Rev. Father. Ejike Mbaka, the young, fiery Catholic priest of the Adoration Ministry Enugu fame is a well talented man of God and quite combative in his evangelism. He is most importantly known in these parts for his outspokenness and fearlessness in interrogating power.
In fact any memoirs of erstwhile Governor Chimaroke Nnamani of Enugu State that is devoid of at least a substantial mention of his encounter with Fr. Mbaka will obviously suffer a literary and historical flaw and hiatus. The revered and often loquacious priest sufficiently engaged the former governor and kept him on the edge for a good while.
After years of the practice of his brand of evangelism, Mbaka has come to master the art. With a creative combination of the solemnity and compelling meditation attendant to the liturgy of the catholic church; the combative and sometimes aggressive prayers of the Pentecostal mode with its occasional lapse into a staccato of strange, seemingly cacophonous language together with the fear-inspiring, masquerade-invoking sensationalistic features of native African religion using the gong, Mbaka has been able to achieve a mass appeal and has become an asset of legendary proportions raking in money, men and materials to the catholic church. He has also dispensed much in charity to the less privileged in his native Enugu state.
So, when during his New Year message, this formidable man of God took to what amounts to a harangue on the person of the president of our country, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, the message, understandably got viral with amazing celerity. Mbaka is a priest whose influence and importance lie in the sheer quantum of his flock, admirers etc. If he says something silly, he would definitely lose sleep because this flock, the source of his power may get thin. He does not seem to have stirred the hornet’s nest among his flock with his new message and that should worry the president and his team and the communication infrastructure attendant to such issues.
To pretend that Mbaka cannot influence anybody is to take a trip in self delusion because he obviously can, not a few but many. That this priest can rise above religion and geography at this time in our nation’s history to entreat his followers and everybody to vote for Buhari, against Jonathan is both instructive and revealing. The major discount in Mbaka’s call was his inability to tell what Buhari can do better and the means of achieving them in order to help comparative analysis and informed voting.
But whether Buhari loses or wins, a number of very germane lessons, instructions emanate from his candidacy namely that there can be times when Nigerians can genuinely afford to rise above religious sentiments; that the very divisive animosity, if not outright hatred that exists between the rich and the poor in our country is still deep-seated and growing; that there are very few Nigerians whose wealth cannot be traced to government either through direct robbery from government via politics, inflated contracts or favored waivers that violate all known anti-trust laws. That military rule is after all not the type of evil it has been painted to be and that somewhere in the corner of the minds of Nigerians is the possibility that military leadership is still viewed as a lot better than the practice of democracy. Otherwise, from where did Buhari garner all the attributes upon which his present popularity is soaring? Buhari is by far, the most naturally popular living Nigerian leader. An expression which compels a definition, that he is one leader who can attract a genuinely enthusiastic crowd without hiring or paying for them.
If after 16 years of uninterrupted democracy, many Nigerians are quite enthusiastic in placing Buhari as the messiah of the nation, then it is clear that any kind of democracy cannot be better than all military rules. It means that the ordinary citizen needs at all times a leader who can by sheer force of his personality infuse in the polity, the required discipline for the restoration of rectitude in at least some important spheres of life.
There is need for deep introspection on what has gone wrong. The disturbing clue is that an autocrat or a military dictator who champions the cause of a better society where rule of law, equity, justice and discipline are prime values is a lot better than a ‘democrat’ who stays in his office and makes a list of those he thinks can represent the people. Little wonder all military coups in Nigeria except that of Abacha were heralded by transports of tumultuous joy all over the country. The very idea of democracy is founded in the logic that consensus is better than command. But when the latter remains a substantial feature of democracy, the difference is then lost.
The 2015 presidential election promises to be interesting. There are those who believe so much in the president; so many of them moneyed and somehow scared of the puritanical posture of a Buhari but ready to spend embarrassing sums of money to stop him. There are others who feel so cheated and often times annoyed that the nation’s patrimony has been so brazenly coveted under the Jonathan presidency by men and women who have grown above the laws of the land that they need a man like Buhari, a former military leader who neither owns a house in Abuja nor an oil bloc and who it seems have been able to tame his greed to come around to institute a regime of laws and ethics to the land.
Mbaka, perhaps, more, through this last line of thinking than any revelations has opted for a Buhari. There are yet those who unconvinced by Mbaka’s posture, will still throw up the sectarian card which accuses Buhari of potentials for undiluted zealotry against other religious persuasions. But whatever strength a Buhari is bringing to the table, including the seemingly sure calculation of securing the south west vote, he is sure to battle the untoward influence of the sheer armada of resources of the president’s men.
Few weeks are away to know how far, the message of the Padre of the Enugu based Christ the King Parish, Rev. Fr. Ejike Mbaka sank into the psyche of the people. May God bless our country, this year and always. [myad]
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