Why Oritsejafor has no case to answer

This is so because President Goodluck Jonathan’s body language since this untoward matter manifested has largely passed unnoticed.When political and religious leaders share the same kind of excessive preoccupation and conspicuous desire for the accumulation of wealth, it is normally at the expense of the led. Contempt and ridicule will then follow. This has unfortunately […]

This is so because President Goodluck Jonathan’s body language since this untoward matter manifested has largely passed unnoticed.
When political and religious leaders share the same kind of excessive preoccupation and conspicuous desire for the accumulation of wealth, it is normally at the expense of the led. Contempt and ridicule will then follow. This has unfortunately blinded the reaction of many Nigerians over this affair.
 Therefore any attempt to extricate Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor from the smouldering cauldron now scalding his sense of objectivity and questioning his modesty will just be a self serving gambit. Likewise any attempt to condemn and criticize him.
Why would, amidst this affair, Pastor Oritsejafor preach the sermon at the nation’s recent 54th Independence Day Interdenominational Service?
The answer is very simple and quite straight forward. The eminent Pastor despite the raging issue still enjoys the confidence and esteem of Mr. President. The significance of this is equally clear cut. Religious insularity in Nigeria has always been a political tool rather than aberration. That is why President Jonathan can stake his credibility, imperil his anti-corruption credentials and risk major diplomatic fallout from South Africa just a few months to a presidential election. Or is the president just baulking because a disaffected flank of Nigeria’s security architecture might have deliberately leaked actionable Intel to the South Africans?
 In an attempt to religiously counteract Marilyn Ogar’s simultaneous clearance and indictment arising from Stephen Davis allegations the president ended up with a public relations disaster in Tchad and by nobly standing with his friend and pastor he has dry docked with discerning Nigerians. The current administration is disastrously navigating through the treacherous waters of religion with a cracked telescope; for the administration to expediently reach pacific waters the current chief tenant of the Aso Rock Villa must remain very presidential.
During the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) according to Ambassador John Mamman Garba in his memoirs published by the Ibadan based Spectrum Books in 1979 titled THE TIME HAS COME, the Federal Military Government to minimize civilian casualties, other forms of collateral damage and fast tract to end that conflict needed to acquire a fleet Italian made Aermacchi light ground attack aircraft. The necessary official orders were placed and processed; negotiations opened and were promptly concluded at the highest governmental levels with delivery dates set only for the formidable secessionist propaganda machinery to swing into a major counter offensive. The Vatican was thus saturated with a vicious stream of petitions to lean on the then Aldo Moro led Italian government and his Socialist coalition partners to cancel the entire order on the premise that the jets when eventually delivered will be used by “Nigerian Moslems” to obliterate “Biafran Christians who are mainly Catholics”. The Christian Democrat Moro obviously knew better because Nigeria was only then led by General Yakubu Gowon, it’s fledging Air Force commanded by Col. Emmanuel Ikwue and the procurement negotiations led by Ambassador Garba all Christians and that the conflict had nothing to do with religion but the ethnic chauvinism of the secessionists, however to avail and mollify Pope Paul VI alongside the Roman Curia the aircraft were manufactured via a Czech subsidiary of Aermacchi tagged L-29, they were subsequently retired to serve as advanced tactical training planes in their new base in Kano for successive generations of crack Nigerian Air Force pilots including the former Biafran Air Force flyers who were magnanimously re-integrated. The same aircraft in the 1990s ended up as donation to enhance the defense capabilities of some of our ECOWAS neighbors and are still in active service till date.
 A significant remnant of that kind of demagogy of the erstwhile Biafra subsists till date, mainly through the travesty a current series of TV ads which daily inundate our airwaves reminding President Jonathan that “we that are with you, are more than those against you”.  
That the adherents of our diverse Abrahamic faiths have degenerated into “competing social orders” is sad enough but more unfortunate, it is at the expense of our much vaulted quest for national unity, progress and development.
The leadership burden of an organization such as the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) can only be carried on the broad shoulders of those that derive instructive lessons from the history of its founding and garner a profound understanding of that. To be a national shepherd in a diverse pasture such as Nigeria does not require a garrulous rock star status, other prerequisites of unusual candor, a sense of proportion, a balanced perspective and exemplary leadership qualities are more ardently required.
It is a historical paradox of sorts that one of the major building blocks that culminated into the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) was laid by a scion of the Sokoto caliphate and its Sardauna, Alhaji (Sir) Ahmadu Bello. Back in 1964 the then Premier of the North actively encouraged and vigorously supported the establishment of the Christian Association of Northern Nigeria (CANN) as an umbrella body for the region’s faithful. Those were the halcyon years when a young school leaver from the erstwhile Kabba province made the best GCE “O” Level results from the North and was promptly rewarded with a regional government scholarship by the Sardauna to further his studies but opted for a ministerial calling.  That brilliant lad, John Cardinal Onaiyekan with the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar today jointly head the nation’s best shot at inter-religious dialogue that has even captured the attention of the Nobel Peace Prize nomination committee. The fact that such a major inter-faith initiative is not directly championed by the national secretariat of CAN (as the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs is involved on the other aisle of the Abrahamic faith system) is an eloquent testimony.
On December 6th 1937 the then Anglican Bishop of Sudan, Rt. Reverend Guy Bullen took off from Khartoum’s aerodrome for an Episcopal visit to Juba (now capital city of South Sudan) with the pilot of a church owned bi-plane, they unfortunately crashed landed near a village called Pap, and both instantly died. Would the Bishop by then leased out the aircraft to help defray its maintenance costs? Certainly not. The diocese would not have bought the plane in the first place no matter the mitigating circumstances. Long before Pastor Oritsejafor was born the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) in colonial Nigeria maintained a fleet of light aircraft to facilitate its evangelical and medical work under the auspices of a flying doctors program. In fact they pioneered airstrip development in Nigeria. None of the aircraft were blatantly used for personal aggrandizement.
The ultimate responsibility of Pastor Oritsejafor’s leasing agreement with Green Coast Produce Company Limited is personal. The buck stops on his office table and not on CAN’s pulpit. Therefore all well meaning Christians (including this writer) have disassociated themselves from the wild assertion that in the blinded pursuit of the CAN leader’s pecuniary interests a “war has been waged on the Nigerian Church”. May the pastor be reminded that the real enemies of the Church are its leaders that have overwhelmingly failed to be accountable to their flock and have dragged the humble faith founded by the son of a carpenter into murky partisan politics. The pastor should bear his own cross.
Most of those currently sauntering along the granite tiled corridors of temporal power in Nigeria today are overtly bipolar towards the Nigerian project; they modulate between rabid sectionalism and religious insularity to an occasional national sentimentalism. It is against that background that Pastor Oritsejafor has no case to answer.

Yahaya-Joe wrote from Rock road, Wusasa, Zaria <[email protected]>;