Adebowale Oriku 

I was not a great one for reading lists until I ran into Irving Wallace and his children’s The Book of Lists. The book is fun - brimful of odds, oddities, quirks and quiddities: The number of men suspected of being Jack the Ripper, the archetypal serial killer. Sixteen cases of people killed by God. Lists of sundry coincidences, chance meetings, botched robberies. The number of people recorded to have died while having sex. Actually the Wallaces’ Book of Lists is no more than a light-hearted procession of curiosities and eerie happenstances in the form of a book. At the time the first one came out in 1977, it was one of a kind and after several reprints and additions, now there is something close to a ‘list’ industry. Books, magazines, newspapers do not miss the opportunity to list the names of people doing one thing or the other.

I live in the UK and I read the Times, so I am familiar with the yearly publication of the British Rich List. Even if I am only a modest man with modest dreams, the biblical mental sin of covetousness is only barely repressed, pushed far into my cerebellum when reading the names of the richest guys in the UK. And the list of the most beautiful women in the world. My hopes here are even less fond. I’ll allow the Brad Pitts of the world to pore over the latter list – his wife, Angelina Jolie, topped it last year.

I subscribe to a number of magazines too. Philosophy Now because of an amateur interest in philosophy. The Humanist because I am a humanist. Then the two big American-born rivalrous international magazines: TIME and Newsweek. And not long ago, three complimentary issues of Forbes magazines were sent to me. There was no way I could have got it across to the guys at Forbes that I did not really need the magazine, that I’m not the ‘business executive’ they imagined, nor am I a prospective subscriber as saved up in their factoidal database. Anyway, it was in one of the Forbes that I was able to read up on the list of the five hundred biggest firms in the US. If there was anything that issue told me it is the vast wealth that seems to inhabit the space called the United States – the last of the first hundred companies is worth tens of billions of dollars. If anything is ultimately going to make a dent on American economy - in other words the world economy - it would be macroeconomic giantism. We seem to be experiencing something in that guise now. 

Expectedly Barack Obama is TIME’s Man of the Year. The conferment of Person of the Year has become an annual feature of the magazine - the winner, bad guy or good, is often trailed by a list of slightly less recognised men and women during the year. Einstein was deservingly named Person of the last Century.  

The rivalry between TIME magazine and Newsweek is as real as it is mutually demure. Of course Newsweek often chooses its own Person of the Year, only in a slightly different way from TIME. When I received my copy of Newsweek this morning I was not surprised to see Barack Obama in the first page of a list of fifty of people called The Global Elite. Who else would be number one? And there is the Russia’s New-Czar, Vladimir Putin. Nicholas Sarkozy of France. Hu Jintao of China. Warren Buffet, the richest man in the world. Carlos Slim Helu, the second richest. Rupert Murdoch. Michael Bloomberg. The Dalai Lama. Apple boss, Steve Jobs. Osama Bin Laden. Toyota chief, Katsuaki Watanabe.

Most of the names in the list are recognisable. There is a couple of Islamo-political leaders. But apart from Pope Benedict, the only Christian leader who features is Pastor EA Adeboye of Nigeria. Well, I must say that was a name I was not exactly expecting to espy on the list. But why not? There are two columns, made as asides to the main list. In the box entitled The Power of Money, the five listed names are all influential Wall Street denizens. In the box entitled The Power of Tyranny, among the five listed tyrants are three Africans: Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, Sudan’s Omar Bashir and Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea.

Of course, we don’t often forget that one of our own, Wole Soyinka, has made probably the most significant list in modern times – the Nobel Laureates. In the 1980s, some had thought Nigeria’s MKO Abiola was among Forbe’s list of world’s richest. This was a myth. In those days the only African that featured in Forbes marginal rogues’ gallery was Congo’s dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. It was not until this century that men like Sudan’s Mo Ibrahim and Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote made the list.

So Pastor Adeboye’s name is still somehow a standout in Newsweek. And let me quickly declare that not being in the least religious, to say nothing of being a member of the Pastor’s Redeemed Church, the appearance was taken dispassionately. For me, it is neither here nor there.

