Dr. Ugoji Egbujo

In 1984 I visited Eyadema’s Togo. I was dumbfounded. Eyadema was after all an empty inconsequential vessel. The stark rurality and wretchedness of Lome and the cheerful naivety of its residents could only be surpassed by Gnassigbe’s megalomania. The national radio would pause and greet him almost hourly and would never forget to wish him well with his meals. His pictures which hung every where seemed to summon reverence from passersby. Policemen would line the routes he would travel and would herald his passage with their whistles which compelled everyone to stop and to join them in clapping furiously, waving frantically and smiling with a determination to please him.

With the enthusiasm with which the street submitted, it didn’t take long before my bemusement gave way to curiosity. I tried to find mockery beneath the obsequiousness, to lighten its stupidity, but I found duty. How did fear compel such a sense of duty? 1984 Lome was a house of slaves. Their devotion to the worship of Eyadema could only be explained perhaps by a diagnosis of pathological servility. I didn’t meet Eyadema but from his fruits I knew him. Many pastors in Nigeria today have turned their congregations to 1984 Togo.

North Korea’s Kim Jong -un and his father before him are perhaps the apotheosis of Eyadema’s social theory. The automaticity of the North Korean population and the vigour and uniformity of their compliance are the products of the brutality and repressive whimsicality of a depraved group that has seized the nation by the scruff of the neck and is dragging it face-down to the edge of an abyss. But if Kim and Gnassigbe god status can be explained by Pavlov, because states have instruments of coercion and torture, what will explain the culture of deification of pastors in Nigeria?

Regular pastors and even lunatics like Rev King all manage to be emperors in an age where the Bible and the Holy Spirit are freely available to brethren. You would think that in a society rendered prostrate by widespread poverty occasioned by wanton profligacy and unbridled thievery by the ruling class, the poor would despise anyone ,under any guise, abusing public trust for self enrichment. You would think that the down trodden who have flocked to church to seek solutions to problems their secular leaders recklessly and maliciously inflicted on them would be extra vigilant.

That they would resist attempts to replicate the demons that have haunted politicians, and made them mad. That they would protect the clergy from those demons. Lack of accountability, lack of tolerance for dissenting opinions and criticisms, self aggrandizement, corruption and theft, greed and megalomania, nepotism and cronyism, disregard for rigour and deliberation, disdain for scholarship and research, penchant for superficiality and frivolity, conspicuous charlatanism. These demons have seized the church, especially Pentecostalism to which I belong. That is why pastors are now pharaohs.

Pastor Adeboye like Pope Francis, epitomes humility, simplicity and sincerity, are revered for the right moral reasons. For remaining broken, contrite and therefore human despite all their fame and stature. But that tribe is almost extinct in the pentecostal circles. Who amongst the other pastors are like these two? The policy of the Catholic church, in line with Apostle Paul’s teachings, to keep priests away from the worries of raising families and accumulation of wealth has proved to be great wisdom. The Catholic church owns the priests while in many of the churches that abound now the priests literally own the churches and parishes.

The church of Christ is now littered with small men in cloth with huge egos. And their whims are passed across as dictates of the Holy Spirit. But in what is the veneration of pompous, empty, ineffectual, vessels preoccupied with self aggrandizement founded? Masters of glib talk whose personal lives cannot recommend them to anyone. The congregations know the truth but can’t pay the price of righteousness and the pastors interpose themselves between God and miracle seeking men in the manner of the prophets of the old testament, before the veil was torn.

Yes, Jesus came and ordained the whole congregation are priests . These pastors claim familiarity with God and congregations addicted to quick , easy fixes, worship the pastors in the erroneous belief that the pastors can help them attract divine help which ordinarily their unrighteousness and distance from God would deny them. The pastors , now gods, water down christian doctrines, permit all sorts and keep the needed numbers. If the congregation is Spirit filled and not deluded, the pastor loses his ‘divinity’. But the congregation wants magic. Pastors promise wonders at the sight of money.

