Feature/OPED
What Pentecostal Pastors Have in Common With Politicians
By Michael Owhoko, PhD
The disparity of roles between ecclesiastics and politicians is generally expected to translate to differences in values, lifestyles and creeds, but this pattern has been disrupted and bridged in Nigeria by materialism. Moral disconnects, lust and insatiability for money, wealth, fame, influence and power have conspired to bring the men of God to the level of politicians. This is evident in the Pentecostal ministries where some founding pastors and general overseers {GOs} no longer exhibit ascetic dispositions and restraints from material allures.
Men of God are ordained servants positioned to constantly communicate God’s values and the work of Jesus Christ for the redemption of mankind with humility and sacrifice, not as businessmen and women with devotion of brewed capitalists, displaying affluence like politicians. Politicians are elected political office holders with the responsibility of running the government to primarily provide welfare and security of lives and properties for the people, but opt to make politics a career and business for generating wealth for themselves.
With similarities in affluence and avarice, both pastors and politicians now operate in the same frequencies. They buy private jets, lodge in diplomatic suits in 5-star hotels during local and foreign travels, send their children to expensive schools abroad, buy houses abroad, procure citizenship of foreign countries for themselves and immediate families, live in highbrow areas, enjoy retinue of domestic staff, and site projects funded with church or government money in their villages and home towns.
Besides, they also drive expensive exotic cars and SUVs with convoys of security escorts for protection. The use of escorts by politicians is understandable because they are vulnerable to public attacks owing to the lifestyle of lies and deceit. But where men of God who preach truth and regularly assure members of divine protection, fail to invoke celestial powers on themselves, but rely on security agencies for defence, leaves much to be desired.
The process for funding their voracious and lavish lifestyles is similar. While politicians deploy all sorts of illusions to embezzle public funds, including the collection and diversion of constituency funds for private interests, some men of God obtain a pecuniary advantage over their members through hoaxes, guilt and fear. They ensure management of tithes, offerings, seeds and first fruit are under their exclusive preserve, including compelled donations orchestrated to look voluntary, but mechanically designed to appeal to the emotions of congregates.
There is no accountability and transparency. Financial management and utilization of these sources of income are shrouded in secrecy, except to the knowledge of immediate families of pastors and GOs or a few carefully selected loyal church members. Members are generally advised not to ask questions on how finances are utilized, as enquiries are viewed as recalcitrant handwork of the devil, and attract consequences ranging from warning, suspension or outright expulsion.
Abroad, the church’s offerings and tithes are classified as charity funds. There is transparency and accountability. Members are at liberty to ask for receipts for such levies, as they serve as evidence of contributions to charity. Such receipts are presented to the government for purposes of tax rebates, enabling members to enjoy tax relief.
Pentecostal churches are not liable to members on how levies and contributions are managed, just like the government where there is no accountability and transparency. Political officeholders use public funds as personal incomes to service their lives. When citizens demand accountability over the management of revenues in the face of glaring corruption, politicians in power are quick to accuse or label such persons as agents of destabilization working for opposition parties. When such criticism persists, such citizens are either hounded, warned, blackmailed, intimated or silenced, using state security apparatus.
Due to seemingly shared values, politicians who contested elections and won through rigging and other fraudulent processes, are offered opportunities in the Pentecostal churches to offer thanksgiving to God for a “successful” election. They are even allowed to step on the pulpit to share testimonies and minister to the congregation, with prayers offered to them thereafter, and sometimes, along with prophesies. Before departure, the politicians make donations to the church, most of which are redeemed with looted funds.
Looted funds are accepted as donations, gifts, seeds, tithes or offerings. Pastors and GOs are not bothered about the sources of funds nor the integrity or character of donors. As long as it swells the revenue base of the church, it is acceptable. This is the attraction accounting for the proliferation of Pentecostal churches in Nigeria. It is doubtful if the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics {NBC} knows the exact number of these churches. They target locations populated by high net-worth individuals to set up branches to grow their finances, as against rural areas inhabited by the poor. Lekki in Lagos is a major target, accounting for the high presence of key Pentecostal churches.