A wife of a friend who is a member of the church would have jumped for joy. The woman had once taken exception to it when I said ‘I think I would like the man,’ the man referring to the good pastor. The woman was peeved that I addressed Mr Adeboye as ‘the man.’ She said I should have called him ‘Papa,’ ‘Daddy,’ or ‘the Overseer.’ It did not matter to her that I did not belong in the fold. Anyway, that sort of ebullience is understandable. And I am certain Mr Adeboye would not mind that I said ‘the man,’ after all he is a ‘man of God,’ a man who has not aggrandized himself with titles like 'Archbishop' or 'Primate.'

Of course I would like to read a critical biography of someone like Pastor EA Adeboye, but what I have found is only a piece of hagiography. However, from all I’ve heard and from appearances, deportment, even tonality, Mr Adeboye’s charisma is the sort that eschews flash, dash and neopentecostal bling. Which is all very well.

The Newsweek article rehashes the spread of Redeemed Church both in Nigeria and outside. There are 360 branches in the UK here. A number of times, I have been invited to the Holy Ghost Night, the massive revival which sometimes caters to the supplication of upwards of twenty thousand people - mostly Nigerians, and mostly those who need immediate answers to their prayers. Again for reasons I have mentioned above, I see no point in solving practical problems that need a contemplative cool head with choral sleeplessness.

In the piece, Mr Adeboye enthuses over how his church has sent missionaries to places like Pakistan and China. The pastor wants churches to become the new Starbucks, or Macdonald’s, built everywhere, serving opiate soft-drink and soul food. He says: ‘In the developing world we say we want churches to be within five minutes of every person.’

The question anyone has not convincingly answered for me is: Why hundreds of thousands of churches? Why not a few thousand libraries in every corner or neighbourhood as they have in the UK here? Why not functional research and development departments in all ministries (not Christian ministries)? Why not world-class universities in every major city and big town in the country - I don’t mean the current mushrooming of private, unrated, and often church-owned institutions - universities that have well-resourced backrooms and scientific smithies where boffins can do their crucial work.

Lest I should be misread, I am by no means recommending the kind of clinical clockwork world Charles Dickens satirises in Hard Times. I am not in any way saying that churches should not be built or people should not attend them if they so choose. But for us in Africa, and Nigeria particularly, the long-term effect of such thinking as having a church within every five minutes of everyone will certainly return us to an abecedarian state of existence, a faux-Orwellian world where God breaths down on everyone’s neck like a sort of cloud-bound incarnation of Big Brother. 

Mr Adeboye relates an experience of ‘miracle’ that happened on the Lagos/Ibadan expressway. The fuel in his car ran out and there was no fuel in every petrol station around. God spoke to the clergyman, told him to keep on driving and he drove for another 200 mile on damn-all. Well, there is no proving whether this miracle happened or not, although a hard-headed rationalist would start his explosion of such an anecdote from Popperian Falsifiability.  

All right, the miracle truly happened. But the question for me is more sociological. When there was no war or disturbance, isn’t something worth pondering upon that someone of Pastor Adeboye’s clout would even find himself cutting it fine, going on such a long journey without adequate fuel? Was it an act of faith that he even began the journey at all? Was the petrol tank leaking? And if the fuel truly ran out, what does that say about Nigeria, an oil-rich country where you cannot get fuel in your car for hundreds of miles?

Pastor Adeboye was as close to the former President Olusegun Obasanjo as a cleric could be close to a politician. He was to Aso Rock what Billy Graham was to a number of American Presidencies, and if such a personality depends on Divine Providence to run a car, then what about those who have neither the ear of the presidency nor the uncomplicated favour of providence. And one should not forget that Mr Adeboye is a former university don, a mathematics teacher. In one of my more secular moments as a younger man I had remarked to a born-again cousin that I’d rather Mr Adeboye remain a mathematics teacher, give us our own Principia Mathematica, solve one of the six remaining million-dollar Millennium Prize Mathematical Problems. But then Mr Adeboye said God called him, and that is that. After all one of the most important creedal bewilderments in the Christian religion is Freewill.

