Former Special Adviser on Media to the former governor of Enugu and current governor of Oyo States, Dr. Festus Adedayo, has said that there may be revolt by the congregation if the church does not get involved in the process of electing God-fearing persons into government in the 2019 elections.
He made this known in a lecture he delivered at the Seminar Series of the Ibadan Anglican Church Diocese, held at the Comfort Akinfenwa Events Hall, Molete, Ibadan on Tuesday with Bishop of Ibadan Anglican Diocese, The Most Revd Joseph Akinfenwa in attendance.
Adedayo said that because governments are proving incapable of and are showing helplessness at solving people’s problems of existence, they run to the church for succor.
“Governments are literally throwing their hands up in surrender. The perils and pains are proving intractable for secular powers-that-be to handle. Unemployment has reached a crescendo; economic, health and social crises have proven really indomitable, in spite of coordinated attempts to tackle them. Hopelessness is becoming infectious like a pestilence and the world, which had made governments and technology its hope, is returning to the Church for the way out of its existential dilemma,” he said.
According to him, if Nigeria is not successful in electing God-fearing men and women into positions of power in 2019, who will in turn ameliorate the heavy load which the church carries, the pressure on the church would multiply, probably leading to a revolt of immense proportion.
“As predicted in II Timothy 3:1 which says, ‘but know this, that in the last days, perilous times will come,’ the perilous times are actually here and science and technology are profoundly incapable of providing solutions to the pains suffered by humanity. The perilous times are the existential void, agony and crises that man undergoes today. The pains man underwent decades ago are little compared to his challenges today. The Church is still where people frequent for solutions to these existential crises and where they get “spiritual fixes” whenever they get to inexplicable crossroads of their lives,” he said.
He called on the church to wake up from its apathy of the past towards politics and the process of acquiring political power.
“You cannot blame the church wholesale for this. The church had been driven away from having anything to do with the process of seeking power. The backstabbing, murder, corruption, occultist search for power and sundry vices of politicking in Nigeria would make anyone who has integrity to protect to see politics and politicians as lepers. Due to the abdication of space by the righteous for the unrighteous to reign, the worst of us have superintended over the best of us, while the collective keeps silent. For how long will the righteous stay on the sideline and allow the heathens to foul up Nigeria?
“Not only must it come out of its hiding place, the church must take full and undisguised interest in who runs for offices, from the minutest to the biggest office in the land. It must move against the reprehensible set of people who contest elective offices and who have, over the years, drawn Nigeria backwards. The church must also wholeheartedly goad on and support the few good ones in society who demonstrate purity of mind and character,” he said.
The Seminar series also included another lecture on security consciousness by the church.
Packaged by Alice Egbedele