While politicians have made politics a lucrative business, violating the purpose of government for selfish interests and gains, these men of God in the Pentecostal movement have also made the gospel a business, failing to resist the lure of earthly wealth under the guise of kingdom expansion pursuit. While it is true 1 Corinthians nine: 13-14 says preachers can live from the gospel, making it an obligation for church members to support their pastors, men of God have taken this verse out of context by taking advantage of vulnerability and ignorance of members to fund their ostentatious and extravagant lifestyles.
The need to sustain and maintain their expensive lifestyles is also responsible for the absence of clear succession plans. Having tasted power, money and influence, the typical politician is afraid to relinquish office. Where he is statutorily required to do so, resorts to picking his child or wife or relation or a sponsored successor to take over from him. For them, it is difficult to let go of the wealth and juicy opportunities associated with their offices.
Founding Pentecostal pastors and GOs also deploy similar methods to perpetuate themselves in office. They have no clear succession plans, preferring to foist themselves on the congregates in perpetuity, pretending to be waiting for the Lord to choose a successor, when in fact, they have their children or wives in mind, whom they groom to take over. They cannot afford to hand over the huge finances of the church to an “outsider”. It is the reason a Pentecostal church hardly survives beyond the life of its founder, as it slowly slides into extinction after his or her demise.
Also, while politicians regale their audience with promises of taking them out of poverty as a strategy to secure their votes, some of these Pentecostal pastors create false hope for members for prosperity as a strategy for church growth. Rather than encourage congregates to acquire skills to enable them to offer services and products, they organize prayer programmes where they are asked to sow seed, which only enriches the pastors but depletes the poor. They know wealth cannot be created through prayers, yet, members are advised to exercise faith.
Unfortunately, donations, levies and other revenues contributed by members of the church are not fully used for kingdom expansion but diverted and invested in private family commercial businesses registered in family names. Returns from these investments are also not fully ploughed into the church but partly reinvested into other businesses, including real estate, stocks, manufacturing, and even aviation where underutilized private jets are leased for commercial purposes.
Implicitly, there are now obvious blurred lines between spiritual and temporal dimensions fueled by material pursuits involving Pentecostal pastors and politicians. Existential gaps between them have continued to be narrowed by shared values, exacerbated by materialism. The underpinning motive behind this seeming convergence is prosperity, covertly wrapped under the guise of bringing succour to the people, which is currently posing a serious reputation threat to the Pentecostal movement, and reshaping it to conjure an image of hypocrisy. It is indeed, an unhelpful development.
Sadly, the affluence associated with pastoral office is also currently having a ring on the minds of church members who are enrolled in Bible Colleges. Most of them now look forward to establishing their church upon graduation. They also want to “blow” like their pastors who project their stupendous wealth as a product of divine favour, prompting them to want to set aside divine ordinances and protocols to commence their ministries, rather than wait to be called by the Lord.
Dr. Mike Owhoko, Lagos-based public policy analyst, author, and journalist can be reached at www.mikeowhoko.com and followed on X {formerly Twitter} @michaelowhoko.
By Kingsley Omose
Sharp conflicts have always indicated transformation points to the consciousness of the world and provided pivots. Pivot is a point of articulation, a point at which things balance.
Sharp conflicts, whether it is a world war or (war in) Iraq, has always indicated transformation points to the consciousness of the world and provided pivots to a new design of human actions.
Things change after the world is traumatised or the world has sharp military conflict or collision of the human will in the earth has always provided pivot points or transformation points to the world’s consciousness.
We look at these events, look at the terrible things that are taking place, but behind that we recognise the fact that things are shifting to new positions.” Dr. Noel Woodroffe on Core Imperatives for Successful Nation Development
Gandhi used the principle of embracing personal suffering from your oppressor without retaliation to wake the conscience of your oppressor and make him stop the oppression to free India from British colonial rule.
