ECWA ANTHEM - Oh God be Glorified

Verse 1.

Love for the dying and the perishing;

A call to save the lost we heed;

Through the raging storms and all uncertainties;

Our lives we freely give…

 

And through ECWA Your name be glorified.

Oh God be glorified.

 

Verse 2.

The Bible our authority, mission our identity,

Touching lives with what we preach.

In life and speech, faithful we shall be,

Drawing hearts of men to Christ

And through ECWA Your name be glorified.

Oh God be glorified.

 

Verse 3.

Help the poor and homeless, clothe the weak and cold;

Giving all we have for Christ.

Our strength and substance we will not spare,

We shall draw all men to Christ.

 

And through ECWA Your name be glorified.

Oh God be glorified.

 

Verse 4.

The vision of our fathers will not die in our hands,

Like a candle in the dark, we shine.

Breaking every stronghold till the end of time,

Till our Lord and King we meet.

 

And through ECWA Your name be glorified.

Oh God be glorified. (2x)

 

 

 

Song Written by: Mr. Godfrey Alphonsus

Adopted by: ECWA in February 2019

Edited by: Rev.Romanus Ebenwokodi

 

 

Jagaban Never Dies

Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria's President-elect.

I am an Obedient to the core. Outside of Nigeria, you may not understand what it means to be an Obidient. But in the heart of it, people know it refers to men and women who are fervent about the presidential ambition of Peter “Obi,” one of the men wishing to become Nigeria’s President in 2023. Today, though, I pay homage to Ahmed Jagaban Bola Tinubu who emerged victorious despite endless man-made hurdles in his way. 

 

 “The road to righteousness is narrow and difficult,” says the Holy Bible. If there is a man who dragged this message to the core of my heart, it is the Jagaban. President Mohammadu Buhari attempted to become president three times. After the third defeat, he was about quit. It was Bola Ahmed Tinubu who went to him and preached that deserters never win and winners never desert. He listened and won the next election. There’s something to learn here: Tinubu is an unbowed politician. 

 

By the time the authorities pulled the curtains open for political activities in 2022, it seemed that clandestine forces within the All Progressive Congress (APC), an amalgam of two old parties, wanted to backstab; Jagaban had supported Buhari on the condition that he would be the next. He fought his enemies within the party and, in the end, rose to the top of the mountain and hoisted a flag of victory! 

 

If you are a Nigerian who frequently logs into Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook and similar sites, you will recall how Tinubu once noted that he has stopped login into his social media handles because of mudslinging volleys against his character. There are versions of a video of a politician who needed people as braces in order to walk and attend political rallies. There are photos of him snoozing while visiting a native king to solicit support. He was alleged to be sleeping while the king gave his speech of approval. There were videos of him praising a political party he referred to as PD-APC. He was almost praising a rival party, the PDP when he realized it. The worst is one of him dishing out syllables of a word that isn’t in any dictionary on this planet. When asked questions at Chatham House, he referred the questions to some selected members of his team. It was, in the minds of detractors, a goof. It became one of their shells against him. 

 

As politicking built energy, the Nigerian Central Bank declared it was redesigning the Nigerian currency, the Naira. It said that a curious chunk of the total cash that should be in the vaults of commercial banks had gone missing. It believed corrupt politicians had withdrawn the money in small paltry portions to avoid snooping eyes and are planning to use the money in deals for votes. An ugly trend of vote-buying had played during the party primaries. This inspired a compilation of a list of politicians based on their financial worth, with the wealthiest topmost. If you place this list side by side with the list of contestants of primaries by votes, the two lists are carbon copies and proof of the suspicion of vote-buying. So, in a bid to frustrate vote-buying and usher in an era of transparent voting, the Central Bank decided to redesign the currency. Jagaban proved it is not all about money but about brains as well.

 

While the political campaigns lasted, we, the Obidients, thought we were going to win. We were the most heard on social media and had well-wishers everywhere under the sun. We were among the most urbane and globally trendy. We felt Obi would give an elegance we badly wished for our country. But we failed to accept that there are a lot of ignorant Nigerians who aren’t on social media and as such the surveys that built our convictions weren’t a true reflection of the acceptance of the men. We saw it, albeit at dusk. 