Now back to the magazine Newsweek in which Pastor Adeboye features. He is number 49, the pastor is captured kneeling in prayerful pose. This is a telling posture indeed. It confirms the obvious, that Mr Adeboye is truly a man who counts on his God, who is in servitude to his God, a sure-kneed, fearless supplicant-in-chief. But as I looked at the kneeling Pastor, I remembered Henry Kissinger - played by Paul Sorvino - in Oliver Stone’s movie, Nixon. In the dark depths of the White House, the fraught President Nixon asks his powerful Secretary of State, Kissinger, that they should get on their knees and pray. He says, ‘I hope this will not embarrass you, Henry’. The Jewish, though not quite religious, Kissinger is visibly embarrassed. He whispers to the president as he goes down on his knees, ‘This is not going to leak, is it?’ A few days later Nixon resigns.

Robot  # 1 | 26.12.2008 08:27

Adebowale Oriku I was not a great one for reading lists until I ran into Irving Wallace and his children’s The Book of Lists. The bookis fun - brimful of odds, oddities, quirks and quiddities: The number of men suspected of being Jack the Ripper, the archetypal serial killer.Sixteen cases of people killed by God. Lists of sundry coincidences, chance meetings, botched robberies. The number of people recorded to have died while having sex. Actually the Wallaces’ Book of Lists is no more than a light-hearted procession of curiosities and eerie happenstances in the form of a book. At the time the first one came out in 1977, it was one of a kind and after several reprints and additions, now there is something close to a ‘list’ industry. Books, magazines, newspapers do not miss the opportunity to list the names of people doing one thing or the other. I live in the UK and I read the Times, so I...Read the full article.

Veelinks  # 2 | 26.12.2008 14:47

Pastor Adeboye is truly a man of God. He did not vie for this recocgnition. I am sure that even if he has ackonlowledged this, he will only glorify God (rather than himself for this achievement) In summary if you are cynical about the Pastor's sincerity, I would advise you just wait. You will get a devine confirmation of the Pastors genuiness. I am saying this with every confidence. Thanks Victor

Dunamis  # 3 | 26.12.2008 15:19

It is enough that Redeemers are proud of the recognition given to their leader and the resr of us are pleased for them. It will be one of the Chrises next or maybe even Tunde Bakare. With commercialised faith everything does happen, including the death of many from sheer apathy, the perpetuation of misery because of greed, the enthronement of ignorance for lack of courage. Churches ensure that their clergy do not suffer the fate of the poor and voiceless and they uplift their congregations with motivational sermons, buttressed with strategically delivered quotes from the Bible which only a select few are privileged enough to enjoy here on earth, while the rest of us wait for God to put the mighty from their thrones and scatter the proud hearted, fill the hungry with good things, and send the rich away empty. The mercies were promised to our fathers but we will only come into our own when we make heaven. Our visas depend on the size of our donations.

adebowale oriku  # 4 | 26.12.2008 16:06

Now let me clarify something. I do not doubt Pastor Adeboye's bona fides as a religious leader. I would not presume on such a thing as whether someone is genuine or disingenuous in whatever they choose to do, or be. I think I made it clear that Mr Adeboye appears pretty likeable to me, and this has nothing to do with whether he is a Christian or not. I write not from the angle of a cynic, but from that of a man who has the right to think as freely as he can - I mean within the bounds of reasonableness. I have only expressed an opinion here and I hope it will be taken as that. Of course it might appear foolhardy airing this sort of view, given the level of religiosity of my people and the respect, even veneration, in which Pastor Adeboye is held. But then again, let me reiterate that it was not my wish to undercut the integrity of the man. I stand by everything I wrote above and I’m very much prepared for the punishment of hell that such a well-intentioned essay may prod me into. As to a visitation from the pastor to confirm his genuineness, this will be wasted on me. I am far too fallibly human to cast any stones

