“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
– The Holy Bible.
By Nduka Uzuakpundu
What may, ultimately, culminate in a religious crisis of a frighteningly, monstrous proportion is gradually brewing on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, especially the Ogun State stretch, which is a vital economic route that links Lagos with other parts of the country. Until the advent of Pentecostal churches and other wild branches of the Cross, it was almost, always, an easy and pleasurable drive on the expressway. It was possible, in those halcyon days, to drive on the congestion-and-pot-hole-free road from Lagos to Benin City in two hours; Warri or Onitsha, three; Port Harcourt, a little over five; Ibadan, 50 minutes and Ijebu-Ode, 35. Then, there was a slogan: “breakfast in Onitsha, lunch in Lagos”; by some ambitious transporters, who ‘jetted’ between the two commercial cities. That was between the late ’70s, when the dual carriageway was constructed, and the early 1990s. It was estimated, back in 2009, that about 37,000 vehicles plied the expressway – daily.
On both sides of the road were dense rain forests. Once, in a while, acephalous corpses dotted the expressway. Some said that they were products of ritual killers. They were pointers, some others said, to the fact that the expressway was a famished road. There were, it’s true, lonely human shelters – the fore-runners of today’s ambitious human housing and office structures – located at far between. But all that has changed, with irritatingly costly effects. The astronomical soar in the country’s population and the ever-pressing need for new human shelters have opened the Lagos-Sagamu end of the expressway to individual and corporate developers. As industries are springing up, so, too, is there a muscular vehicular traffic. The serene, rural wild, for which the area was once known, is now a good instance of an innocence lost – irretrievably. Take, for instance, the fact that each time there was a major, crowd-pulling, Cross gathering within Kilometre 30 and 59 of the ever-busy expressway, it’s such that – somewhat inexplicably – both sides of it are virtually blocked to the extent that vehicular traffic becomes agonizingly slow.
And, over the years, because of the notoriety that the Cross gatherings have gained, most commuters – who know when they take place and attract a gargantuan crowd of viciously and hopelessly brain-washed Nigerians and foreigners, who stubbornly think that their ultimate redemption, ‘deliverance from witches and demons’, and expected ‘miracles’ rested with a clique of dissemblers and workers of iniquity – a people whom Christ, in His consuming wrathfulness, shall never forgive – either go through the Ijebu-Ode-Ikorodu road, Epe-Ijebu-Ode road or Sagamu-Abeokuta bush lane en route Lagos and vice versa. The intent is to avoid being trapped, for as long as nine hours – it could be more – on a two-kilometre stretch, for as long as a particular Cross gathering lasts.
This development is tyrannical. It’s the tyranny of a tiny minority. Why should the organizers of such Cross gatherings subject commuters to occasional mental agony and psychological torture – all in God’s name?
It’s in the long, time-consuming traffic jam, caused by the Cross gatherings that many of their victims – individuals whose vehicles’ engines become faulty, and so have to park them somewhere and take another means of transportation, fast, so as to avoid being late to their destinations – in the honest expectation that they would come back to meet their vehicles the way they left them – or those who, because of the same long, time-consuming, traffic jam, end up in the hands of criminals, who rob them violently of their belongings. Add a visible number of the sick, who die – while being taken to hospital by good Samaritans – because they could not get there early enough to receive crucial medical attention.
But, as it may well be argued, the congregation of relatives, friends or good Samaritans, in whose loving and caring arms well over a legion of the sick have died, in agonizingly slow, time-consuming traffic jam, on the particular stretch of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, should stop complaining: didn’t they know that free, efficacious medical care was given to the genuinely physically-down, in the numerous, ultra-modern hospitals inside one of the expansive worship complexes run by dissemblers and workers of iniquity, whose activities have caused so many deaths and economic losses? Inside the complex, there is a legion of what is called “Prayer Warriors”, who, it is claimed, possess unfailing, spiritual powers that could heal the sick. The visionary orgainzers of a certain stubbornly, offending Cross gathering said that they built the ultra-modern hospitals and had resident prayer warriors, who had special, spiritual healing powers, not only in fulfillment of their corporate social responsibility (CSR), but, as well, to serve as compensating features for whatever offence their religious activities were certain to cause. It’s their argument, still, that in the past twenty-five years, their religious gatherings had discouraged fatal accidents on account excessive speed by lawless motorists, who had thought that the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was another Formula One turf. And why not! They also posited that those who refused to join them in worshipping Christ, in their vast complex, would always be incurably sick or get caught up in the agonizingly slow, traffic jam about which they complain – with impotent rage, though.
But seriously, Christ is certainly not happy that there appears to be an unholy alliance – a conscious conspiracy, as it were – between the remorseless cheats and coldly calculating workers of iniquity, who organize such Cross gatherings that cause so much agonizingly slow, time-consuming traffic jam and criminals, on the one hand, and, on the other, road-side menders of vehicles rendered faulty after unusually long hours in the muscular, jet-speed-of-a-snail traffic jam, petrol dealers, transporters, who tap into the nasty traffic situation to increase fares, such petty traders as hawkers of water, snacks, gargantuan loaves of freshly-baked bread, soft drinks, citrus fruits, religious stickers, visors, gift items, all manner of poorly-printed, mini-flags of some well-known foreign countries, religious publications, textiles, biros, marking pens, cell phone recharge cards, imported, immaculate white handkerchiefs, spotless envelopes, anointing oil, etc. This is an unholy alliance that thrives on the hardship, which the parties to it cause their fellow human beings. While diverse businesses boom – including crimes of extortion and mugging – the organizers of such Cross gatherings, are sure that the seasonal providers of goods and services, who make gargantuan profits, as a result, would gladly deposit a fairly generous fraction of same with them, as either tithe or offering – because ‘God loves a cheerful giver’! This presupposes that there is a symbiotic relationship, as it were, involving the organizers of the offending Cross gatherings – the so-called anointed men of God – criminals, artisans and petty traders. Amen, somebody!
Still, it’s almost certain that given the arrogance and remorselessness with which the organizers of the offending Cross gatherings go about their activities– and, quite unfortunately, that of their swarm of viciously and hopelessly brain-washed followers – their prayers – and it matters less how fervent – will never be answered by Christ.Truth is that those who genuinely worship Christ are ever cautious never, as a result of their activities, to cause unnecessary discomfort to their fellow human beings, because, Christ did say, somewhere in the synoptic gospel according to Matthew – the historian and ex-tax-collector: “do unto others, what you would like them do unto you.” The Golden Rule, that is. Amen, somebody! There’s a curse on the offenders by a congregation of victims of their religious activities.The misplaced arrogance of the organizers of the offending Cross gatherings would seem to have been steeled, lately, for, as one of the leading pastors of the offending churches told this writer: “Vice-President ’Yemi Osinbajo is a member of our church.” It was quite irresponsible of him, though, to have linked Osinbajo with the gargantuan lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
Besides, members of the Crescent are not happy. A legion of them, who have, on many occasions, fallen victims of the notorious, church-programme-induced traffic congestion on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, told this writer, after Juma’at service, at Tom Jones, on Lagos Island, on August 5, 2016, and at the Lagos State Secretariat Mosque, Alausa, on August 19, 2016, that they saw the development as sure to cause, in the near future, a religious conflict – one that would be characterized by blood and fire.
It promises to be a miraculously ferocious Holy Ghost fire that would consume Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, who lives 382 metres, somewhere off the expressway – where religiouslawlessness is regnant – in Ogun State, for evading tax, even after fasting for forty days and forty nights – in opaque solitary confinement – and receiving Holy Communion, during a combined service, in Prophet Brother Jero’s church. It’s an unquenchable Holy Ghost fire that would – with a miraculous touch – burn Prophet Brother Jero to ashes – for plotting to claim ownership of the mushrooming places of worship that are now a common sight – in the name of expanding his church and “winning a multitude of clean, heaven-bound souls for our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen, somebody! And because Soyinka has, stubbornly, refused to execute the contract awarded him, on his birthday, in 2014, for the expansion of a certain notorious section of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Holy Ghooooost fire! And, again, because cautelous Prophet Brother Jero has conspired with some corrupt government operatives and fake town-planners to erect – with “tigritudinal attitude” – gargantuan churches, where combined services are, often, held – in areas designated as strictly residential – and, thereby, causing gargantuan nuisance to Soyinka, whenever he’s busy crafting his usually toxic, Prize-rigging, opaque plays and fictitious Bastille notes – rebarbative works, all; and because they are likely to congest the traffic of words in the reader’s brain, they are never read by such brilliant characters as AdedayoOjo, ’Gbenga Oni, Nkoyo Toyo, Inatimi Spiff and ’BayoOnanuga – Holy Ghooooost fire! It’ll be a miraculously ferocious Holy Ghost fire that would surely consume Soyinka, in a similar manner that he stodges pigs “. . . without gastronomic options”, and Prophet Brother Jero for his famed, openly lecherous conduct, which led to his being nabbed, when he was comfortably “clasped between the two fleshy thighs of a . . .” Delilah, during a recent women-only vigil. Alleluia, somebody!
A congregation of students of English Language, Theatre and Communication Arts, federal and state Directors of Arts and Culture, well-known actors and actresses in Nollywood and members of Radio, Television and Theatre Arts Workers’ Union (RATTAWU), led by Sunday Omobolanle (alias “Papi Luwe”); all members of Sports Writers’ Association of Nigeria (SWAN), led by Tony Ubani (alias “Outrage”) and popular humorists, under the captaincy of handsome Atunyota Alleluya Akporobomerere (osare, omagarhen!); they all chorus, in defeaning unison: “Holy Ghooooooost fire” – against Prophet Brother Jero for conspiring with Soyinka to have the National Stadium andTeslimBalogun Stadium, at Surulere, Lagos, the Agege Township, the National Theatre, at Iganmu, Lagos; the test cricket pitch, The Arcade, the old National Assembly complex, all at Race Course and Campus Square, on Lagos Island,the International Trade Fair complex on Lagos-Badagry Expressway, the numerous warehouses and premises of once-thriving industries that have been forced to fold up, on account of openly hostile government policy,converted to gargantuan churches. Amen, somebody! For causing so much nuisance in neighbourhoods, where live the aged, the infirm, pensioners, et al, in form of excessively loud noise – in a flagitious breach of a legion of extant laws on noise abatement, Holy Ghooooost fire!
Such places of worship that are built with the dirtiest of capitalist and worldly ambitions, would, surely, collapse, because, according to a genuinely aggrieved, regular victim of the muscular, jet-speed-of-a-snail traffic jam on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, who’s also a father of three girls, and lives in Lagos – Sheikh Sakrudeen Ibn Mahmudh, 49, – “they lack clean spiritual content.” Many more churches would collapse, he prophesied, if they were not erected – and, genuinely, so – for the glorification of Christ. Well over a legion of church structures would fall flat like the walls of Jericho – certainly not mosques, used by peaceful, law-abiding and tax-paying Muslims – whenever predaceous birds like hawks and kites fly over them – with a gargantuan loss of local and foreign souls, if Soyinka and Prophet Brother Jero stubbornly refuse to sow a seed, or insist on robbing God. Amen, somebody! “When the Holy Bible said in the book of Psalms, chapter number 127, verse number 1, that ‘Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it’”, IbnMahmudh pointed out, “the over-abundance of crises in most churches, today – including leadership and succession, embezzlement and misappropriation of funds, sit-tight syndrome, failed marriages, on account of infidelity by hypocrites, cheats and fraudsters, vicious gossip, rumour-mongering concerning why some churches’ members no longer visit their pastors for fear of being drugged and raped or sodomised and, amongst others, collapse of supposedly church-owned, multi-storeyed buildings – are persuasive evidence to that effect. Many more marriages will be sundered, because Christ did not nod at them or send any so-called anointed man of God to represent Him, when such marriages were contracted.” Amen, somebody!
And yet, Soyinka and his accomplice – Prophet Brother Jero – insist that all is well. Really! Soyinka and his god-son – Prophet Brother Jero – will, surely, not escape severe punishment, for their stubborn refusal to speak in tongues and for making a false prophecy, not so long ago, that, very shortly, the price of crude oil would plummet to three dollars per barrel – instead of praying, fervently – as do prayer warriors – so that the product’s price would soar, astronomically, to a new height of, say, $190 per barrel – and, so, ease the country out of recession. Amen, somebody!
And thus spake Ecclesiastes (Dr.) Reuben Abati of Christian Amalgamation of Nigeria (CAN): “Soyinka is clearly a part of the problem in that, since the past three decades of the rot, rust and forced ripeness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, he has elected to maintain a conspiratorial silence, because, firstly, it suits his stubbornly opaque – if inevitable – gawk at the eschatological and twilight zone; secondly, because what’s happening on the expressway is in keeping with Prophet Brother Jero’svaticination concerning his pot-hole-riddled, prize-winning work – The Road.”
And thus spake ’Lekan Ogunbanwo of General Overseer Pentecostal Faith of the Nativity (PFN), in response: “For Soyinka’s opaque, conspiratorial silence on the rot, rust and forced ripeness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Holy Ghooooost fire! For Soyinka’s stubborn insistence that the rot, rust and forced ripeness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway are not only true manifestations of The Road, but, also, some conclusive evidence of the gargantuan corruption in Nigeria of today, Holy Ghooooost fire! The Holy Ghost fire – Okechukwu Ifionu speaks of conflagration – should consume Soyinka now, before the refulgent and glorious sun finally goes down on him – for linking Christian religious programmes with bad roads, muscular, jet-speed-of-a-snail traffic jam and near-bottomless corruption. Amen, somebody!”
Many church structures that would survive the looming blood-and-fire crisis on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and elsewhere, would be flattened, in later years, by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – if their pastors insist on aiding and abetting kidnapping, bank robbery,stealing of the country’s crude oil and selling it to foreigners, rapery and snacking on human flesh. Alleluia, somebody!
