In defence of Jesus Christ and OBJ

     
Adamu Adamu  

    Olusegun Obasanjo was quoted and condemned for opening his mouth and lashing out his uncouth and caustic tongue heavenwards. He uttered such an abomination that, except for the sake of comment, I would not have wished to repeat; for, it was an utterance that could cause mountains to crumble to dust.

   He said that even Jesus Christ [AS], the Prince of Peace ”peace on him at birth, peace on him in life, peace on him at the Ascension and peace abounding on him at the Second Coming ”could not conduct free and fair election in Nigeria.

     This is a challenge at once stupid and a gratuitous affront to God and a denial of the authority of His chosen agents. But perhaps Obasanjo is not even capable of understanding that, by this, he has declared war on God and against a Dominion that is limitless; against a divine plan that cannot be frustrated; against a power that will never be found wanting, and an omniscience that cannot be successfully disobeyed in the exercise of its authority, from the management of the subatomic world to the smooth administration of the cosmos.

    But those without shame can say what they fancy, but God is He than whom there is no other. He it is Who, in every situation and under all circumstances and above the claims of every other power, is able to impose and enforce His Will with majestic ease. The miracles of Jesus, the Christ  which stand as an eternal testimony to the truthfulness of his own ministry, are a demonstration of the power of the One in Whose name he came.

    By the leave of God, he cured diseases without medicine. Wasn't this a demonstration of His power and the exercise of direct authority over matter in the microscopic world? And he walked on water and he rose to heaven in glory. Wasn't this an instant of the cancellation of gravitational pull and the abrogation of the very law that keeps the cosmos together? And, miracle of miracles, he raised the living out of the dead. Wasn't this a command to that most elusive and most unknowable of all entities ”the human soul? Who is there in the world today who can claim to know what exactly was happening here? Who could claim to understand a spirituality for which Time stopped and for which the space-time dimension was torn aside?

     Even if he has no grace enough to accept this, Obasanjo has no right to try to cover up the abject failure of his administration and his glaring personal incompetence by hiding behind this regrettable insult to divine power. Just because he himself has so miserably failed, Obasanjo, blinded by delusion, was, in effect, saying that someone who could order atoms and microbes and elicit instant obedience from them, one who could suspend gravity and reverse death could not conduct a free and fair election in Nigeria. Election my foot!

     What is required to conduct a free and fair election in Nigeria or anywhere else for that matter is not to drag holy names into mundane, corrupt national affairs. What is really needed is a dose of competence, patriotism and a healthy respect for the people's will dose to which Obasanjo is a complete and eternal stranger. And because he had led an administration that was a deliberately incompetent, unpatriotic, corrupt authoritarian dictatorship in the name of democracy, he didn't and couldn't and would not at any time have been able to conduct a free and fair election.

    And, thus, unable to do it and unable accept the fact and appreciate the grandeur of the celestial station of that holy name, Obasanjo, wallowing in the mud of profanity, tried to pull the name down to his level, demoting divine sanctity to his base, heathen level. Once, the late Chief Sunday Awoniyi told me that for the 39 years or so then that he had known Obasanjo, there was no time anyone did one good turn to him that he did not repay with evil. It is certainly not easy or possible for a mind that has grown old in the commission of sin and rebellion against God to appreciate and know divine matters.

     When he said he was a born-again Christian who had been delivered from the valley of death, we all trembled. If his life—this dance on the graves of the assassinated, all that promiscuity and incest, all that corruption and all the lies—was a second birth, we all wondered: was it really a birth in Christ  or an abortion in bastardy? And we have wondered for long enough; but now we have our answer; for, no one who truly believes in Jesus  would have mocked his power to perform miracles in such an odiously offensive way.

    And one should not sit down, dine and enjoy all the blessings placed at the banquet spread out by God for His bondsmen, as Obasanjo has done, and then have the temerity to belittle, trivialize and insult divine signs—and reckon he will go scot-free. We shall shout and complain even if no one will listen.

   Luckily, Christian bishops have already condemned him; and, though not at all surprisingly, he had shot back. I am sure, despite this, the bishops may have already forgiven him, because these people are in the business of forgiving sinners; but, to me, this is one sin that can rend the heavens asunder and for which forgiveness has not been invented and should not be available, especially to someone so unrepentant.

     While it may not be surprising if bishops forgive, it is truly shocking that the ulama in Nigeria have remained silent as the sanctity of the name and person of Jesus are trampled underfoot with the jackboots of a retired tyrant. Or, do the ulama imagine that the defence of the honour of Christ  is exclusively the responsibility of Christians?

     Real God-consciousness is to be seen in the graciousness of conduct and in the haste and immediacy of jumping to the defence of divine sanctities and not in the polemical combativeness of provocative preaching. Or, do the ulama think it will be well with them when on the Day of Distress they are asked what they did when the honour of the Word of God was traduced by the demented, dirty and sick mind of a prodigal former president?

   After benefiting from ecumenical solidarity from Christians as a result of sanctimonious pretences; after setting Christian and Muslim tempers against each other in the hope of reaping electoral capital out of national misfortune; and after deceiving and short-changing the nation at every turn, Obasanjo has now decided to insult the sensibilities of both Christians and Muslims with that obnoxious utterance.

     Some things should never be attempted even in jest and certainly not in vain, and should never be tolerated under any circumstance. To associate the hallowed name of Jesus even with a successful, free and fair election constitutes gross disrespect; to associate that name with an unsuccessful one is unacceptable sacrilege; but to directly impute inability and failure to the owner of that name is unadulterated blasphemy and an insult to the world.

     But the truth is that Jesus [AS] is above the limit placed on him by unbelieving agnostics, and no amount of blasphemy from any quarters can subtract a whit from his holiness. And no amount of pitiful blasphemy will cause the slightest anxiety with regard to his holy reputation in his followers and others who believe in him. The traducer—this animal called man—it is who stands cut off and accursed. Would to God that this nation had a law against blasphemy that made the lives of blasphemers forfeit!

   Imperfect as it is, this is a defence for Jesus, but it is not a defence that Jesus stands in need of; for, he is above calumny of any agnostic; it is but this incapable defender who wishes, by the attempt, that he becomes ennobled and blessed. And may the glory be to God, Lord of all the worlds, and peace eternal upon Jesus, the Christ.