In doing this, Gandhi had pointed to Jesus Christ as showing the way to embracing the principle of embracing unjust personal suffering visited on him by those he came to save to awaken the conscience of humanity to the path of reconciliation with its Creator, God.
Gandhi set up unarmed Indian protesters to defy unjust British laws and policies and then for these Indians to resort with non-violence when the British Army made up principally of Indians visited them with violence in return.
While Gandhi used the principle from a majority population perspective, Martin Luther King Jr. took the same principle and applied it from a Black minority population perspective to awake the conscience of the dominant white population in the US to the evils of segregation.
He simply organised Black protesters to defy the segregation policy and not to respond with violence when the police in the South came to enforce segregation with brutality and unwarranted violence before the American media who were on hand to record it.
This was what gave birth to the Civil Rights Act in the US ending segregation and legal racial discrimination, amongst others. Hamas deviated substantially from Gandhi and Martin Lutther King Jr. in that its application of the principle was triggered through violence and killing of over 1,200 Israelis during its border invasion on October 7, 2023.
The issue before Hamas was how a minority population brings the attention of the world to Israel’s biggest open air fenced prison in the world with over 2.5 million Palestinians, and by extension, the issue of a Palestinian state.
First, without the knowledge of the 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas dug tens of thousands of kilometres of tunnels deep underneath Gaza.
Then, on October 7, 2023, Hamas and its allies broke through reinforced concrete walls separating Gaza from Israel, invaded some neighbouring communities, killed over 1,200 people, and forcefully took over 200 Israeli captive back with them into the tunnels underneath Gaza.
An enraged Israel with its Western allies reacting to what they regarded as a massacre swallowed the bait, and what the world has witnessed live on all media platforms in the last 13 months has been a morden defining of what constitutes genocide as the full military might of Israel and its Western allies was visited on an unarmed nonviolent Palestinian population in Gaza.
Make no mistake, implementing this strategy came at great cost to Hamas and its leaders, but what has shaken a watching world to its core has been the resulting violence and suffering visited on over 2.5 million unarmed Palestinians, mostly women and children, by the Israeli government and military with the support of its Western allies.
A peace deal has now been brokered between Israel and Hamas facilitated by Donald Trump using a 3-stage peace plan earlier put forward by the Biden administration, starting with the exchange of prisoners between both sides.
But be assured that just as happened in India gaining independence from the British with the help of Gandhi, and with the civil rights movement in the US spearheaded by Martin Luther King Jr., the Palestinian cause is now a global issue thanks to the actions of Israel and its Western allies in the last 13 months.
Feature/OPED
Reflection on Groups’ Kindness to Alidinma Mixed Secondary and Ute Okpu Grammar Schools
By Jerome-Mario Utomi
This piece was inspired by two separate but related events; the first has to do with the news report that Dr. Philomena Onoyona Foundation, in line with its vision of giving unwavering commitment to education and community development, recently made a strategic visit to Alidinma Mixed Secondary School in Agbor Alidinma in Ika South Local Government Area of Delta State, where it donated learning materials worth thousands of naira to the students.
The second and closely related to the above centres on the revelation that the Ute Okpu Community in Ika North-East Local Government Area of Delta State recently came alive as the 1990 Set of Ute Okpu Grammar School Old Students Association celebrated its annual reunion with a series of social responsibilities aimed at giving back to the society.
These activities, programmes and initiatives include but are not limited to; deworming of children aged 10 years and below, payment of tribute to the unsung heroes of Ute Okpu Grammar School, presentations of lecture series, bestowing of awards, testimonials, plaques and cash gifts on the school’s outstanding/dedicated teachers, staff, and alumni in recognition of their tireless efforts and unwavering commitment, and unrelenting passion for education.