Furthermore, in the blood-and-fire crisis that is to come, a legion of the corpses of fake and parasitic pastors would litter the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – at the expensive price of causing yet another version – a New King James Version – of an unusual, time-consuming traffic snarl – for their insisting, with a touch of hubris – against the pronouncement of Christ – that man must live by bread alone. Amen, somebody! The fleet of bullet-proof vehicles owned by such fallen pastors would be impounded by the children of the genuinely poor and converted to taxis for the masses. Their private jets would be set ablaze because they are cursed objects of ill-gotten wealth, in which no one, henceforward, should fly, for fear of a certain crash and gargantuan loss of life. Their lavishly-furnished mansions, bungalows, duplexes and commercial housing estates would be taken over by those whom the Holy Bible refers to as “poor in spirit”, who, in turn, would convert them to government-approved crèches, nursery and primary schools – solely for the children of their class. Amen, somebody! The wardrobes of the fallen parasitic pastors and fake bishops would be looted and their contents sold – as would their fabulously expensive yachts – in a transparent manner, and their proceeds gladly donated to motherless babies homes. All that, said IbnMahmudh, would be the beginning of a combined legion of the anointed poor and the meek inheriting the Earth as written in the synoptic gospel according Matthew, chapter number 5 verse number 5. Amen, somebody!
If the security agents – the Police, State Security Service (SSS), the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), National Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), etc. – are thorough with intelligence gathering, they are most likely to find out that patience and tolerance, on the part of believers in the Crescent, are about to snap. And, just in case, the looming blood-and-fire, religious conflict may be one too many for Nigeria – amidst today’s deep recession, economic sabotage in the Niger Delta region, Boko Haram terrorism in the north-east and post-Biafra war agitations.
Nigeria has been lucky to have survived the Biafra war. The on-going lawlessness and flagitious breach of the fundamental rights of a crushing majority of tax-paying Nigerians – including the followers of the Crescent – as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (CFRN), may trigger off an Armageddon-like conflict. And even if Nigeria survives it, ’tis far from certain that her make-up – as a resilient, federated nation-state – will ever be the same again! Amen, somebody! As religious suspicion and intolerance – in the post-bellum era – sink their roots, fear and anxiety would reign – almost supreme. It may well become quite compelling, then, to exit the Nigeria of today, because an influential and sweeping mass would have come to see as no longer sustainable what is called “The Nigeria Project”.
The impending blood-and-fire, religious conflict, further, promises to be self-inflicted – and not a case of conspiracy by some foreign powers, who know, full well, that a peaceful Nigeria, so vastly blessed with human and natural resources, would soar – almost inexorably – in terms of sustainable human development – in that the security agencies would have little alibi that, in the past three decades, they were not aware of the lawlessness of those who had always claimed that they were worshipping Christ at a certain area of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.
Amen, somebody!
And, as wily and fraudulent Prophet Brother Jero, always put it, whenever such buffoons as Sonala Olumhense, Reginald Ibe, Ilemi Okoka, Ebere Wabara, Pita Onaivi, Dele Alake, Nosa Osazuwa, Nnamdi Obasi and Ibn Mahmudh are trapped in the agonizingly slow traffic jam caused by the Cross gatherings on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway: “Let somebody shout alleluia, so that the angels of the Lord, in Heaven, will hear and rejoice.” Besides, Prophet Brother Jero, who is a General Overseer of the offending Cross gathering, once commanded his intimidating crowd of viciously brain-washed, uncritical followers, when last Soyinka celebrated his birthday, to the effect that: “Unseal your generously long, wide and deep beaks and pray, fanatically, too – like the prayer warriors that you are – so that such idiots as Ammah Ogan (alias “Chop one, Chop two”), Christy Anyanwu, Comrade Opeyemi Bamidele, Chido Nwakanma, Ben Tomoloju, Mike Asuquo, Emmanuel Ibeleme, Tunde Rahman, Nnena Ukoha, Emeka Odikpo, Bobian Tokura, Joke Kujenya, Effiong Nyong, Tunde Umar, Lawal Ogienagbon and Alhaji Waheed Odusile would always get caught up in the traffic each time we hold our famous Cross gathering.” Amen, somebody.
Still, in a well-thought-out, ambitious epistle – crafted in corrupted soy ink, with a characteristic, stubbornly irrirtating, opaque literary style – and addressed to Soyinka – the gargantuan, pig-headed nincompoop, who thinks that he’s the only one who knows how best to speak and write opaque Queens English – Prophet Brother Jero, who quotes the Holy Bible to justify evil, and every other so-called anointed man of God, who is living in questionable opulence, Ibn Mahmudh prophesied, inter alia, that if the organizers of the offending Cross gatherings failed to repent, they would, surely, be “cast, on the day of judgement, into an everlasting fire, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Amen, somebody!
The Federal and Ogun State governments – in league with the Solons, who represent that part of Ogun State – should check this potentially explosive development that the followers of the Crescent rightly say, openly, violates their fundamental human rights. The Solons, who collect what is known as “Constituency Project Fund or Allowance”, and in whose area the lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is, should see it as a challenge to which they should direct both financial and human resources – before it escalates into a consuming crisis that would, amongst others, harm their reputation, political appeal and ambition. The followers of the Crescent are genuinely aggrieved in that when they congregate in any of their modest camps, anywhere on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, little inconvenience do they cause other road users. They said – and this writer nods – that the Crescent would have come – almost relentlessly – under a Niagara of barbs, were it the offending C. “How come nothing is being done”, they demand, “to check the tyrannical excesses of the so-called followers of the Cross on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway? Are the organizers of the offending religious activities sacred cows?”
Some influential personalities of the Crescent, who have close links with the Sultan of Sokoto –Alhaji Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar III – said that, very shortly, they would write to the Federal Government, the Inspector-General of Police and National Assembly, to call to order the irresponsible characters, whose religious activities – on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – were causing them and other law-abiding, tax-paying Nigerians untold hardship. While they were sure to take uncompromising legal process against the known organisers of the offending Cross gatherings, they would stage, they told this writer, an initial peaceful protests, for as long as one hundred and eighty days, on that stretch of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, if the lawlessness there was not checked. Their intent is to prove that the Crescent is a religion that preaches and practices peace – not one that encourages hypocrisy, fraud, disrespect for the feelings of other human beings and the kind of lawlessness that is almost a fixture between Kilometre 30 and 59 on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Their planned peaceful protests and robust legal process, they told this writer, would be, besides, to register the fact they were the dishonest organizers of the stubbornly offending Cross gatherings that were giving Christianity a bad image in Nigeria. It’s a part of the near-bottomless corruption in this country that, in the past three decades, the unclean organizers of the so-called Christian gatherings – some of which take place on every first or last Friday of the month; and there’s one that takes place a little before Christmas, which attracts the viciously and hopelessly brain-washed from Nigeria and other climes – have never been called to order. Indeed, the followers of the Crescent did say that the unclean organizers of the offending Cross gatherings had grown so powerful that they had the Nigeria Police Force and FRSC under their control. “They are on the pay-roll of the organizers of the offending Cross gatherings”, said Ustaz Ossein Ishaq al-Kareem, who resides at Ibafo, in Ogun State. “The untidy experience to which these so-called Christians are subjecting road users on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway must cease forthwith, if only to avoid their churches from being torched and the leading organizers of such church programmes, which cause so much traffic jam from being murdered,” al-Kareem, 43, who’s a father of two girls and a boy, told this writer, recently, inside a mini-bus on a trip to Sagamu from the Berger area of the expressway.
“The people, who organize the church programmes, are the same cheats, who hide behind the cloak of religion and see nothing wrong in accepting gargantuan tithe and muscular offering from thieves, who have looted the fisc of this country. They welcome such rogues and economic saboteurs and pray for them, as do prayer warriors, so that they’d continue in their ungodly ways. They are the same so-called anointed men of God, who send other people’s sons and daughters to stand by the roadside, under unforgiving heat of the sun, to distribute tracts, at the risk of being hit – and, possibly, killed – by a motor-bike, tricycle or vehicle, while their own children – in a prelude to debauchery and constitution of gargantuan nuisance to the rest of society –are at their cozy homes watching unedifying films. Jesus Christ is certainly not happy with such characters, who seem to have lost their conscience to transient, worldly gains. Filthy lucre, if you care. Amen, somebody!
“And yet, they claim that they adore Jesus Christ. In vain, their prayers! In vain, the prayers of pastors or so-called anointed men of God, who have taken an active part in driving the country’s economy into a deep recession,” said al-Kareem, a 2002 and 2009 graduate of Computer Engineering and Sociology, respectively. “President Muhammadu Buhari should please call the people, who organize the Christian church programmes, to order, because they are oppressing those of us who are law-abiding, tax-paying Muslims, and who use the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, quite often. This country and the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway belong to all of us. The other churches that either say ‘Domino vobiscum’, ‘Deus, per omnia secula seculorum’, ‘Index Liborum Prohibitorum’, or those who say ‘Salaam ailekum’, the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians or those who wear white garment – including the followers of Saint Aladura, who – one night, during an oppressively hot season of anomy, back in the early ’60s – invaded and occupied twenty-two plots of undeveloped land at the Victoria Beach, belonging to Soyinka – and have been in this country, for ages, are never known for the kind of arrant lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, caused by a tiny group of workers of iniquity, cheats and parasites, who are very fond of parroting: ‘Holy Ghost fire’ and ‘Amen’, even when they are fouling the laws of this country. In place of organizing programmes that obstruct the free flow of traffic on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – with its attendant gargantuan inconvenience, health risk to motorists and economic loss to this country – won’t it be a lot to the glorification of Christ, if they spend their time praying – and fervently, too – like the prayer warriors, that they claim they are – for the release of the Chibok girls? They wish their enemies ‘Holy Ghooooost fire’ – whatever the meaning of that – in a sinful disobedience of Christ’s instruction, as in the Beatitudes, that they should ‘pray for those who persecute and revile you unjustly, solely for my sake’.
“Matters would not have been this bad, had a majority of Nigerian journalists not been agents of western imperialism. We have it on record that some of them are on the pay-roll of Washington, the Vatican and Brussels.”
“From now on”, a visibly angry Ibn Mahmudh told this writer, outside the Lagos State Secretariat Mosque, at Alausa, Ikeja, on September 14, 2016, “the likes of wily and fraudulent Prophet Brother Jero, whose religious activities on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway are causing law-abiding and tax-paying Muslims and other Nigerians extreme hardship, shall never know peace. Amen, somebody!
“Those of us who’re law-abiding Muslims,” said Ibn Mahmudh,“are no fools. The lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway must stop, now. Otherwise, it’ll be extremely hard to guarantee the safety of the Pentecostals in this country – especially their captains and infrastructure on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Add a legion of contractors and their associates, who were paid a colossal sum of money to keep the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway in order, but failed – almost with impunity – to do so. This was an issue that was discussed at a pre-Eid el-Malud gathering, somewhere outside Lagos, in 2014. We’re fast running out of patience. Why, if one may ask, have you journalists not focused on this lawlessness? Why have the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Nigerian Press Council (NPC) and Newspaper Publishers’ Association of Nigeria (NPAN), Civil Liberties Organization (CLO), National Human Rights Commission and the oodles of constitutional lawyers in this country not condemned the lawlessness being perpetrated by the cheats, fraudsters and parasites; workers of iniquity, all, who call themselves Pentecostals, on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway?
“Could it be because the same so-called Pentecostals have bribed you journalists and newspaper publishers never to report the gargantuan economic loss to this country, the mental agony and the psychological torture caused a majority of law-abiding Nigerians – including Muslims, whenever a certain Pentecostal church organizes a crowd-pulling programme to the snarling of vehicular and human traffic between Kilometre 30 and 73 of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway for as long as eighteen hours? Some of you journalists and newspaper publishers are corrupt; you’re some of the major contributors to the problems of this country. Because you’ve been bribed by the Pentecostals on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, you tend to pretend that their lawlessness is just okay. But, be you informed that we Muslims are saying that it’s not. Does the Holy Bible spouse lawlessness!
“Were the gragantuan traffic jam on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway a product of Muslim religious activity, some idle and mischievous journalists would have tagged it: ‘a prelude to the Islamization of Nigeria.’ And if what the Pentecostalists are doing on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is an attempt at ‘Christianization of Nigeria’, let me say, here and now, that it can’t work! Never! Never! Enough of Pentecostalist lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway! We Muslims are no fools. Enough! If nothing is done, soon, to check the Pentecostalists’ lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and elsewhere, be you informed that we’d pronounce fatwah on all the known characters behind it, their wives, children and associates.” Amen, somebody!
Besides, such people are happy, today, because the Nigerian economy is groaning under a deep recession. It’s during a period like this – as was the traumatic era of structural adjustment programme (SAP), in the late ’80s and early ’90s – that, in a show of shallow self-righteousness, they start an aggressive noise-making, instilling fear in the gullible and making false, unrealistic promises that, say, “Your life will never be the same again” – all in a devilish bid to create a gragantuan hole in the pocket of whoever falls a victim of their lies. These are the false prophets, fake pastors, dishonest miracle-workers, self-seeking evangelists, self-styled anointed men of God, who sleep with their secretaries, aid and abet kidnapping and robbery, rape minors; workers of iniquity, all – about whom the Holy Bible said, in the synoptic gospel according to Matthew, would arise as the end-time drew near. Amen, somebody!
Surely, were Chief Gani Fawehinmi (fondly referred to by his army of admirers as Senior Advocate of the Masses) and former national President of the Nigerian Bar Association – Mr. Aka Bashorun – alive, they would have long filed a suit with an eyeing to getting a mandatory injunction to put an end to the Pentecostal lawless on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. In addition, were Chief Obafemi Awolowo alive, today, he would have, for informed reasons of morality, profound respect for the teachings of Christ, national economic advancement and solidification of peace in the South-West geo-political zone, called the irresponsible leaders of Pentecostal churches on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway to order; that they should put first the expectations of God, respect for the rights of law-abiding and tax-paying Muslims and a crushing majority of other Nigerians, who use the autobahn.
