2023: Towards A Christian President for A Divided Church
The year was 2014, a year before the Presidential election, Jonathan had been in the saddle for 6 years, 2 to complete Yardua’s mandate and 4 for his own mandate. His performance was not as bad as it was made to look, but the dynamics of politics is built on marketing and de-marketing of candidates and their political parties, while strategic marketing is the most veritable tool of the government in power, for which PDP and Jonathan hired a wrong hand in Femi Fani Kayode!
De-marketing, of course is the strength of the opposition. In other words, propaganda must be effectively employed to kick a sitting government out of power. The job was executed excellently well by Lai Muhammed and his crew!
Not a single aspect of our social life was spared from the mud slinging of political propaganda! Religions were not left sacred. Everything was pulled along into the mukky water of politics and electorates were divided along religious lines!
One would have thought that the incoming government will bind the wounds and heal the hurt, once elections were over, but alas, but here body language insulted our sensibilities, wounds were further opened and gap widened!
God was merciful to the church to forewarn her of the capacity of the extremists to explore the divide beyond the intention of the ACN component in APC who needed just anything to take advantage of as an opportunity to ride into power. What selfishness!
Though, the propensity of politics is fanned by nothing other than self interests. That conspiracy is today our snare, proving difficult to come out of, both, by christians who bought the dummy of integrity and anti corruption and the regional politicians, intermediaries who brought and sold the wares of the extremists’ plot without knowing it!
There was the voice of one who cried in the wilderness to make straight the way of the church at picking a political side. He saw it coming and used Turkey, the nation her President recently visited Nigeria as a warning to us!
Talking about the visit of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, giving available public allegations about funding and arms deals with Boko Haram, should suggest to the church that now is the time to form political alliance with modest peace loving Muslims who of course are in the majority!
The build up to 2023 has began in earnest, but the highest demography of voters in Nigeria is far from being ready for the contest to ensure a return to secularism of policies of government in politics!
The Redeemed Christian Church God set the record of the largest single gathering in the world since Lekki 1998, which is yet to be erased by any religious or even entertainment gathering anywhere on this planet.
That record was set a year before our return to democracy, but nothing was made out of this political capital during the 1999 elections, and if you ask me, nothing has been made of this huge capital till date.
You may say but Prof Yemi Osibajo is the Vice President, yes, but the decision to use him was made by those who know how to exploit the strength of the church to their advantage!
Politics is a grassroot game and democracy, a game of numbers, the church has the Numbers but no grassroot presence!
Please, don’t be surprised if an Olokun worshiper is the Local Government Chairman of Ebutemeta LGA, where the National HQ of RCCG is situated, an Obatala worshiper that of Yaba where you have the Foursquare Gospel Church Headquarters, and an Egungun worshiper in Sango Ota Local Government Area where Cannanland land is located, and Bishop David Oyedepo is screaming from his pulpit regularly about the worrisome state of our nation!
Do I need to tell my dear Bishop and our Presidential hopeful in Pastor Tunde Bakare that the pulpit is not the place of politics?
PTB needs a political platform beyond his pulpit where his political review under the banner of state of the nation will be shared!
Archbishop Vinny is under the Anglican communion. It has the capacity to influence Ikeja Local Government, but will it network with others to get that done?
The numerical strength of the Catholic Adults of voting age alone is enough to swing victory in this country! But the church’s undoing is her inability to aggregate her numbers, structure herself from bottom to top for the required political surprise!
The cohesion and the strength of the church is so much in doubt that a Presidential hopeful, like Pastor Tunde Bakare will rather openly relate with the President and other Muslims than do with the church!
Beyond the credibility questions placed on the leadership of CAN in 2014 is the need for us to come together now!
The church should be ready for public smearing of her image if she dares to challenge the status quo, but the good news is propagandists are cowards by nature.
They just want to bully you out of the space and once you refuse to give up the space and you structure yourself not just for noise in the media but to strategically engage all your network addressing every issues thrown into the public regarding the church in private structure built for the purpose of grassroot political education to bond the church to a kingdom direction, Victory alone the church will experience!
Pastor Femi Emmanuel, in a recent video that went viral provided a statistics that the church is yet to take advantage of. He said the ward structure of political parties in Nigeria is a little over 10,000.
Concerning himself with Pentecostal movement as the National Director of PFN Politics and Governance Department, he listed Churches whose strength are more than the strength of our 2 leading political parties of PDP and APC put together.
On his list, are RCCG, Deeper Life, Mountain of Fire, Chosen, Christ Embassy, etc, the list goes on!
My advice to the church will be to build their structure away from APC and PDP. A partisan posture will be counter productive!
The church’s candidate must be chosen through a christian political consensus. For now, interest of the kingdom must come ahead of individuals members of our Churches that are in the race!
National Consensus Movement (NCM) had a meeting 16th January and followed up with another on the 16th of October 2021. They have taken the bull by the horns to bell the cat, and are inviting Christian leaders and Christians with callings for leadership to a Christian Conference with the theme:
ENDING NATIONAL DISTRESS:
*THE IMPERATIVE OF CHRISTIAN POLITICAL UNITY.
The meeting, according to a statement signed by Bro Bosun Emmanuel shall take place as follows:
Date: Saturday 13th November 2021
Venue: Conference Room,
Onigbagbo House,
Bola Memorial Anglican Church,
Mobolaji Bank Anthony Way
Ikeja, Lagos
Time: 11.00 am.
The meeting shall be chaired by Elder Matthew Owojaiye, representing National Christian Elders Forum (NCEF).
Some of the highlights of the meetings of 16th January and 16th October 2021 are as follows:
- The Christian community is the largest demographic group in Nigeria yet, during elections it becomes the minority group due to political disunity in the Church!
- In 2015 and 2019, political disunity in the Christian community gave room for sponsors of an intolerant, retrogressive, and discriminatory ideology to gain political control in Nigeria to the distress of everyone in the country!
- The experience of the Church in 2019 in which the Christian community fielded over 40 Presidential candidates should not be repeated!
- Christian electoral assets must be harmonized for effective Christian participation in politics and balance of power in the country!
- The NCM leadership meeting identified divergent political interests and competition amongst the Church leaders as the greatest obstacle to Christian political unity!
- Christian leaders must be persuaded to place the corporate interest of the Christians and the country above personal and denominational interests!
- The NCM leadership meeting advocated that the Christian community should adopt one of the two major political parties and use Christian electoral assets to negotiate the emergence of competent, Godly, and courageous leader for Nigeria!
- The leadership meeting concluded that building a third force at this period for the next election is too late!
- The leadership meeting observed that Nigeria is currently playing Politics of Religion. The Christian community should therefore shun politics of tribalism and ethnicity and be organized based on its faith to provide crucial balance to the polity!
- During its January 2021 meeting, National Consensus Movement adopted THINK NEW as its rallying slogan for the 2023 elections! National Consensus Movement is calling on Nigerians to THINK NEW in raising the next leaders for the country!
Christian leaders are cordially invited to the next meeting on 13th November 2021!
Whatever our differences must be put aside now, the only way to peace is for us to come together to guarantee the future of every Nigerians to their freedom of religious worship.
When our cohesion is formed then, the next move will be to engage our Muslims brothers and men and women of other faith on the imperative of our nation’s peace for our individual peace and security! Will the church rise to the challenge?
Dr Bolaji O Akinyemi, an Apostle, focusing on revival in the church and spiritual revolution in the nation, the BID, as he is fondly called, is also a Communications strategist.
FB: Bolaji Akinyemi.
Email:
bolajiakinyemi66@gmail.com
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