Be Prepared and Obey the Law: A Practical Lesson taught by Brother Francis Thomas McCrea

by oafak

Debo Awosika-Olumo (Aka Bobo) -1970-74 set
President GHMIGROUP INC. Fellow of American College of Epidemiology and Professor of Public Health Administration University of Maryland Global Campus

There are many lessons of “be prepared” taught by Brother Thomas, during my memorable time at Saint Joseph’s College Ondo.
While in form 1, one of our new entrants, Mr. Henry Fasedemi (Jaguar), brought boxing gloves to the school. This experience made many of us venture into boxing as one of the recreation sports in the school. Brother Thomas got interested in this sport and bought more gloves, and also gave the rule that no one should hit anyone in the abdomen (tummy) during weight classified bouts. There was this particular day, I was wearing a top over my navy-blue shorts instead of the khaki shorts after classes. Brother Thomas gave a go-ahead to the person I was fighting with to hit me in the stomach. This individual hit me in the tummy as instructed by a wink from Brother Thomas. I was expecting brother Thomas to discipline the guy that flouted the rule, instead, he told me to go and change and wear the correct dress code for the period. Hence, the joke was on me. The next “be prepared” lesson was when some of the new entrants brought different musical instruments to the school. We started a ragtag musical group. Brother Thomas got interested and decided to make the group more formal with the acquisition of more sophisticated musical instruments. He decided to go to Ibadan with some students to buy the new musical instruments. Fortunately, some of us were just strolling around. Of the four-six of us strolling around, only two students were wearing the correct dress code. He stopped and told dress code folks to go and change to their colors and accompanied him to Ibadan. These two experiences taught me the lesson, to always be prepared and obey the constituted laws of any community of residency.

Bobo
I am grateful to God that I have the opportunity to share these two experiences on how God used a man early in my life to teach me this important lesson of life.

Happy Birthday and Many Happy Returns of the Day in perfect health Brother Francis Thomas McCrea

A Ride of My Life

by oafak

Olurinde Ebenezer Lafe [SJC315 (1965-69)]
Chairman, The MIDATCO Group, Bentleyville, Ohio, USA
Former Director, Center for Renewable Energy Technology and Professor, School of Engineering & Engineering Technology, Federal University of Technology, Akure.

Lafe

The year was 1966. I was in my second year at St Joseph’s College (SJC). It was during one of the holidays. I was leisurely strolling on the road in front of our family home in Igunrin Street, Ondo. An old VW car drove by. The driver and I made full eye contact. It was Brother Thomas! He recognized me. He reversed to where I was. We chatted for a few seconds. He then asked if I would like to go for a ride. I enthusiastically responded, “Yes!”
I hopped into the car and had a ride of my life with Brother Thomas. We drove to Ile-Oluji. We talked about so many subjects under the sun. The 15-year-old me had tons of questions. For example, I asked him why our school uniform wasn’t the traditional Yoruba outfit. He calmly explained to me that our school uniform, as designed, was best suited for all the academic and vigorous extracurricular activities we engaged in as students. I was thrilled. I was on the proverbial Cloud 9!
The Snakes
A constant and perpetual wonder for SJC students was the boldness and dexterity with which Brother Thomas handled snakes. An open discussion came up in our class one day. Many of us believed Brother Thomas must possess some magical powers to pick up snakes without any fear. Our classroom teacher decided to chime in. He told us Brother Thomas had the same issues we had with snakes when he first arrived in our neck of the woods. Brother Thomas went back to North America and took it upon himself to read books on snakes. He educated himself and developed the uncanny knowledge to decipher between venomous and non-venomous snakes. The discussion opened my young teenage mind. Just like Brother Thomas was able to overcome the conventional fear by acquiring knowledge on the crawling, elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles, I too can develop mastery of obstacles by studying to unravel the mystery surrounding what we fear.
The Waiver
I was a day student in my last 3 years at SJC. Around the time of our WASC exams in 1969, a nighttime fire incident in my house had burnt the majority of my personal belongings including books and clothes. My school uniforms had also gone up in smoke. Some of my native “Ankara” native clothing escaped the fire. Undeterred, I put on a set of the Ankara “Buba and ṣokoto” that survived the fire and decided to go to school. I went straight to Brother Thomas to recount the story of the fire and why I was in traditional attire. He sympathized with me. He then chose to give me an unconventional waiver from the requirement to wear the school uniform. I enjoyed that waiver until the end of our school term.
The Affirmation
About a year after leaving SJC, a close senior relative and I traveled to Ondo from Lagos. We made a quick stop at SJC to check on his son who was a new student at SJC. Brother Thomas was on the school grounds. My relative shared with me later the private chat with Brother Thomas during the visit when my name came up. Brother Thomas told him, “He is a gentleman.” My senior relative was so impressed by that brief comment made by Brother Thomas. He repeated that story for years to scores of our family members. Learning about the opinion of Brother Thomas, my Secondary School Principal, about me was a major morale booster while embarking on my undergraduate studies in engineering at the University of Lagos.
The Lessons of Life
I recall Brother Thomas, with his long flashlight, going from dormitory to dormitory early in the mornings and late at night. He was dutifully checking that all was well with us. I marveled at his skill and fearlessness in handling those snakes we saw regularly in SJC. His selflessness, devotion, and dedication gave us a solid foundation and valuable lessons during our beginning years. I was highly privileged and enormously blessed to have been trained, mentored, and influenced by Brother Francis Thomas McCrea. Happy 90th Birthday, Brother Thomas!

