Akume, Oritsejafor: Lessons from Catholic conspiracy

THE  election of Senator Busola Saraki as Senate President of the 8th Senate and Yakubu Dogara as Speaker Representatives with their respective deputies teaches memorable lessons. The first lesson teaches us the intricacies of change as a constant factor. Constancy as a factor of change demands that those who clamour for change are bound to the forces of change even within their chosen parameter of change and thus must accept any wind of change that trails their political thoroughfare.

What this means is that even those Nigerians who clamoured for change as defined by the present APC in power should not expect President Muhammadu Buhari to rest consistently on the oars of his promises of change. His inability to make his assets public before the same Nigerians he promised few months ago to herald an unflinching change and accountability is clearly a smack of this constancy of change. What it means today is, if President Buhari renegades in his promises, he is still within the political confines of change as so defined. It also means that even the APC leader Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu should accept his waterloo experience at the National Assembly as part of the same progressive forces of change that saw APC in power today.

The second lesson teaches us again, against the background of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s waterloo experience at the National Assembly that a northern Christian  is a better brother to the Caliphate than his Yoruba Muslim counterpart. Can this be questioned against the background of a Christian Yakubu Dogara expressing gratitude to His Eminence Sa’ad Abubakar III, the Sultan of Sokoto for helping him to emerge Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives against the resolute desire of a Muslim Bola Ahmed Tinubu to impose a Muslim Femi Gbajabiamila? Definitely, as the godfather of progressive change Asiwaju  Tinubu has no choice than to accept the outcome as part of the same progress in the same change he preaches, just as in the case of Moshood Abiola’s June 12 experience.

But more striking is the third lesson which goes to sustain the commonplace argument that any political edifice built on a foundation of shifting sand of irreconcilable ideological blocs cannot withstand the constancy of change within the same orbit of shifting foundation. As the shifting political equation of this shifting edifice stands today, the CPC/ANPP bloc controls the executive arm of the Federal Government; the PDP through her reneged sons controls the Federal Legislature, while the ACN controls the  lame-duck APC party structure with the consolatory office of the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

But the most memorable lesson of this constancy of change as arising from the melodramatic election at the National Assembly is the striking change in the expected political fortune of a group that so much stuck out her neck in such a manner that tended to question the spiritual solemnity and credibility of her leadership. Under President Goodluck Jonathan, the Roman Catholic Church had the number three citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator David Mark, then the Senate President and the Deputy Speaker of the House of Reprsentatives. Indeed from the emerging political equation of the time, David Mark should have by now been the frontrunner for the coming 2019 Presidential election, when the Christian Middle Belt should be expected to produce the next President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

But it appears all have become a subject of history against the background of Roman Catholic conspiracy against the common good and fundamental aspirations of the entire body of Nigerian Christians and its apex leadership the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) expressed through the enigmatic leadership of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor. Against the background of a Christian President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of Protestant extraction and a Christian Senate President of Roman Catholic extraction, the Roman Catholic had in much a suicide fashion designed within the fulcrum of their myopic political ingenuity a plan to subtly root for a Rotimi Amaechi Vice Presidency under an Atiku Abubakar Presidency, with a George Akume Senate Presidency. The Amaechi Vice Presidential project hastily evaporated as soon as the Atiku presidential project collapsed, but the Akume incendiary vision of unseating David Mark continued until the recent imbroglio which saw a change within a change.

Utilising the seed of Tiv-Idoma rivalry in Benue State, the Roman Catholics had believed that a George Akume Senate Presidency would be the better recipe for their perceived marginalisation from national political leadership than a visionary David Mark under President Goodluck Jonathan’s mentorship.

If one may ask, at the end of counting, what political stock is now left for the Roman Catholics to gather?

Yes, Goodluck Jonathan lost the election in line with the aspirations of the Roman Caholic leadership, but how far did it change the political fortunes of the Roman Catholic leadership? We now have the missionary journeys of a Rotimi Amaechi Vice Presidency and a George Akume Senate Presidency collapsing Jericho-wise.

Today, under the Presidency of a Muslim General Muhammadu Buhari the number two citizen is a Protestant, the Senate President a Muslim, Deputy Senate President a Protestant, Speaker of the House of Representatives a Protestant, and his Deputy a Muslim. Does it not prove that the God of the Nigerian Christians is a just God who is always rewarding his owns in accordance with the proportions of their faith and labour in Christ?

What is most striking about this weird Roman Catholic conspiracy in their pursuit for mundane vainglory is that in their inglorious bid to stop the re-election of President Goodluck Jonathan they threw every caution of spiritual solemnity and customary integrity overboard. They began first by questioning the wisdom of overt support for a fellow Christian President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by the apex Christian body, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), and went further to announce their exit from the organization in the most despicable manner that tended to malign and question the integrity of President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian, whose only sin was being a Protestant, and the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, whose only sin was to have challenged and defeated His Eminence Cardinal John Onaiyekan in the CAN Presidential election.

