Onaiyekan and His Bishops, By Sam Omatseye

John Onaiyekan once basked in the plaudits of everyone. But that was until he revealed his true colour over the 2023 elections. He vowed never to vote for President Bola Tinubu. His grouse? Muslim-Muslim ticket.

I wonder why anyone expected him to be fair to the president. He has swathed himself as an adversary. He carries the air of a holy man, speaks with reference to scripture and deadpans like an avenging angel. When anchors and reporters speak to him, he never declares his partisan position, and they never remind him. In modern journalism, the report will remind viewers that he is no partisan saint. So, he is reported and interviewed as though he came out of the Holy See, unstinted. That is poor journalism, and we have a lot of that these days.

So, when he breached the courtesy of his visit to the President recently, he spoke like a man without a blemish. If he did not vote for the president over Muslim-Muslim ticket, has anyone asked him to answer whether President Tinubu has governed as Muslim or as a fellow citizen? Has he counted his appointees and has found them lopsided? Even some Muslims have griped about so many Christians on his payroll.

The basis of his grouse, if it was because he feared a Muslim wave in government, has been neutralised. So, his beef has no bearing on the holy of holies. He should confess as his folks do to him in the sanctuary. Or else, he qualifies as a pharisee.

In his Arise interview, he said the president said all is fair in politics. He concludes that he plans to rig the elections. He even contradicts himself. He says even if the elections are free and fair, the outcome will not be credible. You see, before you rise to be a bishop, you go through not only the scriptural furnace. Cardinals and bishops are brewed as robust intellectuals. The Catholic Church churns out many a PHDs, and some of them speak with rigour. The ADC hireling Chidi Odinkalu described his sterling academic laurel as the best in northern Nigeria. I wonder how a man so well-educated chops logic. He says something that is fair begets a foul outcome? Again, he was not asked to reconcile his assertion with the context of President Tinubu’s words. The president said all is fair so long as there was an equal opportunity. Did he hear that, or his ears edited the president? Did the president not say he will not hand his opponents a red carpet? Did he expect Tinubu to go coy into battle? His ears did not hear that. Tears for his ears. As a certain saviour said, those who have ears to hear…his anchor did not even challenge him when he questioned INEC’s neutrality. Does he have evidence? He says President Tinubu should not appoint INEC officers. Does this man read the law?

He should have been asked the big goof of the visit. The prelates wanted schools to return to the missions. They received a tutorial instead. The president told them, in not so many words, to read not only the Bible, but bible of the country: the constitution. He said it was not in the remit of the president to return schools to the missions. These prelates are very clever people. Some of them have PHD. I am sure they have heard of the word federalism, and in case they did not, something must have gone wrong with their education. I doubt it. Prejudice stunts the minds of clever people. President Tinubu educated them that it was the job of governors to return schools to the missions. And if they did not know, he did a stellar job of that as the first citizen of Lagos State.

The visit was not ready to give the president any credit. Even their language about NELFUND was couched in grudging semantics as they quickly drew attention to the moratorium on private universities as though there was no reason for it. That is, corruption and standards. The same in their rhetoric about security. If you read their submissions, they conceded Oriire and a few other triumphs only to inundate the following lines with a sentiment of official impotence.

They spoke without history or context as though the president brought insecurity. There were no nuances or caveats. It was the sort of writing that a professor would give a D. They appeared at Aso Villa as toadies for applause, apologies to Greek playwright Euripides in his play Hecuba. The bishops’ language was not sober, but juvenile, written in the exuberance of student union activists. It sometimes had the register of an anarchist as when they warned of one-party state. It was not the rhetoric of the Holy See since it rippled with the vanity of a pagan rather than a pulpit. It was not written with canonical restraint or pause or even Catholic subtlety.

We have had Catholics speak in the past like Olubunmi Okogie. No one should begrudge them when they weaponise a fiery tongue. But even at that, there must be an empirical ballast and context. This was conscience without context.

On the economy, they said the nation is bleeding. Quite a phrase. Is it bleeding with the arrests of the Ansaru kingpins, the rescue of over 200 in Borno, foiling the kidnap of Poly students in the area, or the joint efforts that eliminated the top tier goons of al Qaeda? With regard to the economy, Onaiyekan says the president said the economy is fine. His speech for applause was without context as well. Did he, like their leader’s speech, put the economy in context? I would like to refer them to the story of the Bible when the people of Israel wanted to escape Pharoah’s lashes and Moses led them to the solitude of the wilderness. Some of them started romanticising their days of tyranny under Pharoah. Until God gave them manna. They also griped. Was Onaiyekan with his Catholic buddies not in this country when everyone agreed that fuel subsidy should go? Were the figures not public knowledge about the trillions owed in ways and means? Was that not bleeding. Are we on ways and means today? Are we bleeding when the reserves rise from $4 billion to 40 billion? Are we bleeding if we can turn billions to help students pass through schools and give billions in loans to businesses? Is it bleeding when major arteries are being restored in roads and bridges? is it bleeding when state governors have received more money today than they ever did? Have they held state governments to account? Is it fair to believe all can be done in a few short years given the cavernous hole dug for the government? They did not even address these. The president has said over and over that we lived in false times. It was what Europe went through that was called the Locarno honeymoon. When the truth came, the continent plunged into depression and despots like Hitler and the Sawdust Caesar (Mussolini) exploited it to bully their people with illiberal systems.

One would appreciate it if they can also look at their candidate Obi. Rather than answer whether he built new schools as governor, he said he cut some grass. He took the baton from another boisterous fellow who was secretary to the government. Obi the grasscutter. If they want to be fair, let us know whether the Catholic Church chided PDP when it had 31 states under its bosom. As Babatunde Fashola (SAN) said, anger is not a strategy. The bible says “be ye angry but sin not.” Let them come, as Prophet Isaiah enjoined, and reason together.

In the language of lawyers, the bishops thought they came to equity, but were their hands clean?