What transpired on one occasion of the ever-chaotic and irritatingly noisy Cross gatherings, will, for many floods and moons to come, be an interesting subject of a vexatiously inconclusive academic discourse at the Department of Hypocrisy, Fraud and Corruption at the Congress University of the Holy Ghost, where Soyinka teaches rebarbative Comparative Literature and Anti-Plagiarism Strategy.
Then, Uthman Shodipe reported, in The Congested Road, which he has edited for more than three decades, that a visibly irritated Soyinka surfaced, unexpectedly, to organize a parallel religious programme on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, which was tagged – as a very visible 21feet wide, 10 feet deep, sparkling white banner, held very firmly on three, freshly-cut, dark green, 28 feet high, bamboo poles advertized –“Holy Ghost Evangelical Revival and Crusade for the End-Time”.
On an abandoned, one-metre high rostrum, Soyinka – Christ-like in appearance, wearing an over-flowing, sparklingly white, ground-sweeping garment, waist-reaching goatee and bare-footed – started a New King James Version of noise making thus: “Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Calvary, Holy Communion, Vigil, Resurrection, Holy Ghost fire, Miracles, Breakthrough, Private jets, Delilah, Prophets of doom, Chibok girls, irresponsible Oby Ezekwesili, who fraternizes with Boko Haram terrorists at night, Powers and principalities, Powers of darkness, Israel, Crusade, Revival, Five loaves of bread and two fishes, Manna from Heaven, drowning of a multitude of the army of recalcitrant and ungodly Pharaoh in the Red Sea after it had been crossed, miraculously, by the fleeing Israelites, Crown of thorns, Blood of Jesus, Forty days and forty nights, Walking on water, Anointed men of Corruption, Testimonies, Devils, etc.” That was a little before the sun went down. Nearby, a group of commercial bus operators felt offended by Soyinka’s irritatingly noisy, religious programme in that, with his long, rusty, conical and archaic megaphone, he had subdued their calls on prospective passengers to places like Ajah, Iwo Road, in Ibadan, Ijebu-Ode, Ago-Iwoye, Ososa, Ore, Benin, Warri, Ilorin, Anthony-Oshodi Oke, Mile Two, Ketu, Obalende, Ikoyi, Victoria Island, Ojota, Berger, Agege, Sango-Ota, Ifo, Abeokuta, etc. As some of the commercial bus operators seethed, there were others, who said that: “Soyinka shall end up in hell fire for attempting, in Christ’s name, to dislocate our business”. It was the wish of Eleshin Toluji, who plies the Lagos-Ilorin route, that Soyinka – a shameless tax-evader, since Oslo – ought to have been arrested for organizing such a disruptive religious gathering, without obtaining a permit, in the first place, from either the police or FRSC. Not too far away from where was Soyinka, a group of bus and taxi cab operators, who felt crossed by his noisy, evangelical outing, sulked: “Soyinka is spoiling our business. He is a nuisance. He does not belong here. He should have gone to the National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos, or University of Ibadan to exhibit his new appearance as a fake Aladura prophet. He is causing so much traffic congestion and excessive noise here. How can prospective passengers hear us when we are advertising our destinations? He is a lousy character, who’s abusing his fame as a prize-winning play-wright!” Amen, somebody!
But, well before darkness crowded in, Soyinka, according to Shodipe, had attracted a swarming crowd of nearly 22,000 – a majority of whom were the aged – especially women, and hungry-looking graduates of tertiary institutions, who, for nearly a decade, were still unemployed. These were individuals, whom Shodipe, in his perspicacious best, surmised would be the pioneering members of Soyinka’s fast-growing, Expressway to Prosperity Evangelical Church (EPEC); individuals who would be viciously brain-washed by Soyinka – ably assisted by Prophet Jero, Pastor Odia Ofeimun, Apostle ’Yemi Ogunbiyi, Senior Apostle ’Femi Osofisan and Sunday School teacher and Choir-master, Brother Olatunji Dare. What accounted for Soyinka’s glorious success, on that occasion, was his fame, his forced, if blasphemous, appearance like Christ, his arresting, Barry White-like voice, command of the English language, elocution, gift of the gab, and, quite naturally, orthoepy concerning biblical, Greek, Roman, Jewish, Biafran, Esan (Ishan), Ijebu and Egba names. These were ambitious, winning evangelistic qualities that, according to a prophecy by Prophet Brother Jero, Soyinka, in the next two decades, would whet, quite unsparingly, if he were to be augmented and win more multitudes of souls into the Lord’s vineyard. Amen, somebody!
Almost everyone that alighted from a vehicle – and pedestrians, too, who, that night, clustered near the new evangelist in town, marvelled at the inspirational, spiritual words that gushed out from the beak – so miraculously and aesthetically aquiline – of the Opaque Fount. As the day wore on, the Soyinka-led religious gathering had worsened human and vehicular traffic on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway up to 11.57 a.m. the following day; a Saturday, such that the police and FRSC operatives had no solution to it. Shodipe recalled that many were impressed by Soyinka’s rendition of the Grammy-winning song by the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ – “Oh, Happy Day”. Many were those who either sang along with Soyinka or danced when he crooned“My Sweet Lord”, by George Harrison – the first of The Beatles to go solo in 1972, “Seven Spanish angels” by Ray Charles and Willie Nielson, Sam Cooke’s version of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the wind”, his extended version of “Amen”, “A Prayer” by The O’Jays and The Commodores’ “Jesus is power.” “Indeed, Soyinka could be said to have been more soulful, throughout the night, than Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Tyrone Davis, The Staple Singers, James Brown, Millie Jackson, Candi Staton etc.” So impressed by Soyinka’s brand of evangelism were some people that they, quite miraculously, erected about twenty-two lamp posts, powered by an equal number of medium-sized generators. There were others, who, in appreciation, had to park their cars nearby and left their front lights on, to help the consuming, starless and inky darkness. The sweet denouement of the Soyinka-led religious gathering was about 2.50 a.m, when Ofeimun, Ogunbiyi, Osofisan and Dare – all dressed Mao Zedong-like, in white suit – joined Soyinka on the rostrum. Almost every song, thenceforward, during what was called “Praise-worship time”, went, miraculously, viral. Some of the praise-worship songs that Soyinka did so well included the following: “It shall be permanent, what the Lord has done for me . . .”, “What shall I render, what shall I render to thee, oh Lord . . .”, “What a mighty God we serve . . .”, “Mighty Father, great in battle, Jehovah is your name . . .”, “Come and see the light, the light of God . . .”, “The Lord is mighty, mighty . . ., Jehovah knows . . .”, “Talodabi ire, Jesu, talodabi ire o, alagbara . . .”,“Jehovah, you are the most-high, you are the most-high God . . .”, “Praise the Lord, oh sing on, sing on…”, “Stand up, stand up for Jesus . . .”, “On the way to Calvary, he died for me. . .”, “I have a very big God o, He is always by my side . . .”, “Higher, higher, higher, higher Jesus, higher, lower, lower, lower, lower Satan, lower . . . ”, “Rock of Ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee . . . ”, “The most excellent is Jesus, shout alleluia amen . . .”, “Immortal invisible, God only wise”, “Lousy Rotimi Adebayo is singing, you are worthy oh Lord, singing, you are worthy oh Lord . . . ”, “On the mountain, in the valley. . .”, and “He’s a miracle working God . . . He’s the alpha and omega. . . .” Soyinka was greeted with a prolonged, rapturous applause, when he signalled the end of the seven-hour long gathering by rendering – quite soulfully, like a seasoned artiste from the Bible Belt of the United States of America, who once led the Top-Ten chart, for nearly twenty-two weeks, sporting the famous Atlantic or Tamla Motown record label – Jim Reeves’s “We thank thee” and “Take my hands precious Lord”; the former, a plaguy satisfied Soyinka was quoted by Shodipe as saying that it was a registration of his profound gratitude to the merciful and infinitely kind Christ for making his debut religious gathering the most successful in the history of religious lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway; the latter, an appeal, from the bottom of his heart, that, yes, the precious Lord should, also, lead everyone – for they were all God’s children, from far and near – who attended, safely home. Three weeks after the gathering, Ogunbiyi told this writer – in what was more of a post-mortem, somewhere at the notorious Berger-Arepo stretch of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – that the twenty-two praise-worship songs rendered by Soyinka were symbolic of the number of months that the Nobelist-turned-lecherous evangelist spent in solitary confinement – during the Biafra war! Alleluia, somebody! He was uncompromisingly aggressive in his defence of Soyinka to the effect that there was nothing blasphemous about Soyinka’s Christ-like appearance, because it was a well-thought-out gimmick to draw a swarming crowd of fools to the gathering – who’d gladly part with some of the little amount of hard-earned money that they had on them, in the name of offering and tithe, so that Soyinka will go, thereafter, and feed fat on them and live an ostentatious – if overweening – life-style. Amen, somebody! He corroborated a report by Shodipe that a certain aged woman, who was well impressed by Soyinka’s performance during the religious programme said, amidst streaming tears: “Opaque Literary Style would, surely, go to heaven”. Another woman – a former beauty queen, in her ’40s – said, during “Testimony Time”, that she was cured of seven ailments and delivered from demons in the course of the long, noisy religious programme, after touching Soyinka’s over-flowing, sparklingly white, ground-sweeping garment, a little after noon at night! Alleluia, somebody. It was a memorable religious gathering, during which Soyinka directed a lot of tirades at cheats, workers of iniquity and fraudsters. Quoth he: “Stop collecting tithe and offering for God or Jesus Christ is not hungry”; “What shall it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and lose his own soul?”; “Stop collecting tithe and offering for your private use, because you will end up in hell fire, on the day of judgement”; “Stop burning candles, because it’s a wasteful and harmful exercise that pollutes this beautiful Earth – and, so, sure to make it too unsafe for the meek to inherit”; “Stop fraternizing with corrupt politicians, ye fake anointed men of God, who have driven the Nigerian economy into a deep recession”; “Ye shameless and dishonest pastors, false prophets, apostles, bishops, evangelists, general overseers, archbishops, deacons, deaconesses – all ye who claim that ye are anointed men or women of God – today is thine day of salvation. Therefore, go ye and give all thy riches to the poor; the poor whom ye have, over the years, been wicked to, and follow Christ, if ye art, genuinely, desirous to get to heaven.” Praise the Lord, somebody!
So memorable a religious gathering it was that it rented the front pages of most national newspapers with such headlines as: “Reverend Soyinka causes gargantuan traffic jam on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway”; “Soyinka joins Pentecostals to oppress law-abiding Muslims in false adoration of Christ”;“Soyinka sets new evangelical crowd record on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway”; and, amongst others, “Pastor Soyinka dramatizes lawlessness on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway”. This was about the best crafted and longest of about twenty-two of such front-page stories – all written from diverse angles – on the noisy, Soyinka-led religious gathering. The writer – ’Jide Ogungbade, a well-known dramatist and prosaist – fittingly blended the traits of features and history to a length of seventy-five inches – in a language that was, undisguisedly, flowery. On page three of a biweekly –World Salvation – were splashed very sharp pictures – of some tearful, elderly women and male adults, people rolling on the dusty floor, some hefty men – including Ofeimun, Ogunbiyi, Osofisan and Dare, helping those, who were, in Pentecostal parlance,“in spirit”, but were, indeed, pretending that they were gripped by convulsion, to stand on their feet. The pictures were taken by ’Jide Ogungbade, who is a better amateur than so-called King Sunmi Smart-Cole in terms of using the camera. And – ‘to God be the glory’ – there were also the pictures of thirteen men – one of whom did confess that he was an ex-criminal, who robbed banks in Lagos, Ilorin, Sapele, Kano, Kaduna and Port Harcourt – who made the fattest offering on the occasion. That was conclusive evidence – one that tosses back any shadow of doubt – according to lousy Rotimi Adebayo, that “Soyinka is keeping the company of criminals, who cloak their evil deeds behind the mask of religion.” And about eighty-two percent of the newspapers celebrated a Christ-like “Soyinka the Evangelist” either on the front page or page three. Alleluia, somebody! Ofeimun said that there were panegyric reports about the same religious gathering in numerous newspapers in Leeds and Oslo. Some wild bush-telegraphs had it that Soyinka bribed a congregation of News Editors not to report the spectacular – if lawless – evangelistic acts of Agozino Agozino, Toyin Akinosho, Obasi Ogbonnaya, Alex Emeka Duru, Evelyn Usman, Emeka Ibemere, Obiageli Mbanefo, Ifeanyi Mbanefo, Ogie Eboigbe, Tunde Olusesi, Yusuf Ajibola Yusuf (YAY) and Charles Supo Orija, so as not to dwarf his outing. But, Shodipe reported ‘in the august pages’ of The Congested Road that the group were what Soyinka called, in a post-gathering news conference – it was on a Sunday – “The Twelve Apostles of Blasphemy and Darkness”. Soyinka’s reason was that they almost disrupted his debut religious gathering, when they massed, on the Ibadan-bound, opposite side of the expressway, while he was evangelizing for Christ’s sake. Amen somebody! The Twelve Apostles of Blasphemy and Darkness were said to have been angered by Soyinka’s utterances during the night. They reasoned that Soyinka was quite irreverent towards their Pentecostal church, General Overseer, elders and pastors, wives, children and swarming members for which, in what could be called a parallel gathering, they unsealed their beaks of diverse shapes and sizes, and started preaching with the aid of very powerful loud-speakers thus: “Unblessed is Opaque Literary Style for he shall not see the Orwellian kingdom. Unblessed is the octogenarian Nobelist for he shall be held, again, in solitary confinement. Unblessed is the stubborn social critic and activist, for he shall be compelled to fetch his national medal from the Lagos lagoon.” A certain private radio station – Redemption Radio, transmitting on 73.30 F.M – quoted Soyinka thus: “May Holy Ghost fire consume the Twelve Apostles of Blasphemy and Darkness, under the captaincy of Ogie Eboigbe, for plotting to disrupt my religious gathering!” He said, besides, that he would file a suit against arts writer, Agozino Agozino, for “Punic faith and conspiracy to cross my right to spread the gospel of Christ for the salvation and reconciliation of man to God. Amen, somebody! Some conservative journalists, led by ’Deji Elumoye, said, crossly, that it was “a clear case of poor editorial judgement” to have done Soyinka such an unmerited honour of splashing his Christ-like appearance on the front pages of newspapers with national appeal. They would have felt a lot better had such an unmerited publicity been done by community newspapers or amateur publications by NYSC operatives. But, as lousy Rotimi Adebayo put it, in a dissenting opinion article, titled: “Soyinka monopolizes front pages of newspapers”, published in The Congested Road, “The honour done Soyinka by the lavish coverage and domination of the front pages of most national newspapers by his noisy religious crusade on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is of gargantuan, historic proportion. It’s an honour well deserved, in that Soyinka – for those who don’t know – is a quondam journalist. And, even if it’s, indeed, true, that Soyinka’s religious exploits crowded out other good stories that ought to have contested, quite robustly, the front page with Soyinka – like the mysterious razing, by Holy Ghost fire, a South-West geo-political zone office of the apex bank and the invasion of a popular southern airport by armed men suspected to be Boko Haram allies – the Nobelist should be commended, no less. That he has long left the newsroom – where democracy, transparency and fair-play are often chased out by very mean individuals or tin-gods; individuals, who, in a hopeless self-deceit, insist that there’s no life after the undemocratic newsroom; individuals who are undisguisedly tribalists and vicious liars – for the theatre, does not, necessarily, call for such shameless show of envy by ’Deji Elumoye and his hangers-on, who claim that they are journalists; emptied-headed journalists who, in self-denial, argue against the fact that Soyinka is a news-maker, any day. Whatever such news-hounds think, truth – a self-evident one, at that – is that he’s still one of us. The newspapers that gave his noisy religious programme such a generous coverage in a show profound gratitude, for the news value it offered, did so for its welcome relief at a time of drought. Deji Elumoye and his boys should go back to school to learn more about what really makes news! Amen, somebody! Yes, it’s pretty obvious that Soyinka achieved his glorious conquest of the front pages of a gargantuan number of newspapers, via vile means – the kind that helps the unsmiling effects of a deep recession – it’s an end well justified. N’est-ce pas! By his rare, Oslo-like, front-page conquest, Soyinka has sent a persuasive signal concerning a coming revolution, for which avid readers of Nigerian newspapers will, henceforward, be fed, no longer, with false stories of corruption on the part of supposedly trusted public officers and their associates, written by ’Deji Elumoye with diverse nom de plume and sent by e-mail to numerous newspapers. All that, in coming to pass of a prophecy by Prophet Brother Jero, will be replaced by more appetizing and nourishing stories of religious lawlessness everywhere in the country – including Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Amen, somebody!
