Some Naija Churches " Ministry of Universities"

This piece of article may generate a lot of negative backlash, but at least my voice represents that of some remote Nigerians who night and day are increasingly getting confused as what the real intentions of some Churches in Nigeria are.

As I write this blog, a friend of mine questioned my right to say anything against the leaders of these churches.He said,"Patrick are you a Pastor? please leave this issue for men and women of God to discuss" he said.

My friend advice might come out as a result of naivety and wrong baseless beliefs because to many like him any issue that has to do with the Church, can only be discussed or mentioned by a man of God, not just any Christian but by an ordained preacher to avoid the wrought of God.

Eventually I made him to understand that I am also an ordained preacher as well, then he drew a big breath of relief and eventually gave me a breathing space to continue my blogging.

The fear in which my friend and many others like him were buried in all these years has made discussion  such  like this a taboo but to some, time has come for it to be discussed as it   has generated strong silent debates ever since it surfaced publicly.

Needless for me to tread on the Biblical verses to support my argument, the Bible is there for anyone to read and deduce for themselves the truth therein.

The church in Nigeria has done many great things in the last 30 years especially when the pentecostal movement famously demonstrated Gods power with biblical teaching that made it became widely accepted.

The likes of Arc.Bishop Idahosa of the blessed memory,Pastor Kumiyi, Rev.Ezekiel, Pastor Oritsejafor and Rev.Uma Okpai and many others brought a different dimension to biblical preaching, tele-evangelism and healing miracles with several crusades all over Nigeria showcasing foreign preachers like Reinhard Bonnke, Benny Hinn and many others at the early stage and shortly after, mega Churches began to emerge with powerful Ministers like Pastor Adeboye,Bishop Oyedepo, Pastor Mathew Ashimolowo,Pastors Tunde Bakere, Mike Okonkwo,Okotie, Olukoya,and Chris of Christ embassy and not forgetting Pastor T.B Joshua(no matter how controversial you may see him) and many others.

The emergence of these strong army of God brought diverse miracles and led many to believe and Pentecostalism blossom astronomically. The expansion of the church was welcomed by many, people demonstrated their faith by selling off their properties to support the church and many landed properties were freely given to Churches or sold to them with little to nothing to say the least.

The passion and charity that greeted some Pastors actually became infectious and many abused and took advantage of these benevolence from numerous worshipers, exploiting and mesmerizing a lot of them, yet everybody moves on and see it as a blessing in disguise.

Listen Folks, when it comes to how  preachers preach or their ways of lives I do have my reservation alright but I will not be bothered and truthfully it is none of my business, because it might be from an encounter with the spirit or what I may call "religious experience" which in most times are personal, bringing about different preaching styles and methodologies, but when it comes to Church extra curricular activities, that is activities outside the core calling, I will most certainly comment.

I will comment because it is more of a mundane thing than spiritual even as we are meant to believe. The bible is clear on all these and anything not in line with the biblical teaching calls for real questioning. You cannot combine mundane things with spiritual things together as a core calling package. The mission is simple "save souls" and not to loose focus and start chasing fame and financial empire that will never benefit the very people who labored vigorously to build the church.

In Nigeria today all the mega Churches are in completion of one business venture or the other unlike the early days of its growth. If you ask any members of the churches, the reason for these impromptu wave of financial boom and searching instead of soul searching, they will readily tell you that they are celebrating the glory of the Church(already?)wow.
Is that a great news ? when many souls are being wasted and needed to be saved and the Church is already celebrating its glory.

There is no mega Church today in Nigeria that does not have a university or at least about to get one. This undoubtedly should be a welcomed news but many have fouled it claiming that they are almost out of reach to the vast majority of the members who contributed immensely to the building and funding of these churches and their universities.

The universities were founded so that they can serve as an alternative to the secular ones where many ill vices like cultism reign easily.They were supposed to be role models, platform of excellence and above all a seat of qualitative yet cheaper fess than the secular ones, because the founders are Christians as well as the administrators whose main target is not to profit but delivering quality with the fear of the Lord.

A senior member of one of the churches that operate a university in Ogun state once told me that, no member of their congregation can say he is poor because the bible says we are rich and poverty is a choice.

Well understood, hmmm.., so, with this kind of teaching, nobody can actually complain of high school fees publicly because "they can do all things through Christ Jesus". If you do otherwise who knows you may be seen as a faithless person and eventually may be recommended for deliverance and perhaps removed from front seating row.