 

The feeling of losing a presidential election is worse than the feeling of losing someone you love dearly. It is painful to the Obedients because, within any visible range, there doesn’t seem to be one with the magic that sold Peter Obi to millions, one who was going to lead a shared dream to victory. 

 

I am looking for words to comfort Peter Obi, the Obidients and the Igbo nation. But I know that four years is not far away. At least now, we have the structure our detractors often referred to. To the Igbo nation, we love you and your presence in Nigeria is a source of pride to all of us. Stay hopeful.  

 

Sam Adeyemi, Prosperity Preaching and Poverty in Nigeria

Sam Adeyemi. Source: Punchng.com

  

I first knew, Sam Adeyemi, when he was invited to minister at the Rock Word Church in Port Harcourt, South-South Nigeria. He is the kind of minister whose introduction will always be greeted with mass hysteria, every time. His niche is Prosperity Preaching.

Recently, I watched a video footage of Pastor Adeyemi remarking on the fact that there is something wrong with the module of Prosperity Preaching, something to which their energies have been channelled for the past thirty years. This, according to him, comes from recent statistics showing that Nigeria has overtaken India as a nation with the highest level of poverty in the world.

This is very humiliating, the fact that we have overtaken India in the ranks of nations with the highest degree of poverty. I first heard about the Indian poverty situation in a remark President Mohammadu Buhari made, sometimes during his long power struggle. He was in India as part of his series of military training. He remarked that every morning in India, a truck would move from street to street, picking corpses of men and women that have died of poverty the previous night. If this is how bad the situation was in India, it points to the seriousness of the situation in Nigeria.

This, however, is what Pastor Adeyemi needs to know. Not every indicator that comes out is reliable. Some statistics are purposely falsified to help the author, mostly a fraternity of powerful western nations, achieve a selfish goal. Sometimes, there are errors in the survey because someone sits far away and assumes certain things. We can’t be the richest African country and still have the worst rich-to-poor people ratio. At least, trucks don’t go around picking corpses in Nigeria.

Regardless of how hard prosperity preachers work, the body with the most powerful means of mitigating poverty is the government. It is the body worse primary duty is to make life easier for people by way of building the groundwork. Anything Prosperity Preachers do is complementary. Even NGOs, with the huge resources they deploy into helping alleviate poverty, admit their role is a drop in the ocean when put side-by-side with the roles of governments that includes the first, second and third tiers.

If we come down to the Nigerian population, poverty levels are higher among non-Christian populations found in the north. For those that have been following the speeches of the deposed Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi Lamido, you know he is someone that has not hidden his admission that there is a high degree of poverty among the Muslim population. He continued to give speeches to help alleviate severe poverty by advising Muslims to shun polygamy if they know they don’t have the resources to support large families. Remember, these speeches are among the reason he was deposed; people hate a man who talks against a culture they are used to and love. This is how profoundly rooted the culture of poverty is in Northern Nigeria. 

But, we also need to look deep into the pastors, congregations and the curriculum. Most prosperity preachers seem to be working for themselves. They are among the richest pastors not only in Nigeria or Africa but on the planet. They own private jets and a system of schools that ordinary Nigerians can’t enrol their kids as a result of exorbitant tuition fees.  According to Max Romeo, “while the Reverend drives expensive cars and buys everything tax-free, the poor will have to sacrifice to give in charity.” Jesus Christ, the pillar of Christianity, rode on donkeys to meet with the congregation. The donkeys he rode on were not even his. Meanwhile, we are advised, as Christians, to live the life that Jesus Christ lived. Jesus Christ was a personification of love and “humility” among other things.

Perhaps, prosperity preachers need to do the seemingly insurmountable by taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Muslim population in Northern Nigeria.

Obasanjo’s Letter to Nigerians on Endorsement of Peter Obi

 Dear Compatriots and Friends,

MY APPEAL TO ALL NIGERIANS PARTICULARLY YOUNG NIGERIANS

Happy New Year! May all our national calamities disappear this year.

