When I heard the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye (popularly known as Daddy G. O) ask for 10 people who can give 1 billion Naira each to build a new and larger auditorium for the church, I knew we may never hear the last of it. And true, there have been so many voices all condemning this act. But I see it this way. Perhaps if our government had been an effective and people-oriented one that makes it top priority to make life comfortable for the populace by providing jobs, good roads, regular supply of power, clean water, affordable healthcare for the masses, we won't have the enormous crowd who go to these churches looking for all kinds of breakthrough; and by that the RCCG may not need to build a 3KM auditorium.
And who is better? The politicians who steal public funds, stash the money in foreign accounts, buy houses in places where even Bill Gates and Aliko Dangote would think twice before doing so, change the cars of their girlfriends very regularly, and send their children to the best schools all over the world? Or the Pastors who earn their living by praying for a hopeless people, renewing their belief in a good Nigeria that is coming soon, and if God permits, heal their sicknesses that have defied all western and traditional medicines?
Imagine a woman who is heavily pregnant and has to sleep in a one-room apartment with her husband and one other child. There has been power outage for days, the internal heat she feels is unbearable, and they can't open the only window the room has because six out of their seven other neighbours use the 'I pass my neighbour' generator and the noise and fume will make sleeping worse and dangerous for them, and her husband can't afford to buy one from his meagre salary as a gateman in a school down the road. Then she manages to drift off to sleep only to wake up some 10 minutes later panting, because she has just escaped from the hands of a masquerade who wanted to suffocate her with a big black bag. This continues for days and PHCN remains out as usual. She shares the dream with her friend who says she should see a doctor because it's more of malaria. The doctor tests her, finds no malaria and tells her to just rest more. Yet the dream continues, and sadly, PHCN is still out. Do you know the next point of call for her? A church. Yes, to see a Pastor who will cast and bind the evil spirit tormenting her. But like my pastor would say, who won't have nightmares sleeping under that condition? Take her to a better house with enough space and ventilation, constant supply of power, add an air conditioning system to the room, then call me when she wakes up by noon the next day.
It's same with someone who eats meat and fish in the dream and believes some evil forces are trying to initiate her into something. Why won't she eat meat and fish in the dream when for about a month or more the only place she's been seeing them is in Iya Aganyin's pot when she goes to buy N70 bread and N30 beans just so she can eat a meal a day? And when the dream doesn't stop, she also heads for the church.
Consider the case of a family whose breadwinner had just won a huge Oil and Gas contract after many years of lobbying and praying, and maybe they have two children whom they struggled to see through school and who fortunately had just secured jobs in multi-national companies, only for these three to lose their lives in road accidents on the Benin-Ore Road at different but short intervals. Won't such family think it has more to do with the 'hand of the world' than with the simple fact that our roads are death traps? Won't they run to some Pastor somewhere for protection from the evil spirit that is 'cutting short their lives at the point of glory'?
And you now ask why we need a 3KM auditorium! Soon, we will need a 10KM auditorium to contain the increasing number of people who will keep thronging to the church for supernatural help as long as the government remains blind to the sufferings of the people.
Then it will be unfair to say the church is not doing anything to help or give back to the people. Almost every church has a Care Unit and very regularly they feed the hungry, take the homeless into shelters, sponsor young girls and women into starting up one trade or the other, teach young men crafts that can sustain them, rehabilitate drug addicts and sex hawkers, give indigent students scholarships, take food and clothes to prisons, do community development projects, visit hospitals to sponsor surgeries, and so on. And I don't think these acts are closed to the public, we just choose to call a dog a bad name so we can hang it.
The blame shouldn't be on the Pastor who asks for money to further propagate the gospel of the Lord and keep providing solace to those who need it. Even if we call them 'god of money' and all such names, it doesn't take away the fact that if not for religion in one form or the other, we could have got to a point when Sodom and Gomorrah would have paled in comparison to Nigeria. The whole blame should be on the 10 people who can afford a billion Naira each (whether looted, stolen, earned, inherited, found or given) to build for God but have people in their States, cities, villages, towns, neighbourhood, and even in their local churches, who are jobless, hungry, sick and homeless. As long as religion remains the opium of the Nigerian masses, we will never stop paying for it.
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