Dr Promise Adiele

Promise Adiele

“This boy, he will kill his own father, and then marry his own mother”. That was Baba Fakunle. He delivered the prophecy with measured certainty, which validated his prophetic designation in Ola Rotimi’s The gods are not to Blame. Baba Fakunle’s source was Ifa, the famed prognostic essence assessed through the casting of Opele, stringed objects of divination. At the end of the play, the prophecy was precisely fulfilled. Odewale killed his father, King Adetusa, and married his mother, Queen Ojuola. Son and mother had four children. Thus, the people of Kutuje depended on Ifa’s prophetic attributes to uncover the future. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the people of Umuofia depended on the prophetic revelations of the Oracle of Hills and Caves to look into the seeds of time. Those were the good old days, when traditional prophetic channels were effective, free from human desecration and pollution. In contemporary times, following the advent of Western religion, prophecy acquired a totally different identity where people for diverse purposes embrace it as a social-regulating mechanism for manipulating people’s emotions, a manoeuvring, predicting procedure for self-enrichment or as God’s honest pronouncement to humanity.

Of course, the three categories of prophecies above encapsulate our understanding of that spiritual methodology in the modern world. However, the big question is, into which of the categories does Dave Umahi’s latest prophetic claim belong? Should we accept his prophecy as a social-regulating mechanism for manipulating people’s emotions, or as a manoeuvring, predicting procedure for self-enrichment or as God’s honest pronouncement to Nigerians? For clarity, Dave Umahi, Nigeria’s Minister of Works, recently prophesied that Kaduna State governor Uba Sani and Bola Tinubu will be in power for eight years. According to him, “I want to assure you, my dear governor, Uba Sani, that I’m also a prophet. It was only David in the Bible that was a prophet and a preacher, and God has told me that you will do 8 years, and Bola Ahmed Tinubu will do 8 years”.

I am not aware of Dave Umahi’s ordination as a pastor or priest of some traditional divinity. But his allusion to David in the Bible as a corollary of his name Dave devalues that revered chosen man of God in the Holy Book. Also, given his anti-people pronouncement, it is improbable that God will speak through his indeterminate spiritual consciousness. And because he is not a known clergy member in the prophetic cadre, the possibility of using prophecy for self-enrichment is far-fetched. That leaves us with the first category of prophecy – as a social regulating mechanism for manipulating people’s emotions.

If Dave Umahi is a prophet, his inspiration certainly does not derive from the Almighty God or any recognized traditional source like Ifa or the Oracle of Hills and Caves. These sources can be viewed as genuine mediums which take into account the observable realities of people’s conditions and are therefore interested in their welfare. Will Ifa, looking at the anguish inflicted on Nigerians by the present power protocol, be so fatalistic as to wish Nigerians another four years under the same administration? Will the Oracle of Hills and Caves be so insensitive to the plight of millions of Nigerians to unleash further privation on the people for another four years? Will the Almighty God extend the evisceration of Nigerians under the present administration for another four years? Although God can punish a nation by afflicting it with a horrendous leader, Nigerians believe that their prayers should abate the current economic and political infirmities with no further extension. Therefore, we can rightly say that Dave Umahi’s pronouncement, seeking to prolong the current economic asphyxiation in the country, is insensitive, lacking any spiritual source, and insulting to the Nigerian electorate.

There are many Umahis in the country who willingly submit themselves to the hypnosis of sinister mediums by declaring that Tinubu will be returned in 2027, whether Nigerians like it or not. Of course, given the country’s current political actualities and the associated chicanery, the current administration may retain power in 2027. But if we consider the socio-economic realities on the ground, if we ponder the height of economic depredation which Nigerians suffer daily from the government’s policies, if we reflect on the spiralling cost of living across the country which are inconsistent with the favourable economic indices spewed by misbegotten global institutions, it becomes unlikely that Nigerians would be willing to step into the same river again. The prophecies about Tinubu’s retention of power in 2027 are more disconcerting because they completely disregard the wishes of Nigerians and their choices at the polls. Umahi’s declaration gives the twitchy feeling that Nigerians are inconsequential in who becomes their president in 2027. Such undemocratic behaviour is evident of a demagogue removed from the immediate, constricting challenges of the masses who daily wallow in untold hardship and destitution.

Perhaps we can understand prophecy as a declaration of an impending doom. We have people classified as prophets of doom. Prophets of doom only get negative revelations, which sometimes come to pass. Some prophets have received revelations about famine, which was a form of punishment for the people. The Holy Bible records in Acts 11: 27-28 how Agabus prophesied about famine in the Roman world during the reign of King Claudius. Before the last election in 2023, I saw a video of an unidentified man on social media in a church pulpit giving a prophecy. Initially, he spoke in Yoruba while an interpreter relayed his message to non-Yoruba speakers in English. Suddenly, the man changed to English and declared as follows. “If you decide to vote, if Tinubu wins, all of you are going into mourning. That is what God has spoken. Let it go viral, God has spoken. Let me say it in English so that everyone will understand what I am saying. If Nigerians vote for APC, Nigeria will sink. People will be swimming in poverty. The economy will be in shambles(sic). If the government of APC continues, Nigeria will suffer extraordinarily. I am not in support of anybody. As a matter of fact, I don’t vote and I will never vote. I am telling you that we have never seen hardship before, this is when we will experience more hardship. We will be sick, the economy will be sick. I am not saying anybody should like me”. The accuracy of the foregoing prophecy is legendary.

Given the above exegesis, we cannot completely dismiss Dave Umahi’s pronouncement as unprophetic, but we can simply classify it under the doom variety. The same goes for all those, including the APC chairman Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, who have prophesied, without considering Nigerians, that Tinubu will rule for eight years. For those of us in the literary clan, we can easily substitute ‘doom’ with ‘tragedy’ for a more penetrating effect. The tragedy of these prophecies towards 2027 does not consist in who wins the election, but more about the docility of the people to accept the present misery in the land and be ready to accept a repetition, not because they approve of the system, but because the system was and would be foisted on them. So when any wayfarer prophesies that the people’s current suffering should continue in 2027, it connotes a tragic mindset which hugely undermines the electorate, the real custodians of democracy.

Perhaps we can also consider another category of prophets, which does not include the likes of Dave Umahi and his co-prophetic band. These prophets belong to the artistic realm as poets, playwrights, novelists, and musicians. Niyi Osundare immediately comes to mind. He wrote a prophetic poem about the rot in the Nigerian judiciary, “My Lord, Tell Me Where to Keep your Bribe”. In the poem, the poet accurately captures the rancid chamber of Nigeria’s judiciary, described as the most bribed sector in 2023 according to a report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Call Osundare a prophet and you will be hitting the bull’s eye. But we must not relent to wish that Umahi’s tragic musings, which he misnamed prophesy, must never come to pass. If the Almighty decides to stretch Nigeria’s affliction in 2027, we must embark on a collective supplication and diverse propitiation to the supernatural realm, every man in his language to appease the powers that rule the earth. Did the Holy Book in Nahum 1:9 not affirm that affliction should not arise the second time? In Nigeria’s case, affliction from the Buhari era arose the second time in the present dispensation with dire conditions. Perhaps, we can all echo that affliction should not arise the third time, irrespective of whatever Nigeria’s political prophets, led by Dave Umahi and Abdullahi Ganduje, may think.

Promise Adiele PhD

Mountain Top University

[email protected]

X: @drpee4