I am constrained to write this letter to all Nigerians especially young Nigerians, friends of Nigeria globally as well as our development partners because of the gravity, responsibility and implications of the collective decision Nigerians, both young and old, will be making within the next two months.

The last seven and a half years have no doubt been eventful and stressful years for many Nigerians. We have moved from frying pan to fire and from the mountain top to the valley.

Our leaders have done their best, but their best had turned out to be not the best for Nigeria and Nigerians at home and abroad. For most Nigerians, it was hell on earth.

Those of us who are alive should thank God for His mercies, brace ourselves for the remaining few months of this administration and pray and work very hard for an immediate better future – future of liberation, restoration and great hope and expectation.

We have had campaigners going up and down the country feeding us with what they mean and what they do not mean, what they understand and what they do not fully understand, what is possible and what is not possible, what is realistic and what is unrealistic, what is true and what is untrue. I believe that we need not be confused nor be gullible. Let us be cautious, not to be fooled again.

I have interacted with the major contestants and I find it interesting that, in one form or the other, each of them claims to want to do what I did during my Presidency and to take Nigeria back to where it was at the height of my Presidency and immediately after. I was pained that most of them do not realise that the Nigeria of today had been dragged down well below Nigeria of the beginning of my Presidency in June 1999.

Although at that time, Nigeria was in very bad shape and was tottering on the verge of collapse and break-up.

Even then, Nigeria was not faced with the level of pervasive and mind-numbing insecurity, rudderless leadership, buoyed by mismanagement of diversity and pervasive corruption, bad economic policies resulting in extremes of poverty and massive unemployment and galloping inflation.

For these reasons, I kept pointing out to them that the instruments used in 1999 to 2007 and methodology used will grossly be inadequate for the perilous situation we now find ourselves.

Without prejudice but with greatest respect to each individual with utmost regard for the best for Nigeria and all Nigerians and from my personal experience, all the major contestants claim to be my mentees. I will not deny such positions since I have worked with all of them directly and indirectly in government.

I have come to realise a number of factors in character, attributes and attitude that are necessary in the job of directing the affairs of Nigeria successfully and at a time like this. These characteristics or attributes are many but let us be mindful of some key ones together.

From interaction and experience, and as mentees as most of them claim, I will, without prejudice, fear or ill-will, make bold to say that there are four major factors to watch out for in a leader you will consider to hoist on yourself and on the rest of Nigerians in the coming election and they are what I call TVCP: Track record of ability and performance; Vision that is authentic, honest and realistic; Character and attributes of a lady and a gentleman who are children of God and obedient to God; and Physical and mental capability with soundness of mind as it is a very taxing and tasking assignment at the best of times and more so it is at the most difficult time that we are.

Let me say straight away that ‘Emi Lokan’ (My turn) and ‘I have paid my dues’ are one and the same thing and are wrong attitude and mentality for the leadership of Nigeria now.

They cannot form the new pedestal to reinvent and to invest in a new Nigeria based on an All-Nigeria Government for the liberation and restoration of Nigeria. Such a government must have representation from all sectors of our national life – public, private, civil society, professional, labour, employers, and the diaspora. The solution should be in ‘we’ and ‘us’ and not in ‘me’ and ‘I’.

Mind you, I reiterate that no human being is an angel let alone a Messiah, but there are elements of these attributes and on comparative basis and by measure of what we know of, and what some of us have experienced from the front-runners, we must assess judiciously and choose wisely.

If anybody claims he or she has anything to the contrary, it will be up to him or her to prove to us.

I pray not to be proved right again in the bad sense but rather to be proved right in the positive and glorious sense of Nigeria becoming what God had created it to be – a land of plenty and prosperity united for common purpose of inclusive society, common security, shared prosperity, equity, egalitarianism, justice, and equal stake in the Project Nigeria with leadership role of Nigeria for the black race and fair share of global division of labour.

One ridiculous point that has been touted to justify unjustifiable appointments and selections is ‘competence’. In truth and in reality, genuine competence can be found in any region or section of Nigeria through track record and performance if only people will honestly and sincerely look hard for people with such attainment and attribute.

