Professor Femi Mimiko

Femi Mimiko

We have been inundated, in recent times, with a whole bunch of nondescript, online materials, in which attempts are made to call out the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor E.A. Adeboye (Daddy GO), for asking Nigerians to pray for the country. Some of the stuffs are packaged in so disrespectful a manner that you begin to wonder what type of background such inquisitors came from. My question is, why take on Daddy GO – an 83 year old Pastor, quietly doing his own thing, and making his own modest contributions to national wellbeing – in this manner? The man of God asked for 100 days of fasting/prayer for Nigeria; and so what?

My take on this is simple. Let everyone apply themselves diligently at whatever legitimate things they choose to do. You can’t continue to throw shade at those who believe in prayers, and in the power of their own God to answer prayers. Who does that?

Unquestionably, anyone who believes in God must agree that God has, indeed, blessed Nigeria so much. It is also true that by the choices we made over the years, and the ones we continue to make – as leaders and the led – we haven’t allowed God’s glory to fully manifest upon Nigeria. But you can’t continue to put down those who genuinely believe that these same challenges could also be placed before God, to help fix. “I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?,” so the Bible says in Jeremiah 32: 27. What is more, God himself admonishes us, in John 16: 24, thus, “ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” The implication of these is that those fasting and praying – in truth and in spirit – to propitiate God for mercy, and for Him to fill up our many gaps, as a nation, are on solid scriptural footing. So, what are all these hassles, and harassment of Daddy GO about?

Mind you, the argument is not that Nigerians, on our own, should do nothing practical about the challenges of nation building – and these are legion. Not at all. Rather, it is to say that praying is a critical pathway that anyone is free, and must be allowed to freely choose. For God’s sake, we cannot all be in the same boat on the way forward for our most beleaguered country.

One other thing these people fail to interrogate is the counterfactual to a life of commitment to prayer, on the part of most Nigerians. Pray, what would the situation have been were Nigeria not a praying nation? Have these content creators ever paused to ask themselves this question? Have these people, quick to insult pastors, ever paused to imagine how well the religious houses have served us, in moderating some of our basest instincts as human beings; and especially, as Nigerians? Have they bothered to investigate the psychological value of religious worship – including those intense physical gyrations we see at Praise and Worship sessions – in distilling bottled up tension in people, especially at times like these, of seismic changes in personal and family economic fortunes; and the implications of such for social stability?

That religion may serve as opium to the people, as Karl Marx hinted several years ago, does not suggest that it is completely of no social value. Afterall, a time there was, in the not too distant past – the early 1980s – when Liberation Theology was the catalyst and bedrock of mass resistance to a state run berserk in Latin America; and with impressive pro-masses outcomes to show for it. The Catholic church was a veritable vehicle in bringing back in, liberal democracy in the Philippines, when its life was practically being snuffed out by President Ferdinand and First Lady Imelda Marcos.

So, these folks should let Daddy GO, and whoever chooses to pray on, and about Nigeria, be. Otherwise it would be legitimate to put such ‘activists’ off as mere vectors of misplaced aggression. If they consider the Nigerian State as having failed them, and it surely would be legitimate for millions of Nigerians to so feel, they should find the courage to take on the State, and find a means of either reforming, or wholly reconstituting it, rather than these low blows on concerned civil society actors doing what, in spite of the minor limitations their methods may have, is of great value to our collective wellbeing.

Enough, please, of these unwarranted, and unimaginative efforts that make it sound as if the clerics calling on Nigerians to fast and pray for their country, are the problem. The lesson of history is that the struggle for social emancipation is, of necessity, and always multidimensional and multifaceted. Leave Daddy GO alone, and do your own thing, please. Let those who choose to follow his counsel, to fast and pray for Nigeria be, while you go find your own bearing! Afterall, the man of God is neither compelling anyone to follow his counsel, nor railroading anyone into his own worldview.