“Isn’t ’Deji Elumoye aware that the front-page stories on Soyinka’s religious lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway has boosted the circulation of the reverent newspapers! It may interest ’Deji Elumoye that about twenty-two of such newspapers that, out of envy, he accused of celebrating an aggravated ‘Nobel lawlessness’ – whatever the meaning of that – are, to this day, still printing – in response to an unimaginably stratospherical demand by the departments of English, Theatre and Communication Arts in all the country’s tertiary institutions, all former lawless students of Soyinka, who have read at least one of his opaque works, all lawless actors and actresses in Nollywood, noisy broadcasters, who are members of RATTAWU and all the lawless members of the Confraternity of Sea-Dogs – extra copies of the edition on Soyinka’s religious lawlessness. Amen, somebody! It’s only an idiot like ’Deji Elumoye, who could have suggested, unrepentantly, that the pictures of a Christ-like Soyinka splashed on the front pages of ‘newspapers of the years’ and ‘most widely read’ and circulated newspapers should have been used in cyclostyled, amateur magazines published by the press club of a junior secondary school.”
For ’Deji Elumoye’s consumption, said lousy Rotimi Adebayo, Soyinka was excellently far from opaque in his use of language throughout the noisy religious gathering on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. And, that, according to Ogunbiyi, was because Soyinka knew that religion was now a booming business, despite the current deep recession, in which the success of any ambitious evangelist rested more on the use of a language that could easily be understood by the common man; not one calculated to rig a literary prize. Alleluia, somebody!
“It should also interest envious ’Deji Elumoye and his gang of mischievous journalists, who do not seem to see anything good in Soyinka, that the stratospherical demand for the edition of the newspapers on Soyinka’s religious lawlessness will remain interestingly elastic well after Soyinka’s exit from the theatre – in coming to pass of a prophecy by Prophet Brother Jero. Indeed, part of that prophecy is that, very shortly, ’Deji Elumoye and his anti-Soyinka allies shall repent and become very fiery proselytes, who’d be regular fixtures on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway selling special editions of the newspapers with front-page stories on all manner of lawlessness being encouraged by Soyinka.” Alleluia, somebody!
’Twas many thanks to Soyinka’s corruptive financial influence, in most newsrooms, nation-wide, that it was never reported that some ardent believers in the Crescent did storm the rostrum to tug at his over-flowing, ground-sweeping, sparklingly white garment and long, Christ-like beard, in protest against the muscular, jet-speed-of-a-snail traffic jam caused by his religious gathering. The same Soyinka, whose over-flowing, ground-sweeping and sparklingly white garment, about which Ogunbiyi once boasted, had the unfailing spiritual power to sweep the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway miraculously clean of gargantuan pot-holes and muscular, jet-speed-of-a-snail traffic jam. Amen, somebody! Rumours had it, Shodipe wrote, that Evangelist Wole Soyinka later took home the ex-beauty queen – who’s, sometimes, referred to as Wemimo Shokunbi. “Beards are still waging, rather stubbornly,” according to lousy Rotimi Adebayo, “to the effect that, to this day, W.S. has obstinately refused to let go W.S.!” Alleluia, somebody! He figured, besides, that: “In the near future – using aggressive public relations, marketing and advertisement tricks – it’s W.S.’s honest expectation that W.S. would be transformed to ‘Our Mother In Israel’. ’Twould be interesting to know whether such a spiritual transformation was achieved after W.S. was held in solitary confinement by W.S.!”
“Soyinka is an unrelieved embarrassment to the bar of Nobel Prize Champions. For his disorderly and shameful conduct which snarled both human and vehicular traffic on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, for as long as 27 hours, he should be Snowballed from the Noble Congress of Conquerors of the Nobel Prize. And if one may ask, whoever told Soyinka that there’s an International Prize for Religious Hypocrisy and Lawlessness! And, even if there’s such a prize, Soyinka’s associates – including Odia Ofeimun, ’Yemi Ogunbiyi, and ’Femi Osofisan – should tell him that it’s not a prize for lawless characters, who force the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway to become miraculously opaque – in the name of organizing a Cross gathering.
“If Soyinka is to be taken, as a far-from-a-charlatan evangelist – and, so, well deserving of an International Prize for Religious Hypocrisy and Lawlessness – he should take a cue from Jesus Christ, who, wherever he went, preaching the gospel of respect for the law, love and care amongst human beings, good relationship between man and God, spirit of forgiveness and rejection of Satan – never caused the bush paths in Samaria, pristine roads in Bethlehem and the globally famous Jerusalem-Calvary Expressway to become miraculously opaque – even though he attracted a frightening, rippling multitudes of honest and well-behaved followers.
“The Holy Bible tells one that human and vehicular traffic was never congested when Christ organized his Holy Ghost confabulations. The Holy Ghost does not empower lousy, self-seeking cheats and workers of iniquity, who have an exaggerated sense of self-importance and, so, tend to think that they are more powerful and famous than the Great Redeemer – the saviour of humankind, who lived a vicarious life, died on the Cross of Calvary, so that the oodles of mortal sins committed by such lawless characters as Josephine Akpata, George Chukwu, Evelyn Russell, Alaba Ajogbo, Buno Uwabor, Vicky Madukife, Tunde Sulaiman, Tunde Aiyegbusi, Gbenga Ariba, Mike Ukana, Tompra Abarowei, Gordini G. Darah and exceptionally lousy Patrick Wilmot will be swept away – tsunami-like – by Soyinka’s over-flowing, ground-sweeping and sparklingly white garment. Alleluia, somebody!
“Still, Soyinka is a stormy petrel in almost ‘every material particular’, especially because of his stubbornly irritating opaque bent. On the pulpit, he was quite akin to Christ, whom the Roman historian – Suetonius – wrongly accused of creating disturbances’. Soyinka is not an evangelist. He is not a graduate of any reputable theological school or seminary, where clean, anointed men and women of God are produced. For that, he couldn’t have drank the blood of Jesus, as if it’s a performance-enhancing drug – and, so, attracted an intimidating number of viciously brain-washed followers to the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway show – as Shodipe would want the world to believe! Soyinka is a lawless character for causing a lot of traffic congestion on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway by his fake and fraudulent evangelistic programme,” wrote Abati, who edits a widely-read and prize-winning daily – The Expressway Report.
Soyinka was said to be an archaic evangelist, who was still living in antediluvian times. Where and how did he smuggle into this country the unusually long, rusty, archaic and conical megaphone that he used at his religious programme?
“An ambitious evangelist who wants to win souls for our Lord Jesus Christ”, Abati wrote, “would have had a more fulfilling evangelistic campaign with the use of modern and shapely communication gadgets like a battery-powered, shoulder-borne megaphone, cordless microphones, lectern made of glass or plastic and gargantuan loud-speakers.”
Besides, what Shodipe referred to in The Congested Road as “Soyinka-won, new souls”, Abati wrote, “was the job of a paid hand. Shodipe was so naïve that he never knew that Soyinka is a remorseless ‘shrewd contriver’. To tell the truth, the swarming, intimidating crowd that attended Soyinka’s evangelistic programme was hired at a very gargantuan sum of money; about N20 million, said Chido Nwakanma. For more details on Soyinka’s religious tricks, Shodipe should get in touch with BanjiAdisa. Amen, somebody!
“Still, one would like to disagree with the elderly woman, who, after touching Soyinka’s over-flowing, ground-sweeping and sparklingly white garment, said – amidst tears of joy, in appreciation of Soyinka’s evangelistic performance – that ‘Opaque Literary Style would go to heaven’, in that heaven is not meant for Soyinka, who snarls the traffic – human and vehicular, especially when he has not obtained police permit to that effect – on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Soyinka, who fans lawlessness with piercing arrogance and remorselessness to the discomfort of his neighbours. Soyinka should note thatThe Road to heaven is not as narrow a path as the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and, so, should not be congested or blocked to the prevention of a swift flow of human and vehicular traffic, for whatever reason; not even by organizing a Holy Ghost confabulation. The Road to heaven, if Christ’s experience is any guide, is an ever-open expressway; sans gargantuan pot-holes; sans Holy Ghost confabulation-induced, muscular, jet-speed-of-a-snail traffic jam. If Soyinka thinks otherwise, he should quote from the Holy Bible: the book, the chapter, the verse and the writer of the book to support his position. Alleluia, somebody!
And yet, at length – in coming to pass of a prophecy by Prophet Brother Jero – erupted a sanguinary religious conflict. Amidst a gripping recession it did. The military, police, NSCDC and FRSC were openly unwilling to intervene in what was decidedly a conflict that had – they knew so much from pure intelligence – gone well beyond their reach. Appeals from influential political and business quarters, Washington, Paris, Moscow, Addis Ababa, London and Brussels, that the warring parties should exercise restraint and sheathe their daggers – for the next nine months – in a bloody conflict that, in nearly twelve weeks, had taken an unrelieved complexion of a battue; one in which a high number of real and imagined Crescent and Cross adherents had been slain – was bootless.
The Cross was well dealt with: it was reported that much to the glee of Soyinka, Onuoha Ukeh, Eyo Akpan, Adamson Momoh (a labour beat veteran), Foster Obi, Dele Alake, Reuben Abati, Felix Nyong, and the Lagos State Ministry of the Environment – most neighbourhoods in Abeokuta, Ibadan, Idanre, Isara, Lagos and the Berger-Ogere stretch of the expressway became eerily quiet. No longer active were hypocrites, who had claimed that they were praise-worshipping Christ, especially at night, to the prevention of a restful sleep for law-abiding Muslims, the infirm and the aged, unrepentantlyproud atheists, animists, agnostics, idol worshippers, free thinkers etc., or a little before sun-up, when their noise, made in the name of spreading the message of Christ – a message they never believed, in the first place, breached, quite rudely, the quietude of the neighbourhood.
“How come! Was it a case of the Crescent’s fury – an informed, justified, if destructive, heave, like that of a volcano on the Indonesian archipelago – being the beginning of the end of lawlessness, in the name of religion, or pretence to the effect of adoring Christ?”, Soyinka asked, rather rhetorically, in an opinion article titled: “Graveyard silence”; in July’s edition of The Congested Road.
It was difficult to tell, nonetheless, whether the Crescent’s heave would, ultimately – when it has spent itself – yield sanity on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. And yet, many months to the number of twenty-two, it became quite lucid that the painful reluctance of the military, police, FRSC, NSCDC, political parties, crowns and palaces, skippers of huge labour-intensive and massively-capitalized industries, etc. to broker a cease-fire in the sanguinary Crescent-Cross conflict was because the deadly, sectarian virus of the crisis had had its own toll on them: they, too, were already divided along religious fault lines, as it were.