Letting Us Have Our Fun

by oafak

Omotayo (Cornelius) Fakinlede (SJC 518: 1966-71)
Professor, University of Lagos

It was late in the year 1970. The prefects for the next year had been appointed. This included several of our classmates such as Segun Filani – Senior Prefect, Juwon Awosika, etc. It was only form five students that were normally exempted from regular housework which included cutting grass, compound cleaning, etc. A number of us, some of whom felt bad that we were not so appointed, refused to do housework and obey our classmates that had just been given power. We constituted ourselves into what we called “The Supremes of SJC”. We even went to the usual classroom front and took a group photograph and we made ourselves a rival power block. The new prefects could not control us and, I believe, they must have gone to report the matter to the Principal, Brother Thomas.
He came to hostels one afternoon and rounded all of us up; he had bought brand new cutlasses for each of us. He came fully dressed in his own Khaki on Khaki. Seeing our principal in his Khaki uniform defeated our ability to refuse to be so dressed. And he marched us towards the piggery and asked us to start cutting the trees for the firewood needed to make our meals in the school kitchen, himself leading the way! We did that, with him, every afternoon from 4:00 pm until the end of the year. That ended our rebellion.

Brother Thomas
Brother Thomas with Omotayo Fakinlede near City Hall, Toronto. June 2018

One late afternoon, as we were walking towards the piggery, Brother Thomas in front, the rest of us, no exceptions, followed to the usual workplace. I took my cutlass, pretending I wanted to cut off his head! The remaining pupils burst into uproarious laughter. I enjoyed it so much that I did it repeatedly, and we laughed. Brother Thomas looked back and asked: “Why are you laughing?” We all pretended there was nothing causing the laughter. He just went with us, made us cut the trees as we were supposed to do. And that was it. I needed to grow up many years later to realize that Brother Thomas was fully aware of my buffoonery; He was simply allowing us to have our fun. That was what we thought we were: The Supremes of SJC just because we reached the end of the year in form four!

NB. I have not been able to locate the photo we took at that time. It had the caption “The Supremes of SJC. Please if anyone can find it, it will be a good picture to post here.

