Last Sunday’s admonition by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo on church leaders to expose and ostracise their members who grew rich through fraudulent means is not only timely but also a necessary charge towards ensuring the success of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s war against corruption.
Osinbajo, who made the call at the Aso Villa chapel during a special service to mark this year’s Father’s Day, said each time worshippers go to church, they are told about giving, adding “but we need to talk more about honesty.”
The acting president, who is also a senior pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), said: “Just now, His Eminence said Nigeria’s great problem is not an absence of prosperity, but that we have enough for our needs but we don’t have enough for our greed. The greed of many is what has landed this country to where it is today. It is the greed that has landed us where we are. Many say the reason they are stealing is because they need to have an arsenal for future political experiment. It is a lie! It is greed.
“And if the church says you are not allowed to steal and we will ostracise the thieves in our midst, if a man’s resources, what a man has does not measure up to what he earns, if you found that a man has more money than he should have, if a man is earning a salary in a civil service or public service and he has houses everywhere, we have to hold him to account. He must first be held to account in the church. He must first be told in the church, we will not allow this.
“If the church ostracises the thieves; if the church says we will not accept thieves here or we will ensure that we expose you, you are stealing the resources of our nation, you are stealing the resources of a private company or other establishments, then we will not have the kind of problems that we have in this country.”
Addressing the Father’s Day celebration specifically, Osinbajo called on all fathers in the country to be exemplary leaders that build generation of righteous men and women.
The acting president urged all fathers to follow the footsteps of Abraham in the scripture who, he said; God chose in order to “command His children and household in the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice.”
Although, corruption as a crime has neither racial nor religious affiliation, most of the perpetrators in Nigeria subscribe to either Christianity or Islam, which portrays them as followers of the Omnipotent. Unfortunately, the proliferation of churches in Nigeria has not translated into a proportionate rise in spirituality and Godliness. Conversely, the phenomenal growth in the number of churches in Nigeria has simultaneously witnessed the steep rise in corruption in a scale, magnitude and sophistication that cannot be contemplated let alone be imagined.
The Nigerian paradox is in spite of the federal government’s efforts to curb the corruption menace through the instrumentality of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission (ICPC), among other anti-graft agencies, rather than abate, the situation has deteriorated such that, according to the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, 55 people, including government ministers and bankers, stole a total of N1.34 trillion ($6.8 billion) of public funds between 2006 and 2013.
It is against the backdrop of this sordid and deplorable state of affairs that we commend Osinbajo’s homily to religious leaders, who by virtue of their divine mandate are expected to ensure that their followers understand and put into practice the sacred teaching of mutual love, truth and justice as enshrined in the Scriptures. The idea of an individual or group of persons stealing public fund for personal gain is on one hand a legal wrong and on the other hand a violation of the sacred law, which is the primary duty of all religious leaders to protect and defend.
We, therefore, urge religious leaders to be the vanguards in the fight against corruption by shunning greed and materialism laid on their altars and concentrate in the spiritual and moral upliftment of their followers. Religious leaders must take up the gauntlet to speak against evil in all ramifications and discard the pervasive fad that projects demonstrably corrupt members as models of piety, accomplishment and Godly favour.
