ORGANIZED RELIGION: A BAGGAGE SO HEAVY FOR NIGERIA - MODIU OLAGURO

Lately, I've found it irritating when I meet people and they ask if I'm Muslim or Christian. Could they be so shallow not to know that -- at least in this era -- religion has had absolutely no effect on our morals, conducts, and dispositions? The reality is glaring for all to see. From the civil servant with no holes in her ear to the trader with loose clothing, its the same story of deceit and hypocrisy. Call it false generalization if you want. 

Some illiterate "kobonaires" who can hardly feed quote the revealed text to justify the perversion of their dangling testicles while the nation keeps bearing the brunt through spiraling hooliganism and brigandage. At the other end of the line -- as with the former -- it's their way or no way; every commercial bus is an altar, all the classes in the university are pulpits! These go on while the enemies of the people keep destroying the nation. Till 1999 or thereabout, Christians still eat our Sallah Ram; my family also enjoy the Christmas Chicken. 

Presently, from north down to the south, we have allowed religion to destroy our socialization so much so that the Sheep and Goat now toss their compasses at us. Love between a lass and lad -- the purest form of socialization is most hit in this regard. A Jehovah Witness fella must never marry an outsider -- that includes everyone without a witnessing bag; Aishah cannot date Raphael. Are we not in soup? We are no longer human beings first, but Christians or Muslims. To be a traditionalist is to receive a wink of eternal condemnation. 

Our sense of justice has become so perverted and tainted that truth now undergoes a semblance of Einstein's relativity theory via rationalization under spiritual lenses. With 85 million Christians and 85 million Muslims, Nigeria became and remains the most corrupt nation on earth. With over 1000000 Churches and 1000000 Mosques, the killings keep increasing. The injustice in the land is so widespread you would think that all the inhabitants here are Children of the Satan. 

The Human Brain was supposed to perfect us as superior creatures. With 100 billion cells within it, the termite should be learning from us,  not the other way round. I've laid bare my thoughts as a confused creature who believes, as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, that "there are no facts, only interpretations." For the first time, I'm not being critical over an issue of serious importance. It pains me to see us divided over what ordinarily should unite us as descendants of Adam -- or Monkey. We cannot move forward as a people with a baggage this heavy. We cannot.

OUR SENATORS MUST WEAR UNIFORMS - an article by ABIMBOLA LAGUNJU.

The members of Nigerian parliament have developed a penchant for wasting public funds on irrelevant things that do not add any quality to our lives. They waste our money, they waste our time and they play with our collective intelligence. We do not get any value for the money we spend on them. They have a short attention span on any matter. Different mundane things easily catch their attention while matters of national importance are quietly and deliberately kept off their radar. 

They have now taken a fancy to uniforms. They like uniforms. They like Police, Army, Customs, immigration, Civil Defense uniforms. Uniforms! Our honourables and senators have turned uniforms to an issue of national importance. They want to see as many as possible in uniforms. They are not interested in the person, just the uniform he wears. The servile retinue of police aides in uniforms who waste our taxes guarding them from us, their employers has conditioned them to look down on service uniforms. They feel that they are superior to the wearer of any kind of uniform; after all, their police guards clean their shoes, carry their bags, escort their wives to the market and play the servants to their children. Appearing in anything but a uniform is considered an affront by these members of parliament. They send you out of their presence. They disgrace and humiliate you. Ask Hameed Ali. They were irked to see him in their parliament without his uniform. They wanted him to deck up like one of those police officers that carries their bags. He refused to oblige them. They walked him out. They hammered Hameed. They were not interested in hearing him on the performance of his charge or the reason why he dreamt up payment of  import duties on old and tired vehicles which his own men allowed into the country. They were not interested in Nigeria. They were interested in their ego. They invoked a redundant law to prove their point. Where on this God’s earth do parliamentarians waste taxpayers’ money on discussing in which clothes an employee of the State must appear before them? Hameed Ali did not come in his skin. He came in a decent and non-flamboyant outfit. But these senators wanted to see him in uniform by all means.