Mr Omodunmiju Akinyose 1939-2021

by oafak

Mr Dunmiju Akinyose: My Brother!
Where do I begin to talk about the recently departed Mr Omodunmiju Akinyose? To us in the Fakinlede family, he was many things. More than a Brother-in-law: A brother. He was a consummate father. He was more than a husband to our dear sister, Adunni, he was a soulmate and friend. He was deep, jovial, and relaxed.
Sister Adunni – the oldest child in the Fakinlede family was passing through her early twenties – a beautiful and desirable young woman. And I was nine years old. How did I know?
We greatly misunderstand young people and often underestimate what they know. They gather a map of the world so fast from the data they receive from adults and make an accurate, realistic judgment of the world around while adults continue to supply information by saying all sorts while they are around.
Young people can also be as vain as adults as they drink from the same wells of virtue and of vice. Add that to the fact that in our time, our father stubbornly refused to read his letters by himself – preferring to ask us to read them to him. It is interesting to note that the same man read his bible to pieces by himself! This fact made my 9–12-year-old mind – quite a knowledgeable one. I read the marriage proposals to Baba. I read the letters of discord, of broken relationships and of formal wedding contracts! I was a scribe – at age eleven!
The genesis of the relationship between my sister and Mr Akinyose was well documented in my mind. And, coming shortly after the end of another relationship, I had taken sides. And I was not on Mr Akinyose’s side! My main beef with him was that he had no car! How dare him marry my sister when he did not have a car!
Character? Who cares about such an unnecessary superfluity called character? I just wanted to see my sister driven about in a car and Akure Town seeing her in splendor! Handsome? The only handsome things were vehicles! Give me the least attractive person in a car, I was OK!
Secrets! Of course, I never shared this with anyone! I just kept it to myself! My father himself did not have more than his two bicycles, but I thought that my sister was of a higher quality – fit only for those that had pleasure cars!
I do not remember attending the wedding in 1968 but saw the several times that Sister and her new husband visited Baba at his shop near the central motor park. I still have a tape of that motorcycle and her sitting position. And in my mind, I would be thinking of her inside a car if she had made a different choice!
Then the children came! Then we visited at the School of Agriculture. After this the family grew. Then they drove their own car. Then they became more prosperous. Then they owned their own houses. Then he retired from government service. Then they lived in the village. Then he went into politics and became the Chair of the local Government. And at last, they had Segun – the only one remaining at home with sister rejoicing that, but for him, the house would have been empty!
It was always a joy to visit this family each time I passed by Ore on our way from visiting in-laws in the Delta. He was either at home or relaxing with friends – sometimes playing draughts.
We met on many family occasions. The last major of which was at Mama Talabi in Ikole (2002) where we were lodged together in this large hotel by anty Lucy.
It was that late night talk that I saw into the father’s heart of the Man, Dunmiju Akinyose. His concern that night was Nireti Oke and their early married life struggles in Warri with stability in jobs, business as they grew their family. Breaking down his children’s different situations and the worry in the mind of a father that night was a glimpse into the consummate father’s heart.
I arrived late after the Thompson’s wedding in 1996. I still remember the friendly scolding he gave me from a surprising side. “Ana mi, we kan ya duro timi die”. Why did I not come to stay a while to console him that his darling daughter was leaving! He said it half-jokingly and half seriously.
Seeing all these children grown up to the state they are today and the deep family values they share tell me two things: The end of a journey is much more than the beginning thereof. And the most important asset for growing the family is not early wealth, but early stability!
I know several other families that started stronger from a financial or social standing. The end is not fully determined by that! Mr Dunmiju Akinyose was blessed with a deeply effective family with family values and results that beat many with better starting positions.
Apart from family stability, this family also had deep religious roots and community roots. And since the burial service emphasized the religious depth, I concentrate on the community roots. These are all related values. None exists independently of the others!
Mr Akinyose did not become a local Government chair the way many politicians do: Just find a way to get a high office and enjoy the perquisites! No. He was a man connected deeply to his roots. He lived his life in the community! He did not live in Abuja or Lagos, and suddenly came to the community to establish an address for political purposes! Sister Adunni herself often surprised me in speaking – not standard Yoruba nor our Akure dialect. She spoke (and still speaks) the language of Odigboland! Even when talking to us, her siblings, her Akure is now suspect. This family trait has deep effects on the children! The language is just the visible part of the cultural depth. If the children have lost this, as I think they may have – following the trend of speaking only in another tongue to their family – they, like many modern families have not passed to their children, they cultural advantage they had! That cultural identity that can make Olu Akinyose spend so much time at home in these times and still feel connected is a deep portion of the cultural roots that propelled all of them to succeed in foreign lands! They know who they are, and they know where they come from!
We morn the loss of our dear brother, Dunmiju Akinyose. And I ask myself, what does the future hold for his widow? Sometimes you wonder if the loneliness and sense of loss that follow a successful marriage are not points to discourage it! Well, the loss is not only a loss and a lonely afterwards. It is also a time full of memories. The tape of life and memories are some of the rewards of the successful life of a relationship like Mr & Mrs Akinyose. When you now add the strength of the well-connected families of Yemi Thompson, Nireti Oke, Duti Olayinka, Olu and Segun, these well-connected families, scattered over the world and helping one another is perhaps the most desirable way for the end to come. How else would you want it?
To you, my sister, I am sending you this private note to let you see some parts of your life from your little brother’s view. Meanwhile, I commend you to the mighty grace of God; more than able to sustain you at this time and for the rest of life. May you live long and healthy to continue as a rock of reference for those that mourn the loss of Mr Akinyose. And may they continue to be worthy ambassadors of that great legacy. Amen!

Professor Babatunde Ayodeji Ogunnaike 1956-2022

by oafak

It is tempting, as one sees the flood of tributes that naturally follow the news of Tunde’s departure, to feel complacent and assume there may be no need to say anything. Afterall, Tunde Ogunnaike is the closest we get to a polymath. His life influenced people in several seemingly unrelated ways. That brings in friends from a wide variety of human interests that, on the surface, look incompatible: Hockey and Statistics, Drumming and Chemical Engineering, Chess and Bible Study, Calligraphy and Differential Equations, Fine Art and Control Systems, Football coaching and PhD Supervision! If you can navigate the connections between things like these, then you are beginning to know Tunde Ogunnaike.
Other tributes have delved into this, I shall therefore stay in my personal space.
The last time I visited Tunde and Anna in Delaware was in 2017 – shortly after the loss of my own wife. That visit was eventful only in the fact that it was, perhaps, the only time we spent such a considerable time together without concluding it with a game of chess! Anna, knowing how he longed for chess was always so happy I was playing him! The last time he visited me in Lagos was 2020 when he came to Unilag as a visiting scholar. We had Ogbono soup for a meal since he would not take carbohydrates. I knew he was being careful about health. But Tunde sometimes takes decisions that discomfit; for example, eating the white and forgoing the yolk of an egg! I suspected no serious problems.
As we entered Unilag together at the same age in 1973 and he graduating a year earlier than me, we maintained a friendship that climaxed at the time we went through the most consequential decisions in life: Marriage and work. And we talked several hours into the night on each of these! I know the struggles with living at Oshodi and the effects of a harder Nigeria on his young family. The gradual pauperization of Nigerian people that started in the 1980s and its effects. I know he tried all that was humanly possible to give back to Nigeria.
What did Tunde not do? Many know that he authored books. How many know that the first one, written at the Chemical Engineering Department at Unilag was hand-written? That is an example of the extent Tunde would go if he wanted to do something. He never was the one to take “no” for an answer! Of course, he had a good handwriting and was an artist so he could do all the illustrations, he did these because he had no better choice. The book must come out! No excuses! And, came out it did while he was in Nigeria. As he went back to the US, many of the publishers could not accept the work as original until they had no choice, but to do so! This time, it got properly published.
In the past 24 hours, knowing that Tunde leaves us, a little over a month before a birthday, my mind is on overdrive, trying to make sense out of it all. This dynamite package of a human being, quietly influencing things around him, had to go. He was on loan to us for a set time. That time is over! Easy for me to say, mighty hard to bear for those who know and love him best. To Anna and children with young families, only the mighty grace of God can comfort and thoroughly console. Even that has to have the cooperation of Father Time.
The last major thing Tunde and I did together was to connect the work going on at the University of Delaware on Covid response to the University of Lagos and the Nigeria Academy of Engineering. The personal funds that Tunde expended on this project is perhaps only known, on this side, to Professor Tokunbo Denloye and me. Despite his calm demeanor, Tunde was a warrior! And warriors always go with a battle salute! Farewell my brother and friend, Tunde Ogunnaike, you have fought a good fight!

