*Photo: Primate Elijah Ayodele*
I am sad at how happy I am at seeing that yarmulke-donning heistmeister, Primate Ayodele, caught in the glare of embarrassment. I have wished for this moment for a long time. A man with the morality of a viper deserves no less. In fact he deserves far more. He insists he never demanded money from the Power Minister he attempted to shaft, yet he has not denied that the messages the Minister handed to the DSS came from his own fingers. You have to wonder what he thought he was doing and why he saw no vision that the minister was going to invite the attention of the DSS and that of the to public him.
For years this man and others in the prophecy ecosystem have built Leo Messi-level careers because vigilance, especially by the media, has been in short supply. Hardly surprising, given that the media treats the drool-stained phrase “man of God” as a sacred title borne by the brahmins of Christianity rather than a simple description of anyone who claims devotion to God.
Every year end, lying machines belt out what they call prophecies for the coming year. These are usually woolly and vague enough to fit every living soul or the tired warning that Mr X or Y should pray not to die. The media serves this dish every year. It never bothers to audit what Adeboye, Oyedepo, Oyakhilome, Selman or the swivel-eyed Suleman declared the previous year, which is usually muck in commercial quantities.
This reluctance to audit has fuelled public appetite for the garbage pouring from those discredited pulpits. It has also encouraged the shameless boldness of the Primate who sees his audience as no better than monkeys. This is the same landscape that produced the man who had tea with God, the one who arranged international travel via the toilet, the one who claimed God kills like John Gotti and the one who saw Range Rover in heaven.
The media needs to put these alleged prophecies under the headlights of scrutiny from the media. That may help the public separate the real from the ones who gush with materials lower than low grade football transfer tittle tattle.
At the moment the media behaves as if prophets are above scrutiny and rates them by the volume of their voices and the heat of the emotions they stir. The result is the falsphecies we hear.