"Why I endorse Buhari/Osinbajo ticket’’ - Pastor Sunday Adelaja (Part 4)

Why I believe President Jonathan is far more a fundamentalist than Gen. Buhari

This is the fourth part of Pastor Sunday Adelaja's explanations for throwing his weight behind the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket.You can read the previous posts here, here and here.

Ecclesiastics 10:16-17
16 Woe to you, O land, when your king is a child,
and your princes feast in the morning!
17 Blessed are you, O land, when your king is the son of nobles,
and your princes feast at the proper time—
For strength and not for drunkenness

‘Plato is my friend— Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is the truth’. Therefore I say ‘Jonathan is my president, Goodluck is a Christian, but Nigeria is my greatest love’

I am a pastor and I am happy that we have so many growing ministries and churches in Nigeria. It is our pride that Christianity is so popular in our country and that we have such a freedom of religion.

Dear reader, let’s imagine ourselves as Muslims for a minute. Let’s assume you are a Muslim and what you see almost on a weekly basis is that your president is always flanked by leaders of his religion in a country where we don’t just have only Christians. In a diverse country like ours where Christians and Muslim are mostly on an equal footing, a Muslim could easily think why should his President often be surrounded mainly by Christian leaders? Either he is with the respected leaders of the Christian association of Nigeria (CAN) or on the prayer ground of some of the highly regarded and respected Christian churches. Supposing you are a Muslim and you see your president in such situations, is it not understandable for a Muslim to call him a Christian fundamentalist?

Now let’s imagine that it’s a Muslim president (for example Gen. Buhari) that is always going from one mosque to the other always surrounded by various Muslim groups. I can imagine what kind of accusations would have been coming from my Christian brothers and sisters, in which case Gen. Buhari would not only be accused of been a fundamentalist, he would also have been accused of Islamising Nigeria. But here is a Christian president doing what we would have called a fundamentalist act, yet we are accusing Gen. Buhari of been a fundamentalist when he doesn’t even do such things.

As a pastor myself, I think it’s a good thing that the president is doing this. I would be happy if the president comes to my church too. I think it’s a good thing that we have that kind of freedom of worship in Nigeria. But let’s be fair, what would we actually say If Gen. Buhari is seen doing the same thing? My point is that we should have a fair play. Gen. Buhari should be allowed to practice his religion just as president Jonathan is allowed to practice his religion. The fundamental principle of the Christian faith states that we should treat others like we would like them to treat us.

Matthew 7:12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Most often we don’t want to give a fair treatment to our fellow countrymen that belong to another religion.
That is wrong!
It is not fair!!
Our God is first and foremost a God of love!!!

Can someone tell me the last time you saw Gen. Buhari been flanked by popular leaders of his religion or kneeling down, praying with his Muslim clerics in a mosque? No, he makes his faith a personal affair. This is not the action of a Muslim fundamentalist! But rather from the actions of President Jonathan, it is tempting to say he is more of a fundamentalist than Gen. Buhari.

Now, my Christian brothers and sisters- believe it, I am a Pastor and am not backsliding. Let’s just be objective! Put yourself in the shoes of another Nigerian who is not a Christian, someone who is not in any way a more inferior Nigerian by our constitution. Would you deny him the right to have a Muslim president in his own country just like we have our Christian president in President Goodluck Jonathan? How comfortable should a Muslim be to call himself a Nigerian after seeing that his president is always with leaders of his Christian religion? How comfortable will you be to say that this man is still my president if you were in their shoes? However, the Muslims in Nigeria have largely been gracious enough to know and understand that this is freedom of religion and not to raise too much alarm about it. But here we are as Christians calling a decent, a modest Muslim believer a fundamentalist just because he is serious about his religion, despite his efforts to keep it private. He is not even the president yet!

What would we then say if he were to be flaunting his faith out there just like President Jonathan does? Please understand me, I am not saying this is necessarily bad but let’s put ourselves in others' position. That is what objectivity means. That is what tolerance demands.

It is bigotry, and it is religious nepotism that makes us think that when it benefits us we have all the right, but when it comes to others they don’t have the same right. For us it is acceptable. For us everything goes, but for others it is not acceptable. Why should we feel as Christians that we have a better or greater ownership of the country? Are we not all citizens of the same country with equal rights?

Please let us think about the feelings of others who are fellow Nigerians of different religions who are not to be blamed that they were born in a non-Christian home. It could be anyone of us in their position.

Mark 12:31- And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ‘There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The greatest commandment of our Christian religion demands of us to be considerate of others. My fellow brothers and sister, let us be Christians not just in name but also in practice. To love your neighbor as yourself means we should love the Muslims and the pagans as we will love our fellow Christians and even more so we should love them as much as we love ourselves. That is to say we should wish for them those things that we wish for ourselves.

To be continued tomorrow

*Pastor Sunday Adelaja is the founder and senior pastor of the Embassy of God, an evangelical-charismatic megachurch in Kiev, Ukraine, reputed to be the largest charismatic church in Eastern Europe.