MR. PASTOR, STOP PREACHING NONSENSE!
As a student of religious politics and religious terrorism, I am quite aware that religious leaders do have political agendas and characteristically use the altar to mobilize (or de-mobilize) their followers for politics. I was, however, utterly shocked after listening to a 1hour 30 minute apocalyptic message by a self-acclaimed 'messiah of information', Pastor Emmanuel Bosun, whose barrage of nonsense was recently responded to by the APC. His agenda was indeed clear - he wanted to sensitize and mobilize the Christian population against their Muslim counterpart especially in preparation for the 2015 general elections. In order to achieve this, Pastor Bosun had to produce voluminous falsehoods and showed some horrific video to his helpless audience in a church, raising the alarm that Islam is the main problem in modern Nigeria while Muslims are out there to exterminate Christianity in the country. As much as the pastor's right as a Nigerian citizen - who can belong to any political party of his choice and express himself freely - is appreciated, there should be no gainsaying that he has no right to distort facts and re-write history in a bid to sell his cruel agenda or execute his contract with some political paymasters somewhere. Pastor Bosun's shenanigan message may ordinarily not warrant a response, but it is of importance that the unsuspecting public, who fall easily to the pontifications of religious leaders in Nigeria, is saved from the falsehoods that characterise the message and the mischief of this end-time pastor.
Pastor Bosun starts his alarmist message with a certain conference held in 1989 in Abuja by Muslims who arrived at certain conclusions defining the 'Islamic agenda' in Nigeria and Africa. The highpoints of the communiqué after the conference organized by the OIC for Muslims in Africa, according to the pastor, are 'to ensure [that] only Muslims are elected to all political posts of member-nations' and 'to eradicate in all its forms and ramifications all non-Muslim religions in member-nations (Christianity underlined).' How absurd! I wonder if Muslims could be so foolish to have released this kind of sensitive communiqué to the public if there was any. In my scholarly search to verify this claim by Pastor Bosun, I found an objective study by Professor Roman Loimier (a distinguished German specialist on Islam and politics in Nigeria) in his book, Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria, where he made reference to that conference. Professor Loimier noted that the conference was followed by 'a fake communiqué' apparently produced by some Christian groups, which unfortunately is the same document being paraded by Pastor Bosun today. Professor Loimier writes further that: 'The choice of words [in the fake communiqué] suggests that Christian groups wanted to use the occasion of the Islam in Africa Conference not only to discredit the conference itself, but also to point out to Nigerian Christians the radicality and intolerance of the Muslims' (p.318). It is unfortunate that a document that has been discredited since 1989 would still be paraded as evidence by Pastor Bosun in 2014! It is also more pathetic that there were no intelligent persons in his audience to have challenged him for mis-educating them with a fake document.
Pastor Bosun went further to assert that Nigerian Muslims in connivance with the OIC aim to Islamize the whole of Africa. What an ambition! Another nonsensical claim. The pastor displays his absolute ignorance on the formation, membership and activities of the OIC with this claim. I will educate him here. The OIC (The Organization of the Islamic Conference), which emerged in the wake of increasing external attacks on Muslim countries in the Middle East in the 1960s, was established in 1969 as a Muslim (not necessarily Islamic) organization to 'safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony' in the world. It should interest Mr. Pastor that the OIC is not characterised by Muslim-majority states only, it also opens its membership to non-Muslim majority states. Some of them include Gabon, Cameroon, Benin, Togo, and Guyana. Other non-Muslim majority states which have observer status in the organization are Central African Republic, Thailand and Russia. One should ask Pastor Bosun how the OIC would successfully hatch a plan to exterminate Christianity (or other non-Islamic religions) at meetings where Christians and other non-Muslims also attend.
Still on the OIC, this man of God claimed that the series of terrorist attacks in Africa in recent times should not be 'isolated' from the main agenda of the OIC. Praise the Lord! This pastor must be ill-informed about current happenings in the world. Ironically, information is about the cheapest product in contemporary times. It is just available everywhere. The pastor should have known that most of these terrorist groups have as their principal targets the current ruling class in the Muslim world, who represent the main drivers of the OIC. Indeed, they have been victims of the attacks, as well as a large number of Muslims around the world.
The pastor lost it completely when he mentioned that the APC is a party to be closely monitored because it is an Islamic party in the fashion of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. That's quite interesting. The most interesting part of his message here is that we have heard these claims from the PDP before. It is a popular slogan of Femi Fani Kayode - a shameless Islamophobe. This should make a critical mind suspect a connection between Pastor Bosun and the PDP. According to Pastor Bosun, the APC is an Islamist party because its major officials are Muslims. Another piece of rubbish! My last check shows that the APC has four individuals as its key members of the executive - John Odigie Oyegun as the National Chairman, Lawal Shuaibu as the Deputy National Chairman (North), Segun Oni as the Deputy National Chairman (South) and Mai Mala Buni as the National Secretary. Pastor Bosun does not need to be an intellectual to know that two of these individuals are not Muslim. Furthermore, APC has four governors - Adams Oshiomole, Rotimi Amaechi, Kayode Fayemi and Rochas Okorocha - who are not Muslims. Where did the pastor get his information from?
The pastor's political agenda came to light after he appealed to his audience that the South West must not be allowed to be under the control of the Islamic party. In his words, 'the next battleground is the South West.' Pastor Bosun strongly encouraged Christians to vote out the APC in the South West in the next elections and vote for the PDP. In this regard, the pastor is also ascribing Islamism to the patrons of APC in the South West, especially Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. This is a joke taken too far. Tinubu himself would immediately enlighten anybody that he is everything - a socialite, a businessman, a politician, 'Area Father' - but an Islamic personality. It is on record that during his reign as the Governor in Lagos State, he was the first administration to return missionary schools to their original owners; a policy which did not favor the Muslim ab initio. Tinubu's wife is also a prominent member of the Redeemed church, where his husband regularly attends their special programmes at the end of the year.
Readers would certainly be bored if all the statements by Pastor Bosun are responded to in this piece. But it worries me that this person was appointed as a delegate for the Christian community at the just concluded national conference. The Christian community should have done better to appoint some intelligent individuals to the once-in-a-lifetime gathering of serious minded people, which I am sure they have in abundance.
Nigerians should not be surprised that these messages are surfacing a few months to the general elections. But they should be warned that these fake messiahs are agents of politicians who have been hired to invade worship centers to mobilize votes for their patrons. It is not new in the history of elections in Nigeria. The pastor did well anyway. At the end of his talk, he told his audience that 'Jonathan is 100% successful' and compelled his audience to vote for him in 2015 as a religious obligation.
Written by Hakeem Onapajo.