Ejike Mbaka, a Nigerian Roman catholic priest, is now trending on cyberspace-Nigeriana.
He is being hounded by many, over a video, which showed him trying extraordinarily hard, to coax and squeeze promises out of Peter Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, who is a running mate of the PDP in the forthcoming Nigerian presidential election, to no avail.
Another video showed the same man of God, applying the same format, on representatives of the incumbent, Mohammadu Buhari, to good effect. The funds he was raising was to build projects in the prayer ministry he runs in Enugu. Even the governor of Kano State, Mr. Ganduje, who was caught on video receiving bribes in dollar denominations from contractors in his State donated some money on that altar of God, after being plied by Mbaka with those juices good for such ears.
Many Nigerians were miffed over what they saw as shameless opportunism in cassock, and unabashed marketing of religion to gain economic patronage from political office aspirants.
Scarcely did the video make the rounds, than the default Nigerian epistemic posture, popped to the surface. That annoying Manichean binary, which happens to be our collective default position on every non-issue.
Our visual prisms are ethno-religious, myopic, and very much allergic to history. It is also scarcely rational. Critical analysis are hardly our first port of call, whenever an issue makes landfall, in the Nigerian cyberspace. Reactions governed by mostly uneducated emotions, hijack what could have been used as a teachable moment for the country, to ensure that we are not always condemned to repeat history, due to our inability to learn from it. Santayana was preaching to a congress of deaf mutes, when he railed against not learning from history.
Nigeria is the ghettoes of civilization, due to this mindset. The country has remained a prebendal neo-feudalism; a geopolitical hell-scape, designed for the maximum inconvenience of her citizens; an essential arena, where the arrogant psychopathology of mediocrity, embraces the whimsical capriciousness of amorality in politics. That the country has disinherited and disinvited herself, from both the metropolis and suburbs of global consideration is thanks to this.
The reactions trailing Mbaka’s brazenness, showed that the minds of some Nigerians, are citadels of medieval neurosis; atrocious blackholes of impenetrable ignorance; and stagnant reservoirs of mediocrity. Sciento-technical rationality is foreign to this mental universe.
Such minds bask in, and celebrate with awful pomp, and miserable pageantry; the obsequious obscenity of all impious sociopathologies native to primeval ignorance. They seemed genetically configured to abhor all engagements, which interrogates their dogmas. They view their positions as temple of sacrosanctity, where the orthodox is the true. They forget that the orthodox have been most times, not ordinances of reason, but institutions of might. They are enslaved to a cognitive dissonance that refuses to let go. They use tools of knowledge to armor and consolidate their ignorance.
None of those reactions ever asked:
What is it that Mbaka said or did that was inconsistent, or at variance with the ontology, history, conceptual scheme, praxis, and epistemic pretensions of that cultic-ritualistic-industrial complex called religion? Why should anyone, who shares in that ontology, clutch stones to throw at someone, who presides as a priest, in that convocation, where the unthinking masses, genuflect subserviently in allegiance to their fears? How could a conclave of madness, accuse another mad man of being mad? Is it not an allergy to irony?
They said that Mbaka is a scammer. If he‘d be a scammer, then grievously had he answered it.
His noble accusers are clad in robes of innocence. Borrowed robes, which do not fit. If Mbaka stinks in his brazen political simony, theirs are shrew-grade olfactory Chernobyl!
They believe the same absurdity like Mbaka does and peddles. Yet they turn around to accuse Mbaka of following that absurdity to its logical conclusion, which is atrocity. Voltaire contended that he who makes you believe absurdity would make you commit atrocity. They forgot that.
They said that Father Mbaka is no stranger to controversy. That he surfs controversy like unruly waves.
Is he not being true to type? Was there ever a prophet of any “Deity“ worth his name, who has not been married to controversy, one way or the other; be the deity God, or Gold?
Was it Elija confronting the prophets of Baal? Was it Elisha conjuring wild beasts to feast on kids who were taunting his baldness, like kids do every time and everywhere? Was it Nathan telling David to fuck-off Uriah‘s wife that he stole? Was it Judas’s attempt to shakedown Jesus; trying to scam him off the precious ointment and alabaster jar, purchased by Mary Magdalene and about to be wasted on Jesus‘s feet? Was it his disappointment and eventual sale of his teacher for 30 silver pieces?
Were these not controversial?