Most of us in good conscience can testify to competence when we see any anywhere. What is masqueraded as ‘competence’ is self-interest and nepotism.

We have a unique opportunity to correct ourselves by ourselves for the good of ourselves. Those who are preaching division, segregation, separation, and want to use diversity for their own self and selfish interest are enemies of the nation, no matter what else they may disguisedly profess or proclaim.

The Challenge Is For Nigerian Youth:

If we fall prey again, we will have ourselves to blame and no one can say how many more knocks Nigeria can take before it tips over. To be forewarned is to be fore-armed.

Future is not emotion. I challenge the youth to arise. Let nobody pull wool over your eyes to divide you and/or segregate you to make you underlings. Nigerian youth, wherever they come from, North or South, East or West need education which is now denied to over 20 million children; Nigerian youth also need skills, empowerment, employment, reasonably good living conditions, welfare and well-being.

My dear young men and women, you must come together and bring about a truly meaningful change in your lives. If you fail, you have no one else to blame. Your present and future are in your hands to make or to mar. The future of Nigeria is in the same manner in your hands and literally so. If for any reason you fail to redeem yourself and your country, you will have lost the opportunity for good and you will have no one to blame but yourselves and posterity will not forgive you. Get up, get together, get going and get us to where we should be. And you, the youth, it is your time and your turn. ‘Eyin Lokan’ (Your turn).

The power to change is in your hands. Your future, my future, the future of grandchildren and great grandchildren is in your hands. Politics and elections are numbers game. You have the numbers, get up, stand up and make your numbers count.

Let me say it again, loud and clear, Nigeria has no business with insecurity, poverty, insurgency, banditry, unemployment, hunger, debt, division and disunity. We are in these situations because advertently or inadvertently, our leaders have made the choices. They have done the best they could do. Let them take their rest deservedly or not and let them enjoy their retirement as Septuagenarians or older.

I became Head of State at 39 and at 42, I had retired into the farm. When it was considered necessary, I was drafted back into active political life after twenty years of interregnum. I came back at 62 and by 70, I was on my way out. Others like General Gowon and Enahoro became national leaders at 33 and 27 respectively and General Gowon at the helms of leadership of Nigeria at the highest level. The vigour, energy, agility, dynamism and outreach that the job of leadership of Nigeria requires at the very top may not be provided as a septuagenarian or older. I know that from personal experience. And it is glaring out of our current experiences.

Otherwise, we will be fed with, “The President says” and we will neither see nor hear him directly as we should. Yes, for some, age and physical and mental disposition are not in tandem.

But where and when they are with obvious evidence, they must be taken into account for purpose of reality. And yet it is a job in our present situation where the team leader or captain of the team should be up and doing, outgoing inside and outside and speaking to the nation on almost daily basis visibly and as much as possible interactively and meeting his colleagues all over the world on behalf of Nigeria.

Youth of Nigeria, your time has come, and it is now and please grasp it. If not now, it will be never. I appeal to you to turn the tide on its head and march forward chanting ‘Awa Lokan’ (Our turn) not with a sense of entitlement, but with a demonstrable ideological commitment to unity and transformation of Nigeria.

Leave The Past, Face The Future:

Can we let the past go? I appeal to young Nigerians to stop inheriting other people’s prejudices and enemies. Make your own friends and stop inheriting your father’s enemies.

Let’s stop criminalising and demonising one another on the basis of the civil war on which we are all wrong. And let’s praise and thank God for preserving the oneness of Nigeria.

The Scripture says that if God would take account of all our wrongdoings, nobody would be able to stand before Him. While not suffering from amnesia, let us stop still fighting and reacting to the civil war in our hearts, minds, heads and our attitude acrimoniously.

Let’s stop living on our different wrongs or mistakes of the past: treasonable felony, Tiv riot and its handling, first military coup and its aftermath, second military coup, araba, pogrom and the civil war, all in the 1960s. And more recently OPC, Egbesu, MASSOB, IPOB, Boko Haram and banditry. No region can claim to be innocent or to be saintly. And no justification will suffice. I

n our respective individual or regional positions, we have done right and we have done wrong. It is therefore not right for any of us to be sanctimonious to see ourselves as saints and the rest as devils incarnate.

