Jim Obazee knows accounting like his palm. His command of the subject gives him a measure of self-confidence that borders on arrogance. Accountants are trained to live with the slogan: “Don’t doubt, but verify”. They do not trust anybody – not even the “men of God” who run the business centres with the toga of Pentecostal churches.
As a former pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) Obazee, the ousted executive secretary of Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRC), knows that some of the new generation churches get more from tithes than Ekiti State government gets from taxes. He also knows that some of the “men of God” heading the Pentecostal churches may be richer than Zamfara State government.
Having been an operator (a former pastor of RCCG) and eventually a partial regulator of Nigeria’s most prosperous business ventures (Pentecostal churches), Obazee knows that the churches are more liquid than some of the banks whose books he examines for compliance with global reporting standards.
Obazee might have wondered why the “men of God” who rake in billions in the guise of tithes and other contributions from the public should not be accountable to a public regulator.
Where managing directors of banks could only serve for 10 years, FRC sets 20 years for general overseers (GOs) of churches and other non-profit organizations registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
When the FRC code of corporate governance was subjected to public scrutiny in 2011, Muslims had no objections. Islam does not allow anyone to set up a mosque and fleece worshippers the way the Pentecostal churches do.
The Catholic Church, the denomination with the largest followership in Christendom, had no objections either. Like the Pentecostal churches, the Catholic Church accepts contributions from worshippers.
The difference however is that no Catholic priest commands the type of stupendous wealth amassed by the GOs of Nigeria’s new generation churches. As head of the Catholic Church, the pope flies Alitalia, the Italian national airline, anytime he travels out of the Vatican.
In my days as a young reporter in Daily Times, I was detailed on one Christmas day in the late 1980s to interview Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, the then Archbishop of Lagos Diocese. As the highest ranking man in the church in Nigeria at that time, Okogie had only a Mercedes Benz 200 sedan.
I met him in the Church in Lagos Island but the archbishop insisted the interview must be held in his house. He ordered me into the owner’s seat of the Mercedes and sat in the front with the driver as we headed to his residence. The car was too ordinary for a man of such rank in the universal church. There were no sirens or security escorts ahead of us.
The GOs of the Pentecostal churches that Obazee burnt his fingers trying to regulate, are not like the Catholic pope or cardinals. They are not like the Alfas of Islam.
They ride on armoured jeeps and operate fleets of private jets. Their stupendous wealth emanates from tithes and other contributions coerced from worshippers. Some even hypnothise members to donate to the church. Some years ago, a man stole N64 million from a Five-Star hotel and donated it to a new generation church. The church disowned him when the fraud was discovered.
The difference between the Pentecostal churches and the Catholic Church or Islam is in their skewed income distribution system. The Catholic Church owns hospitals, schools and universities that benefit those at the lowest rung of the social strata. On the contrary, only rich members of the Pentecostal churches can afford the outrageous fees of the universities established by their churches. Yet the universities and other businesses were established with public funds.
A member of one of the Pentecostal churches lamented openly on radio last week that she pays tithes regularly, but cannot send her child to the church’s university because of outrageous fees.
Obazee probably believed that if the wealth the Pentecostal churches coerced from worshippers cannot benefit the poor, government should at least get something from it by way of tax.
Obazee’s sin today is that of insubordination.
Okechukwu Enelama, the minister of industry, trade and investment, ordered him in a letter dated October 17, 2016 to suspend the implementation of the corporate governance code that limits the tenures of GOs of churches and other non-profit organizations to 20 years.
He brazenly ignored his boss on alleged claims that the minister’s directive was not on gazette.
He adamantly started the implementation in a church where Yemi Osinbajo, the vice president is a leading pastor. Being an appointee of former President Goodluck Jonathan, he might have been regarded as a fifth columnist in the current administration.
The hypothesis is that 90 per cent of the GOs that the FRC code would have hacked down are from the south-west which the ruling party tenuously controls. The move against the GOs was therefore seen as a way of inciting rebellion in the south-west against the party.
No one knows precisely why Jim Obazee rebelled against his minister. Ironically, the churches’ stupendous wealth that he tried to regulate is from public fund. The FRC code that sacked Obazee is necessary to check the excesses of churches that could snowball into tyrannical family businesses.
