“PREDICTION ON NIGERIA”, WHO SHOULD WE BELIEVE? THE CIA OR THE NIGERIAN PASTORS?


I don’t know about you. I think we all now have a compelling reason to be raising this type of questions about Nigeria, given the current state of affairs in our country and the country’s very negative track record in more than 50 years as a sovereign state. Nigerians are clearly worse off today than we were at Independence with all its promise. We have never been more despondent, and rightly so, about the prospect of Nigeria staying together as one country than now.


Boko Haram is making the country ungovernable like they promised they would because they are bent on pulling back the hand of the clock because they are bent on “Islamizing” Nigeria and they hated western education and civilization, and the astronomical spread of Christianity which they now see as a threat and a counter force to Islam in the nook and corners of the Muslim North and they are scared to death about that. The Boko Haram insurrection runs far deeper than our naive President Jonathan and his Government and their security establishment are willing to admit. The Niger Delta militants are reacting to years of neglect and suffering as the parrot that lays the golden egg that has kept the country going for so long. Egbesu is holding sway in the eastern part of the country. Oodua’s People Congress is doing the same in the southwest. Poverty, Starvation, Crimes and Violence and double digit inflation, Unemployment and instability are ravaging the nation and nothing seems to be working. So much illegal arms have been imported to the country and it is only a question of time before the country collapses under its own weight.

To add more insult to an injury President Jonathan could not think of a better time to embark on his pet project to end the so-called subsidy than right now. You have to wonder what the go along to get along President was smoking to come to such a bizarre decision when he knew the CIA has been projecting the year 2015 as the potential end of the road for the geographical expression called Nigeria, and if he truly feels the pains of millions of Nigerians who voted for him and not his do-nothing PDP which is really absurd in my opinion because Jonathan is PDP and PDP is Jonathan Period. Why, for goodness sake, would President Jonathan and his Government do something that stupid is a legitimate question to ask? Providing some answers to that question is what my first article this year is all about. It is a clear case of those who the Gods would destroy. I leave you to complete the statement

Nigeria has gone near the precipice and has had many a close call so many times in our history. Nigeria still exists today only because she has been lucky and naive at the same time. I would not even credit that luck to God per see as some of you are likely to do. I would rather give much of the credit to a few of our leaders who have persuaded us to endure the inequities in our country by encouraging us to persevere because they strongly believe that our tomorrow would be better than our yesterday and our today and we believed them, sad to say.

Ogbuefi Nnamdi Azikiwe fondly called “Aisiki Iwe” by the Yorubas because he was as intellectually gifted as they come, in his prime, and he was a powerful and fearless journalist of the colonial era by giving hell to the British Imperialists who held Nigeria in bondage since 1914 by amalgamating the Northern and the southern protectorates, two odd couples who should have been allowed to go their separate ways from the “get go” if the British had not put their own interest before our own. The other leader is Obafemi Awolowo, the best President Nigeria never had, who was seen as the closest to a Messiah or an Osagyefo by the Yorubas and across section of Nigerians but was far less trusted by the power brokers in the North and the East. The Igbos called him “Alibaba”. The North saw him as a big threat and a stumbling block to their plan to permanently dominate Nigeria and they openly conspired to frustrate him out of public office and out of life because they claimed he was moving too fast for the country and taking them out of their comfort zone.

Then came the Ikemba, Odumegwu Ojukwu who actually challenged the whole country to a civil war he could easily have won, if the North and the West and their international collaborators had not conspired to defeat him and to run him out of town. I said it before and I would say it again that Ojukwu was right in 1967 and the rest of us were decidedly wrong because the avoidable disintegration Nigeria is facing today could easily have been nipped in the bud in 1967 if Nigeria has listened to the voice of reason. Ojukwu saw it coming and he courageously decided to do something about it while Azikiwe, who had become the unrepentant appeaser and compromiser who wrote the Biafran national anthem but was also the first to betray Biafra as beautifully summarized by Okoko Ndem in his powerful broadcast on the war we used to pick on the radio at the time.

The Biafran attempt failed for many more reasons than that. Obafemi Awolowo as Commissioner for Finance and Deputy Chairman of the Nigerian Executive Council at the time added the coup de grace with the stroke of his pen when he suggested to Gowon the immediate creation of 12 States which polarized Biafra and made it that much harder for the area now called South/South or the Calabar Ogoja River Axis as defined by Awolowo to remain committed to the Biafran war effort with their oil and natural gas and when the same Awo challenged the wisdom of making it easy for Biafra to get food and weapons to continue fighting the war.

Awolowo wanted the war to end because he eloquently argued it was only benefiting the war commanders and the Generals while holding the rest of Nigeria to ransom. It was a smart move that crippled Biafra and forced her to surrender while Ojukwu quickly disappeared into exile leaving the whole place in ruins.

