abuja.
Fashakin is the National Publicity Secretary of Congress for
Progressive Change (CPC).
A
man in the Nigerian city of Suleja has approved of sexual relations
between his 39-year-old wife and 19 years old son, saying there is
nothing wrong with it. Towing the same line of thought, the son and wife
equally see nothing wrong in their incestuous relationship.
