Which Other Gates? -By Timothy Nkenu (@Timzy234)

I read, with great doubt and disbelief the report that Pastor Oyedepo allegedly threatened to open the gates of hell upon anyone who failed to support President Jonathan’s second term bid in the forthcoming elections. A lot has been said, the statement has been rebuffed by the Pastor’s team, political parties and individuals have criticized the pastor as well. As for me, I have chosen to write this article believing that he did not say it, but, discussing the ‘gates of hell’ properly.

Any Nigerian born into this country (apart from the oil-money privileged ones) would know that the ‘gates of hell’ is not a threat as they’ve been living in a ‘mansion of hell’ and thus, there is no reason for opening the gates of hell. For example, hell is generally compared to darkness and given the epileptic supply of power in Nigeria and constant darkness, one can say that we’ve been in hell.

In a country that is presumed and should be the richest in Africa (‘per individual’, not paper statistics), it is saddening to note the varying degree of stress that majority of the citizenry have to go through to get even the most basic things of life e.g. a shower as there is little to no water supply by the government.

The citizens have become their own government, they provide themselves with electricity as the government does not provide that, they pump their own water, build extremely high fences to protect themselves from men of the underworld, walk carefully and suspect anyone in a public place who they might assume to be a suicide bomber, pay heavy bills for undelivered services amongst others.

With all these, I don’t think any Nigeria is scared of the gates of hell as they live in hell.

There can possibly be no hell that’s worse than what the average Nigerian faces today, and if it exists…

No, there definitely can’t be any ‘hell’ ‘hotter’ than Nigeria.