The unbraiding of Pentecostal Churches by the Archbishop Emeritus of the Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos, Cardinal Anthony Okogie, during an interview last week, was thought-provoking. Top of his conclusion was that there was no godliness in the decision by some churches in the country to have as many branches as possible. Apparently referring to multiplicity of branches of Pentecostal churches, the patriarch of the Lagos Catholics described such branches as “mere business centres”.
He declared: “The mushrooming of churches has not elicited commensurate level of godliness across the land. In order to bring us together and to get sanity back into this country, the fear of God must be number one. For example, I heard that one of my colleagues, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, said that he would love to build churches everywhere so as to make it easy for worshipers to walk to them. But for me, that is a useless statement. How can you say you will build churches everywhere? What kind of churches are you talking about? Those who are pastors are traders and a good number of them are businessmen. Such churches in most cases are more like business houses.”
Okogie simply hit the nail on the head. Pentecostal churches hardly aim to build affordable health centres or schools on every street in Nigeria. They hardly aim to build or equip public hospitals/schools or provide water for all on every street. The majority of their members can’t afford the few schools built. They just aim to have branches on every street and make money to sustain the posh lifestyle of their founders. This is neo-slavery. Most of the churches are set up to milk their gullible followers with wild imaginary miracles. Charismatic and smooth-talking Pentecostal preachers are worshipped by mesmerised followers who cringe under them. These power-dressing pastors simply want money from their followers to sustain their posh lifestyle.
Just look around you and you will see Pentecostal pastors flying around in private jets and driving around in limousines, while the majority of their followers wallow in abject poverty. They drive the best cars and live in the best houses. These entranced members contribute money to buy posh aircraft and cars for them. I can’t forget the presentation of 2014 Rolls Royce Phantom to the General Overseer of Christ Royal Family International Church, Lagos, Bishop Tom Samson, in March 2016 during his 50th birthday celebration. Samson had set tongues wagging back in 2014 when he got a N80 million stretch hummer limousine from an undisclosed church member. So many Nigerians have fallen for Pentecostal scam. Come to think of it, if they are really doing the will of God, this country would not be in this mess.
Something is clearly wrong somewhere. Despite the multiplicity of churches, there is still so much corruption, hunger, disease, poverty, unemployment, wickedness, witchcraft and frightening man’s inhumanity to man in this country. Notwithstanding the array of churches and mosques, this country is dominated by morally-bankrupt people. Nigerians spend too much of their time praying and running to churches and mosques, instead of working and being their brother’s keeper. This is why we have remained a third-world country.
Countries dominated by religious zealots hardly develop. In my dear Nigeria, churches buy premises of failed factories and convert them to churches. Can these churches create jobs and pay taxes? We can’t continue like this. We should be talking about building cottage industries, schools and health centres on every street, instead of churches and mosques. Things have just got to change.
This was copied from "MY FRIENDS" forum posted by Engr. John Okupa, 14.10.'17.
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