Tunde

Whither Nigeria?

by oafak

It is pertinent at this time in our history and national underdevelopment to ponder a few things. Nigeria, to some, a geographical expression; to others, the indivisible nation to which we must pledge allegiance, like it or not, is, once again at crossroads. Crossroads, for many great peoples and nations are often events or periods of great national calamity that cause peoples to reimagine their future. Great peoples such as Indians and Chinese were humiliated by decades, if not centuries, of domination by Western powers, reached their crossroads in the middle of the 20th century. Chairman Mao Zedong asked himself: “In this vast land, who rules the destiny of man?” With a strong determination, he embarked on his “long march”, closed his country to foreigners for another half century, taught self-reliance, educated his people, and organized his country until his grandchildren, capitalizing on the structures he created, are now a giving the same Western powers nightmares while teaching them lessons in human capital and social development. It is an ongoing story.
India, another great nation that had also been humiliated, is not too far behind: A completely different methodology. When Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, created the Indian Institutes of technology around mid-20th century, he may not have imagined that his actions will lead to the near dominant stranglehold later Indian generations will have on the worldwide Tech Industry in our time. India has seven companies among the world’s largest 500 companies according to Forbes Fortune 500. While India is not known for being an Oil rich nation, the combined revenues of India Oil companies, listed on Forbes, is as large as half the revenues of the largest oil companies in the world! For Korea, it is about Ships and Chips! At the end of the Korean war, South Korea was devastated, hungry and desolate. Helpful western Charities kept orphanages for many homeless children. In fact, up to the early 1970s, South Korea’s electricity production capacity was lower than that of Nigeria! Today, they are not only producing 50 times per capita, the Nigerian production, they are manufacturing semiconductors, consumer electronics products, cars, and trucks in addition to their historical world leadership in heavy industries including ship building! The return of the so-called losers of the second world war: Germany, Japan, Italy, etc., whose cities were flattened by bombs, into economic winners in its aftermath is another case in point of what successful nations do when they are at crossroads.
Wrong Questions
Beginning from organizations such as MASSOB, IPOB and movements for the Yoruba Nation, centrifugal forces have been unleashed via the ineptitude and nepotism of the Buhari Government in an atmosphere of conspiracy theories on the intention of the Fulani nation that, despite their minority status, have long dominated Nigeria’s politics. The land needs healing from the armed banditry, kidnappings and killings attributed to the herdsmen of Fulani stock, Boko Haram and ISWAP all over the country. Brave Governor Ortom has been shouting from the Benue and others have simply had enough and are ready to break the nation into smaller pieces. How these will all end requires the insight of a prophet – not the kinds of prophets Nigeria is famous for – Horoscope Prophets, living and dead!
While uncertainty pervades the air, unelected Deputy President Garba Shehu has been doing what he does best: thrown a little more fuel into the raging fire by making pronouncements – insolent, to be charitable, idiotic, to be accurate, on the reason why, for example, it was necessary to attack Igboho’s house, looking for arms while ignoring the armed criminal Fulani bandits, ISWAP and Boko-Haram operatives and sympathizers, etc. that routinely kidnap northern children and take ransom money from hapless travelers nationwide! The “professionalism” of the boastful DSS operators remains AWOL when it is needed to confront the Boko Haram/ISWAP alliance that recently held “elections” in Borno State with its own “governor”, “tax” collectors, “law” enforcers and other paraphernalia of “government”! That is where Nigeria finds itself in 2021! And, of course, the situation makes people to ask questions.
Channels Television had two contrasting guests last week: Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, a Fulani, and former Secretary of INEC and a vociferous “Southern stalwart” in Dr Katch Onanuju. The questions they were asked and the issues that appear to concern many in Nigeria are not about wealth creation, infrastructure, employment or competitiveness, but where the next president should come from in 2023! First of all, listening to Baba-Ahmed, I wonder why, given that such articulate Fulani people exist in this country, why is it that the ones that actually get to be president need to sometimes have their WAEC certificates presented to them after they have been head of state? If we must have a Fulani President, give me Baba-Ahmed and replace all else we have had in this land!
Of course, he did his best to feign ignorance of the attitude of Northerners in demanding the presidency after Jonathan, such is the selective amnesia and subterfuge that pervades national discourse in Nigeria. Asking the tribe of the next president, unfortunately, is the wrong question in an era of secessionist agitations, large scale insecurity, stagflation and poverty, unemployment, degeneration of public and social infrastructure, and general despondency. Baba-Ahmed asked what the demand for a Southern president would achieve. A journalist drew his attention to the fact that the ACF forgot to ask the same question when the Fulani irredentist, Professor Ango Abdulahi, made similar demands for a Northern president in 2015; a question which Baba-Ahmed masterfully dodged!