Their obsession with uniforms has limits however. They want others to wear uniforms, but not them. They dread the idea of changing their babarigas and agbadas for any kind of uniform. Just a couple of days ago, a tailor who sews uniforms for greedy politicians passed by their senate to ask them for confirmation of his appointment. He wanted them to confirm him as the official tailor for their future uniforms. They were horrified. They mugged Magu the Tailor. They did not hear him. They could not. They were deep in mental imagination of themselves in badly sewn short uniforms. They all know that Magu the Tailor already has their sizes. They also know that he has already purchased the cloth to sew their uniforms. They knew that if they confirmed his appointment, they would sooner or later be obliged to wear their short Made by Magu uniforms.  Individually, under their breaths, they muttered, “I reject it”…”this is not my portion”. Collectively they chased Magu, the EFCC chief tailor out of their presence like a demon. They exorcised him from their collective system.

And just down the road, in the House of Representatives (of themselves), the honourables are considering a bill to nominate their own tailor. They do not want to hear of Magu or any other tailor chosen by Mr. Buhari. They want one of their own to be their tailor. They want well-made agbadas and babarigas, not the kind of ill-fitting shirts and shorts built by Magu who learnt the trade from Ribadu. They believe they can pull it off. They know from history that Ibori built his own High Court in Asaba where Justice Marcel Awokulehin gave him favorable verdict for an unprecedented list of economic crimes. The honourables know that it is possible in Nigeria to eat your cake and have it. And they know that Nigerians will just take this intended coup against decency in their stride. After all we had Waziri and Adoke and nothing happened. We have had all sorts of nightmarish people in important places and nothing happened. We just wring our hands in the face of unimaginable crimes against us and our country.

But what is Mr Buhari going to do now about Magu the Tailor? Is he going to oblige the senators and find a more merciful and compliant tailor? Is he going to tell Magu to burn the block note of the sizes of the senators that he has diligently compiled? Will Mr. Buhari ask that the clothes that Magu bought to sew the uniforms be burnt? Mr Buhari should understand that none of these options is open to him. Magu does not know any other trade than to sew clothes for politicians with sticky fingers. See what happened to tailor Ribadu when he was sent out of his shop by Jonathan & Co. Ribadu lost his bearing. He is still reeling from the shock.  Ribadu, like Magu is a dedicated specialist tailor. Both cannot practice any other trade. Therefore, Mr. President Buhari, Mr. Magu cannot be sacked by those to whose wardrobes he wants to add more clothes. Magu has exposed more thieves of our commonwealth than the combined total number exposed since our independence. He has shamed them even if the courts are dragging their feet to send them to jail. Mr. Magu deserves a national honour and not a disgrace.

In the case of Hameed Ali, Mr. Buhari should let these senators understand that it is not the uniform that makes the brain. They should look elsewhere to massage their egos. Mr. Buhari needs to make it clear to the clients of Magu that if Hameed must wear a uniform to appear before them, they also will have to wear their own uniforms to appear before the people, Magu or not, and sooner than later.

APOSTLE SULEMAN: ADULTERY IN THE PULPIT an article by BAYO OLUWASANMI

The adulterous affair between the founder and General Overseer of Omega Fire Ministries Apostle Johnson Suleman and 23-year old Canadian-based singer Stephanie Otobo has become news staple for many days, so much that it needs no retelling. 

One of the great epidemics of the Christian Church today is adultery. The plague of sexual immorality has made Christianity a mockery. These days, people feel Christians, and particularly pastors, are nothing more than heathens who go to church on Sunday to socialize. Pastor scandals have been happening for a long time. It's not new. The Christian world is full of such reports. Since the beginning of Christianity, pastoral failings stretch as far back as Christian history. The Bible is replete with such stories. Sex and adultery show the so called “men of God” as big-time hypocrites. The call to priesthood is more than having the oratorical gift, sugar-coated tongue, and the persuasive marketing skills of a salesman. It is as much as about thoughts and temptations. Adultery is one of those temptations. 

