On Wednesday, September 24, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) accused the President of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, of smearing the image of the body.
The Catholic men of God were speaking on the link between Oritsejafor’s private plane with Nigeria’s arms deal in South Africa and alleged laundering of $9.3 million cash to that country.
To the Bishops, military aircraft would have been fit for that purpose.
“It is not proper, the guilty must be punished. It is not acceptable for a Christian leader to be seen always with the President.
“We in the Catholic have always picked holes in Oritsejafor’s style of leadership in CAN and we even wanted to stop attending CAN meetings at the national level,” said Ignatius Kaigama, Archbishop of Jos and CBCN President while fielding questions on BBC Hausa service.
After reading a report in a newspaper last week and the interpretation which South African media gave the September 12 building collapse at the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) in Lagos, owned by Temitope B. Joshua, I wept for this country.
I was concerned because virtually all the South African newspapers – Guardian, Mail, Sunday Times, Sowetan, City Press – did not have any kind words for T.B. Joshua or the Nigerian leadership.
From what the newspapers wrote, you wonder whether it is still the same Joshua, whom most South Africans; white, mainly Afrikaans and relatively conservatives, praise for his spiritual dexterity in healing with all manner of sicknesses ravaging them, who is being vilified.
An article in City Press written by Jacques Pauw was not only damaging to whatever Joshua and his church think they stand for, it presented a window into how the rest of Nigerians are perceived by South Africans.
According to the article, Joshua once engaged Pauw to visit his church to do a documentary on it and his miracles. But what Pauw wrote afterward about the SCOAN following the collapse of its guest house and the death of nearly 115 South Africans suggests deep-seated animosity, more so as he said his findings did not support Joshua’s claims.
Let us share some of Pauw’s deductions. “It took me some time to understand why the Afrikaner psyche found Joshua irresistible. Why were they prepared to seek salvation in a country they perceived to be drowning in greed, political rot and economic decay?
“Christianity Nigerian-style was world’s apart from the chains and shackles of Calvinism. Joshua unchained them. He allowed them to worship with gusto and fervour previously thought unseemly. That the new messiah was black and his church in Africa’s biggest and maddest metropolis only added to the allure.”
Pauw quoted one South African named Moses in his article who said: “I understand the despair of terminally ill people and why they grasp at final straws. My father died of lung cancer and might well have made the journey to Lagos. I am just glad he is not here anymore to become a victim of a ravenous tick that feasts on the blood of the ignorant, gullible and desperate….”
Notice that somewhere in his piece Pauw had made a pejorative statement about Nigeria as “drowning in greed, political rot and economic decay” and the whole idea really was to rub in the insult.
If his piece in City Press did little damage to Joshua and Nigeria’s image, the scathing editorial of South Africa’s Sunday Times which target was both Joshua and our government as well as the uncomplimentary comments from different quarters in South Africa did much more.
The cover of the popular South African Sunday Times a fortnight ago was “Blood in their hands”.
Earlier when the surviving South Africans were brought home, the country’s Government Minister, Jeff Radebe, said: “We are keenly awaiting as a South African government the investigation that is being conducted by the Nigerian government so that we get to the bottom of the cause of … this national disaster.”
Radebe did not only put the figure of his countrymen and women who visited the SCOAN before the accident at 349, he also put the dead at 115. To him and most South Africans, neither Joshua nor the Nigerian government did what was needful to reassure them that culpable homicide was not intended.
The dust created by the building which collapsed on September 12 was yet to settle when we got entangled again in another stupid incident where South Africa’s name came to the fore.
A princely $9.3 million (about N1.5 billion) which was being smuggled, nay laundered into that country by yet to be unmasked persons was intercepted and seized by the South African country at the point of entry.
A private plane which Oritsejafor confirmed he has an interest in was said to have been used to move the money to South Africa. The private plane has since been hired by other users, making it difficult to pin down the culprit. Talk of mafia deal and that is where the problem is.
So much has been said since news of movement of the $9.3 million cash to South Africa broke, and as is expected, political colouration has entered into it. Event came to a head last week when House of Representatives members got divided along party lines as the matter came up. As I write, the division among the Reps has got deeper.
Opposition members, mainly of the All Progressives Congress (APC), stormed out in protest that the majority members loyal to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did not see any reason to debate the matter.
I sympathise with the opposition, and more importantly, with Nigerians who do not understand what political interest is doing to our country and we Nigerians when criminality and morality, like the one involving money laundering, are involved.
The PDP government would stake anything to manage the situation, but they should be asking themselves in whose interest that would be in a country where corruption is perceived as an index case even by outsiders like South Africa?
While lawmakers are fusing over the veracity of what transpired with the $9.3 million, the Senate said it is investigating. The Senate Committee on Defence, led by George Sekibo, had met with service chiefs led by the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh.
I have little confidence in the ability of our Senate to unravel the real story behind the money in question as previous cases abound where matters before the Upper Chamber end up only in “we are investigating.”
And as some House of Representatives members asked last week, why should a government seek to smuggle such a huge sum of money into another country using a private plane when it is propagating a cashless economy?
Why should our government make nonsense of our law on money laundering as well as not sensitive to the money laundering law of neighbouring countries like the destination country for the $9.3 million?
Why was South Africa not put on notice about the movement of such sum as well as the purpose it was meant for? What happens to our security officials, both here in Nigeria and the attaches in South Africa as well as Nigerian officials in our South African embassy?
I hope they will be patriotic and courageous enough to raise such queries, otherwise the damage the $9.3 million cash will do to our image before South Africa will be worse than what the country currently thinks about us regarding the SCOAN building collapse.
Many Nigerians and even non Nigerians think the government and those close to the corridors of power are doing too many dirty things to raise money for the coming elections.
The $9.3 million is believed to be one of those instances when money will develop wings from Nigeria and land in the hands of willing-to-do business countries with corrupt Nigerians after which the money makes its way back to Nigeria to be used for political purposes.
We are in the era of slush contracts and such gambits that go with politics.
This should be another test case for President Goodluck Jonathan’s government to prove that what South Africa thinks about Nigeria is not correct.