The Biafran war ended 42 years ago but the inequities that informed that war are still very much with us today, believe it or not You can even argue it has multiplied tenfold and yet our leaders and our people are conflicted on who to believe on the predictions on Nigeria. I recall Awolowo once telling the Nigerians that the country’s economy was bound to unravel under the Shagari-led NPN unless some remedial action was taken to salvage it. He was immediately labeled a prophet of doom by the NPN but what he predicted came to pass because his prediction was based on empirical research and very powerful data and statistics that anyone with any basic knowledge of probability theory could not ignore or dismiss with the wave of the hand.

It is the same kind of research that has led the CIA to openly predict that Nigeria as we know it may not survive beyond 2015. It is the same CIA that has predicted revolutions in other places including the fall and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union with amazing accuracy. They did it with the Iranian Revolution under Shah Palavi and it came to pass. They did with the Arab Spring and it also came to pass with precision. They did it with South Africa and it came to pass with the release of Nelson Mandela and the fall of the Apartheid Regime. They did with Iraq, they did it with Egypt and now with Libya and Syria and they have all come to pass because they always did their homework. If the CIA got it right with Uganda under Idi Amin, with Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Waza Banga and so on and so forth why is Nigeria going to be different is a legitimate question to ask? The answer to that is probably because our leaders trust more their pastors than they do the CIA and all the political pundits and experts making predictions on Nigeria.

Bishop Olabayo of the Taborah fame in Ilorin and almost a stack illiterate used to publish every year his predictions on what would happen in Nigeria in particular and the world at large to prove his closeness to God and to get the attention of gullible Nigerians. He became famous for those revelations and his Church membership grew by leaps and bounds and he became a national figure at one point holding crusades and revivals all over the country as I recall. I am not exactly sure if he is still doing it today, or if he has beaten a retreat following some scandals in his Church.

The story goes on and on of Nigerians including our political leaders and even President and Governors holding night vigil in State Houses and putting all their hopes on every word uttered by their pastors before they make any policy decisions. They trust their pastors more than they trust their advisers and political pundits who are paid to advise them. Even though Dr. Jonathan belongs to the Anglican denomination, you see pictures of him kneeling down to receive blessings and seeking guidance at the monthly Holy Ghost night along Ibadan Express.

There is therefore no way in the world President Jonathan could have gone ahead to make his move on the flammable subsidy removal debate without a word of advice from one or two of his trusted pastors in Nigeria. I say so because I strongly believe the President committed an unforgivable blunder of his political life by taking such a dumb initiative in the current political climate of Nigeria. The apocalyptic eruption following his decision may well be the defining moment of his presidency and precipitate a chain reaction nobody is able to predict to borrow a cliche from the late Anthony Enahoro.

Continue Reading Article below,

When Bishop Olabayo started his yearly predictions some 30 years ago or more, the humble mathematician-turned General Overseer Enoch Adejare Adeboye from Ifewara had not found his voice and swagger as the spiritual equivalent of the Pope to the Evangelicals in Nigeria but more so to his Redeem Christian Church of God, the fastest growing Church in the whole world the last time I checked. The man was still struggling to make ends meet as a Lecturer at the University of Lagos like his other colleague in the same University, General Overseer Olukoya of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministry in Nigeria. Multi-millionaire clerics like General Overseers Kumuyi and David Oyedepo and other prominent preachers like T.M. Joshua, of the Synagogue, music idol Chris Okotie and others too many to recount in this article have not begun to make their mark as a force to reckon with in the evangelical movement which has now posed a major threat to the older denominations like the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Methodist, the Baptist, and the CAC to mention a few.

By any way you slice it, pastoral ministry as advertised and projected by the Evangelicals in Nigeria has now become one of the most lucrative business or career in Nigeria arguably next in line to Politics as number one and the Entertainment Industry as the number two. There are many more pastors in Nigeria today than any other vocation and it is so for obvious reasons. You would have thought that development should have made Nigeria a better country with so many born-again Christians showing up in every nook and corners of Nigeria from Port Harcourt to Sokoto and from Ifite Oraifite to Potiskum. The exact opposite is unfortunately the case as observed by the great Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu by faith when he told Christians “I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians because your Christians are so unlike Christ”

The proliferation and the spread of Churches in Nigeria has started forcing the Muslims to rethink their strategy on how best to respond to the Christian challenge using Islamic fundamentalist movement like Boko Haram and elements of Al Qaeda to put the Christians in check much to Nigeria’s peril. The Evangelicals have risen to quick prominence and influence in Nigeria as traditional worship, paganism and voodoo worship are fast becoming a major embarrassment to their few remaining devotees across the country. The idol worshippers are fast losing their members to the Evangelicals just like the older Churches are also struggling to find some ways to counter the wind of change blowing thru their Churches as their members decamp in huge numbers to the new Churches looking for instant gratification, predictions and Professor Peller kind of illusion and miracles. The observation is so intense and true that you no longer know who to believe.