Just let us agree to move forward together in mutual forgiveness, one accord, inclusive society, equality and equity. Together and without bias and discrimination, fear or favour, we can have Nigeria of one nation in diversity, in truth and in practice. Let us honour, cherish, respect and even celebrate our diversity which is the basis of our potential greatness and strength.

If we will only continue to harp on wrongs done by each of us individually or collectively, we will never be able to stand together. If we will continue with wide brush to paint a national or sub-national group as bad and never to be trusted with leadership because of past error or mistakes that some of them were responsible for and treat their offspring as inheritors, it will amount to great injustice that will surely lead to no peace, no security and no stability for development and progress.

First, no group is faultless; second, for the greatness of the whole, we need one another as constituents of the whole; third, we cannot be talking and working for Africa’s integration and for Nigeria’s disintegration at the same time. Why for instance should I be stigmatized or despised because of my place of origin, place of birth or where I come from? Where I was born, by whom I was born and when I was born were not choices made by me. They were choices and prerogatives of God.

Any antagonism against me on that basis is unfair and is tantamount to fighting against God, the Creator. Such derogatory attitude and mindset do not build any human institution let alone a nation. While not forgetting the past, let us put the past behind us for it not to continue to mar our present and our future and that of the coming generation. We must rise above primordial animalistic instincts and behaviour. Yes, we are human and higher than animals in the wild. Let us develop national ethos and national characteristics that can take us collectively to the promised.

My dear young men and women, let me assure you that there are only two tribes of people in Nigeria a tribe of good people and a tribe of bad people. You are either a good Nigerian of Igbo extraction, Kanuri extraction, etc, or a bad Nigerian of Yoruba extraction, Ijaw extraction etc.

I will at this juncture want to commend the politicians as they have generally been reasonably civil in their campaigns without making politics as a call to war against opponents.

Genuine and fair competition conveys greater legitimacy in any political rivalry or competition. A situation where people in authority and power assume such positions through foul and despicable means and continue to espouse and act in ways that only engender conflict or war by subverting legitimacy of power and authority does not augur well for the polity and as such, the moral foundation of the government and the society will be terribly weakened.

May God help, save, protect and sustain Nigeria for all Nigerians, for Africa and for the human race. We can only continue to play politics of ethnicity, religion, region and money bags at the peril of our country and to self-destruction. We need selfless, courageous, honest, patriotic, in short, outstanding leadership with character and fear of God beyond what we have had in recent past.

None of the contestants is a saint but when one compares their character, antecedent, their understanding, knowledge, discipline and vitality that they can bring to bear and the great efforts required to stay focused on the job particularly looking at where the country is today and with the experience on the job that I personally had, Peter Obi as a mentee has an edge. Others like all of us have what they can contribute to the new dispensation to liberation, restoration and salvaging of Nigeria collectively.

One other important point to make about Peter is that he is a needle with thread attached to it from North and South and he may not get lost. In other words, he has people who can pull his ears, if and when necessary.

Needless to say that he has a young and able running mate with a clean track record of achievement both in public and private life.

The Glow in the Plateau Mindset

When you stay in someone’s backyard, it gives you the space to see corners of him you wouldn’t have seen. On the reverse, when someone’s backyard is far away, he gives you the impression his place is like paradise, where everything is flawless. If you come against it, you must have proof to back it up. So, as long as you have not travelled there, his corrosive lies are fact.

When the Fulani issue started in Plateau State, many of our closest neighbours would beat their chests saying, “they can’t try this in our state.” Unexpectedly, the tide of events moved the conflict to their towns and villages. Their reaction, as a matter of fact, turns out even worst. I have stayed in a number of places outside of Plateau State. Everybody has a shortcoming.

