Oritsejafor and northern bashing

During April’s post-election riots, Pastor Oritsejafor suggested the immediate arrest of retired General Muhammadu Buhari without a shred of evidence of complicity other than the usual conspiracies. Buhari had the audacity to challenge a Niger-Deltan for the top position and so, even though his running mate is a fellow pastor, Ortisejafor would rather roast him […]

During April’s post-election riots, Pastor Oritsejafor suggested the immediate arrest of retired General Muhammadu Buhari without a shred of evidence of complicity other than the usual conspiracies. Buhari had the audacity to challenge a Niger-Deltan for the top position and so, even though his running mate is a fellow pastor, Ortisejafor would rather roast him along. It would appear that the eminent pastor is too pre-occupied with politics to remember John 7: 51 – does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing? If Jonathan had heeded his advice, Nigeria would have been in another state today. Evidently, non-natives of the places where the riots took place became easy targets, it was a national tragedy and ought to be seen as such.

Last week, Pastor Oritsejafor hit the headlines again with the usual bile, this time against the proposed Islamic banking. The insinuation of his weekend interviews is that Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is doctoring the books to pave way for the institutional financing of a Jihad or Holy War. In pursuance of this conspiracy theory the pastor even suggested that the new naira signed by Sanusi has been stripped of its local language inscriptions. The theory is simple if the three main languages have lost their inscriptions on the national currency leaving only Arabic and English, what is left but the declaration of an Islamic republic? Talks like this makes you think you have the wrong copy of the constitution. Every crisis in northern Nigeria takes on a different hue. For years, Nigeria sought a remedy to the wanton killing, arson, looting and kidnapping in the Niger-Delta but this pastor raised no voice against it. Was he a financier or a beneficiary, we may never know. Truth is, at critical moments of national uncertainty, religious leaders ought to build confidence and inspire cohesion and harmony not partisanship. The president of coalition of churches drawing adherents from all races and climes ought to be a conciliator not partisan.

You would think that Pastor Oritsejafor has conducted a forensic analysis of all the votes cast in the last elections to conclude that no single northerner thumbed his finger for President Jonathan. This is the only reason that warrants his consistent attack on any northerner who happens to venture out of the characteristic box of the northerner being the illiterate cattle herder, hewer of water or maker of suya.

I throw a challenge to Pastor Oritsejafor, that we northerners are altruistic enough to give him a tour of northern Nigeria so that he could learn a few things about the complexity of our region and why it is not in anybody’s interest to engage in stereotypical diatribes capable of breaking the fragile unity of our country. If he accepts the challenge, I can raise the funds to meet his usual opulent lifestyle and have his exclusive meals delivered to him as hot or cold as he would want them in any part of northern Nigeria. After such a tour, I expect that the pastor would be better educated to change or wean himself of his conspiracy distortions. I also bet that there are northern Christians who can teach him a word or two about usury and why it is at the core of Islamic banking and how it does not affect his millions in any other bank.

To his followers, Nigeria is one indivisible entity and we sincerely pray it remains so because it has mingled and mixed for so long that for several millions of its citizens, they are cut in-between tribes and religions that if the nation were to break along ethnic or religious lines, we would be stateless. This was at the core of Yakubu Gowon’s Civil War dicta – to keep Nigeria One is a task that must be done.

Ironically and unfortunately, Gowon is a patriotic northern Christian. Biologically, none of us had control of our place of birth. Judging by the quest for foreign visas by Nigerians, no less from Pastor Oritsejafor’s native land, they would have done something about that if they had a choice. The north may be tagged educationally disadvantaged, we are not so backward not to produce our own first eleven in any field of human endeavour. If Pastor Oritsejafor hates Islamic banking for any reason he is not obliged to patronise it. Most erudite Moslems in several parts of Nigeria today attended Christian missionary schools. There are still many around and even tertiary institutions. I do not hear the Sultan complaining – that is leadership and commitment to nationalism for which his position was threatened by the rioters; it is a virtue that any true religious leader should learn. Sanusi may be a herdsman, but he has kept Nigeria insulated from the global economic mess and that’s all that counts to those rich enough to keep money in the bank. The rest of us just don’t care!