The controversy surrounding Pastor William Kumuyi

Why are Nigerians slamming a popular preacher and what are his sins? There was a furor having something to do with something else, like the fulanization and Islamization of a country by Buhari.

Must a pastor watch the words he says with his own mouth in a church he has built with the sweat of his brows, for that matter, in a business he collects tithes from each Sunday to take care of his family?  Readers are asked to “Speak now or forever shut your damned mouth.”

What is the bottom line? The bottom line is the controversy that gave rise to the furor:. The furor is over  democracy which, like water, is fluid, always moving and not static. To keep democracy moving, we Nigerians are required to actively participate in making history with our ideas, input, and struggles.

Does Pastor Kumuyi realize that disagreements are good for democratic principles to take roots and that protests provide the best building blocks of democracy?  One who opposes citizens’ full participation is undemocratic and  is therefore enemy of the people.

Does Pastor Kumuyi hate his people? What Kumuyi fails to understand is that asking my people to keep silent in the face of egregious provocation is too much; it is like he’s the formidable enemy.

Why was the General Superintendent of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry, Pastor William Kumuyi, slammed as most formidable enemies are, for standing with Nigerians with APC membership cards who have been saying for long: “Don’t criticize PMB”?

Talking about a formidable enemy, can a pastor who preaches a seemingly harmless sermon be that public enemy that is tough, difficult, daunting, arduous, challenging? Does Pastor Kumuyi hate his people?

There was a tremendous furor when this poplar Nigerian preacher mounted unto his church’s pulpit to deliver a sermon. Everyone likes to hear a good sermon to help one go through the grind.

The grind is the tedium, the routine that characterizes daily life in Nigeria, usually the common “light no dey, water no day, food no dey” complaint, including particularly the pressure of mosquito bites that cause malaria. Besides, insecurity is another problem that gnaws at people’s hearts day and night.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Like most Nigerians, Mrs. Ade is not one to make something of controversies, especially when she reads the Bible daily, doesn’t pick up the Punch that has palaver plastered on every page.  She is not a woman  to get in the midst of esem okwu (Igbo for quarrels) nor does she understand the furor surrounding her favorite pastor.

 Mrs. Ade is lost, completely lost like one of those ten shekels a woman misplaced and swept the whole compound and still couldn’t find.

Last time Mrs. Ade went to Kumuyi’s church, she heard uplifting sermon about how a handful of corn flour and a few ounces of olive that never gave out in the house of a widow woman.

Courageous Mrs. Ade takes Pastor Kumuyi very seriously and knows that with Kumuyi preaching his sermons, she would not lack any good thing that comes from the Lord. She often goes home to share the gist of Kumuyi’s sermon with her heavily inebriated husband.

As she repeats Kumuyi’s sermon, she also informs her drunk husband that his inadequate control over his love affair with his mistresses-beers and liquor- is depleting their family bank account balance and threatening to force the landlord to throw the family of seven from their second-floor flat.

Her husband is Sunday Ade, a messenger at the Ministry of Education. Sunday has been inebriated since the couple’s wedding day at Kumuyi’s church many years ago..The smell of beer has never left Sunday Ade’s breath since that day even when he is  at the Ministry.

When he drinks, Sunday Ade is intoxicated, stone drunk, high, and he’s smashed mostly on weekend. Abstemiousness, moderation, or abstinence is not a word used to describe Mrs. Ade’s husband.

Why is there such a furor this time over Kumuyi? If you haven’t experienced a furor, it is a deafening nose made when there is uproar, outcry, commotion, controversy, or protest.

Nigeria is a place known for frequent furors, and the Nigerians are an uproarious set of people who feed on controversies as rats do in the house of cheese. We are hilarious, hysterical, funny, riotous, or raucous when something like furor agitates us .