Have we so quickly forgotten John the Baptizer? How could we forget that carmel-skin-wearing, locusts-and-wild-honey-eating, loud mouthed vegan, who fancied himself a prophet of the local Jewish god, and took it upon himself to disturb Herod’s orgasm, at his brother’s expense? He eventually ran the gauntlet, and promptly had his head, handed on a platter to the daughter of an adulteress.
John was controversial.
He refused to look the other way; not letting power do it’s normal business of fucking other people’s wives in peace. He did not want to let the sleeping dog lie. He stood between an ambitious woman, armed with “ukwu nnu“, (salty hips), who had enslaved the weak ego and the flaccid penis of a Tetrarch in mid-life crisis. He sought controversy with his verbal flagellation of the foxy Herod, the Tetrarch of Galilee. That controversy ate his head.
That was John.
Did we forget his cousin, Jesus?
Who can ever forget that opinionated, itinerant Galilean preacher, who was, and had been a slippery synonym for controversy till date?
That guy was insolent. Damn! He believed his own bull of being the son of the local Jewish god. So drunk was he on that narrative, that he stood up and started messing with the revenue of the Wall Street of his day.
He charged into the temple courtyard, where the Chief priests and scribes have been actively robbing and cheating the people for centuries; and decided to disturb the peace of that heist that has been in existence since like forever! Those impious robbers in religious robes, promptly did ‘Ije-abani’ for him, conspired with the political armed robbers ruling the colony, to have his head.
You don’t mess with Wall Street in any country. They are the monied interests. They have the politicians and every apparatus of State in their pockets. That is why they execute and kill anyone, who threatens their business, with extreme prejudice and unemotional economy. They will hand you over to their paladins and mandarins and have you executed.
Jesus messed with the wrong crowd, at that instance. Making whips and overturning the tables of the Jewish Abokis changing money at the temple precincts; their version of our Amawusa, was not a smart move.
He messed with many intertwined interests, which has roots to the highest echelons of the Imperial state of Rome. Each swing of that whip, was him authoring his own death warrant in crimson and plasma.
They connived and had his head.
He was crucified by the brutalizing might of the Roman State, at those crossroads, where colonializing imperialism, is busy sodomizing a colony which adamantly refuses to to keep quiet, and enjoy being raped, without uttering a word, in collaboration with local shylocks spanning every corrupt estate of the local realm.
Jesus was crushed, at the behest of the dark money, ruling the temple at Jerusalem.
Just like the aforelisted, Mbaka has been courting controversy. His head would be had, the day he messes with the monied interests, reaching to the highest echelon of corrupt power in Nigeria; or the day he crosses an ambitious mistress, banging the unproductive penis of one of the major problems with Nigeria.
His relationship with Buhari‘s wife has not reached that point. Otherwise, his head would have been like that of John the baptist; gracing the murderous palms of the daughter of an adulteress.
That is about Mbaka and controversy; the merits or demerits of his version of controversy notwithstanding.
Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, is a Nigerian catholic priest of the catholic diocese of Enugu. He blazed the charismatic variety akin to Pentecostalism of the United States evangelical variety, and runs a ministry in Enugu, Nigeria, which has attracted a huge following across all sections of the Nigerian society. The young charismatic priest, holds court, as all segments of the society troop in their tens of thousands, to his ministry every Wednesday of the week, to pay homage to his version of Jesus, the miracle worker.
Jesus was purported to have said in the New Testament, that ‘where two or three are gathered in his name, that he is there among them’. I don’t know what he would be doing among those gathered in his name. But whatever that is, may be different from the ideas of those who convoked that gathering in his name.
Some detractors may well accuse Jesus of a haughty attempt at creating a personality cult around his person, with that statement. It was actually one of the accusations of blasphemy labelled against him at his trial, as was recounted in the New Testament. In spite of that, Jesus may have never foreseen the politico-economic dimension of the first part of that statement. The politician and the economist knew that, where two or three are gathered in anyone’s name, a market and a society arises. Access and control of any market confers unimaginable power on anyone, who could convoke them. Like all those who created any arrangement, where buyers, be they spiritual or temporal, could meet with the sellers, be they spiritual or temporal, Mbaka became powerful.
The way power is viewed in those suburbs of civilization represented by the many countries in the West, actually differs from the way power is viewed, approached and practiced, in the ghettoes of civilization, represented by a badly governed society like Nigeria; where a cocktail of leadership induced toxicities and dysfunctionalities, make the lives of the people so very Hobbessian-solitary, nasty, brutish and short. In such societies, the creation and control of this market, accessible to every segment of the population, was bound to make any charlatan a King.