The truth is that Baba-Ahmed, cleverly advancing the Fulani agenda, asked the correct question! What is a Southern President supposed to do? (Baba-Ahmed did not ask this question about the Northern presidency in 2015.) Are we going to have a Southern equivalent of Buhari? “A president that will further alienate the North?” because to Baba-Ahmed, it is the North, not the South, that is being alienated right now! Is it supposed to be a temporary opiate for the South till another version of Buhari comes again with his own man-Friday or co-president like Garba Shehu? Suppose there is agreement for a Southerner to succeed Buhari, will that trim the wings of the forces of secession already in full flight? What happens if a Yoruba woman becomes the president in 2023? Will that, for example, stop Nnamdi Kanu from calling Nigeria a Zoo, making him and some fellow Biafran zoo-keepers the only humans in this land? By the way, let us not forget to remind him that some zoo-keepers occasionally end up in the belly of hard-to-tame tigers! Suppose we have an Igbo president, will that assuage the following of Sunday Igboho that believes that nothing short of an Oduduwa Republic will be needed to stop the humiliation of Yoruba people whose potentials have been curtailed by the heavy load of belonging to an unworkable contraption called Nigeria? Will such a president be able to mobilize Northerners against the Boko-Haram/ISWAP alternative governments that only slowed down a little when, Buhari, their spokesperson, was made President? Can the agreement for a Southern president create an atmosphere to begin to develop Nigeria? Will it make us to start talking about wealth-creation, developing local capacity to build large infrastructure projects? Move away from NNPC as a bazaar company to energy and technology companies that use modern technology and research to create energy products and whose scope is not limited to the natural resources of Nigeria alone? Work on improving the Judiciary, law enforcement and fairness for everybody before the law? More accountability: Is it true, for example, that the great railway link between Lagos and Ibadan could have been between Lagos and Maiduguri for the same amount? Will it lead to better, more competitive education for our children?
Right Questions
I have little optimism that the present regime will end well. I pray to God that I be proved wrong while trembling at the fact that I may be right! That will be a shame because, in all likelihood, we shall all pay for the errors committed by Buhari and his government one way or another. Indeed, we have started paying: We pay in hard cash at the market where the most basic food item is becoming difficult if not impossible for the average family to buy; we pay in ransom to criminal Fulani herdsmen and local copycats in the bushes around the highways; In the payments by various governments and individuals to retrieve kidnapped schoolchildren; in the disruption of society by social mobilizations for secessionist movements; in midnight visits of “professional” DSS operatives that only win their successes in unarmed civilian neighborhoods where they can kill and suffer no concomitant casualties; in the exportation of privileged youth whose parents despair of a future for their children and therefore package them overseas to start afresh in new lands where they will need another two generations to fully belong; in many other ways.
It is not likely that these will be our last payments. If we are not careful, the success (or even the failure) of the vocal secessionist movements may easily place us in the same position as Southern Sudan. Divide Nigeria to any number of parts you want, the border of the new entities will be drawn by blood. And it will be our blood (or that of our relatives); you and I – we may not be spared! Perhaps that will be noble and even necessary, for what is the need to live a useless life when there is a good death to die? Perhaps, after such bloodletting, another set of leaders, totalita alia, from what we presently have, may emerge that will allow the different peoples here (Igbos, Yoruba, Hausas, and others) to reach their potentials. They may look back and thank us for giving blood, when it was necessary, to furnish them a sense of purpose and a bright future.
The question we need to ask ourselves at this time is, whither Nigeria? Today, there is no corporate entity in the whole of Africa in the Fortune 500 wealthiest companies worldwide! Not even South Africa nor Egypt has an entry! Nigerians like to ask those of us in the universities how we rank compared to the rest of the world. Wrong question! Universities in Nigeria exist in an ambience, a system and an environment! How do the roads in Nigeria rank? How do the transportation system and motor parks in Nigeria rank? How do the sanitation system and garbage collection arrangements rank? The city transportation and danfo vans? Law enforcement, policing and the Police Stations? Health system, health financing, and the hospitals? The judiciary, their independence, fairness and courtrooms? Rental accommodation, mortgage system, or say, a typical two-bedroom flat in major and minor cities? The hygiene of food service if you want a snack on the fly? These are the corresponding questions that help to situate the answers you get. They are related!
Instead of asking where the next president will come from, let us begin by asking: President of what? Will there be a Nigeria (nation, contraption or geographical expression) to preside over? Or, if you like, to “rule” as Information Minister Lai Mohammed informed us? How will such an entity, if it survives and endures, generate the competition among its constituent elements to create better schools, more efficient industry and fairer social justice that will unleash the creative potential of its citizens? Do the people asking for secession want anything different from these? Why are we always hung up on the opiate of the tribal orientation of the leadership as if they will therefore solve our existential problems? Why is General Buhari and his Government so bent on scoring own goals by foreclosing such discussions insisting that the only changes he will accept must come form the National Assembly and that he cannot listen to those who have not won elections? Has General Buhari forgotten that in a scant six years ago, “inability to win elections” that he is so happy to denigrate now, defined him? That he relied on mass action to make his case? That he did not get any help from the national assembly?
If we break it down, in simple terms, we may ask, how will the electricity generation be tripled in the next ten years? How many local governments will be self-sufficient in infrastructure and power generation as a result of distributed power production that will therefore attract the best and brightest to itself and create wealth? How will infrastructure development companies be developed locally to challenge the tertiary institutions to supply more able products? How do we begin to measure the cost and quantity of contracts awarded in Nigeria to similar ones overseas and keep costs down to the level of our labor costs so to gain an advantage and build more things? How can we produce more doctors to the extent that they not only keep us healthy but also create a health tourism system attracting inhabitants of our region here? How do we make it more attractive to develop local environments instead of always reaching for the sharing bazaars in Abuja?
More than all this, what do we need to do today so that inhabitants of this space, 100 years from now, will consider us as worthy forbears that took them into consideration when planning at the crossroads?

