Should a pastor own a
private jet? That this is even a debate issue in Nigeria reflects just
how wayward some of our Christianity has traveled, particularly since
the end of the civil war and the arrival of large piles of oil money.
We are good adopters, and
in the past 20 or 30 years, these Christian strands in Nigeria have
“grown” side by side with the monies flowing in the streets and the
technologies produced by others. Christianity has moved from the pews
into the realm of business, and from the pulpits to American-style
television.
In the process, some of
the emerging Christian leadership, adopting the culture of American
television and stage, became celebrities and rock stars. Christianity
became marketable, and marketability became mistaken for
commercialization.
These pastors also became
instant television producers, concerned about their looks and make-up
as they prepared for worship services tailored for broadcasting. They
worked on scripts and colous and lighting, and arrived in stardom
wearing expensive suits and jewelry.
They became stars as
their Ministry became a business. And since there is no business without
politics, business took politics in its arms and kissed her.
Increasingly, pastors prayed not for right over wrong, nor simply for
the mercy of God or the wisdom of Solomon, but for specific individuals
or political parties.
Increasingly, pastors
enshrined and preached the immediacy and centrality of prosperity, often
praying for prosperity answers before nightfall.
Prosperity is good. In a
way, our entire journey as homo sapiens is about prosperity: health,
education, longevity; heaven is prosperity over earth, and if we make
heaven, we triumph—that is, prosper—over humanity.
The problem is that some
of our Christian leaders often neglected the fact that prosperity is not
always about materialism. From their glittering thousand-dollar suits,
some of them prospered into the best cars, alligator-skin shoes, suites
in five-star hotels.
All of this often
happened alongside barbaric businessmen, guzzling governors and looting
legislators many of whom, in moments of guilt or periods of sickness or
sadness, sought the comfort of a pastor.
As you know by now, many
pastors pray with their eyes closed. It helps focus on the celestial,
but also conveys the impression of holiness.
Evidently, it also helps
block out the obvious: that some of the powerful people appearing for
prayers in the dead of night, or conveniently arranging to meet with the
pastor in faraway lands, are thieves who have robbed the people blind.
Now, forgiveness is
normal in Christianity. It is the foundation of the Christian Church,
as the entire mission of Jesus Christ, in the Christian faith, was to
take away sin and effect reconciliation with the Father. It is the
place of a Christian leader to help with that process, so when he
engages a sinner, it is to be expected.
The only problem is that
in Nigeria, some pastors have often seemed to close their eyes a little
too much and too long: allowing celebrity thieves to impoverish the
people longer or escape justice. The pastor thereby becomes an
accomplice, accepting vast “contributions” they had reason to know could
not have come from a legitimate income.
In 2007, Archbishop Peter
Akinola, the leader of the Anglican Church, showed up at a “glorious
homecoming” celebration for one Olusegun Obasanjo, who had recently,
reluctantly, and vindictively, given up the job of President of the
Federal Republic.
“You have got the best in
the world and your eyes have seen the worst in the world. All that is
left now is to make heaven,” he told Obasanjo.
He assured the former
president that while he had finished his “horizontal fights,” his
spiritual journey had just begun, and urged him to fight the battle of
his conscience, and seek forgiveness from those he has wronged.
The people Obasanjo had
wronged, for eight long years, were the people of Nigeria, and the good
bishop knew it as did all of the pastors who followed Obasanjo around
and prayed with him routinely.
Akinola told Obasanjo God
had blessed him with everything. “You have enough money, you have
enough houses, you have enough land, enough (cars), enough properties,
even enough children and all should be enough…God has given you far too
many houses. What to eat is not your problem. Paying children’s school
fees is no longer your problem…”
He did not tell Obasanjo that all those riches were at the expense of his deeply disappointed people.
Indeed, many of the
Christian leaders who interpret Christianity as a tool for personal
prosperity pretend to see no link between bad governance and the manna
from heaven they preach to their exhausted congregations. For them,
their access to the corridors of power is merely part of their own
prosperity. They do not see their blindness to bad governance to be
collusion, or their silence to be support.
This is really a double
rape, because on the other side, the pastors collect relentlessly from
the poor to fund an affluent lifestyle. It is the collections that are
now said to be lucrative enough for pastors to bank hundreds of millions
of Naira in personal wealth, and purchase jets by which to rule the
sky.
In the case of Pastor Ayo
Oritsejafor, the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria
(CAN), he did not even have to work at buying the jet himself: his
congregation presented it to him as a “gift.” It is impressive when a
congregation can raise $40 or $50 million to buy a jet.
According to a recent
newspaper story, in Nigeria private jet ownership has grown by 650 per
cent in the past five years, with those wealthy enough to afford it,
including our pastors, spending about $7.5 billion
Bishop Matthew Hassan
Kukah has described this trend on the part of Christian leaders as an
embarrassment because it diminishes the moral voice of the church in the
fight against corruption.
It is not surprising that
he immediately came under attack. Sunday Oibe, a spokesman for CAN,
said: “If there is any clergyman in the country whose constituency is
government, it is Bishop Kukah, who served every government in power in
the last decade.”
Kukah, he accused, served
in the Obasanjo government, only to later attack the former president.
Kukah, he accused, fraternized with former Governors James Ibori and
Peter Odili.
Kukah never served in the
Obasanjo government. “Fraternized” with corrupt governors? Does that
mean he knew them, accepted contracts from them, used them as his route
to riches and glamor?
Which explains the very
point: corruption fights back. Corruption not only defends itself; in
Nigeria, it advertises in Eagle Square. Corruption blackmails; on the
offensive, it paints everything in its own colors.
The obvious is that it is
those pastors who buy jets remind one less of a Christian leader and
more of a playboy or a corrupt former governor. A pastor who buys a
jet, even from “legitimate” resources, cannot avoid being perceived as
being corrupt or compromised
The reason is that a
private jet is not just a mode of transportation. It symbolizes a
lifestyle of opulence and challenges the Christian values of humility.
It suggests matching riches and possessions, affluent luxury homes,
exotic cars, expansive hotel suites and immense bank accounts.
A private jet, for a
Christian leader, suggests the corruption of the Christian spirit and
contradicts the life of Christ and the ability to live a life of
humility and compassion, or to serve the poor.
A private jet may be
transportation to a businessman, and a Christian leader can argue
eloquently that he needs it to simplify his mission. In a country as
desperate as Nigeria, the only destination to which a luxury private jet
transports a pastor is away: from his ability to confront power, and
from the mission.
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