Adultery is like a fire that can and in fact consumes the clergy as well as the parishioner. However, there is a higher bar set for pastors and church leaders. As self-professed earthly representatives of God, pastors must be held to a higher standard. Some people feel adultery among the “men of God” is treated with levity and approval because the sin of adultery doesn't attract the degree of sorrow and shame from the pastor-offenders. 

Apostle Suleman is like the rest of us. He's human. He's frail and fragile. He's not the only one who indulges in sex or adultery. Pastors are not different in make or in value, but in responsibility and expectation. Being a pastor attracts a higher level of criticism because of the higher standard expected of them. Many pastors believe they are above criticisms by quoting verses in the Bible that says you cannot touch the “anointed.” These pastor-hypocrites believe that disagreeing with them means disagreeing with God. 

What are the implications of Apostle Suleman's alleged adulterous affairs? 

Spiritually, his alleged adultery means Apostle Suleman has chosen Satan over Jesus, death over life, and hell over heaven. It is impossible to be an adulterer and a pastor or “man of God” at the same time. They are mutually exclusive. 

Other ministers who are not involved in adultery are tainted by being in the same profession as Apostle Suleman. The pastor's victim or victims have been wounded and their families have paid a price. The guilt from the act will haunt Suleman the rest of his life. His congregants will doubt and question and invariably find out whether he was “called by God' or by men and what he really believes. Those who believed in him and supported him feel betrayed. People whom he was trying to reach for Christ now have a convenient excuse to fall away. His family is wounded, perhaps irreparably. Atheists and others hostile to the Christian faith have a field day. In the future, his ministry is more limited – a miniature version of what it used to be and what it could have been. 

Apostle Suleman's enemies will take his sin gleefully: “Oooh, he was so righteous! But look what he's doing. He's worse than us!” His influence over his congregation will be slim to none. His humiliation will be severe. The shame will be a heavy burden to bear. 

Now what for Apostle Suleman?

Like all Christians, Apostle Suleman struggles with sin. The sin of adultery disqualifies a pastor from his role of spiritual overseer of his ministry. Suleman needs the correction and accountability of his congregation. He needs clear speech, direction, and repentance not sentimental sweets or braggadocio. The ball is in the court of Apostle Suleman. Let him come out of his closet today like his accuser Otobo did, and confirm or deny the accusation of adultery. Truth is the greatest disinfectant.

MARITAL PRIESTHOOD IN THE FUTURE OF CATHOLICISM - THE POPE

ICHEOKU says this particular Pope Francis is an agent of change and he is moving the Catholic Church in an entirely different direction and at such a dizzying speed that it is quaking the church to its foundations. His transformational agenda is such that by the time his papacy ends, he would have succeeded in tilting the church's axis so faraway from where he met it to something which even Saint Paul would hardly recognize anymore. His latest idea is to have married men ordained priests and you wonder what changed to make the church finally become responsive to the rapidly changing demographics and a society which seem to have since moved on without the church, thus leaving the church behind, still stuck in its old ways. 

ICHEOKU says but the reasoning behind his delineating or rather limiting the marital priesthood to only those who are married and wants to be ordained priests; and not also allowing those who are already ordained priest who would like to be married is the 64,000 dollar question needing an answer. Whatever wisdom founds this apparent discriminatory disposition remains to come to the surface. Whether the pope is technically bribing married men and lobbying them to join the priesthood with the carrot of marriage and somewhat "punishing" those who already made the sacrifice of celibacy, albeit unwilling because they had no choice, is another puzzling matter. 

But regardless of how this question is finally resolved, it would appear that marriage is not necessarily what priests wants; they just want to be allowed the right to get laid, period. Icheoku says it is sex and not the commitment of matrimony that discourages entering into vocational priesthood by able bodied men, who cannot imagine a life of celibacy, completely devoid of sex and without a periodic humping. This is the crux of the matter and not necessarily marriage; a fact of consequences which has seen the urge for priesthood further decline, with the new awareness about pedophile priests and what they subject alter boys to. Even gay priests are also finding the restriction on sex intolerably too difficult to bear that they too are turning their backs against ordination; which has invariably affected enrollment for the vocation. 