On Prayer, Tongues & the Holy Spirit

by oafak

The article uses existing materials on the Internet. The links to the full articles are given so that full credits for such copied materials may go where they belong. When materials are not referenced this way, the materials are essentially mine or digested from other works.
This is a response to a friendly conversation from a Pentecostal friend that wants to know how our beliefs differ on the above issues

Prayer, Tongues, Holy Spirit
Approach from the point of view of Christian History, Nigerian Church History, Scriptural Understanding or Personal Experience.
Church History
Who were the acknowledged greats in faith since Apostle Paul? Augustine, Bishop of Hippo or Ambrose, his mentor. Athanasius, the hero of the Aryan controversy that gave the church the Athanasian Creed? Jerome the translator of the Bible or Wycliffe, Huss and Tyndale who bled for what they believed and led, to the availability of the word among the laity.
Then we arrive at Martin Luther the father of the reformation in the 15th century. Ignatius Loyola, Erasmus and others at the opposing end. Is it Aquinas the gentle scholar and translator and John Calvin the Christian statesman? None of these people suffered from the doctrine of “Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues”. In fact, the only church great that can be remotely associated with this would-be John Wesley. That is a man, who, if he were to come back to life and see what the Pentecostals are doing with some of the things he taught, would faint immediately.
There was a remarkable story in one of John Wesley’s journals: There was this “devil possessed man in the King’s palace who “manifested whenever a passage of the scriptures was read. He was calm when you read from classical literatures translated to English. This behavior became problematic and they brought him to the king’s attention.
King George, I suppose, called for the scholars from Oxford and they read the same passages in Latin and Greek. The demon-possessed man did not react to the scriptures when read to him in these languages. It was immediately concluded that the demon that possessed him could speak only English – need not be feared!
“It seems, then, that tongues-speaking, whether unknown utterances or miraculous gifts of languages have been reported throughout history. However, what makes Pentecostalism unique is that never before has tongues-speaking been given the doctrinal importance that modern Pentecostals gave to it.
“Pentecostals… were the first to give doctrinal primacy to the practice. Though Pentecostals recognize such sporadic instances of tongues-speaking and other charismatic phenomena throughout the Christian era, they stress the special importance of the Azusa Street revival, which occurred in… 1906 to 1909 and launched Pentecostalism as a worldwide movement.” [18]
“But to understand why Pentecostals were the first charismatic movement in history to give tongues-speaking theological importance we need to understand the theological roots of Pentecostalism.
Why Pentecostalism began
(Full Article )
Pentecostalism began as a worldwide movement when a revival of tongues speaking at the beginning of the 20th century attracted international attention. Speaking about the origin of Pentecostalism, Vinson Synan (Ph. D., University of Georgia) says, “The Topeka and Los Angeles events took place in a turn-of-the century religious environment that encouraged the appearance of such a Pentecostal movement.” The question is, what was the religious environment that encouraged the appearance of Pentecostalism? What prepared the world for Pentecostalism, historically? In other words, why did Pentecostalism begin?
Firstly, people were seeking the “gift of languages”. [2] Among those committed to world evangelization serious concerns arose over how the unreached millions were going to hear the gospel before the end. Several factors generated these concerns: The missions movement had spent considerable time and energy but the numbers of conversions of native peoples was alarmingly small; the premillennialists’ gloomy assessment of the immediate future caused Christians in this movement to expect the condition of humankind to get worse before the imminent return of the Lord; and then when the arms race of the 1890s occurred and the end of the century was approaching, the Christian expectation of the end of the world was considerably heightened.
Widespread interest in the gifts of the Spirit convinced some that God was going to restore the gift of tongues (identifiable human languages) to the Church to equip them to preach the gospel in other countries, in preparation for the end. In 1895 the widely read Holiness author W. B. Godbey predicted: “[The “Gift of Language” is] destined to play a conspicuous part in the evangelization of the heathen world, amid the glorious prophetical fulfilment of the latter days. All missionaries in heathen lands should seek and expect this Gift to enable them to preach fluently in the vernacular tongue, at the same time not depreciating their own efforts.” [3]
Frank W. Sandford was another teacher who advocated the missionary use of tongues-speaking. He spread this teaching in his publication “Tongues of Fire” through which he endevoured to rapidly evangelise the world. He and others were praying and expected to receive the gift of “power and eloquence” for evangelism. This desire for the gift of languages set the stage for the revival of tongues speaking that occurred in the early 1900s.
Secondly, people were seeking a restoration of the “full” gospel. The Holiness movement sought to restore what it understood to be New Testament Christianity to the Church in the last days in preparation for Christ’s return. This led to the movement reforming existing theology to develop what it saw to be the “full” gospel. Reflecting this desire, A. B. Simpson blended together four themes of Christ as Savior, Baptizer, Healer, and Coming King. In time this was described as the “full gospel” or “fourfold gospel.” [4] This change of theology set the stage for Pentecostalism.