A female voice, on a pirate radio station identified as Liberation Radio, which transmitted on 92.102 F.M., said, in the course of an anti-corruption programme, which had taken the air at exactly 6.15 p.m., that: “Amidst the ongoing carnage, with its roots on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and the open, inexplicable reluctance of the military to arrest the situation, there’s an unconfirmed breaking news about the declaration of Ogoni People’s Democratic Republic (OPDR), and United Niger Delta Republic (UNDR) – comprising mainly of the long-oppressed Ijaw (Izon) ethnic group in the oil-producing area of the country.”
As some top, public officials were either being slain or kidnapped – “somewhat mysteriously” – as some newspaper reports had it, so were places of worship, tertiary institutions affiliated to the warring Cs set ablaze.
Some seasoned journalists – including Prince Tony Momoh, Olatunji Dare, Sonala Olumhense, Tunji Bello, Olufunke Fadugba, Segun Ayobolu, Ogwuike Nwachukwu, etc., almost met half-way, in their various columns on the too-hot-to-handleshape of things to come. Theirs were more of frightening prophecies to the effect that Nigeria would be worse off – compared to Lebanon of 1975 to 1990. Uthman Shodipe wrote in his column to the effect that: “A Nigeria of the post-sanguinary religious conflict – triggered off by the lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – would be more of a broken glass that would be too hard to put together again. The most dangerous fault lines of religion – two religions that were imported here, much to the disadvantage – indeed, denigration – of our indigenous African religions, which preach and practice tolerance and good neighbourliness, moderation and charity; African religions that are never characterized by fraudulent thaumaturge and false prophets, who either preach doom or prosperity for their own selfish ends, or hold combined service, or vigil, where all manner of sexual immorality is regnant, have taken this country back by nearly four decades.
“If there’s still much crushing power left in indigenous African religions, their priests and followers should invoke the spirit of our ancestors to expiate, quite severely, those who smuggled the conflicting Cs into this country, their offspring and followers, who have shed so much blood and caused an unimaginable pogrom in a manner reminiscent of Biafra, Khmer Rouge (Cambodia), Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda. Sad, though, whoever thinks he or she can, will have a herculean task of trying to erase the ugly memory of the sanguinary crisis, which started on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and melt away religious and ethnic distrust and intolerance with roots as deep as the ocean.
“As one writes,” said Shodipe, “some international broadcasters – the BBC, VOA, DW Radio and CNN – have reported that Nigeria was fast being carved into religious fiefdoms. Across the religious divide, false prophets, who’re never in short supply – like corrupt leaders and looters of the Nigerian fisc – will arise, making all manner of promises. Fools are, besides, free – because it’s a free world – to follow them!” Amen, somebody.
Shodipe wrote, further, that while the BBC and CNN were almost correct to have traced the sanguinary religious conflict to the lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, he also prophesied, as if he was under the intoxicating influence of Soyinka’s god-son – Prophet Brother Jero – that “the muscular, virile and united Nigeria of my dream, that would spring from the ruins of the lawlessness and carnage, which sprung from somewhere on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, would be one governed by the chief priests and messengers of indigenous African religions, ordained by or voted into office by representatives of our ancestors. The two conflicting Cs have buried themselves – in coming to pass of one of the frightening prophecies of Prophet Brother Jero – somewhere on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. And, so, it’s time for a renaissance and return to indigenous African religions. Let’s rekindle the spirit of the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC). Are you there, Professor Sophie Oluwole!
“Good riddance to ‘Amen, somebody’, ‘Alleluia, somebody’, ‘Hypocrisy’, ‘Combined service’, ‘Offering’, ‘Tithe’. Good riddance to Soyinka and his god-son – Prophet Brother Jero’. Good riddance to ‘Jesus is coming soon’, excessive noise, parasitic pastors and General Overseers and bishops, their wives and children and elders of various churches. Good riddance to ‘Night vigil’, ‘Miracles’, ‘Altar call’, ‘Give your life to Christ’, ‘Counselling’, ‘Bible study’, Personality cult, ‘Crusade’, ‘Revival hour’, ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God . . .’, ‘Sunday service’, ‘Combined service’. Good riddance to ‘Holy Communion’, ‘The blind see’, ‘Testimony’ ‘Fasting’, ‘Cassock’, ‘Everlasting life’, ‘The Devil’, wasteful ‘Pilgrimage’, ‘Lake of fire’ etc.”
Good riddance, in effect, to everything that has to do with any religion that is not genuinely indigenous to Africa. Shodipe agreed with the BBC and VOA, to the effect that, if the Nigerian federation ceased, ultimately, to exist – as was the Republic of Biafra or post-Tito Yugoslavia – it would have been a victim of treachery; one that would be worse than the Shakespearean against Julius Caesar or Judas Iscariot’s against our Lord Jesus Christ, in that it was her gargantuan wealth that had been used – so generously, with an avuncular touch, but in a clear breach of Sections 10, 35, 36, 37, 38 39 and 40 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which state that the country has no official or state religion and that the Federal Government should not involve itself in any religious activities – in sponsoring the followers of the conflicting Cs to pilgrimages, every year, to places like Israel, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and much to the senseless depletion of her foreign reserve – but to the glee of some airlines that took the pilgrims to their various destinations, corrupt government officials and their accomplices, who demanded gargantuan kick-backs from intending pilgrims, and their hosts. One is tempted to agree with Shodipe, when he wrote with a sardonic and unsparing edge of The Blade that: “When children are over-pampered – in a manner akin to wasting scarce, tax-payers’ money, on pilgrimages that do not contribute to the growth of the country’s economy, or equip public hospitals that are now ‘consulting clinics’ with drugs, ample hour of steady power and water supply, well-motivated doctors, nurses, etc. – they could be as lawless, irresponsible, vicious and decidedly ungrateful to the extent of not only biting the hand that feeds them, but, as well, bite off, with gargantuan and ambitiously whet incisors, pre-molars and molars, and swallow, somewhat greedily, the kind and caring limb from whence its springs.” Amen, somebody!
But, to a close observer, such acts of unrelieved selfishness and ingratitude are, sometimes, freighted on misplaced confidence and xeroxed arrogance. They are offensive acts, calculated, chiefly, to veil, oftentimes in vain, some private – if embarrassing – inadequacies. They are signs of what some psychologists call “innate weakness”; one that’s, inexorably, a function of a mind in the philistine mould. If it’s not handled carefully, it breeds – almost naturally – a bad press or opprobrium for the actor or individual. The inevitable odium leads, in turn, to isolation or severance of the individual from a mass of willing builders in the Lord’s vineyard. That’s when a once-thriving chemistry may have been badly hurt by ill-advised brashness, boastfulness uncalled-for and puerile intolerance of informed criticism and superior argument – probably to shield some inferiority complex, deep-rooted selfishness, engrafted private greed and inexplicable ingratitude. In that event, one thing is certain: the fountain of trust gets poisoned beyond redemption – like a broken virginity. And, at length – as the inherent weakness tolls hard on the individual, in isolation – it triggers off self-destruction. It’s a fairly long and decidedly drab narrative; a serpentine psychological chain of the negative that, in the spiritual realm, will take a profound appreciation of genuine service and fear of Christ to help any individual about whom this case is, perhaps, true.
One final word on Shodipe’s position on the raging C-C conflict: Nigeria would seem to have, indeed, been a clear victim of some calculated conspiracy by some inordinately ambitious individuals, who – probably, in alliance with some foreign powers – fuelled the feud, solely for what they would claw home, whenever it was over. But, well before the conflict, ’twas certain, some newspapers reported, that some of the dramatis personae, in their selfish disposition and consuming exhibition of ingratitude, were found to have kept the company of criminals, whose base desires they serviced – almost unreservedly – for fleeting gains. Then, acting on false promises made them by the same criminals, and their immoral instructions, they saw themselves as masters of the moment. Their lot became false airs: misplaced sense of security and for which they felt clearly questionably confident, and, so, stepped, quite dangerously, on some powerful toes. Some rumours had it that the raging C-C conflict had presented such elements an opportunity of being the latest chief executive officers (CEOs) of a booming economy: make-shift stew to satisfy the base craving of criminals and the genuinely starved. It was from some youthful service-providers in the numerous stew that, as one bush-telegraph had it, a frighteningly large quantity of IEDs and other arms of foreign origin, had been buried somewhere on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, in readiness for use against some prominent individuals and places of worship, whose religious activities, as on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, were causing a lot nuisance and openly disrespectful of the rights of law-abiding and tax-paying Muslims and a majority of other Nigerians. For decidedly selfish gains, such ignoble CEOs of immorality – individuals who profit from crime and embrace selfishness as a way of life – “their most fervent prayer”, Shodipe wrote, “is that the C-C conflict should rage till eternity – even if ’twould, ultimately, consume them!” Amen, somebody! How shallow is the thinking of such lawless opportunistic entrepreneurs of crime and immorality – selfish and unreservedly ungrateful individuals – could be glimpsed from Shodipe’s perspective. The shallowness of their thinking is underscored by what Shodipe referred to as “their legendary, if engrafted, love for filthy lucre – including that stolen from the government’s fisc.” If they could fuel the C-C conflict, up to this far, from their, supposedly, harmless end, they are probably within the Shakespearean mould of those whose prowess, profile and penchant for gargantuan mischief – a la Cassius – is celebrated. Christ, in His infinite mercy, should guide and protect the peaceful from straying into their evil circle. Amen, somebody!
Truth is that whenever this conflict is over, they, too, would be sniffed out and punished severely – for their crimes against the Nigerian nation-state and crossing the spirit of Christ. Amen, somebody! Within the distance, they’d be expected to explain – in an over-crowded Federal High Court or at a military tribunal – what moral right they have to check their wayward offspring and what moral lesson, if any, they impart to them. It may well be necessary, on a fast-approaching, mini-Day of Judgement – in a post-bellum era – to tell the veterans of the C-C conflict that they have an albatross to contend, in futility, though, with: the blood of the innocent that they have shed; the huge loss of life and property they have caused by their selfish enterprise – an albatross that, for life, Christ will, surely, not be happy with them. Alleluia, somebody!
Even so, Shodipe wondered whether the Nigerian government – whenever the raging Holy Ghost fire, which has stubbornly resisted a robust and gargantuan application of ark- and trailer-loads of holy water, pure water, and use of countless cylinders of extinguishers, on professional instruction from the fire service, has spent itself – would go on its knees – compellingly bended, like an economy grappling with an ambitious recession, and say: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” – not tongue in cheek, like a certain wily and fraudulent pastor out there, but in a persuasive emulation of the forgiving spirit of the merciful and infinitely kind, but crucified, Christ the Redeemer on the Cross of Calvary. He reasoned, besides, that the raging religious feud would not have erupted, in the first place, but for the disdainful arrogance, ostentatious contempt and hubris with which yearly requests, since FESTAC,in 1977, by well over a legion of the followers of indigenous African religions – the unrepentant and proud worshippers of Ifa, Ogun, Orunmila, Sango, Orisha Edumare, Osun River goddess,etc – for sponsorship on pilgrimage to Benin, Brazil and Cuba (BBC), had often been rejected by the Federal Government. “Meet such decent and legitimate request – now, and the spirit of our ancestors will, without fail, cause the raging Holy Ghost fire, which erupted from somewhere on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, to vanish”, Shodipe offered. Amen, somebody!
The World Bank quoted, recently, some Friedmanite Chicago Boys as saying that Nigeria would need as much as $480 billion – about 65 percent of it in budgetary aid from foreign governments and international development agencies – spread over a period of fifteen years – in a post-bellum era – for national reconstruction and reconciliation. Amidst a massive capital flight – when about eight banks were visibly unwell, anxiety up amongst a crushing number of their customers, a new, if expensive, market-driven insurance architecture, and some countries in the European Union, Asia and the Pacific Basin closing their embassies – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) surmised that, well into the Crescent-Cross feud, Nigeria had lost $376 billion, and that about $310 billion in sorely-needed foreign direct investment (FDI), would not flow in until twelve years from now. While some industries have folded up and unemployment’s fortune north-bound by 31 percent, the All-Shares’ Index (ASI) of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) was down by 39 percent and capitalization south-bound by 47 percent, it was on a day of a bonfire on the notorious stretch of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, which caused traffic congestion for nearly fourteen hours. The dip in the ASI followed a loss of confidence in the hugely capitalized equities mainly in the telecommunications, beverages and alcohol and oil sectors.
A retired lecturer of economics at the University of Lagos, Akoka – Dr.Mash’udFashola, who’s also a big-time farmer – prophesied that if the current trend at Customs Street was any guide, jobbers, portfolio investors and shareholders of most companies registered at the NSE should expect, in the not-too-distant future, an indefinite closure of the NSE. The reason, quoth he, in Stocks& Equity Express, “is the rebellious dip –720 – in the value of the naira to the American dollar. Add the fact that manufacturing has, since the past seven months, been down by 43 percent – on account of hard-to-come-by foreign exchange and stratospherical surge in the price of raw materials.
“Even though the federal government has instructed the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to inject a princely sum of N740 billion, as stimulus fund into the manufacturing sector – in three tranches, before year’s end – truth is that the forecast of any recovery, henceforward, from the economic recession, is inordinately lugubrious; lugubrious for therecent closure of four first generation banks, the inexplicable collapse of business at the Apapa and Tin Can Island ports, the inferno, five weeks ago, at the apex bank, which destroyed its Foreign Exchange and Bank Depositors’ Profile Account Departments, a similar ambitious fire at the Petroleum Corporation’s Crude Oil Equalisation Fund and Accounts Departments; all acts of calculated arson to suppress some gargantuan pong before the coming to judgement by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), headed by Mr. Ibrahim Magu.”A heavenly-bound Muslim, Fashola offered that while it was necessary that the federal government should meet, anytime, hence, with the representatives of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), to address, amongst others, how well to distribute and expend the stimulus, part of it should be pumped into power generation and measures aimed at boosting the naira. With food scarcity – amidst double-digit inflation, quothFashola: “There’s a pressing need to deal ruthlessly with cheats, fraudsters, hooligans, parasites and those who, in the Supreme Being’s name, lie, and whose religious activities on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway have caused an unimaginable decline in the economic fortunes of the country and untold hardship to a majority of law-abiding Nigerians – including Muslims.