. The pastors are quick to tell their members not to worry about anything because they are busy interceding with God on their behalf and their prayers and that their fasting would take care of everything they would ever need. But the truth is that the pastors are laughing all the way to the Bank and buying jets and driving the most expensive cars in town while their rank and file of their congregation wallow in penury They tell Nigerians God has revealed to them that second to the State of Israel, Nigeria is now next in line as the chosen nation and the elect of God. All our political leaders who daily seek refuge in the redemption camp are told by their pastors is just hold fast to God and it shall be well with them regardless of the mountain of problems facing the country.

The preachers tell our political leaders to not pay attention to CIA’s predictions and other political pundits and prophets of doom predicting that Nigeria may unravel by the year 2015. They forget to tell them that communist countries like Big China, the Russia Republic, India, North Korea, Japan, and most of the Islamic countries around the world including the State of Israel the birth place of Jesus who have all refused to recognize Jesus as the Messiah or believe in the Holy Trinity doctrine are as prosperous and blessed if not more so than many of the Christian countries around the world. If you don’t believe me go to Dubai or Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. Our foolish leaders believe all of that crap and that is one more reason the whole country is in a big mess today.

What differentiates these Nigerian pastors from the rest of their fellow countrymen is the fact that they make you believe that they have a special relationship with God who reveals to them not just what would happen in Nigeria but elsewhere around the world including Papua Guinea, even though many of these pastors cannot tell its location on the map, talk less of having been there at any time. They only go there in spirit and they make their predictions based on that. These preachers with the possible exception of Dr. Adeboye and a few of them have probably never heard anything before about Probability theory in Statistics or any data or record keeping that should help them in accurately formulating their predictions. Their predictions are based on the fact that they fast longer than any members of their Church and that they regularly have encounter with Jesus and they speak in tongues “A ri ba ba ba, Shinke tere, de robo, Mimo , Jehova, Alleluyah……,

The language is neither Greek nor Roman nor English nor French nor Hispanic. Those who speak in tongues would quite often tell you they themselves cannot interpret it. The role to interpret belongs to some other preachers and members of the Church with the anointing to do that. It is an exercise in foolhardiness and self- deceit that is sold to members as prophesies.

What qualifies them to make those predictions is just their special relationship with God which is very questionable if you examine the quality and the precisions of those predictions which are neither here nor there if you see what I see. I have just finished reading two of those predictions from General Overseers Adeboye and Olukoya as representative sampling. Those revelations are framed in a way that if they do not come to pass, you cannot, strictly speaking, hold the pastors to their words. They occasionally tell you some important politicians or traditional rulers would die in the New Year without assigning names. Tell me about it. Why would a few traditional rulers not die in any given year in a country so riddled with problems, disease, poverty, squalor, stressors galore and depravation like Nigeria where every village or hamlet now boasts of a traditional ruler of her own? All of them are ranked by their people as very important regardless of the size of their domains.

In Akure town alone the Ondo State capital we have three such crowned rulers. It is the same thing with politicians. Every Nigerian is a politician. The middle class has been totally wiped out in Nigeria leaving the filthy rich and the very poor. You only talk of the filthy rich millionaires who steal the nation’s resources and the poorest of the poor who have to kowtow to them. Their predictions tell Nigerians to expect some problems in the New Year but their bottom line is that Nigeria and those who believe in God would laugh last and laugh best regardless. It doesn’t take a Rocket scientist or any special relationship with God Or Jesus to come up with such a bland long-winded statements which often sound more like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.

I am a frequent visitor to Channel 5 every Sunday at 9 AM. I go there to listen to Rev. Joel Osteen, one of the best preachers in the business. The huge difference between Joel and the Nigerian preachers is that Joel does not indulge in making predictions based on any special relationship with God. You never hear the Bishop of Canterbury or the Pope himself making such predictions. You never see them doing what preachers in Nigeria do do on television cameras like Pastor Oyedepo’s recent slapping of a young member of his Congregation for having the effrontery to disagree with his Lordship by claiming to be a “Witch for Christ”

Pastor Oyedepo could not control his own impulse or anger. He not only gave the poor girl a dirty slap in the front of everybody he pronounced her as cut down and condemned to Hell because he considered it a heresy for the young girl to stand her ground. I would have thought that the Bishop was in need of deliverance himself, given his inability to control his rage and impulses in the public and taking in out on the poor girl from Imo. You would have thought the man was God or Jesus himself, considering his gloating about his power and the abrasive manner he had made placed a “Fatwa” on the innocent girl. Mahatma Gandhi was right again to have totally described many Christians as being totally different from Christ. It was amazing. Only in Nigeria could such physical abuse of a church member have been tolerated just like that.

I must end this write-up the way I started it by asking again the rhetorical question. Who must we believe? Is it the well informed pundits or the Nigerian pastors who thrive and profit by making false predictions seven days a week, 24 hours a day and 352 days in a year. Your guess is as good as mine.

I rest my case.

Dr. Wumi Akintide Wumione@AOL.com
New York, NY, USA

Peharps you didnt bother getting to the part of Pastor Adeboye's prediction where he said 'at the end of the year, Nigerians shall say ; all is well that ends well". Surely that was too vague for your atheist arsse.

The evils of George Bush/CIA will be repaid one day!