Pastor Perfect and the Poverty Poison

Today's Pastor Perfect is a different pastor... So hold your horses and give me a minute to run with this.

There I was this afternoon, racing home from Law School to blog like some complete loser... I turned on my stupid Mac Book (which by the way no one should even consider buying. By-pass the frikkin thing on the shelf, ignore the cheap price, and move on to a beta sumtin - the Power Book!). Oops... where was I? My Mac Book took forever to start up, I logged into my gmail account, did a little loser-ish dance because Mikoo had left a comment, and poised myself to talk about the issue that I thought was too good to be missed. I was going to do a review of the movie E-weezy, Dabs, Rukkyfrocks, Max and I watched last night, which was destined to have my few readers howling with laughter, and I was ready to begin.

Above the email that got me all giddy - "[Bitchy in the City] New comment on Pastor Perfect and his Poison Pen" - was a different email from Mikoo herself titled "Rev. King". I wasn't going to open it because I knew it was yet another Reuben Abati article (hehe) but decided to be gracious as she'd been so nice and left a comment on my blog.

Now.. I have no choice but to talk about the good Reverend King, because its just too good a flippin opportunity to pass up! Damn you Mikoo!

If you haven't read the article, I apologise, but there's no way I'm pasting up the whole thing. That Reuben dude is long-winded in every sense of the word. The article on Rev. King today was the first one, of the million Mikoo's sent, that I've actually managed to finish!

To summarise:

The good Rev. King, or sorry, "The Most Holiness Dr Reverend King", as he insisted on being called in Court, was a loon.

He used young women as sex slaves, hypnotised their dummy fathers, brothers and friends into handing them over, and required them to serve him naked and "warm" his bed.

He also "enslaved" his congregation who were required to pay a fine of N25,000 if they coughed during the service, and were flogged with rods, hit on their heads with sticks, or assigned a bedroom punishment (in the case of the ladies), when they were "naughty".

He was tried for the creme de la creme of actions after, on July 22 2006, he sprayed six members of his congregation with petrol and set them on fire because of his outrage at the fact that a prized sex slave of his, Vivian, had been unfaithful to him, and they had known about it.

During his trial for murder, he slapped a trial witness, refused to obey court procedures, and then promised to meet his persecutors at "the gate of judgement", after he was sentenced to death.

What comes to mind is the image of a deranged baboon who should've been locked up in Yaba Asylum and severely medicated from the date of his birth. The nut-ball thought himself to be the Christ, or if not the Christ, someone with direct access to God, who could "rain down fire on the whole world" with just a few words in a matter of minutes.

What's more astounding (although considering that these events took place in the Nigeria that we know and love, perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised) is the congregation members who stood by their "Daddy" and "Lord". While the mad man's trial lasted, his bearded followers insisted that he was merely being persecuted as Christ had been, and would triumph in the end!!

The writer of the article went on to blame the various Christian councils in Nigeria who he said should take more responsibility for investigating new churches and movements.

He also blamed the Nigerian government for creating conditions in which people are so poor and desperate that they turn to any fool or mongrel with the promise of miraculous solutions to their molue-load of problems.

Is anyone starting to think that "poverty" is being blamed for a few too many things these days? Poverty was blamed for the deaths of the hundreds of people who died at the Pipeline explosion in December, and poverty is now being blamed for the greed and opportunism that pushes certain people to extreme movements that they know are far from the truth. Forgive me for the generalisation, because we all know there were some real dummy donuts in there who thought Rev. King was their ticket to salvation. But then we also know that there were many others who decided they were going to follow a man, wicked as he was, because of the promises of a better car, house and recognition as a "big man" at home in the village.

Perhaps you could say that if people weren't so poor in the first place, then they wouldn't be lured and deceived by the mere promises of material comfort, which is fair enough. But then I just feel poverty is no excuse for being a fool. We instantly assume when we hear about people like Rev. King and that other wacko, T.B. Joshua, that their "flock" consists of the down and outs. But that isn't true! Rev. King's sex slaves were university graduates in search of the newest Louis Vuitton bag. T.B. Joshua's "converts" included (when I last saw a documentary about him) and still include teachers, clerks, and even some real dumb-ass white people who left the comforts of Scotland or wherever it is the two idiots I watched came from, to follow a man they believed to be true and good, even though he was sleeping with everything in sight and little children were being flogged in his Sunday School for refusing to sing testimony to " the mighty grace of T.B. Joshua, the man of God". I remember how creepy it was to see the words to the song written on the black board in their poky little room... I also find it incredibly creepy to see that I still remember the tune to the damn thing because I was just so appalled at the time that its obviously stayed in my mind!

Why is it that one lady who sells boli on the side of the road in Ajah will go racing to such a church come Sunday, whilst her neighbour, selling akara, won't? Or why is it that one little kid will rather chop the beating of the century than sing about the grace of T.B. Joshua, whilst another will happily chirp away and even earn brownie points because he has such a good voice?

I don't have the answer... So I'm leaving it there.