This is a good piece of scriptural verse but it is misinterpreted here and used as a tool for mere exploitation. If I may ask, to whose detriment and to whose gain is that scriptural verse, while the school fees go higher and the parents suffer, the church on the other hand is immersing enormous wealth. These is forcing the same parents who are worshipers so seek solace everyday in secular schools with cheaper school fees apparently.

The original objective is defeated, isn't it? make no mistakes some of the parents who are members of these churches by the way, readily stand tall to cover up for their spiritual masters and will shamelessly send their kids elsewhere to study with so many unpleasant excuses but the kids on the other hand are still bewildered on how they could not study in the school where they and their parents have sacrificed all and all to make sure it was built. Oh poor kids, for how long will they be deceived?

In the beginning it was the miracles and the sharing of things within the brethren in the communities that motivated a lot of people to join the pentecostal church but today a lot of them are gradually defecting from this basic joy of salvation and increasingly becoming insatiable with material things.

Preachers go a long way to support materialism with every portion of the Bible. There is no way you can win these lots of soul if you continue to put up exotic universities simple unreachable to the majority of the people and members of your church and expect to win people confidence on your mission.

Eventually questions will be asked one day, trust Nigerians, it has happened in many places around the world.The Apostles of old had to ordain deacons to handle the  sharing of food so that they can preach the word of God but today many preachers first and foremost think of what to get from the ministry as a priority over what to preach to the people to save and better their lives. Not only that, today competition and class status have created unimaginable quest of spiritual power, fame and branding.

Church should be separated from profane competition, the missionaries of old had schools and used them wisely and everybody had an opportunity to be educated equally regardless of their background. My father will ever be grateful to missionary schools that offered him the opportunities to be one of the few college graduates of his time. His father was never thinking along that line and wanted him to be a farmer but for the mission schools he would have never known the other side of life.

It was available to the people, it was cheap, it was encouraging, promoters were supportive. People saw help instead of exploitation, they saw hope instead of failure but today it is just the opposite, the mission universities are an exclusive reserve for the rich physically and not the rich spiritually. What a shame.

We must go back to the basics and find out how these addenda to the church like schools and business can actually be beneficial to everybody regardless of your financial pocket.

I know it can create employment to many, provide stability and security to educational process, but let it also be a source of bringing and keeping many into the Christian faith instead of being a source of dividing opinions that could see its merits decimate into a calamitous disaster. 

Let it also be a source of hope for the hopeless, a platform of truth and justice, giving chance to the brilliant and talented youths who may never have the muscle to struggle with the rich of the society on the road to greater heights. This will go a long way in bridging the gaps between the rich and the poor. The government is doing their lot, recently the Imo state governor, Owelle Rochas Okoroacha announced free education to university level for all Imo state born students studying in Imo state. In the past the likes of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief Michael Opara and The Sarduana of Sokoto did the similar things in their time.

Can the church not do this, is it too much to ask for, a development that can uplift the souls of many and bring many back to the kingdom.

Many church adherents will say who cares, as long as we are growing bigger and more famous, than other churches, we shall be number one in the world, but remember folks, not all things that these leaders lead you into is real, some of them are being mislead by their own greed and flesh and as they are being mislead, they also mislead many, please be careful and remember the infamous biblical "Tower of Babel".

I will end this blog with this passage from 2 Peter 2 verses 2and 3,

"and many shall follow their pernicious ways by reason

of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken and through

covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchadise

of you whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not and their

damnation slumberth not"Kjv.

Nollywood please listen and listen good

The Nigerian Film industry has grown a lot in the last few years,Nollywood as it is popularly known all over the world became a turnaround for a struggling film industry in Nigeria which fought a long battle with high cost of production in the 1960s.
Late Herbert Ogunde and Ola Balogun who were film makers in the 1960s did not achieve much results as it were with the present Nollywood in terms of financial and global acceptance but their effort aided a very good foundation in what today is an industry worth at least US$250 million.

However the Kenneth Nnebue production of Living in Bondage movie in the 1990s became a recognisable foundation of the modern film industry in Nigeria otherwise known as Nollywood. The movie took the Nigerian film world by storm and created an audience away from regular television and theatre audiences.

At this stage the audience never really bordered about the quality of the film production, the whole euphoria of indigenous actors and actresses abilities to replicate what other celebrated actors and actresses do is just enough attraction to stay loyal to many films rolled out after Living in Bondage.

Again the introduction of English language in Nollywood blossomed the industry and expanded its fame across Africa and the rest of the world.
Gradually Nollywood began to replace and push the foreign films off the Nigerian shelves, notable the Hollywood and the Bollywood films.