“While methinks that it’s necessary that the federal government should do whatever it can to end the feud, law-abiding Nigerians should team up, as well, with the police, FRSC, National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), National Human Rights Commission (NHRC),Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), State Houses of Assembly, the National Assembly, etc., in the assignment. Whenever the religious feud ends, then, it’s hoped, shall food scarcity melt, because,then, again, shall fairly affordable, wholesome agricultural products from the core north and the Niger Delta region, flood the South-West geo-political zone.”
But, whenever the din of the feud subsides, Fashola advised that the Federal Government – backed bythe police, FRSC, NANS, NBA, NLC, NHRC, NUJ, NGE, State Houses of Assembly, the National Assembly, etc. – should close all places of worship on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway that were linked to it – for at least three decades. “As most Nigerians have come, now, to realize, there has been too much lawlessness and ungodliness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Otherwise there would have been no need for the ongoing senseless waste of human life, loss of confidence by the international community in the Fourth Republic, the stemming of the in-flow of FDI and a steep dip in thecountry’s political economy”, quoth Fashola.
In agreement with Fashola, al-Kareem was of the view that:“One of the enduring lessons of the carnage triggered off by the lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is that there’s now a peremptory 11th Commandment to the existing ten of God, which is: ‘Thou shall not, in God’s name or any other reason, whatsoever, block the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – the busiest road in the West Africa sub-region – because thou shall, surely, draw the consuming wrath oflaw-abiding Muslims.’” Amen, somebody!
A posse of development economists and labour relations analysts, with close links with the World Bank and IMF, wrote in an up-coming edition ofDemocracy and Labour Affairs – a quarterly journal – that, in nearly twenty-five years up to 2014, Nigeria had lost close to nine billion man-hours and nearly $522 billion in revenue to the agonizingly slow traffic jam caused by Cross gatherings organized by irresponsible and lawless church leaders within Kilometre 30 and 59 of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. In one of the journal’s three editorials captioned “Religious lawlessness drains Nigeria’s economy, threatens democracy and unity”, and signed by Andriana Scavells-Mfelatti, 72, it was posited that: “Were such lost revenue available today, it would have been enough, given budgetary discipline, to build and equip, quite lavishly, 292 government-owned primary schools, 45 government-owned secondary schools, 12 federal polytechnics, 16 federal universities, 37 Federal Government-owned hospitals, 376 ambulances, 125 modern markets, 116 police stations, 165 fire service stations – all with regular power and water supply; buy six naval warships, 366 patrol vehicles for the police and FRSC, improve upon security at the country’s air and sea ports, retool all federal research institutes and public libraries, build seven thermal power stations; pay the salary of teachers in primary and secondary schools owned by federal and state governments, pay the emoluments of pensioners for a minimum of fifteen years; clean up oil-polluted areas of the Niger Delta, build twelve refuse incinerators each in all the six-geo-political zones, construct five comprehensive secondary schools each in all the nine oil-producing states of the country, take three million youths, including graduates of tertiary institutions off the labour market and, amongst others, provide 785, 40-seater mass transit coaches – in a scheme that would later become self-financing – on such routes as Lagos-Ibadan, Lagos-Sagamu-Ijebu-Ode, Ibadan-Abeokuta, Lagos-Benin, Lagos-Onitsha, Lagos-Warri, Onitsha-Warri,Ilorin-Lagos, Lagos-Port Harcourt-Enugu-Abuja,Ibadan-
’Twould be recalled that Scavells-Mfelatti was the 38-year-old, mixed-race beguine, who, on the second anniversary of the Soweto massacre, in 1978, burnt all her ecclesiastical possessions – including the so-called Holy Bible and other religious publications of diverse shapes and sizes and founts, rosaries, chaplets, clothes, urns, vases, scarves, handkerchiefs, oils, crosses of diverse shapes and sizes fashioned out of wood, plastic and aluminium, incense, candles of diverse shapes and sizes and colours,and threw the ashes into the deep at Cape Agulhas – the confluence of the Atlantic and Indian oceans – to become a prominent, flaming pamphleteer for the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) of South Africa – the organizers of the protest, during which a large number of black school children were slain – for their informed opposition to a plan to use Afrikaan as the medium of instruction. As some of the brains behind it sneaked out of the racist enclave and took refuge in Tanzania and Nigeria, the Soweto riot was to trigger offa series of well-co-ordinated protests by black youths, which made most of the cities of South Africa ungovernable for the next two decades. Her action, then, she told this writer – over lunch, back in June 1996, at the on-campus residence of a lecturer at the Department of Political Science, ObafemiAwolowo University, Ile-Ife –was in protest against the use of the so-called Holy Bible by the white minority-led, apartheid regime to justify its oppression of the black majority in that country; the same so-called Holy Bible thatevil-minded Reverend Wole Soyinka used in perpetrating the Jonestown massacre in the late ’70s. The so-called Holy Bible that was an accomplice in the evils of colonial rule. The so-called Holy Bible that was used by well over a legion of very visible and influential agents of the Cross – bishops, reverend fathers, pastors, et al – to justify their active participation in the massacre of innocent Tutsi people in Rwanda, in 1994. The so-called Holy Bible that a certain famous agent of the Cross quoted, quite copiously, to justify his handing innocent Jews over to Adolf Hitler and his gang of murderers, who sent them to gas-chambers – Auschwitz, for instance – and so, the Holocaust. Talk of flagitious conspiracy and abuse of power. And that was because the same so-called Holy Bible did say, in of one the Ten Commandments of God that: Thou shall kill; kill innocent Jews by siding with the murderers of the Third Reich. It were it possible, today, some religious fanatics, like the Pentecostalists of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, would have pressed charges against industrious and innocent Jews, whom the so-called Holy Bible accused, with a bald racial streak, as the murderers of Christ, if only to give the world an impression that they are the ambassadors and soldiers of the Great Redeemer. Amen, somebody!
When it was reported in The Expressway Report thatthree State Houses of Assembly, very close to Ibadan and the south-west wings of the National Assembly, had been bombed, twenty-two law-makers of south-west origin assassinated, a majority of the schools in the South-West geo-political zone closed and nearly 218 places of worship flattened, 269 schools burnt, nine pipelines vandalized – as were 22 masts owned some telecommunication companies well-known for their open romance with a certain Pentecostal outfit, 389 petrol tankers in Lagos, Sagamu, Ile-Ife, Ede, Ilaro, Ibadan, Ajebandele, Oshogbo, Okitipupa, Oyo, and Ore destroyed, and an equal number of men – including tanker drivers belonging to the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), who were notorious for parking their tankers at the middle of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, without planting “C” caution signs to warn vehicles coming from behind, even at night, and so caused a lot of ghastly accidents – women and children – across the religious divide – slain, in the course a scorched earth policy, in Abeokuta, Ijebu-Ode, Ikorodu, Ago-Iwoye, Mowe, Ore, Sango-Ota Odogbolu,Ogere, Ikene, Iperu-Remo, Oyo, Ilesha, Epe, Aiyetoro, Ilishan, Agbara, Sagamu, Ibafo, Ewekoro and Ibadan, some law-abiding, prominent Yoruba politicians, business tycoons, popular intellectuals and highly-revered crowns alleged conspiracy “at yet another senseless bloodshed – one that flashes back, somewhat, with a touch of unease, the memory of ‘Operation Wetie’ of the early ’60s – primarily to besmirch the reputation of the Yoruba race and launch a final onslaught to obliterate what is left of the legacies of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo.” They appealed to the federal government to use its might to douse the fire “before it consumes this country.”
They were quite sanguine that the Buhari administration would hearken to their entreaty, especially for Osinbajo’s exalted and influential position in it. One of the Yoruba leaders, who made the appeal to the federal government, was a retired professor of sociology in one of the universities in the South-West geo-political zone. Mr.Oniyangi Olorunesan (not his real name) told this writer, in his Bodija office, in Ibadan, that the appeal was informed by some reports by a pirate radio station called Resurrection Radio, which transmitted on 70.67 F.M. to the effect that except efforts were made to douse the raging C-C fire, it may draw – a la the Congo crisis –mercenaries, alongside ill-behaved herdsmen,dogs of war from Mali, Niger, Libya and the Middle East. He said that the fear of the Yoruba leaders was augmented by Dickensian intelligence from the United Nations, in New York, African Union, in Addis Ababa and some countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), to the effect that:“No country would send peace-keeping troops here, in that the C-C conflict is a product of the deep-rooted corruption in Nigeria. It’s, truly, a self-inflicted wound. Nigerian leaders should find an enduring solution to one of the darkest chapters in their country’s history. Her leaders should reduce the size of her over-bloated civil service, borrow money from her corrupt politicians, her idle and unclean law-makers at the National Assembly, who are about the highest paid in the world, military, police, skippers of the private sector, some past governors of the apex banks, dons etc., to repair her image and infrastructure that have been deeply crossed by the raging feud. Perhaps, as Dr. Alaba Ogunsanwo, a lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, Akoka, did offer, soon after the fall of the Second Republic, her leaders should borrow sorely-needed development funds from her law-makers and other individuals, who have looted her fisc. Otherwise, let the raging Holy Ghost fire on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway ruin her.”Amen, somebody!
But, if anything, said Olorunesan, “that’s an unsettling decision. It seems it’s one that was taken without considering the risk of leaving the C-C conflict to rage – almost endlessly. What that presupposes, just in case, is that countries like Benin Republic, Cameroun, Chad, Niger, Ghana, Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe, Equatorial Guinea and South Africa may be swamped by refugees from the war.”The Yoruba leaders’ appeal came about two weeks after Kilometre 30 to 59 of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway was closed – for security reason and to, as well, relieve the stretch of muscular and jet-speed-of-a-snail human and vehicular traffic.
But, much to Soyinka’s discomfort, a fairly wide bush path – as wide as four lanes – appeared over-night near his house. On it, human and vehicular traffic to and from Lagos, crawled; exodus-like. A morally-bankrupt, Soyinka the Entrepreneur, became, thereafter, a regular fixture there – from 5.45 a.m. to 11.45 p.m. – collecting a flat rate of N50 (“Wazo”) as toll, without issuing a ticket for it, from every bicycle, motor-bike, tricycle, car, truck and mass-transit bus; pedestrians –including the lameon wheel-chair; the lame, who false prophets, parasitic pastors and fake thaumaturge of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway were not able to help out of their sorry plight; the lame, who so-called prayer warriors and self-styled anointed men of God would rather exploit – for as long as they ruled was necessary; the lame, who couldn’t walk, the blind, who couldn’t see, and school children, whose parents – an unrepentantly heartless Soyinka knew, full well –were, indeed, poor, who usedthe bush route, with the assistance of some ex-prisoners and ‘Area Boys’ with blood-shot eyes! As Soyinka collected each “Wazo”, he muttered: “May God bless you; have a safe trip.” And why not! Soyinka – a basso profundo – whom Christ, in His consuming wrathfulness, shall never forgive, for his heartlessness towards the children of the decidedly poor. The children of the poor whose road from school, in most instances, is buried by inky darkness. Soyinka the Stentor, who, in yet another act of heartlessness and his pathological love for money, singled out mass transit buses owned by Igbo people for what he called “a special toll” of N500.00. Soyinka, who shall, surely, be consumed, unsparingly, by Holy Ghost fire! That was the same Soyinka who, until now, had made the unsuspecting international community to believe that he was a friend of Biafrans and every other member of the Igbo race. What a shame! What a scandal! What an act of infamy! Soyinka who, in a shameful show of narcissism, once printed and circulated counterfeit Naira notes bearing his bust, to mark the 22nd anniversary of his scaling the quill’s Everest! Soyinka, who, in a show of irreverence to the Yoruba culture, knots an expensive, shiny blue, ground-sweeping tie atopagbada. , who once told the swarming members of his church never to watch television and that they should dispose of their jewelry at night at the Victoria Beach, because they were symbols of the devil and, so, against the will of Christ. And yet, the same clean Soyinka the Evangelist is seen every day on almost every television channel parroting what he claims is the gospel of Christ. Soyinka the name above all names. There is now a Soyinka who showers his mistresses with gold wrist-watches and necklaces imported from Paris, London, Dubai, Johannesburg, New York and Amsterdam and, as a caring and randy pastor, changes their television sets on their birthdays. Soyinka, at the mention of whose name, according to ’Yemi Ogunbiyi, all knees – including crooked ones, shall bow. Soyinka, who, in a sinful disagreement with the New King James Version of the Holy Bible, insists that there’s neither hell nor lake of fire. Soyinka who encourages churches to found government-approved primary, secondary and tertiary institutions that, for their astronomical fees, are not accessible to the children of the poor; the poor whose tithe, offering and immeasurable ministrations formed a sweeping percentage of the funds and other resources used in setting up such schools. It shall never be well with Soyinka – one of the famous beneficiaries of free education –for conspiring with churches –that foul the law on noise abatement and cause agonizingly slow traffic jam on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – to deny the children of the poor of sorely-needed education. May the crossed spirit of the late Chief ObafemiAwolowo –a la Ate – forever haunt Soyinka,until his favourite subject – rejecting, for the final time, his filthy monetary gratification and ambitious sacrifice deep inside an evil forest – slaughters him, like a pig somewhere inside the National Theatre. Amen, somebody! And yet, in spite of Soyinka’s illegality and heartlessness to the children of the poor, some of them, in a brief chat with this writer, expressed genuine joy to the effect that the raging C-C conflict had offered them a rare opportunity to get very close to him and had what could pass for a Nobel handshake as they paid their toll. Still, on one occasion of his birthday, Soyinka – an ever-ballooning bundle of Biafran sadness that is stubbornly unrelieved – not, to tell the truth, even by his glorious conquestof the quill’s Everest – told Ofeimun, in coming to pass of one of the prophecies of Prophet Brother Jero, that he would have felt a lot better were it that the four-lane bush route was exactly as narrow as the way the Holy Bible said, in the synoptic gospel of Matthew, was to salvation. And why not! Soyinka you’re an idiot; a shameless cheat! When did you become so blessed and obscenely rich with near-bottomless information concerning the Holy Bible! You quote the Holy Bible with an unrivalled, Prize-winning exactitude – in a show of shallow self-righteousness, though – only when it suits your devilish intent. You would not have been here to cross the children of the poor and diligent Igbo mass transit operators, if you had been left to rust and rot away in solitary confinement – even after the Biafra war. You’re an idiot. It shall never be well with you. Amen, somebody!