“By the turn of the century, the Holiness movement had become preoccupied with the “Pentecostal reformation of Weslyan doctrine” and the four themes of the full gospel. In fact, when the Pentecostal movement began a few years later, only the priority given to the gift of tongues distinguished it theologically from Holiness beliefs.”
Thirdly, people were seeing spiritual experiences as “crisis” events. The Holiness movement taught that Christian spirituality involved seeking distinct experiences that occured as instant events. This in turn set the stage for the Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism as a separate experience to conversion.
“Not only did such Holiness teachers emphasize conscious religious experiences, they tended to encourage persons to seek for them as “crisis” experiences that could be received in an instant of time through prayer and faith. By 1890 the Holiness movement began to think of religious experiences more in terms of crisis than in gradual categories. Thus the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church taught instant conversion through the new birth, instant sanctification as a second blessing, instant baptism in the Holy Ghost and fire, instant divine healing through prayer, and the instant premillennial second coming of Christ.”
Fourthly, there was a need for “evidence” of the second work. Benjamin Hardin Irwin was a radical Weslyan Holiness preacher who taught a third work of grace for power in Christian service. In 1895 he began teaching that the second work of grace initiated sanctification and the third brought baptism in the Spirit. This “third blessing” was called “the fire.” Irwin named his group the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church, beginning another movement that started new groups across America and Canada. This created the problem of needing evidence to distinguishing between those who had received the third blessing from those who had the second only. This problem was part of the reason why the mainstream Holiness Movement rejected his as the “third blessing heresy.”
This controversy laid an important foundation for Pentecostalism because it crystallised the movement’s commitment to a two-stage work of the Spirit (which would be simpler to identify). It also highlighted the need to clarify what is the nature of the second work of grace (which would be empowerment, not sanctification). In addition, the Irwin heresy (as it was called) revealed the need for an evidence for the second work of grace. This again set the stage for Pentecostalism which provided that evidence. Irwin later joined the Pentecostal Movement.
To summarise, the historical situation at the turn of the nineteenth-century that encouraged the appearance of Pentecostalism was a widespread desire for the gift of languages for world evangelisation, the desire for a restoration of the “full gospel” involving Spirit-baptism as a post-conversion experience and the miraculous gifts such as healing, the emphasis on spiritual experiences as “crisis” events, and the theological necessity of an evidence to distinguish those having received subsequent works of the Spirit from those who had not.
But in order to understand the origin of Pentecostalism completely we also need to understand how early Pentecostal thinkers themselves interpreted the historical events surrounding their beginnings. Did they themselves understand their doctrine of tongues-speaking to be unique in church history? Did they interpret the events surrounding the beginning of the twentieth-century as the end-time restoration of the “Apostolic faith” in preparation for Christ’s return?
Nigerian Church
The gospel that took root in Nigeria was the handiwork of the main groups: The Church Mission Society (supported but not limited to the Anglican/Methodist Church. In fact, the first missionaries of this group were Germans, not English), The Roman Catholics. To a lesser extent, there were the evangelical groups such as Baptist, ECWA, COCIN and several others. Among these groups, we owe the Bible translations and institutional establishments of Christianity such as schools, hospitals, orphanages, bible translations, hymn books, Christian literature, etc. that we have today.
The Pentecostal churches have contributed little more than noisemaking to the Nigerian Church. Cherubim and Seraphim Movement, Cele, Yahweh Church of TB Joshua, Christ Embassy, Living Faith, Redeemed, Deeper, etc. cannot hold a candle to the deep work of evangelization wrought in this land by the CMS and the Roman Catholic church – take any metric you want. These movements are at best mediocre, at worst, commercial agencies for expanding the influence and wealth of their proprietors who often function and owners of the yard.
From the Protestant perspective, the real greats in the evangelization of Nigeria are Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Townsend and Hinderer, Archdeacon Dennis, W Banfield, etc. These people did not know about the “Holy Spirit, with the evidence of speaking in tongues”.
As the previous section clearly shows, this formula came about from 1906 in the US. It has had the effect of making Christians – mostly converted through the efforts of others, to become highfalutin and overconfident in their ignorance of church history and basic biblical doctrines! It has turned the Holy Spirit, blasphemously, into a noisemaker.
Historical Scriptural Understanding of
Hymns and the Holy Spirit
