[dropcap]S[/dropcap]ince he was posted to my parish in the second half of last year, church dey tire me. Seriously. Literally.
He takes considerable time of his sermon bashing Jonathan. He praises Buhari to the high heavens. One of the reasons he supports Buhari is Osinbajo. He believes that Osinbajo makes the Buhari presidency righteous. To him APC and Buhari can not be wrong, simply because Osinbajo, the righteous, is on the ticket.
When I could not take the comedy anymore, I had to stop church. I started attending another parish. Church for me is a place for spiritual meal , not vain politics. I need to wake up every church day longing for the meal. This longing was no longer there . And I can’t pretend about it.
After being away for a while, I started missing the brethren. I missed my duty post. I always feel incomplete if I am not at my duty post. I see it as a calling. I can’t do this in another parish if I don’t get a formal transfer. So I went back to my parish to see whether my pastor has changed ;whether the murky situation of things in the country has made him to leave Jonathan alone; whether he will concentrate on the word of God and leave politics and Jonathan out of it.
Sermon time! My heart leaped. I prayed silently that he should stick to the word of God, and nothing else.
He started well. He started by surprising me. He said :”Before I start, let me welcome back our brother to church after a long while!” I was pleasantly surprised that he noticed my absence. He even asked me to stand and be greeted by the whole church. He said he and his wife always look out for me.”There are people whom when you see, you know the church is complete,” he said.
What kind words! Who no like kind words hehehe? Believe me, My heart started warming up to him again.
Then he started the sermon! He started with politics! He started by truthfully acknowledging that the situation of things has worsened in the country. He mentioned the fuel situation, the electric power situation and the general deteriorating state of the economy. He said we have never had it so bad. His words.
I thought the man had finally learnt his lesson… I felt he now knows that Jonathan is not the problem. I felt he has now located the problem.
He continued. Sermon o. He said that tithes and offering has dropped by more than 50 per cent. That it is not just in our parish and zone. That as the head of zonal pastors in the province, he knows that there is a general drop in tithes and offering.
Then he dropped the bombshell! He attributed the drop in tithes, offering and the general suffering in the land to “the past administration and their cabal”. He lost me again. God! I was so livid, I started sweating. Nothing he said afterwards mattered. In fact, the only thing that prevented me from leaving right away was that I parked inside and did not want to arouse undue attention by driving out before the end.
The last straw was when, after the “sermon”, he raised a prayer point asking us to use the “weapon of God” against “the cabal of the past government” currently causing our present hardship. I looked around. People were not praying. The man noticed it and shouted “pray, pray, pray”. But there was near silence in the auditorium.
I think that people are wiser than he thinks. I think that most Nigerians now know that Jonathan is not the cause of the current fuel scarcity and the general hardship in the land. Nobody was willing to pray any silly prayer point.
I am going to meet him and request a transfer from the church to another parish. I can not continue to subject my life to poisoning every church service in the name of a sermon.
But seriously, why are Buharists so irrational? How can a sane and rational being, Pastor or not , attribute the current fuel scarcity and present hardship in the land to Jonathan??
Aniefiok I. Udoabasi is a legal practitioner and head of practice at The Brook Chambers. He is a chartered arbitrator and public affairs analyst. Connect with him on Facebook.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