For daring to challenge the Cardinal Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor must not rule over them and must be crucified, forgetting that it was the same Cardinal Onaiyekan that defeated the then Primate of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Peter Jasper Akinola. But the question here is, which Muslim group, in spite of the deep sectarian divide that pervades Islam today, will have the audacity to question His Eminence the Sultan of Sokoto for any form of relationship he chooses to have with President Muhammadu Buhari today? We call on the Roman Catholic leadership to as well question the Sultan of Sokoto’s role in influencing the emergence of Hon. Yakubu Dogara as Speaker of House of Representatives. Onye kpua afele a mkpokolo-ugba wa ewelea kpue ashisha, goes a popular saying among the West-Niger Igbo. “If you call your plate a rubbish-can then people will use it to pack rubbish”, simply explains the meaning of those words.

This was what the Roman Catholic Church leadership tended to achieve by further engaging in weird coordinated effort to further transform the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) under the leadership of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor into a political lame-duck. There was the Cardinal Anthony Olubunmi Okogie not only urging President Goodluck Jonathan to forget seeking a second term, went ahead to cast aspersions on the persons of Primate Sunday Mbang  and Pastor Oritsejafor for supporting respectively Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan. There was an Episcopal Town Hall Meeting especially organized   by Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama to mobilize support against President Jonathan. There was a Rev. Father Ejike Mbaka ravening unprintable insults on the person of President Goodluck Jonathan. There was an incendiary Rotimi Amechi despoiling the political thoroughfares of Rivers State against President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife. Then there was the mother of all Catholic assaults on Pastor Oritsejafor’s integrity, a George Akume pouring all manner of unprintable satanic and heinous invectives against the person of the CAN President, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor.

For the purpose of the lessons of history, it is important to recast by way of quotation two excerpts from Akume’s mindless tirade against the CAN President using them to remind him of the consequences of the biblical injunction as stated in Psalm 105:15, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” Reacting to the trumped up allegation of laundering 93 million US dollars against the CAN President, Akume in the first paragraph of his statement wrote: “I wish to express my utmost dismay and anger over how hard Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor the President of CAN is working to destroy the little credibility that is left of this once glorious organization. Still trending a clearly criminal, immoral and unethical act is being white washed with religious grandstanding,” Again, penultimate to his conclusion he wrote:”My appeal to my brothers in the north is that, what they see in CAN today has nothing to do with Christianity but everything to do with crass materialism and self-seeking opportunism. Thank God, not all hope is lost for Christendom. When Nigerian Christians expect a voice of reason from its leaders, such voice always comes assuredly from the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria (CBCN)”.

One act which can be assertively stated here is that no Christian of Protestant extraction and claiming to thread on the path of God will ever address any Roman Catholic Bishop in the manner that George Akume did to the person of our CAN President, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor. Was that not a contravention of the injunctions of Psalm 105:15?

The question raging in our political terrain today is where is George Akume in the APC political scheme of things after all his inglorious roles of political Judas-Iscariot of the Nigerian Christendom? Yes, Goodluck Jonathan is out and nobody, not even President Muhammadu Buhari will deny the fact that President Goodluck Jonathan remains Nigeria’s number one man of political honour and valour.  But could this be said of the person of Senator George Akume?

The Holy Bible in Acts of Apostles 1:20 emphatically stated the judgment the likes of George Akume will expect in payment for their Judas Iscariot roles, “…and his bishoprick let another take.” Arising from this biblical piece of judgment, it should be recalled that Senator George Akume had penultimate to the election of Senate President sated ipso facto: “As a Minority Leader, automatically I should have become the presiding officer and it is important to take note of this…. and I believe that given my track record and the fact that I have been leading my caucus in the Senate, I should be considered the most worthy man to preside over the affairs of the Senate.” Yes, George Akume considered himself the most qualified and most worthy to occupy the position of Senate President. But did God consider him as such? From Minority Leader to what? Is this not the case of how are the mighty fallen?

This is the lesson we expect the Roman Catholic leadership to learn. They should accept the standing fact that the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is not a platform for liturgical disputations, but a launching pad for addressing vexatious issues bordering on the discriminations, disenfranchisement and persecutions of the Nigerian Christendom hence the association is built on three fundamental factorial pillars: the long years of Muslim dominated military dictatorship that saw the progressive degeneration of the Nigerian Christian personality, the arising discrimination and persecution of Christians through the instrumentality of political power, and the clear-cut Muslim aspiration to impose an Islamic State on Nigeria.

Is it not imperative therefore that both CAN and its leadership cannot avoid being part of the political processes in Nigeria? So where then lie the sins of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor who has variously been described in Arabic terms by the Muslims as the Saifudin of Christianity (Sword of the Christian Religion) for making the CAN for once in Nigeria’s political history politically relevant and a force within the political terrain of the Nigerian Federation?

Dr. Tony Nwaezeigwe, Ag ||Director, Centre for Igbo Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.