Many watchers of events around 2023 politics in Nigeria knew that the declaration by popular Pastor, Tunde Bakare, on Bola Tinubu, one of the major contenders for President Muhammadu Buhari’s seat, would generate torrents of reactions, but very few knew that this one with lots of venoms would come from Yinka Odumakin who was, on many occasions, seen at the front seat as worshipper in Bakare’s Church. Here below, is the reaction.
Pulpit abuse for descecrating politics by Yinka Odumakin
CHIEF Ayo Adebanjo was practically in tears as he called me on Thursday to ask if I came across a political address given by Pastor Tunde Bakare on Sunday. I could not lie to a 92-year-old man and I admitted I saw it. He then asked why I didn’t let him have it as it took another person to forward it to him. I felt so bad at the charge but had a good reason of not wanting to put an old man through the torture of such a dagger from a supposed trusted friend. I knew he would get to know of the unveiled unwarranted attack on him in the ochestrated video, but it didn’t have to be through me if I could avoid it.
The devastation he went through is the reason why I have decided to do this piece as part of the healing process for the old man who was badly hit in a very crude manner.
It is our elders from the depth of their wisdom who said that praying for longevity and avoiding seeing evil are two options you hardly get in same package.
The heartbreak from the pulpit of politics must have been one of the old age evil packages at this perilous season.
It is wth great pain and very torturing reflection that I have to deal with this sad experience as it would have been more rewarding for me to skip dealing with this mental torture, but a man like me cannot afford to be tongue-tied in a moment of crisis as we don’t die on the spot where our mind is spoken. It is not a strange thing for us seeing politicians committing volte face and being on four to eat their very vomit. The only snag in their SWAGA may be the depth of fools they take the rest of us for and the level of stupidity that would make us to say “meen sir” like goats with no brains to them.
It is the very height of the abuse of the rostrum for a Pastor to say to us no matter how God-forsaken the country has become that if somebody is accused of being a thief, the rest of us should go and become thieves as well. That is some weird Sunday school of demonic dimension bordering on arrogance and total disdain for your congregation whom you no longer see as children of God but political instruments that can be abused for any purpose and desire.
There comes a time for self-anihillation for any man and there is nothing anybody can do when it gets into the head of any hero to cross that line irretrievably as the best of men are still men who are suspectible to foibles and it is only God who cannot be mocked or used eternally.
Many would be wondering why a man of God will place the worship of man momentarily over the worship of God on His temple but it takes a deep understanding of man to appreciate that dimension of falling to know that nothing human is alien and never to trust any man beyond perfidy.
There are deep lessons some of us have taken in this journey of life recently which we can now process and take the proper lessons, but may not even have to share the deeper dimensions beyond knowing the other side of men and how they can in their guile think they are making use of their fellow beings.
It boggles the mind when even confidential whispers become political propaganda to score cheap points as if the whole world ends with that and as if there would be no tomorrow again.
There is a tommorow and it comes swiftly and we are all mere playthings in its hand. And it is only those with deep reflective capacity who can handle that dimension of life. That rich man was so full of it at the height of his success and he was boasting of it all and God was laughing until he even started talking of “my soul” and God wondered what came over him that he went maniacal arrogating the soul to himself. He asked him to let him have his soul back and he can keep the rest.
