2015 and Okotie’s numeracy -By Oboden Eruwayi

“There are three levels of what I call the tripartite coalition of evil in Nigeria. We have Elitism, Satanism and Mysticism. If you can understand these three, you will understand how politics works” – Rev. Chris Okotie, Nigerian Compass (October 18, 2010)

The article, “2015 and our crony democracy” by Rev. Chris Okotie in The PUNCH edition of December 24, 2014, and reproduced on the internet, as has become a regular feature, drew a lot of reactions across the media spectrum, throwing the pastor-politician in the deep end of what has become the characteristic verbal-assault of responses to any of his write-ups which don’t run along the grain of popular beliefs. That article pointedly brought to notice, the diabolical angle to a seemingly normal political activity, revealing the subsumed spiritual implications.

Over four years ago, Okotie made the above quotation during an interview, before issues like Boko Haram and government refusal to check the menace took the horrific turn they have assumed today. So, when he recently presented a clearly misunderstood angle to the subterranean intrigues which underline the bloody quest for power in Nigeria’s politicking, when he noted the occultist connotation of the Peoples Democratic Party’s 11-11-11 declaration date, where the ruling party handed incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan an unprecedented sole candidacy in the 2015 presidential election, there was the usual hue and cry.

This is characteristic of ignorance centred on the disbelief in numeracy, adduced implications of associated datings like birthdays, ministerial dabbling in the political circuit with “constant unsubstantiated utterances”, his seeming knowledge of the occultist realm and of course, the passé charge by untutored religionists of his right to speak due to his domestic issues.

But then, what more can be expected from idle minds whose daily routine is to congregate at rumour peddling corners. It is instructive that no bearer of an anti-Okotie diatribe has countered any of his depositions with an intellectual response capable of upending his; rather, they wallow in rucking up his domestic issues. The readers who the cleric makes his presentations to via the mainstream media, retained their opinions – for or against, but never resorted to name-calling and mudslinging.

The proper response to any commentary which is adjudged as lacking in factual merit is to present an alternative discourse, which not only upturns its claims, but also presents the respondent’s line of argument. Arm-chair apologists choose to feign ignorance of the realities or proverbially “bury their heads in the sand”, and make effusive reactions to matters they are not sufficiently versed in. It makes light of the serious crises that convolute around the nation daily. This inability of the opposers of the writer, to upend his postulations with any superior argument, rather than pontificate on his domestic issues, is a cause for concern. Nobody or nation can grow in an environment of denial.

There are people, families and communities who have been at the receiving end of the gruesomeness of this occultist political toxicity by politicians who wish to prove their loyalty to the godfathers of politics, and they would tell a different story, because they have had first-hand experience of the sorrows that attend to such experience and loss. All you have to do is peruse the media and Internet to get a little dose of these kinds of reports of a festering national emergency.

Politics in Nigeria is toxic, and navigating the electoral minefield to attain leadership has always meant that aspirants have been willing to go to any length to secure both nominations and victories at the polls. The spate of ritual killings, dismembered parts of human cadaver dumped along the roadside at odd hours and missing persons have become a regular part of our political diet. Even the uncurtailed scourge of Boko Haram’s serialised murders; bloodletting, abductions and terror war over the last few years are another chapter in the catalogue of security woes that blight this nation.

Irrespective of anyone’s belief or otherwise in occultism, numeracy or their existence in political power quest, no right-thinking Nigerian can accept that these activities by this group of terrorists, whose activities defy all known templates of insurgency are normal. Even the Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Shabab, and IRA can be defined by their fights, but not Boko Haram which even targets its own people. There is more to the unprecedented surge of unrestrained extinction of life and taste for blood that has disquieted the nation more in the last six years than any other time in the history of Nigeria.

All sectors of government have one or more tales of woeful misappropriations, so emphasis by any realistic government must be placed on this need in governmental and leadership circles today. Men of unquestionable character, people who have not been sullied with the crime of corruption, bureaucratic political jobbers and strait-jacketed paper-pushers whose only desire is to rise in power to fund their cravings for power and wealth.

The kind of leader Nigerians need now is embodied in Okotie’s paradigm shift philosophy. We are in dire need of financial managers, yet, to prosecute his campaign, in one night, Mr. President raised a minimum of N21bn, a figure that could do a lot to fix many of the dilapidated academic institutions.

The need to allay the fears and doubts that devious practices are not being engineered to fulfil the 2015 doomsday prophecy, is absolutely necessary. The public to whom the political class should be accountable to must rise up to its duty of demanding that aspirants who are blighted by the affiliations with subversive acts be made answerable.