The imperative is sex and not marriage as those able bodied men in white cassocks are human beings with biological impulses and cravings too. They want to indulge themselves and experience periodically, the spasmodic good feeling which comes with good sexual intercourse. They need to relieve themselves every once in a while and quench the animalistic fire burning inside them and in between their groins; but not necessarily to be encumbered by the demands of marital commitment and relationship. They want to have the ability and choice to get it when they want it; and the pope should be properly apprised of this and then tailor his new to be canon in such a way as would achieve the objective of allowing sex, with marriage as an option. Taking the step further, ICHEOKU says priests and sisters can as well pick and choose among themselves and even start marrying themselves too. 

It is arguable that pedophile priests do what they do because they prey on the least resistant innocent children who would hardly out them or complain in their quest to satisfy their sexual cravings. A predatory sexual problem which the pope can and could have solved  by letting priests love and get sex whenever they can; instead of forcing them underground and into all manners of pervert practises including molesting innocent alter boys. Icheoku therefore says that marriage is not the problem nor the thing which priests desire or which keeps would be priests away from the priesthood. No, they just want to get laid and this is the driving wedge between them and the priesthood. This matter could easily be solved by encouraging priests to date sisters and making it possible for Reverend Fathers and Reverend Sisters to get together, date each other and and if they want, to marry each other. 

ICHEOKU says even 1Timothy 3:2 similarly commanded on the marital status of bishops and since a bishop must first be a priest before graduating to a bishop, it technically follows that the command also appertains to priests. What a new day it will be to see reverend fathers who are husbands and fathers to real children and then deservedly earn their title fathers. What pope on a mission to demystify Catholicism and bring it up to date and not be yoked to centuries old dogmas. ICHEOKU says time for so many people who would like the added benefit of being married or at least getting laid without the scorn of society or a church that will deadlock them, to consider priesthood might have eventually come and hopefully the pope can put it into action sooner than later. The reason it is said that if you live a long time, you will be a witness to so many things and in this century, a catholic priest could also be a married family man. But how about allowing sisters to be ordained too; why not. If female could be doctors, lawyers, engineers, astronauts etc, why not priest. 

WIRE TAPPING PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: UNACCEPTABLE NIXON-LIKE ILLEGALITY.

Icheoku says Obama's White House's wiretapping of then presidential candidate Donald John Trump's Trump Tower's campaign headquarter is to say the least unacceptable and calls for a thorough investigation. With the level of involvement of then President Obama in Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, it is safe to say that the wiretapping might as well have been carried out by Hillary Clinton herself, because it is likely that Obama used whatever information mined as a result of the wire tap to advance the campaign of Hillary Clinton. President Richard Nixon was impeached and forced to resign and later preemptively pardoned by President Gerald Ford for a similar scandal, the Watergate scandal; which is not any different from what Obama's White House is now accused of doing, tapping the headquarter of a presidential candidate who was contesting the presidency against a candidate who President Obama was supporting and campaigning for. 

Richard Nixon did his eavesdropping at the Democratic Campaign headquarters inside the Watergate complex to secure an undue advantage against the Democratic Party and likewise President Barack Obama's White House which had sworn then that then presidential candidate Donald John Trump can never be elected president under his watch. So common sense dictates that the then President Barack Obama would go and did in fact go to the ends of the earth to make sure that his dream of not having Trump elected came through, admitted they were sorely disappointed. Icheoku says the former president and his minders can deny all they want, but the appearance of it, even if not in fact true, collaborates what many had suspected all these months, considering the passionate investment of both time and emotion of President Barack Obama into the flunked Hillary Clinton's presidential election campaign, that Donald John Trump was being monitored and likely wiretapped to trap him. 

