By Festus Adebayo
A high-pitched scandal is ripping through episcopal space in Nigeria. It is the confession by Busola Dakolo, wife of famous artiste, Timi Dakolo, of how she went through a traumatic rape experience in the hands of founder of the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA), Biodun Fatoyinbo. The Pastor is alleged to have been embroiled in several other sexual scandals. According to her, the two rape ordeals that occurred in a week in the hands of Fatoyinbo took place while she was a member of the church, first at her parents’ home and the second, in a secluded road path. Fatoyinbo has denied this allegation.
With no prejudice to the eventual unraveling of the truth of this allegation against Fatoyinbo, otherwise men of God are becoming predators in the Nigeria of today, no thanks to the pervasive hopelessness that successive governments have unleashed on Nigeria. Having lost hope in governments and their promises of hope and redemption, there is today a huge traffic on the road of the spiritual, comprising travelers who hope that perhaps, there lie remedies to the harrowing pains of their earthly existence. “Men of God” thus exploit this hopelessness and prey on congregants’ desperation for the comforts of life and thirst for quick fixes to their existential problems.
The plethora of crises of existence in Nigeria – joblessness, sudden loss of jobs, flight of peace in the family, poverty, decline in social status, avoidable sicknesses and diseases, doctors’ ignorance and mis-diagnoses of common ailments, deaths as cheap as syringes – among others, are on the upswing. Smart Alecs who parade themselves as men of God thus exploit the situation to their advantages. Every social crisis and common ailment are interpreted by them as spiritual affliction, with an introduction of the age-long African witch/adversary next door theory as responsible for the problems. Your mother, stepmother, your spouse, or that old woman in your village must be preying on your happiness, a la these spiritual vermin. And because women are the most passion-driven of the genders, they fall prey easily to these fraudsters masquerading as men of God. In the process, they are hypnotized, sexually assaulted while some leak their family vaults to satisfy these charlatans.
The huge multiplication of churches, mosques and the frequency of Nigerians’ visits to hawkers of metaphysical redemption are all indications of the hopelessness that is spreading like bushfire in the harmattan in Nigeria. Biodun Fatoyinbo may well be one of the millions of latent, now manifest sex and cash predators in cassock who afflict our sick land. This pestilence can never be cured; its only antidote is good governance.
OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS PIECE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORS AND NOT OF PROCYON NEWS, IT’S EDITORS OR PUBLISHERS.