Shoko Loko Bangoshe  # 5 | 26.12.2008 19:01

Adebowale, I'm not sure whether you're asking rhetorical questions when you ask: The question anyone has not convincingly answered for me is: Why hundreds of thousands of churches? Why not a few thousand libraries in every corner or neighbourhood as they have in the UK here? Why not functional research and development departments in all ministries (not Christian ministries)? Why not world-class universities in every major city and big town in the country - I don’t mean the current mushrooming of private, unrated, and often church-owned institutions - universities that have well-resourced backrooms and scientific smithies where boffins can do their crucial work. Do you think that Nigerians think that libraries are so important that they would pay for them if they were built? Do you think that institutions and people who have the money see research institutes as essential to a progressive nation? I don't disagree with you about the importance of education, science and technology, but don't assume that just you see something, that everyone else must see it too.

Dapxin  # 6 | 26.12.2008 19:13

Nicely written stuff. Growing up, my grandma did ogun-worship, so I knew how the dogs were killed... I attended the popular CAC churches alongside her + uncles back in time. I attended the Catholic cathedral at some point. I have been lured to a number of Redeem program(s). And I hated how religious endless-ness of program pervaded TV on sundays back on OSRC. My sister is a Jehovah's Witness. Still, I do not get my head around the tenacity with which the churches rule. Whereas Mr. Adeboyes remains almost revered as a tin-god among his church members, but people do not to question the reality of things, as it should / could be, while they swallow the 'trickery' in these establishments fulltime. Ha! One of my elder sisters once told me how he- Adeboye travels in an entourage, you know the way our own IBB/Abacha did with multiple cars- as a sign of God's endless blessing & "effect" on the man....I shook my head. And your reference to the political link, him + obj is surely not lost on me. While I hold one truth to be self-evident,(apologies Obama) that there is a creator, and an entity that is behind all the complexities + order of this universe, if you question the fundamentals of these churches, you will deconstruct the fraud! that underlines them all. The Redeem church is representative of the mental clog, that our psyche suffers, due to the many many things....

Ispy  # 7 | 26.12.2008 19:20

As always it is always a pleasure for me to see or hear anything positive coming out of Nigeria, especially when it is done by the international media. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to learn Pastor Adeboye made the Newsweek Gobal Elite list or 50 most influential people in the world list. I must confess i have over the years become very wary of our so called Men of God going by the actions of some of them(occultism, opulence etc). I am also just like the author of the opinion that the proliferation of churches and mosques really has done little to change the socio-economic landscape of Nigeria(though our leaders are always in the front row and closest to the pastors and imams) or the way its citizens think or act.The recent widespread killing and maiming of so called witch children in Akwa Ibom state is one sad manifestation of how dangerous religion can sometimes be especially when it does not go side by side with education as the author rightly mentioned. The recent negative publicity out of South Africa of one of our prominent 'men of God' Pastor Chris Oyakhilome and his brother who heads the church's branch in that country stemming from allegations of bribery and arranged miracle healings did a lot of damage to how Nigerian Pastors are percieved alongside the conduct of other Nigerian Pastors. So Pastor Adeboyes' recognition would definitely go a long way in helping to change the already growing perception that Nigerian so called Men of God are nothing but fraudsters just as every other Nigerian is perceived.The recognition should therefore be a thing of Joy and hopefully help encourage other men of God to toe the line of decency, uprightness and most importantly, righteousness.