ICHEOKU says never in the history of American presidential politics has a sitting president inserted himself in a presidential campaign to elect his successor like in the last presidential election which saw President Barack Obama taking it personal and campaigning for Hillary Clinton in what people later termed his third term. It saw then President Barack Obama declaring that his legacy was at stake and that he will consider the election of then candidate Donald John Trump as a personal insult on him as well as his fabled legacy. He also severally swore that Trump can never be elected president and not under his watch. However, American people ignored him and elected a candidate who they believed is what America needs right now and behold some of the antics of that period is beginning to effervescence tot he top, leading to all these denials and counter denials. Icheoku is not interested in the validity of the allegation since the Democratic Party has now resorted to making allegations which is not substantiated nor backed up with evidence. 

So if the Democrats could boldfacedly accuse President Donald John Trump of having illegal liaison with the Russians and without a scintilla evidence of any such thing, then it is all well and dandy for them and their president Obama to be prepared to nurse the allegation of wire tapping, whether or not there is evidence in support thereof. What good it serves is for them to also feel how hurtful it is to accuse a president who won an election fair and square of colluding with the enemy. An allegation which President Trump has since repeatedly denied but which the still sulking Democrats are not prepared nor ready to concede that they lost the election because of a heavily flawed and irreparably damaged candidate, which they fielded in the election who American people did not have trust in and thereby rejected. But to the Democrats, American people were influenced or rather forced by The Russians to vote as they voted. 

What an insult to the intelligence and candor of the millions of American voters who voted as they were convinced, that they could not have voluntarily decided for themselves to vote as they voted but had to wait for the Russians to direct them on how and who to vote for. ICHEOKU says if only the Democrats know how hollow they sound each time they mouth off this allegation and how insulting the narrative is to the American people who voted to elect Trump, they would have since apologized for the continuing insult that the Russians hacked the election and moved on. They would have found a way to properly rejig their party towards navigating a pathway that will possibly lead them back to future electoral victories. ICHEOKU warns that should they continue to thread on their current path of being perceived as sore losers who could not accept the peoples will and move on, it will be hard for them to ever smell the White House again, especially not with the current crop of leadership who are still running the Democratic Party. 

The irony of of it all is that whereas the Democrats are ready to accept President Obama's denial that he did not authorize nor had anything to do with the alleged wiretap, because according to them, President Obama speaks the truth; the same Democratic party is not willing nor ready to accept President Trump's repeated denial that he and his campaign had nothing to do with the Russians because according to them, Trump must has no capacity for speaking the truth and must first convince them on his innocence before they will accept his innocence - guilty until proved innocent. So why the double and disparate standards of proof required of the two presidents? 

The same crop of losers had earlier latched on Attorney General Sessions alleged meeting with Russian ambassador to ask that he resign the office, until their own photographic evidence of meeting and cavorting with the Russians came to deflate their balloon of holier than thou egotistic tripping. ICHEOKU says does not know about you, but these Democrats are increasingly becoming irritants who are always ready to point at the specs in other peoples eye as in this case President Trump and his cabinet, but chose to ignore the big Russian logs covering their own eyes. Further, if only the Democrats are Christians enough and ever bothered to read the Bible to understand our Lord Jesus Christ's admonition in John 8:7 that he who has no sin should cast the first stone, they would have done some introspections before casting an aspersion on Trump. But for the photographic evidence of them and the Russians, they would still be shouting themselves hoax that Jeff Sessions committed treasonable felony because he met with Russian ambassador in his capacity as United States Senator and not a Trump's surrogate. 

Now they have hushed, forced by their own contacts and winning and dinning with the Russians to beat a retreat into their mourning dark corners, where they have been confined since the November 8, 2016 shellacking. In the manner of "I did not have sex with that woman Ms Lewinsky", all of them had lined up to to denounce Sessions, claiming too that "they did not meet with the Russians nor had any contacts with the Russians." But the Gods are wise and there is a reason historical records and photographs are kept an dit came to the aid of Jeff Sessions and by extension the Trump administration which they were ready to force off the cliff. ICHEOKU says no one trusts the Democrats anymore and nobody is believing their defense of Barack Obama over the latest wire tap fiasco; and so, until a full investigation reveals what exactly truly happened, Americans would believe their President Donald John Trump that something fishy happened during the last campaign and that it was authorized  by the then White House, including wire tapping the campaign headquarters of then candidate Donald John Trump at the Trump Tower.