Where Is Daddy G.O.? Article By Ebenezer Obadare

The abduction of the Chibok girls has sparked considerable
outrage both within and outside Nigeria. Within, a lethargic and episodic civil
society appears to have found a timely cause célèbre. In several Nigerian
cities, thousands of Nigerians, boasting nothing more than righteous anger,
plus a firm conviction that it is the fundamental duty of a government to
protect its citizens, have taken to the streets. In Abuja, day after day,
protesters, mostly women, have organized peacefully but determinedly, even
surviving the Federal Government’s recent cynical attempt to infiltrate and
disperse them. In other parts of the country, and among the Nigerian diaspora,
the common will appears to have been recharged.

Of course it is regrettable that it had to take the tragedy
of the abduction of nearly three hundred girls by a gang of murderous bigots
for Nigerians to realize that we never had a state properly called, and that
what we call a security apparatus merely flatters to deceive. Still, the
significance of the moment cannot be overestimated, and the challenge from this
point forward is to make sure that the proper lessons about state building and
adequate preparation for social emergencies are taken to heart.

It is this very significance that throws the silence of
pastor Adeboye into bold relief. Why, you may ask, does his voice matter? The
reason is simple. His intervention matters because he is one of the people who
foisted the current occupant of Aso Rock upon us. No, he didn’t select him, and
agreed; he did not openly campaign for him. What he did is more subtle and
arguably more pernicious: He prepared the ground for the President’s social
legitimation. Pastor Adeboye was instrumental to President Jonathan’s astute
deployment of religious (read Christian) symbols and the enthronement of the
narrative that he- the President- is God’s anointed, the man without political
pedigree whom God himself has chosen. The visit to the Redemption Camp, the
kneeling down for prayer, the malediction against the enemies of the President,
the President’s own ostentatious spirituality- all are building blocks in the
mighty edifice of his (President Jonathan’s) public presentation as a simple
believer who did not hanker after power, who in fact abhorred all politicking,
yet had power fortuitously thrust upon him.

Pastor Adeboye was an active participant in the construction
of this narrative. But he was not alone. Other members of an increasingly
reactionary religious elite have played their part in its development. In the
middle of 2010, I had a debate on the pages of The Guardian with one of them,
Father Matthew Hassan Kukah, Bishop of the Sokoto Catholic Diocese. With the
champagne from President Jonathan’s official inauguration not even properly
digested, Fr. Kukah went to town to invoke the divinity of the President. In an
article titled “The Patience of Jonathan,” Fr. Kukah, finding political
sociology too constraining, attributed the political ascendancy of the
President to “a monumental act of divine epiphany.” Not satisfied with his own
personal failure to adduce a concrete explanation, Fr. Kukah threatened those
who might as follows: “This man’s rise has defied any logic and anyone who
attempts to explain it is tempting the gods.”

In that same piece, and in a subsequent wholly illogical
response to my challenge, Fr. Kukah took comfort in astrology, claiming that
the fact that the President is called Goodluck, and his wife Patience, can only
mean that the gods themselves, for nothing other than an a mere appreciation of
nomenclatural symmetry, had decided to reward President Jonathan with Nigeria’s
highest office. Said Fr. Kukah: “Dr. Jonathan (yes, our President has a PhD)
has done absolutely nothing to warrant what has befallen him. I am sure I can
safely say he has neither prayed, lobbied nor worked for what has fallen on his
lap. (My parenthesis.)

Fr. Kukah is an intelligent man. So is Pastor Adeboye. Both
are doctorate degree holders who, intellectually speaking, can roll with the
punches. But both are bad for Nigeria, and decidedly so. They are not bad
people. They are wonderful individuals who no doubt mean well for the country.
But it is their politics that is bad for the country. In the case of pastor
Adeboye, most readers will recall a time, before he became the go-to pastor
whom you can count on to whitewash Nigerian politicians’ dirty laundry, when
his political sensibility was right. No more. Same thing with Fr. Kukah, whose
rightward social turn is as baffling as it is absurd.

The common thing to both, as I have been pursuing, is that
they literally connived in preparing the narrative of President Jonathan’s
divine installation. And now that everything with the administration of the
country has gone pear-shaped, both have retreated into an unbecoming and
morally grotesque silence.

Nigerians must pressure them to speak up. For all their bad
judgment, they remain widely influential, and we need the weight of their
reputation as we sustain pressure on the government to find and bring back the
Chibok girls. More important, we need their apology, apology for selling us a
bad product. President Jonathan is not, as I insisted then, a divine candidate.
He is a good family man doing his best in the current circumstances with
everything in his capacity. The problem is, he is out of his depth.

Professor Obadare, a political sociologist, teaches at the
University of Kansas in the United States.