At a glance, the above show of love by the Foundation and the Old Students Association portrays a bunch that recognizes Social Responsibility as an ethical framework in which individuals or corporations must act in the best interests of their environment and society as a whole, fulfilling their civil duty and taking actions that are beneficial to both the present and upcoming generations.
Beyond the donations, worthy of mention are their messages of hope and resolve to continually support both the present and future students within the state and beyond.
Take as an illustration, Dr. Onoyona underlined that the latest visit and donation of learning materials to the students of Alidinma Mixed Secondary School is the foundation’s way of raising from our community, academically strong and well-informed youths that will provide the future leadership needs of our nation as well as compete favourably with their counterparts abroad’’.
The Nigerian-born and U.S.-based social worker and advocate while calling on other well-meaning and quietly influential Nigerians to team up in her current quest to uplift less privileged and vulnerable youths out of poverty and illiteracy, added that this benevolent outreach which focuses on empowering students through provisions of essential educational materials such as school bags, relevant books, pens, and pencils, among others will continue and be extended to other schools within Delta state and beyond to equip the students with the tools needed to excel academically and inspire a brighter future.
In a related development, Speaking via a statement signed by one of the leading members, Chukwuka Justus Iwegbu and titled; The Spirit of Giving Back to Our Community and Alma Mater: A Tribute to the Unsung Heroes of Ute Okpu Grammar School 1990 Set Old Students Association, the Ute Okpu Old Students Association explained that the event which took place at Ute Okpu Unity Town Hall was a testament to the enduring spirit of the alumni association and its commitment to recognizing the contributions of its esteemed members.
“One thing that brought us together after so many years of leaving our alma mater is unity and love. We may not bother ourselves with the sung and unsung stories because we have a whole lot of members who believe in an unsung story of positive contribution and impact on the lives of others. Remembering our roots remains our major mandate and a call to duty.
“The Ute Okpu Grammar School Alumni Association, 1990 set, is committed to giving back to our alma mater and the Ute Okpu community. We believe that education is the key to unlocking the potential of individuals and communities, and we are dedicated to supporting initiatives that promote educational excellence and intergenerational change,” the statement concluded.
Without a doubt, it will be convenient for many to argue that there is nothing philanthropic to attract media coverage of such a low-profiled donation of learning material, particularly as the value of the donation in question is not measured in billions of Naira.
For me, there are lessons to learn from these groups and every reason to celebrate their actions.
First and very fundamental is the hidden truth that members of these groups are not in absolute terms wealthy, particularly going by Nigerians’ context and definition of riches but were predominantly fired by the burning desire to uplift the life chances of the poor and vulnerable in their environment through educational support.
Regardless of what others may say, this piece holds the opinion that these morally eminent men and women made donations to schools not only as a positive behavioural culture but largely in recognition of the time-honoured aphorism which considers education as the bedrock of development; that with sound educational institutions, a country is as good as made -as the institutions will turn out all rounded manpower to continue with the development of the society driven by well thought out ideas, policies, programmes, and projects.
Their action equally symbolises a bunch in consonance with the fact that it is our collective responsibility to ensure that our schools work and our children are properly educated at the right time.
With their culture of donating to the students’ welfare and comfort, the group, in my view, amplified the notion that children enjoy the right to education as recognized by a number of international conventions, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which recognizes a compulsory primary education for all, an obligation to develop secondary education accessible to all, as well as the progressive introduction of free higher education/obligation to develop equitable access to higher education.
We must also not fail to remember that a few years ago, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), in line with its mandate to promote and protect human rights, established the right to education as a thematic area of focus to drive its vision of having all children enrolled in school as well as to ensure that the culture of human rights is promoted and maintained in schools.
One common fact we must not shy away from as a people is that the crushing weight arising from education funding in Nigeria and globally has become too heavy for only the government to shoulder and that is another reason why the intervention/donation by these groups is most profound.