For Mbaka‘s detractors and critics, I absolutely don’t understand the fuss, about Mbaka trying to shakedown politicians, to build up his ministry! This catholic priest, like everyone peddling priestcraft of every religion, has been religious in following the tenets and trajectory of every such enterprise. He was ordained to believe that he is a prophet, priest and king, like every other priest of almost every other religion.
Was Jesus the Galilean not leeching off the riches of Mary Magdalene and other women, who financed his projects and ministry? Was the catholic church not shaking down the hoi polloi of Europe, and scamming them with indulgences to build St. Peter‘s Basilica in Rome?
Was the Clergy not a veritable part of the feudal Estates of the Realm in feudal Europe? Were Abbots and Abbesses, Bishops and parochial vicars across the ages, not shaking down their parishioners and patrons to build up benefices of choice real estate, gold and women? When did religion ceased to be a shakedown? Do I need to unveil the Papal Court of Pope Alexander VI, and the Medicis, who were the money men of Europe? This is why I cannot understand why people are angry with Mbaka. Why be angry with someone, for doing exactly what was in the blueprint of his business.
Many are angry that he constantly wades into politics, instead of staying on the sidelines, and sticking to religion. This class of people canonize their amnesia. Religion is the son of politics. When Aristotle opined that “man is a political animal“, he never excluded any arena of human action and being, from the totalizing arms of politics. For Aristotle, to be human is to be political. To that end, religion is the elevation of politics to the ontological level. Every trespass into religion is dressing politics in the borrowed robes of metaphysics. Why do you think St. Augustine spent his time mimicking Plato‘s Republic in his Civitas Dei, -The City of God?
In normal realpolitik, people lie, cheat, and kill to attain power, privilege and favor. In religion, it is the same. Abraham was ready to murder his son, after hearing voices in his head telling him that he was god. No one has proven that Abraham was not a mentally-deranged man. But the Abrahamic religions celebrate him as father of faith. Some day in the future, some people would rise up and celebrate Hannibal Lecter as the Father of their vampyrean religion. Jacob cheated his brother Esau, and gained God‘s blessings. Yet the Bible teaches that cheating is evil. The list goes on.
In politics, the people are persuaded, blackmailed, coaxed and bribed, into parting with power or their money. In religion, God is also persuaded, blackmailed, coaxed and even bribed into parting with power. The adherents bribe their gods with prayer, sacrifices of meat or blood, and money.
In politics, when the circumstance calls for it, the subjects’ ego are massaged to make them tow one‘s line. In religion prayers are deployed as ego massage, to bribe a sadistic, sociopathological deity, who enjoys his subjects kneeling in self-abnegation, and masochistically submitting themselves to him, for him to grant them favors.
Religion has been the theological manifestation of politics. Politics is the father of religion. Man wanted someone to lead him, and govern his universe. He was thrown into existence without guidance. He invented a Supreme Ruler, and proceeded to bend the knee to his creation. This is why we created and construe God as a King. What does a king do? He rules, reigns, and governs. This is why religions talk about „Kingdoms of God or Kingdoms of heaven“, where every wrong would be righted; where every plain would be leveled, and every rough path made straight, and every tear wiped away“. So asking Mbaka to stick to religion and avoid politics is like asking a mother to abandon the child of her womb.
In fact any prophet who is not political either way, is a fruit that fell far away from its tree. Mbaka did nothing that was foreign to that scam that is called religion. He was following the normal trajectory of every peddler of absurdity. My problem is not with him, but with the absurdity. That is why it is so very absurd to see those, who themselves, have been indoctrinated into believing the Voltairean absurdity, clutching stones to make Mbaka go away! That is hypocrisy in excelsis. Anyone who believes in any God, and criticizes Mbaka‘s handling of his version of their common business, is a fool using his foolery to criticize other fools.
Why should I join them, when all of them are in the same class? Mbaka verbalized his own atrocity-spangled shakedown of Peter Obi and other politicians, upon a platform that purportedly belonged to deity. That is what gored the ox of these class of critics.
Religion is the original scam. If you are religious and clutch stones to throw at Mbaka, your hypocrisy is pregnant with ignorance.
Gwazia ndi yard unu!!!
Watch out for part 2
