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Abuse of pulpit for political purpose

Tunde Bakare

By Yinka Odumakin

CHIEF Ayo  Adebanjo was practically in tears when he called me on Thursday to ask if I came across a political address given by Pastor Tunde Bakare on Sunday. I could not lie to a 92-year old man and I admitted I saw it. He then asked why I didn’t let him have it as it took another person to forward it to him. I felt so bad at the charge but had a good reason of not wanting to put an old man through the torture of such a dagger from a supposed trusted friend.

I knew he would get to know of the unveiled unwarranted attack on him in the ochestrated video but it didn’t have to be through me if I could avoid it. The devastation he went through is the very reason why I have decided to do this piece as part of the healing process for the old man who was badly hit in a very crude manner.

It is our elders from the depth of their wisdom who said that praying for longevity and avoiding seeing evil are two options you hardly get in the same package. The heartbreak from the pulpit of politics must have been one of the old age evil packages at this perilous season.

Mental torture

It is wth great pain and very torturing reflection that I have to deal with this sad experience as it would have been more rewarding for me to skip dealing with this mental torture, but a man like me cannot afford to be tongue-tied in a moment of crisis as we don’t die on the spot where our mind is spoken. It is not a strange thing for us seeing politicians committing volte face and being on four to eat their very vomit. The only snag in their swaga  may be the depth of fools they take the rest of us for and the level of stupidity that would make us to say “meen sir” like goats with no brains to them.

It is the very height of the abuse of the rostrum for a pastor to say to us no matter how God-forsaken the country has become that if somebody is accused of being a thief, the rest of us should go and be thieves as well. That is some weird Sunday school of demonic dimension bordering on arrogance and total disdain for your congregation whom you no longer see as children of God but political instruments that can be abused for any purpose and desire.

There comes a time for self-anihillation for any man and there is nothing anybody can do when it gets into the head of any hero to cross that line irretrievably as the best of men are still men who are susceptible to foibles and it is only God who cannot be mocked or used eternally.

Many would be wondering why a man of God will place the worship of man momentarily over the worship of God on His temple but it takes a deep understanding of man to appreciate that dimension of falling to know that nothing human is alien and never to trust any man beyond perfidy.

There are deep lessons of life some of us have taken in this of life’s journey recently which we can now process and take the proper lessons but may not even have to share the deeper dimensions beyond knowing the other side of men and how they can in their guile think they are making use of their fellow beings.

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It boggles the mind when even confidential whispers become political propaganda to score cheap points as if the whole world ends with that and as if there would be no tomorrow again. There is a tommorow and it comes swiftly and we are all mere playthings in its hand. And it is only those with deep reflective capacity who can handle that dimension of life.

That rich man was so full of it at the height of his successs and he was boasting of it all and God was laughing until he even started talking of “my soul” and God wondered what came over him that he went maniacal arrogating the soul to himself. He asked him to let him have his soul back and he can keep the rest.

When big insults rolls you in the mud

When big insults rolls you in the mud, small ones will not say they are not at home. And that is the case of Senator Anthony Adefuye who had been firing on all cylinders. At a stage Yoruba land became a joke of a type. The recent takes of the senator are not worth recalling but his pertinent story is worth recounting for those who may not know that part.

The senator was a buddy of Bashorun MKO Abiola who practically ate from his palms until the June 12 crises came and he found a big and better  bargain with Sani Abacha. He abandoned Abiola and became Abacha’s man Friday. He carried on with reckless abandon until Abiola drank the tea and dozzed off eternally.

Adefuye did not reckon with the young men of Yoruba land when he chose to show up in Abiola’s house to dance over his grave. The valiant Yoruba young men pounced on him and stripped him naked to make a brisk show of his white pants before he was whisked across the fence after the disgrace.

It is a show of the depth we have fallen that he is today one of the sages who ooze odiferous stinks occasionally instead of keeping silent in eternal shame.

What a year!

IT crept in like any other year hiding its devilish details from many guessworkers who claim the power of clairvoyance.  By the time it brought its corona content, even worship centres were shut down as deaths untold came in its trail.

One particular painful death that came close to me through it was the former governor of Oyo State, Senator Isiaka Ajimobi. We were in the Ikere Ekiti home country of Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, in March when he invited me to sit next to him and one of the issues he raised with me was the deadly virus and the view that the weather around us makes it less potent.

That was our last talk on this earth until COVID struck him and he did not survive. I also tried to unsuccessfully reconcile him with someone they had issue on that day. I even got Chief Olanipekun involved. COVID killed so many pilticians, celebrities and ordinary people in the year 2020 making deaths so cheap around the world.

In our country where public health is so parlous, we were just as vulnerable and deaths so cheap as we live carelessly.  I have been sharing my experience during a trip outside Nigeria when a gentleman got a ticket of over 300 dollars for wearing his mask on the chin.

On  return to Nigeria, I went to a mall in Ikeja and as I fetched my mask to wear, it was the seciuty man that rushed to me pleading that people have stopped wearing mask. Now the second wave is back vociferously. We pray for the souls of the dead as we encoueage the survivors to be careful with the protocols in 2021.

 

Feedback

Re: From Chibok to Kankara

Sir,

NIGERIA, a laughing stuff to the comity of nations, a disgrace to humanity.

Chief Odumakin, with due respect sir, we all know about their evil agenda, but honeymoons don’t last forever.

I am from the north (northern Christian) Kaduna State precisely and I have a bird eye view of the events/happenings. I’ve been following your efforts, voice, write up and must confess that I liked your column of December 22, 2020. Keep plumbing sir, God is your strength.

Shekwonya Yakubu

Vanguard News Nigeria

The post Abuse of pulpit for political purpose appeared first on Vanguard News.


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