Here on the Plateau, people insult the broad smile and open arms of the host. They would dish out that simmering vitriol like,” What does a Plateau man knows other than to drink gallons of burkutu.” They think that Plateau people are without ambition, just because they are head-over-heels in love with the Civil Service.

But we are not without decency. “Blessed are humble for they shall inherit the earth.” Being modest is not a reflection of ignobility. You will understand that Plateau is not a needy state when it comes to manpower. You will understand that military adventurism runs in the blood of the Plateau people. When in the mainstream of the military, Nigeria remains calm. Outside of it, Nigeria burns. You will agree that Plateau women are the most beautiful outside and within. To embrace people of all shades and hues with a smile is a virtue, in itself.  

There is a story that played up the worth of the Plateau humility. A Plateau man owns a house. He stays in Europe and wants to lodge in the house anytime he returns for a brief holiday. After staying for years without visiting, he saw it expedient to rent the house out. He, however, gave out his terms: “I wouldn’t want any tenant who isn’t a Plateau man or woman.” There you go! So, there is beauty in being a Plateau man, after all. It isn’t that there aren’t other people that make good tenants, but he wants to deal with the good he has always known. The worst a Plateau tenant can do is to fail in the rent payment. When that happens, though, your house will still be yours. It is better than renting the house to someone who turns the house into a den of thieves. He wouldn’t want a tenant who turns the house into a shrine, or someone to claim the house belongs to him, or a tenant who turns the house into a “baby factory.”

We may drink gallons of burkutu, but we like ourselves like that.  

Chatham House: Tinubu Did Nothing Wrong

 

Bola Ahmed Tinubu

There is an undying noise across Nigeria, regarding Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s conduct at Chatham House. Tinubu, the All Progressive Congress’ (APC’s) Presidential Candidate in the 2023 General Elections in Nigeria, forwarded questions he was asked to members of his team. In Nigeria, a lot of people see it as a sign of ineptitude by someone seeking to become the Nigerian President.

But there’s really nothing wrong with Tinubu’s conduct at Chatham House. It is important for Nigerians to understand that all the persons to whom he directed the questions are members the APC. A political party is a team of persons who are ‘fighting’ for power. People in the same political party are driven by a common wish for the nation. So, they pool themselves into a strong force with the propensity to achieve their goal of setting up a government and unleashing their common idea.  When eventually the government is formed, the same group of persons will form the cabinet. It is the cabinet that, as a team, makes decision on how a country is governed, not an individual.

If Tinubu becomes president and decides not to allow other members of the cabinet to make contributions, he would be referred to as a despot. Democracy itself is a space that allows contributions from everyone. By relaying questions to other members of the campaign team, he is already demonstrating that he will run a government of inclusivity.

Someone argued that the party doesn’t have any ideology. That the team is a group of guys who failed to find positions in other parties and, hence, found an umbrella in the APC. The most important thing is that they have come together. If there are differences among them, coming together will compel them to prune the differences so that they can move along. Furthermore, cross-carpeting is a tradition in Nigerian politics. It is not peculiar to the APC.

Someone, opposed to how Tinubu conducted himself, compared Tinubu’s visit to Chatham House to attending a job interview and should not refer questions thrown at him to other persons. The situations aren’t similar. Someone seeking to become President will oversee a country of diverse institutions. He is not trained to have knowledge in the affairs of every institution. Instead, he relies on members of his cabinet with experiences in these institutions to help him run the country well.  There is no single president anywhere who ran a solitary government successfully. There are always diverse group of professionals with whom the president builds his team to run the country well. Tinubu proved that he will not be an exception.

As said before, Nigeria has run a political system without ideologies. From 1999 till date, there are only a few politicians who endured without changing a political party. Most of them ran to other political parties and later returned to the same party they had deserted.

What do the electorates do? The electorates will have to take part of the blame for a stagnant political system. If we search deeply, there are other political parties with younger politicians offering modern ideas that meet the standard we are yearning for. Unfortunately, Nigerians are unable to read the policy content of these new political parties. They lazily shove them aside and continue to give attention to the same politicians from an old political culture that has ruined the country for decades.

Until the electorates play their own roles well, blames against certain politicians will never stand.