Suffice me to say that in most areas then notable television soaps and highly rated films like James Bond still attracted a sizable number of admirers.
The release of Osufia in London brought another dimension to the film industry in Nigeria, a lot of film analyst and producers were taken aback with such a high quality production and other film makers in Nigeria followed suit and upgraded their films quality technically and otherwise.

Nigeria has a large resource of world class actors, actresses, film producers, directors, marketers and recently a lot of good camera men with lots of experience.
Film equipments all over the world have never been cheaply, they have always been expensive and may remain so for a long time to come.Everyday new technologies come on the scene and with every new film that comes out we expect to see improvements in editing, sound and picture qualities.
As digital video technology replaces Beta SP which was used hitherto in Nollywood, it is expected that film editing will automatically become easier and more flexible.

With the large numbers of films in Nollywood the industry has become the second largest film industry behind Bollywood followed by Hollwood in terms of numbers of films produced anually but some hurdles are still incredibly high for the Nigerian film makers to cross.
Some of these hard hurdles are film piracy and poor technical quality of the films.

I am particularly interested on the later as the first hurdle is seriously being tackled by the industry and the Government special forces where actually some results have been achieved.
Nollywood is the third largest film industry in the whole world,the pride of the Africa and every black man on this earth, it has created a lot of employment and brought fame and popularity not only to Nigerians but to many Africans who associate with the industry.
No amount of accolades that I will give to this industry that will be enough but it is imperative that they too listen to what the viewers concerns are. Not just listening but improve on the ability to listen and act.

Many in the industry are of the opinion that critics must continue say one thing or the order, "yes technical issue is a normal thing in any young industry, Nollywood is not an exception" said one of the notable Nigeria film makers who pleaded anonymity. To him technical issues will improve when film makers become more relaxed with budget,time,and better equipments.

Ok, let us just say we agree to a large but my worry is that the film makers are not themselves film critics and viewers because if they are they will change some common man -made technical issues that make most films unwatchable.

Most viewers have complained that Nollywwod films are full of noisy sound tracks that never allow them to listen to the conversations no matter how they tune up the volume.
Comparing with other films they argued that sound tracks play audibly when there are no conversation and become almost silent when the conversation fades away in many other films especially from Hollywood but wonders why in Nollywood the case is not the same, some believe that the film makers were actually more interested in the sound tracks than the movie itself.

Another film maker added that the fault was that of the sound Engineer during editing and that many producers because of lack of fund and the rush to quickly get the film into the market will not necessarily check all features of the film.
If it is indeed the fault of the Engineer while take it to him the next time,or better still why not tell him that you do not want the sound track to interfere with the actors voices the next time he edits your film.

As a very big fan of Nollywood, I beg the film makers in Nigeria on behalf of the millions of fans and viewers of Nollywood to visit the issue of sound quality of the films as a matter of urgency to enable viewers to at least hear the wordings of the film.

It will not be long, Nollywood will be challenged by other emerging African film industries. They may not pose as rivals yet but certainly they will and when they do it might be too late for Nollywood to put a strong resistance against them.

Now that Nollywood is on top, infact in the top three, the opportunity to consolidate or even move upwards may be thwarted if they do not listen and listen good to their viewers and fans world wide.

-Patrick Ebuzor

Delhi 2010-Nigeria ,Drugs, Lessons and Attitude

Delhi 2010 saw Nigerians demonstrate power and determination to bring back their lost glory in athletics.The first gold medal of the competition came from a little Nigerian petite dynamite Augustina Nwokolo in 48kg weightlifting who proved that size is not everything that sums to power.

Undoubtedly that great accolade brought about joy and motivation to the rest of the Nigerian contingents. According to sources the Nigeria camp was reinvigorated with power and the atmosphere was charged to greatness and the athletes vowed to perform even better than they hoped in all their fields.

Such an earlier performance is nevertheless a foundation for greater heights for any team in any competition nonetheless an international one to say the least but the hype was suddenly punctured by a peculiar but un-welcomed news of cheating.

Before the news came out,Nigeria had grabbed about 8 gold medals and a hull of other medal colours, more were expected but the zeal was fast fading away from these noble reps of our dear country.The news of the cheating made sharp headlines of all the print and electronic media. The whole world woke up with the headlines"Nigerian 100m winner fails drug test".The name Osayemi became a household name for all the wrong reasons.

A section of the media was of the opinion that the headlines was as a result of embarrassing controversies that marred the 100m race in Delhi (the real winner Sally Pearson was disqualified), others said it was because the sprinter was at the limelight of the most popular race 100m and therefore will be the subject of attention, a biter pill to swallow for Nigerians and gladdening news for Sally and the Australians.

