“…Imagine someone who calls himself a man of God suing me for N1 billion at the High Court, Igbosere. He sued me and my husband on different charges. I am crying to Christians all over the world and to Nigerians: is it a crime to leave him after serving him for seven years? Am I the only woman in Nigeria? Let him look for another person. I am married. Muoka is fake. Most of what he does is magic. He puts me in his paper that I was mad for five years and that he cured me. He is a deceiver. Chosen is like another prison,” she thundered.
Despite her amazing revelations which were backed up with indisputable evidences, the government simply chose to remain indifferent to the matter, and till date Muoka still parades himself as a man of God, deceiving and duping innumerable number of his hypnotized followers.
It is a known fact that the Catholic Church, unlike other denominations, does not believe in magic. But today that is far from the case as a good number of priests—because of money—have also joined the league of Nigerian magicians. Again, similar to the Synagogue saga, just last year we read, in the Vanguard of November 3, 2013:
“No fewer than 26 persons, who attended the weekly crusade at the Holy Ghost Adoration Ministry, Uke, in Idemili north local government area of Anambra State, lost their lives during a stampede at the end of the ceremony in the early hours recently. The crusade, organized by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Obinma for prayers, healing and spiritual retreat, attracts thousands of people, but the one that was held recently on the Feast of All Saints turned tragic. An estimated 100, 000 worshippers reportedly attended the crusade because, besides coinciding with the Feast of All Saints, it was also the first Saturday of the month. Apart from the dead 26 whose bodies were said to have been deposited at Immaculate Heart Hospital and Maternity, Nkpor, and Charles Borromew Hospital, Onitsha, several others, who sustained various degrees of injuries, are receiving treatment in various hospitals in Onitsha.” (Sunday Vanguard, Nov. 3, 2013, p.1 and p.5).
And what was the cause of the tragedy? We read:
“Governor Peter Obi, who attended the crusade in the company of 10 persons, including the National Chairman of All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, Chief Victor Umeh, the candidate of the party in the November 16 governorship election, Chief Willie Obiano, as well as two siblings of the governor, was said to have left the crusade ground around 3.30 am, before the tragedy. Meanwhile, an unconfirmed report blamed the stampede on the governor. The report quoted eye witnesses as saying the stampede started when Obi started campaigning for his gubernatorial candidate and there were shouts of disapproval, causing his security aides to fire tear gas into the crowd…” (Ibid.)
Till date, the “priest”, Fr. Obinma, who permitted the governor to campaign in the “holy ground,” and the “governor” himself, have never been brought to book for wasting the lives of innocent Catholics. In fact, Obi, who became governor through the help of the clergy—which is a normal practice in eastern Nigeria—instead of proceeding immediately to a priest to confess his sin, rushed to Archbishop Okeke of Onitsha Archdiocese and heaped the blame on his political opponent, Dr. Chris Ngige—who was nowhere near the worship arena when the ugly incident took place; and the Archbishop, as usual, collaborated with Obi to cover the sin. The Archbishop then came immediately to tell Nigerians that the stampede was caused by someone who raised fire alarm, then again, that it was caused by “some desperate politicians in the state looking for another backdoor route to power.” Obi himself said it was caused by Chris Ngige’s supporters, while the big-nosed APGA Chairman, Victor Umeh, himself among those that came with the governor to campaign, called for “the immediate arrest of Ngige” (Hallmark, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013, p.35).
Then the dead were buried, and equally, the matter—that is, the case of 26 Igbo souls who went to receive their “miracles” but ended up receiving their deaths—was quickly buried by Fr. Obinma and Archbishop Okeke. Of course, Obi was then the Governor of Anambra State, so no one could question him in the State—not even the Federal Government because he was also a personal friend of Jonathan and his campaigner in the State. When the All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, Engr. Joe Igbokwe, came down heavily on the Catholic Archbishop of Onitsha, Val Okeke, describing him as “heavily compromised” for daring to say that there was nothing political about Governor Peter Obi’s presence at the Adoration programme in Uke, he was seen as a mere politician trying to politicize the event in order to favour his party, while many thoughtless “Catholics” condemned him for daring to criticize an Archbishop.
Finally, people like T.B Joshua will always get away with their crimes only because there are no true prophets in Nigeria, because there are no true Elijahs who can slaughter them just the way Prophet Elijah slaughtered the false prophets of Baal, and because those in government are equally spiritually blind. This spiritual blindness is simply responsible for the reality that churches and mosques are expanding exponentially in Nigeria, yet the country is paradoxically at rock bottom in morality. It rankles that Nigeria is ranked as the most religious country in the world and contradictorily ranks amongst the top dogs too in the corruption index.
JONATHAN EKENE IFEANYI