About 82 metres from where Soyinka and his accomplices collected toll – what Billy Okonedo called, as a matter of fact, “offering”; Moses Jolayemi: “Kongi’s latter-day harvest” – stood some trendily dressed blagueur, who distributed tracts and harangued passers-by to the effect that: “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand”, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son; that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have an everlasting life”, “Where will you spend Eternity?”, “Come to Jesus, because he is the only one who can save you from economic recession”, “Pay your tithe, because, that way, you are assured of a congestion-free expressway to heaven”, “The love of money by Soyinka is the root of all evils”, “For Soyinka – the morally bankrupt Toll-Collector – has sinned and come short of God’s glory”, “It is appointed unto Soyinka – the morally bankrupt Toll-Collector from the children of the poor – to die once, after that the judgement for which he shall be cast into a lake of fire.” Amen, somebody! Within the distance, a female member of the 12-strong evangelists – Fred Owhawha one – rang a bell to draw the attention of passers-by.
“Now, as we rise up for a brief prayer, Odia Ofeimun, ’Yemi Ogunbiyi, ’Femi Osofisan and Olatunji Dare should close their eyes. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be it that any one who has crossed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child – the right and access to education – shall be consumed by an implacably ferocious Holy Ghost fire. Amen, somebody! Now be sitted, while Odia Ofeimun, ’Yemi Ogunbiyi, ’Femi Osofisan and Olatunji Dare should remain standing. Can any one of you explain to this gathering of the children of God why Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, is extorting money from the lame, the blind and the children of the poor? Is he now an ordained pastor, or is the illegal toll-gate, which all of you assisted in its construction, another church in disguise?”
In response to Pastor Olusegun Idariji at Salvation of Christ Evangelical Gospel Assembly, at the Berger area of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Odia Ofeimun said: “Soyinka has never pretended that he’s a saint. He’s a Nigerian, like everyone inside this church. Soyinka is not a hypocrite, like most so-called anointed men of God, who are milking the children of the poor. What he’s doing, currently, at the toll-gate is genuinely Nigerian; it’s not as criminal as the misdeeds of those who have crippled the economy of this richly-endowed country.Thereisnothing wrong in Soyinka’s presence at the toll-gate; not even the fact that he’s been smiling back to his residence, near by, at the close of business, a little before mid-night.”
A retired professor of economics at the University of Lagos, Akoka – Mr.Kayode Familoni – in a text message, applauded Soyinka the Toll- Collector, but advised him to deposit “every naira that you and your accomplices collect, each week, into the Treasury Single Account (TSA), because at the end of such an economic exercise, which one understands is backed by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), yourunique contributionmight just ease the country out of the current recession.” Familoni surmised that if Soyinka’s capitalist foray succeeded in defanging recession, it was very likely – in coming to pass of a prophecy by Prophet Brother Jero – that Soyinka would be crowned, in 2019, with yet another Nobel Prize – this time for Economics! Amen, somebody! In that event, Soyinka the Capitalist, who bubbles with a shrewd sense of business, would have set a world record of being the firstNobelist to cross from one field, at a very terrific speed – as if on a congestion-free Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and for which he should be arrested by the police and kept in solitary confinement – to breast the tape at another. Alleluia, somebody!
Still, a founding member of a Lagos-based weekly –The Niche – AmaechiIkechukwu, accused Familoni of herd instinct and tribalism in seeing nothing wrong in Soyinka’s erection of a fraud-proof, toll-gate on a federal highway without the consent of the FRSC; worse still, extorting – with the aid of an army of ex-prisoners and unrepentant ‘Area Boys’ – N50 from the children of the poor. “One says nothing of the lame, who cannot walk and the blind, who cannot see. One suspects that Familoni’selection to encourage Soyinka’s brand of extortion and illegality presupposes that he’s likely to get a gargantuan share of the illegal toll, whenever the crime is over. Soyinka and his co-toll-collectors should be arrested – now (!) – and put away in a police cell, until the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is re-opened, a legion of firm, anti-traffic congestion measures put in place and every naira in illegal toll collected by Soyinka and his accomplices used to patch the legion of pot-holes on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway”, quothIkechukwu.
An admirer of Soyinka, who’s now gravely disappointed by his scandalous misconduct, Ikechukwu was of the view that Soyinka ought to have played the role of a peace-maker, long ago – as he did, albeit unsuccessfully, on the eve of the genocide against the Igbo people: the Biafra war. Quoth he: “If Soyinka doesn’t vanish, henceforward, from that illegal toll-gate, which he has erected – on a federal highway, at that – and use his muscular fame and influence to end the C-C conflict, be he informed that there’s a sure-to-come-to-pass prophecy – joking apart – that he would be the next target, now that a crushing majority of the workers of iniquity, fake pastors and bishops, cheats, fraudsters, hypocrites, you name it, have been slain. And, if that would, indeed, translate to a modified New King James Version of The Man Died, so be it. Alleluia, somebody!
“But seriously, even though the raging C-C conflict is not Biafra, one is convinced that because it’s like a miraculously, implacable Holy Ghost fire, raging next door, Soyinka would succeed this time. The issue at stake is the morality of the huge toll that his mysteriously faceless,favourite subject is collecting – even from the innocent, especially the children of the genuinely poor,who have no real link to the feud. He should speak any one of the numerous dialects of the Yoruba language – especially the one that he thinks he last spoke, about seven hours, before his arrival in Oslo, to the captains of the warring Cs. They would, surely, listen to him. Methinks; for his transparent desire to have a peaceful, corruption-free and united Nigeria. If he had spoken less of opaque Queens English and more of simple Igbo – larded, copiously,with proverbs, idioms, axioms, metaphors, idioms, adages, personifications, paradoxes, similes, oxymorons, allegories, synonyms, antonyms, synecdoches, cynghanedds, metonyms, hyperboles, alliterations, rhymes and rhythms, serpentine-verses, assonances, oxytones, maxims, aphorisms, euphemisms, sarcasms; you name it – to Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and his Biafra associates, there, probably, won’t have been the Biafra war. He should, therefore, ‘set on and leave no ceremony out’”. Amen, somebody!
All that, to tell the truth, was a part of acoldly calculated and viciously wild bush-telegraph,set afootby some irresponsible journalists, led by ’Deji Elumoye (alias “ Untruthfulness and Injustice”), to tarnish Soyinka’s irritatingly opaque reputation.Another coldly calculated and viciously wild bush-telegraph had it that – following an appeal by NPAN, NPC and the National Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), the police and SSShad declared ’Deji Elumoye and his gang of irresponsible journalists – who had, rather cowardly, gone into hiding – wanted, for setting, deliberately, out to Cross (sic) Soyinka in a cooked story allegedly related to the religious lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Alleluia, somebody. Indeed, the police and SSS – in taking an impressive step further – were said to have placed a bounty on fugitive ’Deji Elumoye and his gang of irresponsible journalists. And, as yet another bush-telegraph – a far-from-wild one, though – had it, the bounty was said to be eighty-two times the amount that Soyinka the Ventripotent and his team of ex-prisoners and ‘Area Boys’ were expected to collect in toll in the next twenty-two months. Amen, somebody!
“What has happened to the soul and unity of this country”, Soyinka, Olatunji Dare and Tunji Bello wrote, jointly, in an opinion article titled: “The costly price of ungodliness and fanaticism”, published in The Congested Road, edited by Shodipe, “is a clear manifestation of deep-seated corruption in the religious and political circles. Where the warring religious parties have dumped dialogue, we are persuaded by the fact that their preference for needless carnage is a betrayal of their blood-thirstiness; that theirs are religions that have little quarters for peace and harmonious co-existence to the advancement of the oneness of humanity. Given that a gargantuan lot of war crimes have been committed, in the course of the on-going ‘Crusade’ and ‘Jihad’, may we offer that whenever the religious madnesssubsides, the Nigerian government should fish everyone believed to have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity out – via a high-powered panel assisted by the police and SSS – and sentenced, on conviction, by a competent court of jurisdiction, to a minimum of thirty-five years behind bars. Alleluia, somebody!”
Elsewhere, Olatunji Dare and Femi Adesina were quoted to have told an unidentified, international broadcaster – was it Al-Jazeera? – that: “The Nigerian government should stop sponsoring, from this moment, individuals going on pilgrimages outside the shores of this country. Anyone who preaches hatred, henceforward, should be arrested, and held, for a minimum of twenty-two months, in solitary confinement, in keeping with a law that should be made by the National Assembly! All the irresponsible and lawless journalists – especially Paul Okunlola, TheophilusAbbah, Akin Adeoya, Charles Okogene, Richard Ikiebe, IfyOmowole, Garba Mohammed, YinkaKadri, Lawrence Ndukwe, Steve Omafume (alias “Nateef”), JideOgundele, Emma Ndukwe, Tony Onyima, Ngozi Ikeanor and Muyiwa Akintunde – whose voices were heard on some pirate radio stations, like Holy Ghost Fire Radio, which transmitted on 91.43 F.M. and Holy Pilgrimage Radio, on 86.52 F.M., from which poisonous and Soyinka-coined, jaw-breaking words gushed out, so as to discredit Christianity and Islam, should be arrested and maltreated, quite severely, as were Nduka Irabor and TundeThompson by Alias Decree Four. Amen, somebody!”
A former sanitary inspector, who’s now a restless journalist – Godwin Oritshe – intervened in an opinion article titled: “Hell fire on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway”, published in The Congested Road, to the effect that: “Any operative of the Nigeria Police Force, NSCDC and FRSC, who’s found to have been compromised with the fraudsters, whose religious activities prevented free flow of vehicular and human traffic on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway should be compelled to repent in ‘sackcloth and ashes’, under the watchful eyes of unsmiling soldiers. Thereafter, they should be made to sweep and scrub clean Kilometer 30 to 59 of the expressway of refuse and blood, under the supervision of the operatives of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA), from 8.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. until the Chibok girls are freed from the jaws of Boko Haram terrorists.” Amen, somebody!
Writing in TheExpressway Report, a specialist on end-time religious affairs, TaiwoObe, in an opinion article titled: “Nigeria’s expressway to perdition”, offered that the Federal Government should, amongst others, ban, henceforward, religious gathering anywhere between the Berger end and Kilometre 82 of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway; demolish places of worship in areas clearly designated as residential, especially in Lagos; Soyinka and his god-son – Prophet Brother Jero, troublesome Femi Falana (SAN) and stubborn Festus Keyamo – should be held, for as long as is necessary, in solitary confinement, in Gashua, so that they would not have an opportunity to sue the Federal Government – in protest against its nemotech and sanitizing measures to help traffic congestion on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and elsewhere; and so fatten their profile as lawyers, who fight against tyranny. And, as lousy Rotimi Adebayo would say, to the discomfort of his peaceful, Muslim neighbours: “Ameeeeennn!” The kind of platitudinous and meaningless “Ameeeeennn” that he shouts at the top of his voice, oftentimes, when he’s walking down a very busy street, in Lagos – sans the Holy Bible, sans an unusually gargantuan bell – as if he’s either one of the viciously and hopelessly brain-washed, wild Christians or, as his peaceful Muslim neighbours probably suspect – a dangerously deranged pastor! Alleluia, somebody!
A visibly worried Soyinka confided in his “faithful and just” allies – Odia Ofeimun, ’Yemi Ogunbiyi and ’Femi Osofisan – that very soon, he’d write, in an unmistakably opaque literary style, to the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) to arrest and keep Rotimi Adebayo – bushy, ebony-black hair, unusually prominent belly – in solitary confinement; this time in a psychiatric hospital, for as long as is necessary for his stubborn parroting of “Ameeeeennn” – to the disturbance of his neighbours: law-abiding and tax-paying Muslims, free-thinkers, Sango and Ogun worshippers, ardent believers in Orunmila, unrepentantly proud atheists, etc.
“To tell the truth, Soyinka is right”, Abati wrote in his weekly column in The Expressway Report, “in that Rotimi Adebayo has ‘embittered’, through his irrational parroting of ‘Ameeeeennn’, for no known religious cause, the ‘genial relationship’ with his law-abiding and well-behaved neighbours, especially Muslims. Anyone, who’s ruled by his or her poisonous utterance or conduct to pose a clear and present danger to religious harmony and peaceful co-existence in this country, should be shackled. And, if lousy Rotimi Adebayo, who’s often bearing ‘a huge cross’, shouts ‘Ameeeeennn’ at the top of his unrefined voice, as if ‘he wants to scale the heavens’, each time he ‘harangues’ over-crowded market-places and bus shelters in metropolitan Lagos; the same Rotimi Adebayo, who was ordered, recently, by a magistrate court, to refund about N12 million kept in his custody by a certain Pentecostal church, which – as is his notorious wont – he embezzled, during the Jonathan administration – is just one amongst well over a legion of such irresponsible characters, the law should descend ruthlessly on him!” And, as Andy Ezeani – the wily and fraudulent General Overseer of Expressway Evangelical Church – who’s well-known for his sartorial elegance, would say: “Ameeeeennn!”
