President-elect,
Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (R) and his vice president, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo,
speak to the media in Abuja, Nigeria, April 1, 2015. (EPA/STR)
I
met Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s vice president-elect, two years ago,
during the annual convening of the mammoth Holy Ghost Congress at
Redemption Camp near Lagos, Nigeria. Back then, Osinbajo — a law
professor and former attorney general of Lagos State — was supervisor of
social responsibility projects for the Redeemed Christian Church of God
(RCCG), Nigeria’s
largest and wealthiest Pentecostal denomination.
At
the end of May, Osinbajo will be sworn in as the second highest-ranking
public official of Africa’s most populous country and its largest
economy. What prognostications can I make about his potential
contributions to the new administration, based on my impressions from
that meeting?
The theme of that year’s Holy Ghost Congress —
“Signs and Wonders” — threaded through sermons, healing services,
ecstatic prayer sessions and an altar call that stretched to half an
hour to allow time for would-be converts to make the kilometer-long trek
from the back of the main Redemption Camp structure to the enormous
stage at the front.
Like many other homegrown Pentecostal
denominations in Nigeria, RCCG preaches personal prosperity and promises
supernatural intervention in the lives of people suffering from poverty
and illness — powerful enticements for citizens of a troubled country
whose population has swollen from 45 million to 170 million since 1960
and where the median income is about $500 a year.
When I was
introduced to Osinbajo in Redemption Camp’s air-conditioned and
opulently appointed VIP area, I was prepared to be unimpressed.
President Goodluck Jonathan was scheduled to appear on the last night of
the Congress — a capstone event that would be attended by roughly 2
million people. Jonathan was there to receive a blessing from Enoch
Adeboye, Osinbajo’s spiritual father and the General Overseer of RCCG.
To my mind, an organization that encouraged the multitudes to pray for
riches, and that anointed a politician who embodied Nigeria’s status
quo, was tacitly accepting the country’s dysfunctions.
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