Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor is at pains to wriggle himself out of a crisis. If it were someone else, it would have been a misdemeanour.
But Oritsejafor is a Man of God, and Christian that leads a flock of disciples, among them, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who by virtue of being the Number 1 citizen is the Number 1 disciple. Together they have performed the pilgrimage to Israel, and just last Sunday, Pastor Oritsejafor led the service at the National Ecumenical Centre in Abuja, in prayers to mark the 2014 National Day. The amicable association between Pastor Oritsejafor and President Goodluck Jonathan is therefore never in doubt.
Oritsejafor is also the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, the umbrella body that covers all Christian Churches in Nigeria. He was first elected in July 2010, And in so doing, became the first Pentecostal leader to hold the position. Then again in later years, the National Assembly of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) at its 9th session in Abuja re-elected Ayo Oritsejafor as President for another three years. Although in all his speeches, the CAN President had continued to pledge his purpose to unite the Church, his tenure has been marked by first the departure of the enormous Catholic Church from the body, and a more cold than lukewarm attitude from the Anglican and other orthodox Protestant Churches. Without doubt the cause is the closeness of Pastor Oritsejafor to President Goodluck Jonathan, within a multiparty democracy and blatantly mismanaged to the chagrin of other members of the Nigerian body of Christ.
Trouble began on Septem-ber 5th 2014, when South African police impounded a Nigerian registered private jet at Lanseria Airport, north-west of Johannesburg, with two Nigerians and an Israeli citizen as passengers, who reports said, were trying to take $9.3m (about N1.5bn), in cash into the country.
This according to South African laws was an illegal act. As a matter of fact, the South African Revenue Service has seized the funds.
This breaking news became even more controversial when it was reported that the impounded aircraft belonged to the CAN President Oritsejafor and the Nigerians became more apprehensive at the revelation in South Africa that the money was intended for the purchase of arms and other military hardware. Although the South African arrests were made on September 5, it took a whole 10 days before the matter became public in Nigeria, where local newspapers were quoting South African Media reports. First, a statement admitted that indeed, the aircraft belonged to Pastor Oritsejafor but was on lease to an airline charter company from whom it was again chartered for the South African trip. Then the rumour mill went into an uproar with notions that it was a mission to procure arms illegally. Given the implications of the involvement of Pastor Oritsejafor in a country long on edge for religious and ethnic crisis, ominous signs of strife filled the air.
Then it was made known that the Federal Government owned the impounded foreign exchange, further compounding the issues. Since this news break, one would have thought the Federal Government would take clear actions that protected our already not so impressive image in the international community. Sadly no reasonable explanation has been made other than more of our democratic institutions getting mired in more scandals. An attempt to table the issue on the floor of the National Assembly was torpedoed by the House Leadership, but not before a scandal broke that the Legislators may have been offered $5,000 each to keep a lid on the matter.
Pastor Oritsejafor has eventually taken a step he should have taken earlier, which was to take the matter to his constituency, the Church first, and thereafter, the public for an explanation. Explaining his role in the whole saga to an emergency meeting of the expanded National Executive Council, NEC, of CAN in Abuja, Pastor Oritsejafor denied any involvement or knowledge of the deal to buy arms in South Africa. He admitted that the aircraft was indeed his own, “presented to me as a gift by members of our congregation and ministry partners worldwide at the 40th anniversary of my call into the ministry.” Pastor Oritsejafor told the CAN top shots that contrary to beliefs, the private jet was not a gift to him by President Jonathan.
Said Pastor Oritsejafor, “In order to ameliorate the cost of maintenance of the aircraft, I sought and got permit to allow the aircraft fly in and out of Nigeria..... I leased the aircraft on August 2, 2014 to a company to run it. It was the leasee that entered into an agreement with the people who carried out the transfer of funds. Having leased the aircraft to the Green Coast Produce Company Limited, any transaction undertaken with the aircraft can no longer be attached to me.”
Were Oritsejafor to have stopped here, Nigerians should not have had problems with him. He owns the jet. He leased it in a normal business transaction and indeed, unless found to be otherwise, he stands absolved of the operations of the aircraft. But he is Ayo Oritsejafor, CAN President who quite often made statements on the nation’s insurgency challenge that were quite at variance with Jesus’ teaching, that left Christians in the North in great difficulty. His aircraft enmeshed in money laundry related to black market gun running is highly immoral and demands not only reproach, but humility from a man of God that God is indeed dealing with.
My worry is that Pastor Oritsejafor does not want to go down alone in his mess and reportedly told the CAN ExCo, that “In as much as I am shocked and distressed by the incident, I wish to appeal to Christians in Nigeria to remember that a war has been waged against the Nigerian Church. This war is being fought on many fronts and this unfortunate incident is another dimension in the assault against the Church.”
This is preposterous and unacceptable, and should be condemned by every Christian, particularly in the North. Did Oritsejafor say so when he took the lease money? The nation’s insurgency challenge is the outcome of a cocktail of problems borne out of political machinations, governance failure, runaway corruption, and a Presidency that has not been decisive in dealing with the situation. It is by the special grace of God that religious war of attrition and retaliation did not break out, in spite of acts to provoke it.
When the global church members bought Oritsejafor the aircraft, did they not reckon with maintenance such that the man of God would not soil his name and hands in the devil’s alternative to serving God - the service of mammon? Thank God we have the example laid bare by our Lord Jesus who used a donkey offered by a one told “the master has need of it”. Did Jesus go on after that to use the donkey for a haulage company? Immorality and corruption in high places is at work, and this was Oritsejafor’s sermon at the Ecumenical Centre Sunday, not “that enemies of Christians were fuelling the division of CAN.”
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