Forced to watch a game by Anthony Akinwale. Unwilling and conscripted spectators that we are, we find ourselves in the stands in an arena of absurdity. We are forced to watch a game of unpredictably changing rules, a game in which players are willing to bend and blend, a game in which the difference between the teams, the players, and the umpire, despite vociferous chants of supporters, is anything but evident. And, to further complicate the absurdity, merchandised religion has been made into a factor in this game.
If one were to ask Nigerians to name this game and win a prize, an overwhelming majority would call it politics. Politics of the 2027 elections, to be precise. But the correct answer is not politics. It would have been if politics were a game of deceit won by the most deceitful. But politics, in the true sense of the word, is not deceit. Politics has the common good as its intent. We must wake up to the fact that what is currently playing out before the unwilling and conscripted spectators that we are, what is being presented to us as politics, is not politics but brigandage.
The Game of Brigandage
What is unfolding before us is a game in which every player, the referee, his assistants, and the VAR are out to deceive. The rules of engagement are unclear and always changing. The goalpost is repositioned after you aim and take your shot so that the ball does not end in the net. Players change and exchange their jerseys before, during and after the game. One moment a player is playing for a club, another moment, during the same game, he is playing for another club. It is a game of all deceiving all, and all the supporters are vociferously cheering the players. It is a game of maximum confusion induced by duplicity.
Religion as a Tool
Then religion is introduced. Emergency prophets appear among and before the spectators. They do all but what Biblical prophets did, all but what authentic prophets are to do. A prophet, in the true Biblical sense of the word, is to bear witness to what is true, to what is good, and to what is loving. But those who emerge attribute the quality of clairvoyance to themselves, reducing the vocation of the prophet to that of a soothsayer. As was the case in past seasons of electioneering campaigns, pseudo-prophets lay claim to having been shown by God what the outcome of the next election will be.
In past elections, “in the name of God”, they told Nigerians which candidate would win the election. One prophet said it was going to be Candidate A, another prophet said it was going to be Candidate B. They forget or ignore the fact that God is a God of truth. There is no contradiction in him. He could not have told anyone that one candidate would win, and told another one that another candidate would win. God is Truth itself. There is no falsehood in him. But his name has been brought into the muddy waters of a game in absurdity.
“You shall not call the name of the Lord your God in vain,” said the second commandment in the Bible. With what is known about hidden and open conduct of Nigeria’s political parties and their operatives, use of the name of God in the build up to the next elections calls for urgent and immediate interrogation. It smacks of blasphemy, a cynical violation of the second commandment, for anyone to say God has chosen the winner of the 2027 election or of any election for that matter. It amounts to an abuse of the ministry of preaching for any priest or any pastor to use the pulpit or any forum to campaign for any candidate.
Role of Religious Leaders
Biblical prophets interrogated kings. Nigeria’s religious leaders should be interrogating the conduct and utterances of those who are facing the electorate, and those who occupy public offices. They should not be seen applauding any candidate. Mixed signals from some religious leaders have led some spectators to draw the conclusion that “the Church” has taken a stand on the next elections. But it is illicit to generalise by saying the Church is largely an extension of the political establishment. For, while that might be true of some churches, or of some pastors, or of some priests, it is not true of “the Church”. Such illicit generalisation comes from a poverty of ecclesiology that characterises Christian religious discourse in Nigeria.
At a time and in a clime of self-appointed and self-missioned prophets, this poverty of ecclesiology explains why everyone is talking about “church”, while only a few stop to ponder the question: what is “church”? In the cacophony of doctrines that characterises contemporary Nigerian religiosity, it is important to know what serious study of early Christianity teaches, and not what populist Christian religiosity propagates. In early Christianity, many of the “churches” we have today would not have been recognised by early Christians as churches. In the same way, many of those who claim to be prophets today would have been considered by early Christians to be self-appointed and self-missioned, and therefore unfit and inauthentic.
Despite copious citations of Scripture, much of what is paraded as Christian religion in Nigeria today is clearly disconnected from Christianity in its earliest form. The issue before us is a deadly mixture of corrupt politics and corrupt religion. Religion and politics suffer corruption when the name of God is invoked to implement a self-centred agenda.
Corruption of Politics and Religion
Politics, the noble act of intelligent ordering of common life for the sake of the common good, is corrupted by brigandage, and brigandage is paraded as politics. Brigandage is what takes place when all kinds of means are justified and deployed to assuage the disordered desire of power mongers masquerading as statesmen. It is what obtains where and when people believe that politics and morality are like oil and water that can never be mixed. Having separated politics and morality, the resulting brigandage is mixed with a corrupt religion whose preachers are in the habit of calling the name of God in vain under the pretext of prophecy, using the noble office of preaching the word of God to campaign for one candidate or the other. This deadly mixture is put on sale during every campaign season, and many Nigerians are buying and consuming it.
But we must refrain from generalising. While every Church leader who imitates Jesus Christ must associate with sinners and saints alike, for Jesus in the Gospel was a friend of corrupt public officials like Matthew and Zacchaeus, even winning and dining with them, it is not the case that such association necessarily encourages or confers legitimacy on those who have bastardised and are still bastardising politics. Augustine of Hippo, a sinner who became a saint, clearly understood this distinction when he wrote in his Rule that one must separate hatred of sin from love for the sinner.
Father Akinwale is a Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Augustine University, Ilara, Lagos State.
