The Ozubulu tragedy brings home a very serious societal issue. The fellow whose parents were allegedly traced to the church is 36, but is stupendously wealthy and influential, such that at his last birthday when he commissioned some projects he funded, the state governor and police commissioner were allegedly present.
In this is part of our challenge, the cancer that is ravaging the land.
The church identifies with him and he spends a lot there. Indeed we hear he funded the church building. In all these no one questioned or queried his source of income. We saw another video where he was spending and spraying money.
It is not enough to lament tragedies and say ineffectual prayers for victims. It’s too late. The fellows who traced this “Bishop” to the church acted irreverently because they knew there was no reverence associated with him. Or the church. And if the church priests really were serving God and not mammon, they should have smelled more than a rat. At some point someone should have made (discreet) enquiries. Someone should have played the role God expects of us. Perhaps then those lives would have been saved. The blind finally led the blind to their graves. No one works legitimately and spends the way some of these people spend. Someone should have asked serious questions.
In the past I had written about the member of a very popular evangelical church who was an accounts clerk with a major hotel but was paying huge tithes and even bigger offerings. Someone in that church should have known something was wrong. And afterwards when the issue was brought up, the church refused to return the money.
These social disjoints manifest in murders, kidnapping, 419 etc., because our values are gone. The rich are the respected in NIGERIA. No one asks questions if you have plenty of money. Not even in churches. Especially in churches. I wrote about this months ago. The Church is sliding. The Church is busy with questionable programmes and seminars and comedy shows. Very few openly condemn moral decay and decadence in the society. Few lament over the land. Many men of God boast of their connections and influence in the political palaces. Presidents and Governors attend their churches and events. And we are expected to be gate keepers. We are busy celebrating thieves and crooks. The Church comes daily with new ideas on how to make money and become rich. Mere fetches. Serious thieves and people of odium are knighted and celebrated; the new heroes, not on account of their spirituality, but how much they have and can part with in the church. They are given front rows. I have not seen a church declare a week of fasting to pray out decadence and immorality. No lamentation.
But millions are spent to print posters and advertise their seminars and inanities where the leaders splash their big pictures with “mama”‘s elegant hands on their shoulders. Jokes.
And all of us are like people riding a tiger. It surely must turn around to bite and sometimes mortally too. Just as happened in Ozubulu. Just watch.
SURELY, NIGERIA IS IN NEED OF SERIOUS HELP.