By TUNDE ODESOLA
Dead but not buried, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) is a perfect example of a living-dead government agency. And only a powerful prophet who profits from buffoonery like the great Odumeje aka the Liquid Metal can resurrect it.
If the NBC wasn’t dead, a song like Zazoo Zeh by Portable wouldn’t be enjoying massive airtime in Nigeria without sanction – going by its storyline that promotes violence, indecency and internet fraud. Conversely, the song, Buga, by Kizz Daniel, is an example of a storyline with a simple universal message of work and play.
Mark you, Zazoo Zeh is just one in the endless list of immoral songs churned out regularly by Nigerian artistes, assaulting the moral fibre of society.
Only the Indabosky Bahose can command rehearsed fire to consume imaginary demons but disgracefully receives dazing slaps from roughnecks attached to the Anambra State Environmental Task Force that tore down an offending part of his church in Onitsha last Thursday.
The public humiliation was an auspicious moment for the Imo-born Chukwuemeka Ohanaemere, who also calls himself The Fight, The Battle, and The Lion Himself, to validate his treacherous claim of raising the dead, by transfixing the unruly Anambra enforcers till Governor Chukwuma Soludo goes on his knees, begging for their spiritual release. But Odumeje missed the moment as he received many thunderous slaps and walked away in peace.
Jesus Christ’s arrest, prosecution, death and resurrection were extraordinary feats of miracle captured in His predicted persecution, healing of the ear that Peter sawed, crowing of the cock thrice amid Peter’s denials; salvation for one of the two robbers at Calvary, the exposure of the Holy of Holies, and His eventual ascension into heaven.
I recall these episodes because some might say Jesus too was helpless when he faced persecution. Till He breathed His last on earth, Christ was an embodiment of miracles, signs and wonders.
Odumeje was about nine years old when a random Prophet Daniel Abodunrin sneaked into the cage of lions at the University of Ibadan Zoo in the Easter of 1991, and attempted to spellbind the feline beasts.
Odumeje isn’t foolish. He might have heard about the fate that befell his forerunner, Abodunrin, and chosen to carefully operate in the bounds of fakery with his eyes wide open to reality. Therefore, Odumeje knows when to fly in choreographed acrobatic wrestling displays on his altar and when to remain obedient in the face of task force punches and slaps for his dentition not to be altered.
Typical of zealots, I vividly remember the reaction of a female cleric who said the lions were possessed by evil spirits for eating up Abodunrin. I wondered why the female cleric didn’t identify some other lions with clean spirits and go ahead to tame them.
From Pastor Tunde Bakare, whom god told he would succeed the retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari, to Apostle Johnson Suleman who greedily prayed that COVID-19 decimation of humanity continued because he bought a third jet during the period, to Bishop David Oyedepo, who opened his church to worshippers despite government’s order for all worship centres to be shut, no scandal is too big in the eyes of dupable Nigerian worshippers to attract an outright condemnation of clerics.
A word misspoken or an act misdone might cause a temporary drop in worshippers’ attendance but it’s a matter of time when attendance would rise again and even surpass its former mark.
Pilloried by poverty and buffeted by insecurity handed down by the political class, the average Nigerian finds solace in churches, mosques, temples and shrines where most homilies appeal to guilt and fear preached to keep tithes and offerings flowing.
In the light of the foregoing, the mind of the average Nigerian has been basely reconfigured to see issues only from ethno-religious and political prisms. He has been rewired to love, defend and be ready to die for his traducers, unlike the fallout of the Stockholm Syndrome, which is the psychological attachment victims have for the captors.
I strongly think psychologists should take an analytical look at Nigeria and name victims’ readiness to die for their victimisers as Abuja Syndrome in the same way there’s Lima Syndrome which is the development of bond by the kidnapper for the victim, and Helsinki Syndrome, which defines a situation where the hostage will not cooperate with the captor.
The All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government’s insensitivity to the killing of Nigerians by terrorists nationwide is evident in Buhari’s contrary-to-common sense response, on Saturday: “I hope kidnappers will sit and reflect and make sure they save their names and their families’.” What a far-gone President!
This was the shameful statement from the retired Major General, whose wife, Aisha, has been living permanently in Dubai, and whom Asiwaju Bola Tinubu promised would solve the security challenges of the country once the clueless man from Otuoke, Goodluck Jonathan, was chased out of office.
Last week’s attack on Kuje Prisons, Abuja, by terrorists who freed over 800 inmates, including Boko Haram convicts, confirms Buhari’s weaponisation of ignorance and fear against the masses as he asked confusedly, “How can terrorists organise, have weapons, attack a security installation and get away with it?” He never got a deserved answer, which is: “It is possible when a rat heads a house populated by cats,” and “when the blind is saddled with threading a needle.”
That Buhari is clueless about the Kuje prison terrorist attack shows that Nigeria’s presidency is a carcass without a soul.
That the three-hour prison attack happened in Abuja and Buhari, the Commander-in-Chief, who was holed up in Aso Rock, which is not far from the prison, couldn’t draft soldiers to quell the attack, is an indication that Nigeria’s presidency is headless.
Last week’s terrorist attack on Buhari’s advance convoy on the way to Daura preparatory to the President’s Sallah celebration affirms two things: One, how incompetent terrorists see Buhari, and two, how vulnerable security around the President is.
If terrorists could shoot and injure two armed police officers in the advance team, despite military cover, that means Buhari is unsafe.
Terrorists’ condescending view of Buhari derives from the fact that they (terrorists) had successfully attacked Aso Rock, the Nigerian Defence Academy, and even kidnapped the head of Buhari’s district in Daura, Alhaji Musa Umar, whom they kept in captive for three months. Nothing can be more sobering.
Ahead of the 2023 polls, the statement by rave-of-the-moment and Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, that if elected president, he would allow all past treasury looters to enjoy their loot in peace, was unfortunate.
Obi, who should have maintained a dignified silence on the issue, or said something like, “We shall see what we can do,” has, by his placatory statement, given a wink to almighty corruption which has become the albatross of Nigeria’s democracy.
Obi should be told in clear terms that an incoming government unprepared to fight corruption in present-day Nigeria won’t only be corrupt itself but, sadly, lacks an understanding of the most profound of Nigeria’s problems.
Nigeria is a shameless country. Were shame resident in Nigeria, neither the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, nor his APC counterpart, Tinubu, would contest the 2023 presidential election.
Both contestants have been influential forces in the country in the last 23 years of unbroken democratic rule – Atiku being a former vice president and Tinubu being a former Lagos governor, yet both still go abroad for medical treatment while Nigerian public hospitals lack water, bandage and paracetamol.
A Nigerian senator, Ike Ekweremadu, and his wife, Beatrice, currently risk jail terms in the UK. If the nation’s healthcare facilities were adequate, the Ekweremadus might not have taken their daughter, Sonia, abroad for treatment. Nothing happens to big men in corridors of power in Nigeria even if someone dies to save their daughter.
In the US, where the law works, R&B superstar, R Kelly, was recently sentenced to 30 years behind bars for federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
In Nigeria, nothing works under Buhari.
*Odesola writes via: [email protected]
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