Let’s talk about hymns. To tag hymns as “Anglican”, “Catholic”, etc., is to misunderstand the historical development of the Church of Jesus. There is a Pentecostal reductionist idea of expressing satisfaction in the feeling that something makes you “feel good”, “feel blessed”, “Spirit ministered to my spirit”, etc. as answers to questions on the logic, value, and purpose of Christian singing. This attitude, a major reason why Pentecostalism is often an undefined mumbo jumbo of incoherent beliefs, is an extremely low bar to set when we consider hymns and what makes Christians to sing. Paul and Silas, in jail for preaching the gospel, after they had been given a thorough lashing,
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, 26 and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. Acts 16:25-26.
What is a Christian Song?
We lost a lot of information in the sense that the Bible did not record for us the lyrics of their singing. Suffice it is to know that the Church of Jesus Christ has followed Paul and Silas and has been singing hymns for 19 centuries before the movement described above metamorphosized into Pentecostalism. It is therefore a pertinent thing to ask: What is a hymn and why do Christians sing? What does it achieve? A robust answer to these will help us understand how to judge singing and increase its value to the profit of our souls.
1. Praise to God. St Augustine defined Hymn as ‘a song with praise of God’ and by that emphasizes the fact that a hymn is usually directed towards God. That statement is of course quite narrow as there are many hymns directed to us, that are words that we use to encourage ourselves, and even songs of protest as evidenced in some Negro spirituals, which are hymns in their own right. A people oppressed, having no other tool for protest and self-encouragement, reverted to this form and tool.
2. Friendly Form of Mysteries. The Gospel, according to Paul (I Cor 4:1), is the “stewardship of the great mysteries of God”. One thing a hymn does is to place these mysteries in a friendly, accessible form. A young person, for example, may find the Creeds of the Church, a bit heavy and intellectually demanding to follow; yet every little child can sing with Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander: “All things Bright and Beautiful”, or “Once in Royal David’s City”, etc. and the same Creeds are packaged in a friendlier and accessible form!
3. Direct Teaching. Not only are Mrs Alexander’s compositions attractive because of their friendliness, they also make for easy remembrance. Hymns are much easier to call from memory than Bible verses. They are therefore a formidable pedagogical weapon in the Church’s arsenal. There is yet no doubt that, sung with understanding and meaning, they afford the same spiritual satisfaction and enjoyment that Pentecostals crave without sacrificing rigor. Mrs Alexander, a bishop’s wife, wrote some of these hymns to paraphrase the basic essence of church beliefs as written in the Historical Creeds!
4. Corporate Prayer. The next issue we need to understand is that Hymns are veritable prayers for corporate worship! The orthodox churches that use a lot of hymns often create confusion in the liturgical services by misreading this fact: We rush through the hymns and go into prayers, forgetting that, in the hymns, we are actually already in corporate prayers! Reiteration of the words of the hymns as a preface to the prayer sessions may, in fact, create a more satisfying corporate prayer experience! Listen to the great immortal words!
When we add these points together, we discover that hymns are among the most influential and potent ways by which faith is transmitted and practiced. “A feature of hymns which makes them increasingly valuable at the present time is their interdenominational character Many hymns in current use are common to most branches of the church, at least so far as any particular geographical area is concerned. In Christian song churches have forgotten their quarrels and men have lost their limitations, because they have reached the higher ground where the soul is content to affirm and adore.”
A more thorough definition of a Christian Hymn could be a “metrical composition to aid worship.” Naturally, such a composition is a hymn because it can be used in private or public worship and, usually, has been set to music in some form. The one-liners that are popular in Pentecostal settings may “bless my soul”, “speak to my spirit”, etc., they need some more dedicated work in theological upgrading to rise to the level of hymns. And that can, and ought to be attempted. I say this, not to discourage their usage, but to call for a more dedicated effort to improve their quality and expand their usefulness.
The Holy Spirit
Talking about the Holy Spirit, it is customary for Pentecostals to accuse “Orthodox Christians” of not “believing in the Holy Spirit”. It is Pentecostals that do not believe in the Holy Spirit. What Pentecostals preach is “Holy Spirit with the evidence of Speaking in Tongues” Of course, I do not believe in that formula at all! But, I believe in “the Holy Ghost, The Lord, the giver of life, Which proceeded from the Father and the Son, Whom with the Father and the Son is to be worshipped and Glorified; He spake through the Prophets”. Here is what the Bible teaches. I am ready to fellowship with my Pentecostal brethren. I can tolerate them. I cringe at some of their practices, but I can bear. The first step to fellowship and understanding is that they too be tolerant and understanding that not interpreting the Holy Spirit the way they do doe not prove unbelief!
As a first step on this fellowship effort, I propose that we read, the following passage responsively, without necessarily disputing or commenting initially. Let us allow this to seep into our hearts as we learn the sincere milk of the Word!
I Cor 14: 1-end
Let us read I Cor 14 responsively and try not to argue or interpret.
Personal Experience
Here is my sermon on the topic. It will tell you what I hold, practice, and believe on this issue. I think the spiritual strategy of prayer as taught in Pentecostal circles is scripturally deficient. Too much thoughtlessness and noisemaking. Prayer should move us more in line with God’s plan: The battle is the Lord’s!