There were reports that some foreign powers, whose sires were involved in the Crusades, Triple Entente, and the Cold War of the 20th Century, were actively involved in the sanguinary Crescent-Cross feud. Two remarkably rich, religious Rs – the one in north-central region of the Mediterranean Basin, and the other in an arid area of the Middle East – it was widely rumoured, had, by one year into the sanguinary crisis, pumped in nearly $60 million in weapons and relief materials for internally displaced persons (IDPs), and a rippling, sea-mat of refugees that were trooping out of Nigeria into Cameroun, Benin Republic and beyond. It was reported, still, that some morally-bankrupt and heartless government officials and representatives of non-governmental organizations had pilfered some gargantuan quantity of bags of rice, salt, bottled water, jerry-cans of red oil, sugar, blankets, energy-giving biscuits, cartons of toilet soap and detergents – relief materials meant for the refugees. There was, it was true, a fierce, external intervention in the C-C feud to redefine the religious constitution of Nigeria.
It was posited by some writers, in Conflict, Peace and Development – a quarterly journal of international affairs – published in South Africa by a group of professors from diverse disciplines, that the C-C conflict was being seen as an opportunity by some foreign powers, long-driven, primarily, by envy, to see a disintegrated Nigeria. “She has dominated African affairs, since the height of her leadership of the decolonization of the continent in the late ’70s. Perhaps, for white racists, who lost their grip on power at the end of Rhodesia and apartheid, here’s an opportunity to hit hard at Nigeria,” NkosilogiMwarija, wrote. “Such envious foreign powers reason that a good starting point is focused effort to dislocate her economy and give her a bad press that hers is a milieu hostile to foreign investment. The C-C conflict is said to have set her economy back by three decades. For that – amidst unease of straying into a debt peonage – she may have to borrow, hugely – at fairly generous interest rates – from the World Bank, IMF, China and Japan, as she strives to effect some post-bellum reconstruction.” Still, as the journal suggested in one of its four editorials: “Cross-Crescent conflict in Nigeria: Blame foreign conspiracy,” “Africa cannot afford to lose Nigeria that has been one of its most polished, shrewd and enterprising ambassadors in global affairs: from Angola to Zimbabwe; Namibia to a non-racial, multi-party and democratic South Africa and the United Nations. The African Union should convene, anytime, hence, a top-level, emergency summit of its Heads of State and Government to ease Nigeria out of the wasteful conflict. When the feud ends, the Nigerian government should seek the assistance of Interpol and some of its foreign allies to fish out individuals, corporate bodies and countries, who played a destructive role in it and drag them to the International Criminal Court (ICC), at The Hague.” But, as it was argued, elsewhere, in Conflict, Peace and Development, “The Cross-Crescent conflict boldly underscores one of the lax areas of Nigeria’s democracy –Africa’s largest; most vibrant and virile. It calls for building robust and sustainable pro-democracy institutions freighted on the rule of law, national peace, security and sustainable human development – so as to avoid a repeat. Oddly enough, the Fourth Republic – which has lasted far more than its sires, since Nigeria’s independence from Britain, in the second half the 20th Century – appears faced with a menacing threat of an eclipse: a sanguinary coup by the military, in the months ahead, cannot be ruled out. It’s gargantuan corruption and ineptitude, as in the case of the Second Republic, that would, naturally, be adduced for its demise. Those who are specialists in crafting opaque apostrophes, threnodies, epitaphs or epicediums should get ready!” Lousy Rotimi Adebayo has just sent this writer a text message that he’s ready! Amen, somebody!
A pirate radio station, run by some irresponsible and lawless journalists, did report that about 65 visible mounds on both sides of Kilometre 30 to 69 of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, were tips under which were mass graves of nearly 2, 379 victims of the religious feud. It also said that mountainous heaps of the good book and other poorly-produced religious publications, white envelopes, imported white candles, white handkerchiefs and ark-loads of imported anointing oil and holy communion, a gargantuan sum of money and cheque books, imported noise-making toys like guitars, cymbals, drums, pianos, organs, computers and compact discs, tambourines, cornets, trumpets, oboes, modern and archaic microphones, megaphones and loud-speakers, public address systems, generators of diverse shapes and sizes; chairs, fans, tables, gargantuan plastic water tanks, lecterns, found inside some of the churches on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, lorry-loads of pirated copies of Soyinka’s The Road, amongst others, were burnt openly – despite rugged protests by about 300 environmentalists from a non-governmental organization – Friends of the Earth (FOTE) – to the effect that the fire and heat that would issue from such a wasteful exercise would fan climate change – on a certain stretch of the ever-busy dual carriageway, known for agonizingly slow traffic jam, whenever Prophet Brother Jero organized a crowd-pulling revival programme. Amen, somebody!
There was a report, in a special edition of The Congested Road, published exactly on the 62nd birthday of Prophet Brother Jero, that well over a legion of dishonest individuals, who were known for excessively debauched life-style – including bishops, pastors, deacons, deaconesses, false prophets, prophetesses, evangelists, apostles, noisy and lousy superior evangelists, and other so-called anointed men of God – individuals who could not be set free from captivity, in spite of fervent supplication by a congregation of so-called prayer warriors – were found in two mass graves – a little inside a frighteningly dense evil forest, close to Soyinka’s house, off the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway (LIE). And, as a certain idiot called Odia Ofeimun would say: “Alleluia, somebody!”
*Epilogue.
But, how well the baptism of fire that is the raging C-C conflict and its attendant gargantuan toll collected on the psyches of the warring parties, would, henceforward, hold, in a firm leash, their driving force of mutually-destructive selfishness, lawlessness, calculated mischief, ingratitude and hubris towards the Supreme Being, in a post-bellum era, is the question. Besides, for the Nigerian nation-state, “there is a pressing need to explain the inexactitude and, so, the inevitable failure of intelligence – alongside what appears more of dishonourable idleness of the Shakespearean cast, on the part of the palace, its guards and ancillary agents.” And, as some security experts – Ashford E. Whielton, one – wrote inThe South Atlantic – a journal of strategic studies – “The inherent decay in the Nigerian political system and the baffling failure to by her political leaders, since independence from Britain, in 1960, to erect strong democratic institutions that could resist the evil influence of corruption could be blamed for the unrivalled triumph of lawlessness by a few criminals, selfish and ungrateful individuals – and their foreign allies, over the general and common good of law-abiding and tax-paying Nigerians – including Muslims. This is about the third major domestic conflict to threaten the unity of the Nigerian nation-state – after the Biafra war and the infamy that was June 12, 1992. Biafra was a real war theatre that attracted to the side of the Nigerian government the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and Britain. It was a war that, whichever way you look at it, was an unmitigated genocide against the Igbo people. Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka nods. It’s a self-evident encouragement – for Soyinka’s personification of either the triumph of good over evil, or an unfailing drive of the human spirit to shake off the burden of tyranny – for those who are pressing the establishment of an independent and viable Republic of Biafra. And Biafra, itself, which is a Nigerian metaphor for marginalization, injustice and gargantuan corruption – three closely-linked issues that have stubbornly retarded Nigeria’s economic and political growth, since 1970 – are still contesting the political space with activists and every other Nigerian, who means well for the country, in the Fourth Republic.”
Still, those who are deeply aggrieved by the intrusion of mercenaries from the Maghreb and Levant in the C-C conflict, which has made difficult a cease-fire by an ECOWAS-led demarche, are calling for a proclamation of an Oduduwa Republic. Once again, here’s an ambitious move that some have argued was designed for the survival of the Yoruba race. It’s such that if it succeeds may cut the rest of the country off from the economically vital Apapa and Tin Can Island seaports and the Murtala Mohammed Airports in the country’s former capital and commercial hub – Lagos. But that can only succeed if Soyinka nods at it! The genuinely aggrieved advocates of Oduduwa Republic have posited that they suspected a vicious agenda “to render the South-West geo-political zone economically and politically irrelevant in the Nigerian nation-state, as was the then Biafran enclave.” It’s their opinion, besides, that the conspiratorial silence of the Nigerian security agents to arrest the sanguinary situation augmented their belief that the Nigerian federation was no longer sustainable. It’s a political establishment that is irredeemably dysfunctional.
It’s equally undesirable, they have argued, that travelling the famished expressway of the Nigerian federation, in a post-bellum era, would be unrealistic. If Biafra was an ethnic crisis, the call for the establishment of an Oduduwa Republic is clearly in response to the evil effects of religion as it’s gradually taking a gargantuan toll on the Nigerian nation-state. Thus, four decades on, ethnicity and religion have proved themselves as quite puissant to melt the far-from-seamless amalgam called the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Ever since the days of Chief ObafemiAwolowo in CalabarColonel ChukwuemekaOdumegwuOjukwu in exile, in Cote d’Ivoire, ’tis been widely held, even though quite erroneously, that ethnicity and religion play insignificant roles in Nigerian politics, because whatever happened to the Igbo people, Ojukwu and all the ideals of justice and unity of the Nigerian nation-state, which he stood for, would not be there to stand against tyranny. The Yoruba people, because the “unnaturally tenacious” apostle of free education and statesman – who for whatever was his reason, never groomed an ascetic as his successor – understood, with an indulgent knowing chuckle, that the Nigerian nation-state was predicated on injustice: a foundation that is as rock-solid as the swamps of the Niger Delta, Ogoniland, Biafra, etc, and was sure to disintegrate as was the USSR. For, how does one justify the amalgamation in 1914, which was effected, arrogantly, with the aid of the Maxim gun – without the consent of over 250 ethnic groups involved? By what genuine economic and political reasons or constitutional rights have states been created, occasionally, since 1967, by individuals from a particular section of the country; individuals, who were never elected, in the first place, into office via the ballot box? Was it in anyway constitutionally defensible that states were created without the consent of the Nigerian people? Whose constitution is the one of 1999? Who were the so-called ‘We the people’ referred to in the opening paragraph of the document? Why is it that Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba – alongside Arabic, are the only languages used in identifying a given denomination of the Naira? Is Nigeria an Arab country? Why are such languages as Igala, Izon, Tangale, Edo, Isoko, Tiv, Owan, Egun, Efik, Urhobo, Ibibio, Birom, Nupe, Kanuri, Ebira, Esan (Ishan) etc. left out? Is Nigeria a country populated solely by Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba? Why is it that the busts of eminent personalities from other ethnic nationalities – apart from those of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sir AbubakarTafawaBalewa, Mazi Alvan Ikoku, General Murtala Mohammed, Dr. Clement Isong and Mr. Aliyu Mai-Bornu – are not on the Naira? Why is there bust of a famous and industrious Nigerian woman – dead or alive – not on the Naira? Is it because Nigeria is a male-dominated country? Was it taking a cue, with a touch of piercing arrogance, from amalgamation and regionalism, which were products of the Maxim gun? These are, perhaps, embarrassing question for which such lousy characters as Odia Ofeimun, Pita Onaivi (alias “Don’t toy with the spirit of the Lord”, Ken Ugbechie, and Shaka Momodu, who are pressing them, should be held, given Soyinka’s nod, in solitary confinement. But, seriously, the Pentecostalists of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, who ask such idle questions bordering on the injustice on which the Nigerian nation-state is freighted, appear to have lost faith in the country. Just as the al-Kareems and IbnMahmudhs have protested against Pentecostalist rot and lawlessness on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, ‘enough of Hausa-Igbo-Yoruba tyranny against the minority ethnic nationalities’. The oppressed minority ethnic nationalities should team up and rise against the triumvirate. And the time for that is now. Amen, somebody. And until those burning questions with linguistic, cultural and political complexions are satisfied, those, who, for calculatedly selfish reasons, parrot ‘unity in diversity’, as if Nigeria is as ‘politically just’ as the United States of America (USA) or Indonesia, should note the country is being run on borrowed time. It’s still a good reflection of Chinua Achebe’s No Longer At Ease. As presently composed – with an indefensible accommodation of parasites, who are destroying the Niger Delta and looting her fisc, to the disadvantage of the minority, from whose geographical areas a crushing percentage of the wealth of the country comes, the demand of the minority ethnic nationalities – a peaceful dissolution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, after years of deceit, maladministration, injustice and tyranny – is about the one sure panacea to help her plight. Otherwise, how does one explain the conspiracy, under the presidency of a majority ethnic group president, so soon into the Fourth Republic, that led to the ceding of the Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon? And as lousy Rotimi Adebayo has prophesied, the immeasurably- rich oil-fields of the Niger Delta shall, very shortly, be ceded to Sao Tome and Principe and Equatorial Guinea. Amen, somebody! Nigeria is more of a fowl perched on a line. Hers is an instability that cannot be helped by Soyinka’s parroting of ‘Sovereign National Conference’. It does seem that a more consuming and sanguinary battle than Biafra is fast shaping up. This is primarily because the political class, oodles of mafia and camarilla have refused, somewhat arrogantly, because they think, erroneously though, that the rest of the citizenry is sedated and so they would not govern the country properly – sans corruption – for the common good, such that there’s a fair distribution of the her vast resources, which has given her Abuja – a new capital that she’s proud of and, more than anything else, return her to pre-1966 structure of regionalism: her apogee development-wise. This a part of the Hausa-Igbo-Yoruba heartlessness towards the minority ethnic nationalities, whose combined population is far more than those of their oppressors’, who have crafted every crisis that the country has gone through, since her independence.
If the Nigerian president had been assassinated, as a result of this crisis, it would have flashed back, in a manner quite uncouth, the memory of how, in February 1976, the Head of State, General Murtala Mohammed, was slain by a group of inordinately ambitious and misguided army officers, in what turned out to be a failed putsch. It’s been some four turbulent decades, since 1976. The raft of security agencies in Nigeria should not allow a play back of that tape of what was some form of self-inflicted sadness. It may well be history, just in case, but none – not even the best historian or journalist around today – would be happy, it’s quite certain, to record – for whatever price, even if it were for a Pulitzer – the sanguinary event for future generations.”