Whatever the reasons might be for such a high profile negative publicity, Osayemi and some of the Nigerian officials should be blamed unfortunately.
The drug methylhexaneamine has just been added to the banned list and is not commonly found during regular test. Many athletics from Jamaica and India have tested positive to it recently.

Osayemi and the second Nigerian Samuel Okon tested positive to this drug. A sympathy assumption from one official was that Osayemi must have taken it for her teething problems, another teaser from Frazier(Jamaican Olympic Champion) who stated that she got hers through a tooth pain killer.
Do I buy the sympathy explanation?, yes why not? after all she is a star I have always admired, she has been on the scene for more than five years at international levels, lives abroad and trains with the "A" list sprinters. She is rated among the world top 20 in female sprinting and in top 2 in African . She has done very well in the past without any drug issue scandal.

Osayemi is not alone, in Beijing 2008,Nigerian athletes tested positive and were disgracefully dismissed from the competition.The picture was awful and the joy of competition crucified.
Before then,we had cases of the Ezenwa brothers,Chioma Ajunwa and some others, to be honest most of these patriots, I would like to call them regardless, were actually ignorant of the impact of the strange food supplements and medication they were taking in the name of pain killers and better physique.

To Osayemi especially, ignorance is not a well accepted excuse.She lives in the US where a whole lot of high profile cases of doping have been revealed.The case of Catlin, Jones and others recently caught was not kept in the dark. In fact it kept any reasonable athlete on his toes, influencing a change in attitude in athletes and making them more careful and ready to follow the rules no matter what their body say.

That lesson did not register with the likes of Okon and Osayemi, they waived it apart and thought they can get away with recklessness. May be she thought that since she lives abroad, they officials will overlook her and believe she is ok because of on and off competition testing. She was right, the mentality of many is that foreign athletes flourish that modern facilities,correct information and exposure which equals truth, determination and patriotism the virtues readily found on home based athletes but elude many having become stars.
You can fool the local officials but when it comes to international officials you may not be so wise enough to beat them.

The Nigerian officials on the other hand cannot be left off the hook easily, considering the excuse of not having any official doping program in place in the country at the moment although some quarters object to that report saying there is a program in place.Now it has become question of functionality of the program or diligence of the officials, anyway, the official report will sooner than later emerge and the truth will be known.

On the other hand, Delhi 2010 has shown that if we put the right people in the right place and show diligence we can improve and become a force to be reckon with in sports worldwide again. This year's performance is a sharp contrast with the 2006 commonwealth games where we managed to get 17 medals in all, the improvement and the number of medal so far attest to it.

As a colleague of mine rightly said, Nigerian officials "Remedy" for this epidemic crime(doping) onwards is to always invite every athlete to a camp and have them tested before any competition regardless of any excuse that might emerge from them.Any athlete that refuses to join the camp will not be allowed to compete. I sincerely agree with you here Steven.

Funding, funding , funding is another excuse from the Nigerian officials any time any day but we must not forget that a whole lot of funds have been mismanaged over and over again. Officials forget that mismanagement of these funds itself constitute the highest obstacle than any lack of funding might cause.Any funds no matter how little, should be allocated to the right priority, it is only then that we can have a proper doping program, practically functional and ready to avert embarrassment of this nature to all Nigerians home and abroad.

All these failures are direct consequences to lackluster attitude towards discipline,integrity, and patriotism of the highest standard, but the question remains when and what will Nigerian officials and athletes learn from all these.

Sadly as Augustina Nwokolo's Gold medal brought joy,life,brightness and motivation to Team Nigeria, so has Osayemi drug failure brought tears, shame, embarrassment and controversy to Team Nigeria as well.

As I blog along 10 Gold medals have been won by Nigeria (Hurray!!!)just a day before the end of the competition but I bet it would have been more, Nigerians say no to doping and show the world that you are hard working world class athletes any day . Remember our great men and women, Faliliat,Mary Onyali,Innocent Ogbunike, Chidi Imoh, Rufina Ubah, Beatrice Utondu, Christy Okpara-Thomson, Sunday Uti, late Dele udoh and many others, they did well without doping and the world also respect them. Think Twice.

Nigerians should be aware that any negative thing that happens in Nigeria or to Nigerians in competitions always make great headlines, the reasons I do not know.Yesterday an Indian failed a drug test and it took several hours before it was even mentioned not to to talk about her name being revealed.

That was in total contrast to the Nigerian cases where the A sample results were announced with "vengeance" almost immediately it is discovered by the Testers.
Do not trash your hard earned name, at least in sports Nigeria has a name to be proud of.I pray that more positive results will not emerge from Nigerians as the games closes tomorrow.
-Patrick Ebuzor-main blogger