As we celebrate these uncommon efforts, the lesson we must all draw from the example of these groups is that it is time for all to collectively find creative and sustainable solutions to educational provision for all in Nigeria, especially for the children of the poor and lowly as these children deserve the right to hold all of us accountable.
If we fail to provide this traditional but universal responsibility to these children, their future will hang in the balance as a result of such failures. And chances are that most of them will run to the streets. And, as we know, the streets are known for breeding all sorts of criminals and other social misfits who constitute the real threat such as armed robbers, thugs, drug abusers, drunkards, prostitutes and all other social ills that give a bad name to society.
Utomi, a media specialist, writes from Lagos, Nigeria. He can be reached via [email protected]/08032725374
Embarking on a new year often involves setting ambitious resolutions – a global tradition of striving for personal growth and positive change. We vow to eat healthier, exercise more, learn a new skill, or take on challenging DIY projects. However, as the initial enthusiasm wanes, some resolution may only fall by the wayside.
To enhance your chances of success, let’s delve into some common resolutions and explore key tips that will empower you. This includes setting clear and achievable goals and utilising tools that will equip you for the journey towards achieving those aspirations.
1. Enhancing physical wellbeing: Losing weight or improving fitness often requires a lot of different things working together. To support your efforts, consider utilising tools such as smartwatches to track progress, resistance bands for strength training, and cardio equipment like an exercise bike or treadmill. For home workouts, invest in dumbbells, kettlebells, and a yoga mat. A food scale can aid in portion control. You can also stay motivated by wearing nice workout clothes that makes exercise more fun. These products are all available on Temu, a direct-from-factory marketplace offering year-round deals to help you achieve your New Year’s resolutions.
2. Cultivating healthy eating habits: This often involves prioritising whole foods, minimising processed foods, and increasing fruit and vegetable consumption. To simplify this journey, consider investing in helpful kitchen tools. A food processor can streamline meal prep, while an air fryer offers a healthier cooking alternative. A slow cooker is perfect for effortless and flavourful meals, and a vegetable spiraliser can make eating vegetables more enjoyable.
3. Prioritising stress reduction and wellness: Prioritising wellness is crucial for overall well-being. To reduce stress and feel better, focus on mindfulness practices like meditation or yoga and spend time in nature. Improve your sleep habits. Helpful tools include essential oil diffusers to create a calming atmosphere, weighted blankets for relaxation and comfort, stress balls to release tension and improve circulation, and noise-cancelling headphones to block out distractions.
4. Trying out a side hustle to diversify income: Becoming a social media content curator, for example, is a rewarding pursuit in Nigeria, however, it requires careful planning and execution. Defining your niche and identifying reliable sources of content are crucial first steps. A strong technological foundation is essential for success. This includes a reliable computer or mobile device, a stable internet connection, and specialised software for editing (video, audio, and image). Investing in affordable high-quality recording equipment, such as cameras, is crucial for capturing professional-looking content, while good lighting is essential to enhance its visual appeal.
5. Strengthening personal relationships: This is a valuable resolution that can enhance our well-being and strengthen our relationships. In today’s busy world, it’s easy to let the demands of daily life overshadow meaningful connections. To make this resolution a reality, consider scheduling regular family dinners, planning weekend outings, or dedicating specific times for uninterrupted conversations. Remember that quality time is key; put away distractions and truly engage with your loved ones.
6. Contributing to the community through volunteering: Volunteering your time to a cause you believe in is a rewarding way to make a difference in your community and the world. Find a cause that resonates with you and explore opportunities within your local area. Start small and gradually increase your commitment. Remember that volunteering is a two-way street; it not only benefits the organisation but also provides you with a sense of purpose and fulfilment.
Consistency and adaptability are key to achieving your New Year’s resolutions. Celebrate your successes, be patient with yourself, and don’t hesitate to adjust your approach when needed. Platforms like Temu can be invaluable allies, offering a wide range of affordable products to support your goals. From fitness equipment to kitchen essentials, Temu can effectively equip you without straining your budget.
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