In a sermon in his church recently, Pastor Oyedepo, the founding Bishop of the Living Faith Christian Church advised the Federal Government to expunge that part of the newly Amended Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) which empowers an appointee of government to suspend the trustees of an association or a religious body and appoint an interim manager or managers to coordinate its affairs “where it reasonably believes that there has been any misconduct or mismanagement, or where the affairs of the association are being run fraudulently or where it is necessary or desirable for the purpose of public interest”. By implication, the law regulates the activities of religious and charity organisations.
Rattled by the law, Oyedepo had likened it to an attack on the church by the state had said: “They are jealous of my church” and warned: “I am sent as a prophet to the nations. Don’t try it”! Well, rather than engage in introspection and contribute to divergent opinions on the contentious provisions in the amended version of CAMA, I wish to take exception to the notion that the state is persecuting the church, which it is not, and that church founders are prophets of God which they are not.
We must learn to situate things in their correct perspectives in this country. Islam and Christianity emerged from Judaism, a Jewish monotheistic religion founded by Abraham, yet none perceives nor worships God the same way and each bears a malice or hatred for the other. Therefore, taking creed and faith together and treating these as a tendency present in man to get close to God, we can state categorically that it is not God that sends out man on a mission to win souls for Him.
Religion is, and has always been a big problem in the corporate governance of a secular state like Nigeria. The point must be made that every religion has a founder and every founder has emphasized a different aspect of God. The northerners became muslims through conqest by the Arabs from the desert north, while the southerners became Christians through colonization by the British from the southern seas.
Before the coming of these colonialists we had our own indigenous religion, however crude, by which our ancestors survived the harsh realities of the then uncharted “dark continent”. That religion is earth based. It does not pander to the teachings of one great teacher or prophet and it has no zeal to mount any propaganda machinery to evangelize or win souls for God. It was the allure of its vast human and mineral resources that brought in the colonialists in droves, each with its own brand of religion with the common theme – to plunder and conquer by fire by force! And this mentality has been carried over unto this day.
Prior to our independence from British colonial rule in 1960, our founding fathers from the north, led by Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, were united in their resolve “to conquer the south and to dip the Koran in the Atlantic ocean” after the British left our shores”! (Google it). They saw the new nation as the estate of their great grandfather Othman Dan Fodio, and vowed to overrun it. “We (shall) use the minorities in the north as willing tools and the south as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us and never allow them to have control over their future”!
Their southern counterparts, on the other hand, were more absorbent of the idea of a united country in a loose federation. However, while Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba and founding from the South West, was forthright about the idea of an independent Western region in a weak Federal structure, Nnamdi Azikiwe, from the South East canvassed the imperative of structuring a national identity using the power of a strong central goverment.
Well, after independence a fiercy struggle ensued over the control of the regions and the new independent nation collapsed less than six yrs after its formation. A succession of military rulers, mostly of northern extraction, took over and never ceased to pursue a purely religious agenda of “dipping the Koran in the Atlantic ocean”! Gradually, all the military, paramilitary and security establishments, the federal bureaucracy and the NNPC were hijacked and sectionalised. They removed the symbol of our currency, the “star of David” which we inherited from the British, and replaced it with Arabic numerals. They also wrote the motto of the Nigerian Army in Arabic letters and the country became effectively a conquered “Islamic” state and has remained essentially so till date.
Sixty years latter under President Muhammadu Buhari, a retired General and member of the Caliphate, we are still unable to celebrate our diversity. A trip from Ijebu Ode to Port Hacourt in the south-south gives the impression that the south is under a security seige, with the overbearing presence of the police, military, customs etc every ten kilometers or so, throughout the entire route stifling commercial activies and adding to our woes, leaving out much of the north where armed bandits, kidnappers and terrorists plunder and kill innocent citizens, of what use then or to whose benefit is the loopsided security architecture?
The same goes to the unbriddled
lopsided and nepotistic appointments in all Federal institutions to the chagrin of all other stake holders. These forces are now so well entrenched that they do what they like and those outside the Caliphate crucible no longer have a sense of belonging. Herdsmen have taken over farmlands in the south and there is no one to cry to.
Over the years also, the church industry in Nigeria too has carried on as an agency defiant to secular laws despite earning its sustenance from worldly pursuits. Some barely even pay tax while running publishing firms, hospitals, schools, restaurants and other businesses, while their leadership style also trail regional and nepotistic lines. We now see a growing tendency among southern men and women to establish churches in all manner of places, blaring loudspeakers, even at nights, to manipulate religion by fire by force! for their own political and economic gain. I doubt this is the church Jesus meant and established.
Boko Haram started as a religious movement that later metamorphosed into a killing machine against both Christians and Muslims with an obvious economic interest in the oil reserves of the Sahel north east. Right now in the East, there is a virulent rebellious movement seeking to establish a Jewish state of Biafra, which intent and purpose is to annex the oil-rich minority southern part of the country for its founder. They also threaten fire and brimstone adding to our woes, can we afford to allow self-styled men of God balkanize our country into feuding economic interests in the name of religion? The story of Iraq and Libya are still too fresh in our memory to contemplate.
Ideally, religious organizations, as NGOs, should be detached from state control. NGOs largely depend on foreign donor agencies for their funding, and government obviously has a duty to scutinize their resources and the application of these resources. But the Church is a self-funding NGO by default. They appropriate a large amount of the earnings of hapless citizens as tithes, offerings and sundry other charges, which many seekers of miracles and the miraculous pay because of the divine nature implied, only for them to acquire real estates, yet pay no taxes themselves nor provide essential services, why would government not take a closer look at their activities and finances thereof?
When COVID-19 became a pandemic, they had no revelation of it nor prayed to avert it but went underground in trepidation of it, yet they very readily forecast elections as revelations by God and chastize all those who speak against them with chants of fire and blood and death, why would the state not exert a measure of control to regulate their activities?
I am not a fan of President Buhari, what with his proclativity to sectionalize his government and military architecture, but the truth be told, he is the duely elected President and we are not privy to the information he has about these organizations. What if some of these churches have been implicated in money laundering and other financial crimes? Should he stand aloof and not use state power againt them before things go out of hand? And in the event that he appoints a muslim to oversee the finances of a church, what can the church really do about it? Start a war?
What is baffling is that these privately owned churches, which stand against laws seeking to enforce transparency in their business dealings in Nigeria, conform to similar regulations abroad where things work, why do they rage here? It’s been weeks since this law was promulgated, why have the not gone to court?
The incursion of government into the running of churches is not a good thing but the church holds a formidable place in society and it must not be found wanting before God and man. The CAMA law, warts and all, is a democratically passed and signed piece of legislation. Any review, amendment or repeal of the law being canvassed must also follow due democratic processes and not by galvanizing public sentiments against it by religious bigots and their agents.