Pastor Kumuyi was quoted as saying: “Don’t attack the president of the country, whether in words or in the newspapers or through the Internet. Honour kings. Don’t disrespect or dishonour the governors. Don’t disrespect leaders of the community and leaders in the church. If we are to honour the governors in the states, how much more the pastors,”

Newspaper boys reported that Kumuyi gave his don’t-criticize Buhari sermon as he spoke during a church service in Gbagada area of Lagos one Sunday morning.

Lagosians went crazy after the sermon. They went berserk, meaning that my people went totally crazy, and beside themselves; Biafrans were mad, and wild. The rest of the country went banana, with a few going nuts.  You could see murder in the eyes of die-hard Igbo people who felt marginalized. How dare?

What the hell was Kumuyi talking about? The purpose of this essay is to create an imaginary scenario depicting the import, significance of Kumuyi’s otherwise innocuous, harmless honor-the-king message.

The Nigerians didn’t think the sermon was a joke, they didn’t take the insult lying down, and they weren’t amused either.

It is often said that the party ain’t over until the fat lady sings, and that fat lady is none than the Umuahia man named Nnamdi Kanu who wants to carve out a separate nation from Kumuyi and Buhari’s world.

 Supporters, including Kumuyi’ wife and a bevy of fat choir girls agree that “Pastor Kumuyi is a respectable and responsible man of God, I like him; But we should allow him to speak his mind as God gives him utterance.” 

Opponents disagree. They say that that man went too far, and he ought to stay clear of politics which he does not understand. Why can’t he stay within his comfortable zone-saving souls going to hell? After all, opponents argue, ddn’t Jesus criticize Herod’s claim to be a god?  

Didn’t Apostle Peter declared his innocence  before judges pulled together to decide whether to stone him to death for heresy, and didn’t Peter say,“Fellows, we must obey God rather than man”?

Didn’t Jesus flog Igbo-like merchants desecrating the temple with their wares? What about prostitutes claiming to have received secret message from God after smoking one or more joints  of Indian hemp?

We are not going to worry about many embarrassing things like asking akwunakwunas (street prostitutes) about how much money they’ve made from male members belonging to Kumuyi’s church.

And we are not going to worry about whether Pastor Kumuyi remembers ever using hallucinogenic when he made that I-beg-you-to-respect-Buhari admonishment.

Hallucinogenic is a psychedelic, mind-altering, mind-expanding, mood-expanding drugs such as cocaine, LSD, and so forth.

If a thorough investigation of Christians’ use of intoxicants must be made, what do we suppose the survey would reveal?

Bear in mind that a discussion of use of drugs among church members is beyond the scope of this inquiry; and so is inquiry into whether Pastor Kumuyi has ever smoked marijuana or drank alcohol. Can we blame his sermon on overeating or excessive use of some substance?

Such inquiries are topics better left for subsequent essays. It’s a spicy, salacious, or scandalous subject. At this time, let’s respect the things of God.

Suffice it to say this: Pastor Kimuyu got in trouble when he preached a sermon that got the Nigerians furious and made Buhari and his supporters happy.

You are furious when you decide you are going to wage undeclared war with a man of God or with God. Some small-town preacher at a small Pentecostal church at Fort Valley had told the congregation: “Your hands are too short to box with God.”

The furor over Kumuyi’s sermon still rages on when Mrs. Ade gets into one of her husband’s drunken tirades after Sunday Gbadamosi Ade, a low level Ministry of Education messenger, joined the mob calling for Pastor Kumuyi’s blood.

Mrs. Ade said, “ Pastor is a righteous man, He saved our marriage when you drank all of the rent money away, didn’t he ?” Didn’t his prayers help?”

Mr. Ade responded, “oh yea. Oh yea. It helped a lot when I borrowed that money from my office workers. Where were he and Buhari when you were diagnosed with pancreatic disease and he was busy collecting tithes and the other man was laying around in a London hospital?”

Posted by Dr. James C. Agazie, jamesagazie@gmail.com; jamesagazies.blogspot.com

Posted Saturday, June 8, 2019