ajimoh  # 8 | 26.12.2008 19:49

=Dapxin;304919>Nicely written stuff. While I hold one truth to be self-evident,(apologies Obama) that there is a creator, and an entity that is behind all the complexities + order of this universe, if you question the fundamentals of these churches, you will deconstruct the fraud that underlines them all! The Redeem church is representative of the mental clog, that our psyche suffers, due to the many things.... Dapxin, I crave your indulgence in my addition/emphasis to your originality above. I totally echo the same underlined opinion. Did I not hear somewhere that the ebullient Pastor rejected the recent national honour bestowed on him in sympathy with the long-suffering masses? Yes, that is what one would have expected from a man of God truly in tune with the ordinary people and who is celestially powerful, bold, & conscientious enough to proclaim loud and clear that he would not dine with those who do not have the interests of the masses uppermost. I was elated when I heard the news of his rejection of any national award from politicians and the reasons he gave for the rejection - in my somnambulistic state of course! The OBJ link is pure mischief; nothing could be farther from the truth, I hear the straight talking pastor was always castigating OBJ and others, reminding them to do just by the people, not to rig elections and to fish out the killers of Chief Bola Ige and other victims of political assassinations. In fairness to him, I hear he was a most potent critic of politicians always speaking out against looting of the treasuries by the various Governors, etc, political intolerance, heavy-handedness and lack of the provisions of the basic necessities of life in a richly blessed Nigeria. In fact, I hear he was particularly hard on OBJ - AND I DO HEAR THINGS...CONSEQUENCES OF HALLUCINOGENICS!

VOR  # 9 | 26.12.2008 21:33

=ajimoh;304938>Dapxin, I craze your indulgence in my addition/emphasis to your originality above. I totally echo the same underlined opinion. Did I not hear somewhere that the ebullient Pastor rejected the recent national honour bestowed on him in sympathy with the long-suffering masses? Yes, that is what one would have expected from a man of God truly in tune with the ordinary people and who is celestially powerful, bold, & conscientious enough to proclaim loud and clear that he would not dine with those who do not have the interests of the masses uppermost. I was elated when I heard the news of his rejection of any national award from politicians and the reasons he gave for the rejection - in my somnambulistic state of course! The OBJ link is pure mischief; nothing could be farther from the truth, I hear the straight talking pastor was always castigating OBJ and others, reminding them to do just by the people, not to rig elections and to fish out the killers of Chief Bola Ige and other victims of political assassinations. In fairness to him, I hear he was a most potent critic of politicians always speaking out against looting of the treasuries by the various Governors, etc, political intolerance, heavy-handedness and lack of the provisions of the basic necessities of life in a richly blessed Nigeria. In fact, I hear he was particularly hard on OBJ - AND I DO HEAR THINGS...CONSEQUENCES OF HALLUCINOGENICS! Ajimoh, you are baadddddddddddd:D:D:D I think I suffered this HALLUCINOGENICS when I saw him slap Fayose in Ekiti a few years ago for turning the state into a theatre of war. However a later learnt that GO actually went to celebrate with Fayose and encouraged Ekitieans to co-operate with their governor!! I need to do something about this HALLUCINOGENICS:lol::lol::lol:

Auspicious  # 10 | 26.12.2008 23:33

=adebowale oriku;304863>Now let me clarify something. I do not doubt Pastor Adeboye's bona fides as a religious leader. I would not presume on such a thing as whether someone is genuine or disingenuous in whatever they choose to do, or be. I think I made it clear that Mr Adeboye appears pretty likeable to me, and this has nothing to do with whether he is a Christian or not. I write not from the angle of a cynic, but from that of a man who has the right to think as freely as he can - I mean within the bounds of reasonableness. I have only expressed an opinion here and I hope it will be taken as that. Of course it might appear foolhardy airing this sort of view, given the level of religiosity of my people and the respect, even veneration, in which Pastor Adeboye is held. But then again, let me reiterate that it was not my wish to undercut the integrity of the man. I stand by everything I wrote above and I’m very much prepared for the punishment of hell that such a well-intentioned essay may prod me into. As to a visitation from the pastor to confirm his genuineness, this will be wasted on me. I am far too fallibly human to cast any stones Hello, Mr. Oriku! Please continue to excercise your right to speak freely without apologies for your views. The man whom you have opined about here is just as human as any of us - I am sure he, like his fellow men here and elsewhere, does get horny and enjoys an occassional erection with his wife. And I am sure he takes a shit every now and then - you know, that smelly, slimy stuff that exits from our posteriors. As Dapxin and Co have joined you in pointing out, the influence that "Daddy E.A." weilds have pretty much sat untapped for the good of his fellow citizens, who bear the brunt of the excesses of the rich and powerful that "Daddy E.A." enjoys the privilege of knowing and interacting with on one-to-one basis. The story is that all the big-big men of Nigeria attend the many branches of the Redeemed Church across Nigeria. In a nation full of injustice and failure as Nigeria is, "Daddy E.A." owes it to his God, his fellow citizens and his motherland, to use mantle of his leadership of a powerful Nigerian church to toture the conscience of Nigeria's failed leaders - that is what the powerful Prophets of the Biblical Age did in the days of yore as told by the Bible. But what do we see from some of our Pastors like Adeboye? All we hear are more and more of those testimonies that sustain a culture of waiting on miracles, rather than use our own God-given blessings to perform the miracles that he has charged us to perform here on Earth. All we hear are testimonies of Pastor Adeboye's car (or SUV - maybe a Hummer?), going on a 200-mile trip without any Gas in the Tank! Another fool out there too will be praying for the same kind of miracle, rather than go to the gas-station to queue for gas. Another pregnant mother too will go and lie down in the church and pray for God to do a C-section for her, rather than go to a hospital and allow God's miracle to happen through the hands of men that God has blessed to perform miracles. In a land ridden with high levels of illiteracy and superstition, we don't need Adeboye's kind of testimony about cars travelling 200 miles on an empty tank. That's what I sought to point-out in my comments below. Auspicious. =Auspicious;303477>+ DESPITE my being wary of organized religion, I believe God's miracles are great and mostly inexplicable - but not so inexplicable as to place a mircowave oven in your kitchen because you need one. So, tell me about those miracles of God: like that of the man who was suddenly healed from a terminal disease to be whole again. Tell me about God's miracle in the case of the Baby who was the only survivor in a jetliner accident - witnessed by the whole world. Tell me about God's miracle that we can all behold and praise God for: like the way the heart beats on its own, without any external source of power. Tell me about the miracle of tranmission of information through millions of neurons in the human body to and fro the brain. Tell me about the miracle of human intelligence as endowed by God himself. Tell me about the brain of the bird that follows the same flight pattern half-way across the world every year. Tell me about God's miracle in the case of the man who was saved from the lethal effect of a bullet meant for his heart by a coin in his shirt-pocket. Tell me about the miracle of the carpentar, who unknowingly walked around with a nail embedded in his brain for a whole year as a result of an accidental disccharge from a nail-gun. Tell me about the miracle of the man who after being blind from birth, suddenly began to see after he hit his head from a fall. Tell me all that and more. But, please, tell me less about driving 200 miles on an empty gas tank. Yes, God -- in all the forms we worship him as Muslims, Christians et al -- is a powerful God whose 'foolishness' is greater than the world's greatest genius' (according to the Bible). Yes, God is capable of practically any miracle. But God's miracles are not the kind of miracles that encourage us humans to take our affairs for granted while hoping for His miracles. God is a miraculous God. God may engineer a perfect coincidence by the miracle of a Good Samaritan showing-up with a 50-liter jerry-can of Gasoline to help a stranded motorist; God may create the coincidence of a tow-truck showing-up to tow a stranded motorist for another 100-200 miles to his ultimate destination and God may do many more similar miracles. But, why should God fill your empty tank with Gasoline, wether you are Daddy E.A. or not? The propagation of stories about these kind of miracles is one of Africa's greatest undoing. It is why we hardly utilize our God-endowed resources but sit back to endure the worst of experiences while waiting for God's miracle to come save us, whereas God has already made us living miracles by the virtue of our very existence as humans. That I am breathing right now is a miracle - God's miracles are happening around us every second of our existence. Miracles about a car travelling for 200 miles on an empty tank breeds unseriousness in some of us humans - especially us Africans who need to shed the superstitious mentality that supresses our ability to discover the miraculous gifts that God himself has endowed us ALL. Educated African pastors like E.A. Adeboye should spend more time sharing stories about practical miracles with their fellow Africans to develop that dark continent of ours. And God will bless us all the more for it. I am Auspicious.

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