The Rogue Church: Jonathan’s Italian Church For Favour By Sunday Njokede

Lucky Dube, the late South African
reggae singer once sang that
“prison, prison” is the only thing
European supremacists freely build
and donate to Africans. The Church
is another oddity that Caucasians
give as gift to Africans at freewill.
Lucky Dube had wondered why
Europeans keep building prison,
prison instead of schools and
hospitals. Meanwhile, last month,
the German President Christian
Wulff resigned from his duty post
for two ‘simple’ reasons of conflict of
interest.
On the one hand, the onetime
German President was accused of
accepting a sponsored holiday trip
from one of his friends.
Secondly, he was said to have
collected a five hundred thousand
Euro loan from another of his friend.
His sin here was that his friend had
offered him the loan with a cheap
interest rate payback. Germans
were crossed with anger and unable
to understand why their president
should get a cheap loan from his
friend. When indeed ordinary
Germans borrow money from
conventional banks with high
cutthroat interest rates Germans
started to lambast, criticise and
abuse their former president
immediately the scandal broke
loose.
They told Christian Wulff with all
due ridicule to step aside. The
disgrace from German people
quickly reached a crescendo. And as
result, when their ex-president
could not take it anymore, he
wilfully resigned from office. With
the sole aim to protect the German
presidency from international
ridicule.
President Jonathan should
henceforth resign his appointment
to save our people and statecraft
from disgrace.
If Germany were to be Nigeria, some
funny Jonathan supporters could
have sermonised then rationalised
the inequities of Christian Wulff.
They could have passed his abuse
of office as best presidential and
democratic normality. Germany is
not Nigerian. Back home, Jonathan’s
fans have been turning moral
reason upon its own head over the
Italian church-for-favour gift. They
have since declared Mr Jonathan
their principal as the next best thing
to come out of Africa. To them, it is
OK that Jonathan brushed ethics
aside and collected a church
building gift from Italian firm
handling government contracts.
President Jonathan had, out of self-
announcement bragged of receiving
a church as gift from Gitto an Italian
firm doing government contract.
The incident happened in the
president’s hometown of Otuoke,
during a dedication of the said
rogue church. This particular goofy
insensitivity of the president is one
blunder too many. It has been
ranging about town like wildfire as
expected of this magnitude of
presidential abuse of office. The
Water Gate scandal which drove
Richard Nixon from US presidency is
minuscule compared to the by-now
Jonathan’s church-gate
indiscretion. Few years ago, the
Israeli president Mr Moshe Katsav
resigned from office because he
slept with junior female worker way
back before he became president. I
don’t know how to compare this
Jonathan’s latest sin with erstwhile
Israeli’s president’s own without
telling the man from Bayelsa to
resign forthwith.
We have had parents sleep with
their son’s wife in Nigeria and get
away with it. But believe me. This
present irrational corruption of
President Jonathan is not going
away any time soon. This bribe is
unlike his many other official gaffes
which melt away before morning.
Like contaminated water would
make dirty waves. Some further
nagging issues have popped out
from President Jonathan’s self-
announcement of requesting from,
and accepting a gift of church
building from an Italian company
undertaking government contracts.
It’s not every day you hear leaders
tell the world openly that they have
committed impeachable offence of
conflict of interest. That is. The
president has trampled upon the
constitution Instead of safeguarding
and making it his watchword. Let
him go.
President Jonathan’s Otueke Church
Gate scandal has pushed a core
matter to the front. That is that.
Nigerians who have been urging the
president to undertake an
intelligent quotient evaluation test
have been rightly so vindicated.
There are those who have been
telling President Jonathan to take an
IQ test and make it public. They are
right on cue after all now.
Nigerians who seriously lampoon
and criticise the president are doing
a national duty. I know this
firsthand from how Germans
pounced upon their bygone
president Mr Wulff after abusing his
office. If Germans had tolerated
such brazen abuse of office by their
president: he probably would not
have resigned. Richard Nixon
could’ve stayed put and the
onetime Israeli president might just
have been throwing swipes at
opposition parties who ask him to
step aside. He too, probably would
still have been there like Jonathan if
his countrymen and women were
complacency.
Taking an IQ test will not do after
the president could not know that a
church gift constitute conflict of
interest. Jonathan should step
further by taking a mental test. It is
worth the while to know the
saneness or otherwise of our
leaders. There is nothing wrong with
the president showing us the report
about his IQ evaluation result
coupled with proof of his mental
state of health. Leaders around the
world are taking all kind of health
examinations and bringing the
results to their citizens in good faith.
President Obama had even at a
time; shown his birth certificate to
prove doubting Thomases wrong
that he was not a foreign born.
Likewise most Nigerians have
indicated interest to see the
president Jonathan PhD thesis all to
no avail. Dream on! You are
expecting all that from a president
that has not had the decency to do
ordinary tax declaration and make it
public.
Nigerians who criticise Jonathan
seriously aren’t belittling his office.
Nor are they agent provocateurs as
hypocrites and sycophants are
branding them. The Jonathan’s
lapdogs that badmouth his critics
and call them names should be
ignored. As a matter of fact, it is
President Jonathan that has been
bringing disgrace and shame to our
statecraft and the Nigerian people.
In effect, Jonathan owes Nigerians
change for desecrating our ship of
state and shaming all of us thereby.
By donating church to Jonathan
instead of schools and hospitals the
Italian contracting firm Gitto has
confirmed that it is an apartheid
and colonial corporate entity. The
firm has not only brought to the
limelight, it has also reminded us
one again that donating church as
gift has been a longstanding legacy
of slave masters from time
immemorial. Gitto and other White
supremacist entities around the
world today can never donate
benefitting things of note to
Africans. Welcome Gitto the slave
master, the president as the slave
and the Otuoke rogue church as
symbol of European continuing
oppressive monument plenty of
which are scattered all over Africa