I was with a pastor of one of the fastest growing Lagos-based Pentecostal churches and we spent half of the time on Sunday talking about the Mbaka message. Ejike Mbaka is the Enugu-based Catholic priest who said on New Year’s Eve that time was up for President Goodluck Jonathan and asked him to step down.
My host said he had watched the 21-minute video more than once. On the website www.buzzmention.com, a social media aggregator, Mbaka’s message dented Jonathan’s rating against his APC rival, Muhammadu Buhari, and is still trending.
My host said that as he watched the video the second time, alone with his wife, he turned to her and said it was a shame that this message was coming from the south east. “I told my wife that it’s a pity that, until now, no other pastor or clergy had the courage to say what Mbaka has said. It was blunt. And this is coming from the south east where we thought it was always all about the money,” the pastor said.
He was right. Not necessarily about the courage part. I had said in my column last week that since there’s no way to keep predictors honest, if they say God said, you either take it or leave it. In any case, since the first family – and apparently many prominent politicians – has formed the habit of going to bed with prophets, they cannot cry foul when they are at the receiving end.
Apparently, it was not only what Mbaka said that shocked my host; it was also where it was coming from. Until now, there was hardly any political calculation of the 2015 presidential election that did not assign 100% of the votes in the south east to Jonathan. It was often assumed that he had bought off the south east and locked it away.
However, after Mbaka’s message, delivered to thousands of jubilant followers in Enugu and from elsewhere in the south east, the pundits will have to return to the drawing board.
The south east is in ferment. Three days after Mbaka’s message, the press reported that Ohaneze Ndigbo failed to endorse Jonathan. That does not confer automatic advantage on Buhari. But what it shows clearly is that even though Abuja politicians from the south east may be telling Jonathan what he wants to hear, conditions on the ground are far more complicated.
Let me return to Mbaka. He is not a stranger to controversy. He first came to limelight around 2002, when he accused Chimaroke Nnamani’s government of extrajudicial killings. Among those killed on Nnamani’s watch at the time in Enugu were Sunday Ugwu, whom the killers mistook for his brother Nwabueze, a state legislator and thorn in the side of Nnamani; Engineer Nwankwo, brother to Arthur Nwankwo; and Professor Chimere Ikoku, former vice chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Mbaka raised the alarm against the spate of killings and, for daring to speak up, assassins were sent after him. He narrowly escaped death in one of the attacks during which his car was reportedly stopped, and assassins fired at him from point-blank range. Like him or hate him, the man has earned his stripes.
Some people in Jonathan’s camp may be telling him that the priest’s message was a hatchet job paid for by the opposition. Already, foot soldiers are at work, calling Mbaka names and accusing him of double-speak. He has received death threats and the church might yet wield the big stick. I hope not. I hope what John Cardinal Onaiyekan said about punishing Mbaka was his personal opinion.
Those who now despise Mbaka must remember that this same priest and the Jonathans have been good friends. When the first lady visited him in November and, on her knees, asked for his blessing and a sign that her husband would be reelected, few knew about it. Fewer still knew about the sign Mbaka gave on that visit – of one of the four birds that refused to fly, or details of what he discussed with the first lady after the midnight service at Adoration Ground.
If the first lady and her household have made a habit of prophesy tourism, they’ll have to take the good with the bad. Mbaka and the Jonathans deserve each other. I’ve said it before that when a president wears religion – any religion – on his sleeves, not to adhere to its precepts but to use it to cover his incompetence, he will end up a victim of his own fantasy.
What, in any case, did Mbaka say that is causing so much misery in the president’s camp? He lamented the current state of insecurity, massive unemployment – especially among youths, poor state of public schools and infrastructure and the endemic corruption and stealing on Jonathan’s watch. Of course, he also ruffled ecclesiastic feathers by accusing top clergy of condoning and profiting from the drift.
Rather than stitching Mbaka in a wet blanket, Jonathan should face the points at issue and tell the public exactly what he has done in these areas. His first duty is to secure the country. An article in The Guardian by Sonala Olumhense on May 6, 2012, listed at least 26 vows by Jonathan between 2011 and 2012 to end Boko Haram. As you read this piece, a chunk of this country, the size of Northern Ireland, is under the control of Boko Haram. Yet, things are getting worse.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, unemployment in Nigeria was 21.4 per cent in 2010, 23.9 per cent in 2011, and 25.7 per cent in 2012. It’s been progressively worse since Jonathan started his first term.
When Jonathan took over, total power generation was 4,200MW. An insider once told me that he vowed that he would not even think of a second term if power supply remained at that level. Then he plunged into a power privatisation programme bereft of a gas master plan. Today, power generation is around 2,900MW, and falling. It’s a measure of how much power has improved that Aso Rock’s budget for generator maintenance is still knocking on one billion naira.
Corruption festers while the government looks the other way as it piles up committee upon committee.
It would be uncharitable to say Jonathan has done nothing. But the answer to Mbaka’s message is not to insult him, threaten to penalise him, or accuse him of betrayal without proof.
Let the president say what he has done, for which he deserves a second term, apart from adding Azikiwe and Ebele to his name. That’s the heart of Mbaka’s message.

by Oti Iroegbu

Fact!

GMB will win