God wants righteousness from the congregation. The congregation chooses to go to God through the ‘understanding’ pastor. That is why pastors receive more gifts than God and people no longer give secretly. Because those who give millions and millions to pastors do so because they believe that in so doing they will tap into the pastors’ chumminess with God. And since cronyism is the order in churches now, belonging to the pastor’s cult has added benefits. Only a few pastors understand the millions and billions of naira aren’t theirs.

Small pastors of small churches allow poor congregations empty their pockets to fund their lavish lifestyles. And they turnaround mercilessly , flaunt their ‘prosperity’ and mock the congregation by declaring that poverty is a curse or disease. But if these pastors were truly converted they would not need anyone to tell them that all gifts they receive, personal or otherwise, by virtue of their positions must go to the church and the work of God. Only a carnally minded pastor lives a lavish life style while children of God die of hunger and homelessness and God’s works suffer from privations. I refer to full time pastors and part time pastors who receive monies from the congregation.

Why do pastors who take offerings from the poorest of the poor in Nigeria ride limousines? Isn’t the flesh at war with the Spirit any longer? Why would a church that accepts offerings from wretched people buy Bentleys for pastors? The idea in itself is immoral. Pastors who live in lavish opulence in the midst of general poverty are not heavenly minded. Before you raise an eyebrow they will claim “God said”. The Bible makes it clear, “Feed my flock”- body and soul! How then do you milk the flock , leave them desperate and dying, and wallow in sybaritism? You urge them to give so they can receive and that’s good. Giving is good , giving to pastors is good too. But how do full time pastors accumulate so much wealth and live fantasy lives if they really understand giving? How do they get away with flying first class?

When Pentecostalism crept into Nigeria, the born again Christians of those days went about their Christianity with a determination to distance themselves from the world and worldliness. Many saw them as queer because they eschewed substantial mirth and embraced visible abstinence. They pursued their faith with stoicism and mocked, by their aloofness, all that the world cared about. And while the world worried about their non conformity with traditions, their exemplary honesty and general righteousness recommended them as consecrated people rather than deviants.

They would not be found at community meetings but would not be caught envying the pleasures they had foregone. They were scorned for separating themselves but they were perceived as otherwise standard bearers of morality. They were manifestly sin conscious. Salvation and sin, heaven and hell, dominated any interaction with them , they were severe and strict. But within them was a caring and sharing brotherhood that was so obsessed with heavenly ambitions that earthly rigours and pains of meager living inflicted by moral chastity was considered worthy and necessary sacrifice.

Pastors then across all divides were not exactly monks but were contented, simple, people called to a service of godliness, humanity, charity and peace . Pastors didn’t struggle to be wealthy because the church existed to redefine the terms of success the world knew. Then, prosperity preaching came , found a foothold in the Pentecostal churches and contaminated everything. And since Pentecostalism possessed the youths the corrosion proved contagious and seeped into many orthodox churches. The clergy then began to regard poverty as sin and began to do all not to be afflicted by it. Reckless unclothed ambition ran amok and precipitated a mushrooming of churches which now had owners and later became commercial concerns.

And the church that was once separated from the world gradually saw its appetite for worldliness grow. The orthodox churches , once disparaged for being spiritually docile by Pentecostalism, mocked the capitulation of the latter to greed, acrimony and money. They had viewed the pretensions to superior spirituality with the suspicion orthodoxy reserves for radical reformations. The visible corruption and commercialization of Pentecostalism they claimed were inevitable evils long foretold. The Catholic church has its own very ugly demons.

But who could have foretold that even the Assemblies of God church in Nigeria could be split down the middle , not for any theological controversy but for the sort of mundane things that motor park unions have learnt to manage. When pastors become gods the interest of Jesus becomes dispensable. The cult of personality pastors nurture in churches is not compatible with the sovereignty rights of the Holy Spirit.

TO BE CONTINUED