Private Jets for Jesus
- Post 25 November 2012
- Last Updated on 26 November 2012
- By Sonala Olumhense
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Should a pastor own a private jet?
That this is even a debate issue in Nigeria reflects just how waywardsome of our Christianity has travelled, 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 strandsin 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 colours and lighting, andarrived in stardom wearing expensive suits and jewelry.
They became stars as theirMinistry became a business. And since there is no business without politics, business took politics in its arms and kissed her. Increasingly, pastors prayednot 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 ourChristian 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 sinand 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 OlusegunObasanjo, 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 Obasanjothat 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 formers 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 glamour?
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 colours.
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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I will say the same thing I have said over and again on this issue of private jet ownership by Pasotrs, Bishops, General Overseers and Primates plus Archbishops here and there. There is no crime in riding around in a $40 million US dollars private jet if your congregation are just daft enough to think that 'God' or the gods have ordained you to do so while they take smoky buses to work and dream of their coming miracles.
There is nothing absolutely wrong in churches establishing private universties with money contributed by their members and then charging fees that 99 percent of those members could not afford as long as the members are daft enough to beleive they are serving God and will be rewarded abundantly sometimes in the future while their children go to ramshackle schools without laboratories, textbooks and spend 10 years for courses that ordinarily should be 4 years because of constant strikes by lecturers. There is nothing absolutely wrong in Pastors wearing jerry curls, designers suits by Armani while their wives wear Christine Loboutine, Vera Wang and a host of other designer shoes and dresses as long as the church members are just daft enough to beleive that the 'Man of God' need to look good and that their image of goodness and success could be projected through their Pastors while they patronize bend down boutiques and remain regular customers of 'ejika ni shop' itinerant tailors who help them patch their trousers, bra and shirts. there is nothing absolutely wrong in Pastors, Bishops and other church leaders having fat bank accounts and building mansions here on earth if their followers absolutely believe that 'God' has prepared a place for them in heaven and that they will live in nice air-conditioned houses when they reach there. Religious leaders and government are operating a joint partnership in Nigeria. While the government ensures that there is solid darkness, insecurity and unemployment, the religious leaders provide succour through prayers and assurances that the citizens are safe from witches and wizards and have conquered all negative spirits. This assurance keeps the citizens from asking tough questions of their public officers and everything remains 'cool'. Do you then wonder why every fourth person you meet in Nigeria is a Pastor? For those who will start mouthing the usual bulls***hit of 'hurt not my annointed', I say, May your stupidity continue to increase thousand fold while your 'annointeds' continue to change their private jets like taxis.
Again, these article missed the core issue here and that is the stupidity of the citizens who bankroll these fraudulent pastors.
without a collection of idiotic brainwashed christian citizens there will be no private jet - think about it. As long as the people of Nigeria lack basic commonsense to think for themselves on religion and belief they may forever be mugus for fraudsters and criminals ever willing to take advantage of their semi-literate and primitive mentality. Instead of blaming the people who are stuck in a time capsule of arab and white religious beliefs, you go blaming the people who are cashing in on their stupidity.
@ Lol
I agreed with you to a certain extent that the blame is actually on the congregants that paid for the flambouyant lifestyle of their quasi-pastors. Yes,they lacked commonsense as you put it and they are just as shameless as those greedy and arrogant thieving Pastors. But also,the Pastors must be blamed the most for taking undue advantage of their members that are brainwashed in the name of God, by daily making vain promises of over abundant prosperity as long as they furnished the Pastors' notorious lifestyles. Whenever the name of God is mentioned in Nigeria,peoples' reaction are always different and whenever a Pastor opened his mouth to ask for money in the name of God our rather stupid/brainwashed people are ready to open up their purses to comply with what the dubious Pastors commanded - GIVE! These Pastors are not preaching Spiritual Gospel sermons that can earn any one a passage to heaven as commanded in the Bible, but are busy preaching sermons of "health and wealth" which unfortunately is what our stupid people masquerading as Christians are eager to hear anyway. These clever Pastors took advantage of the situation to collect huge amount of money from those hapless brainwashed expectants of windfall from God. These Pastors smiled daily to the Banks and keep all that they dubiously collected for themselves alone. I grew up in my late mother's village which is not far from that of one of Nigeria's electronic preacher,Dabid Oyedepo. He is one of the richest of those flambouyant preachers in our unfortunate country with two or three jet aeroplanes to show for it. Each time I come to Nigeria and drove past his hometown/village,I can't believe the sight of many miserable people I saw.I can't believe the sight of the dirty nasty town that I passed through. Upon enquiry,I discovered that there is still only one half-dead hospital therein,the same that was long ago established by Kwara State's first military Governor who hails from the village. The hospital is as unequiped as other hospitals in the country. The schools,the roads etc are as bad as that of any other place in the nation. In short,Omu-Aran,Oyedepo's village is not different from any other place in the country while David Oyedepo is so fantastically rich. I passed through Ifewara,the hometown of Pastor Adeboye ,another popular electronic Pastor and almost cried for the devastattion I witnessed therein. Yet,Adeboye owns two jet aeroplanes and very fat Bank accounts, all in the name of God but mercy have departed from his face like Oyedepo as such that they both cared less for the welfare of their own people as well as those brainwashed congregants whom they milked dry every Sunday. Where art though God?
If a man thinks he/she wants to travel in a private jet, good enough.
My takes seems to be, there is no pipe borne water, dig your own borehole, there is no power, get whatever capacity of generating set you would need, the roads are not motor able, get a 4x4 with raised tyres, you can't get around fast enough, get a jet to hasten your travel. Where/when are we going to stop
Make me President and see what I'll religiously do to these 'men of god'.
Thieving charlatans. Walk on water, raise the certified dead, then I'll part with my hard earned money. Oloshi. 2015!!!
I don't see why some have a problem with this clear manifestation of the miraculous power of God's Mighty Love.
Observe : A man, desirous of more moneys than can be accumulated through wage-slavery (but bereft of all entrepreneurial skills or, the courage to go into crime) prays to the Great God Yahweh (Of Israel) and hey presto, before you can say abracadabra 10,000 times, he has a spanking new second-hand jet. If this is not enough to turn any observer into a fanatical prayer warrior (of the christian tendency), then I don't know what is. Me? I'm off to intensify my heaven-bound demands. I don't even want a jet. All I need is one more penis so that I can double my sexual escapades.
To what end? When one dies, will you be buried inside or with the plane?
QUOTE:
Believe it or not, Phey,.. You have probably given Pastor Eja an idea of how he wishes to be buried when the time comes.. -- QUOTE:
Yes. http://www.viceland.com/blogs/en/files/2010/12/img_0884-550x412.jpg [ATTACH=CONFIG]4065[/ATTACH] 
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