There can be nothing more jagajaga than shouting boldly with misrepresented facts but Eedris Abdulkareem is not the first to push a certain false narrative just that maybe his is the most recent and now sounding like the loudest.
Many Nigerians bearing the brunt of the hardship imposed by the barely one-year-old Federal Government of Nigeria need more ideas about where to face the anger. They have turned to some religious leaders especially the General overseer of the Redeemed Christian church of God – Pastor E.A. Adeboye as the cause or sustainer of the problem because he hasn’t publicly come out to attack the APC Government of Nigeria.
In many quarters it has been repeatedly recited that Adeboye protested against President Goodluck Jonathan and has refused to do the same against the APC government. They have displayed pictures (as shown below) as evidence of the clergyman protesting against Jonathan.
Fact check: Did Adeboye protest against Jonathan? and has ‘Daddy GO’ been mute about the underperformance of the APC-led governments?
First, the picture used as evidence was originally taken on the 2nd of February 2020 when Pastor Adeboye led his church in a prayer walk/protest against the killings of Christians in the North, the placards read ‘All Souls are precious to God’, ‘We say no to terrorism’ and ‘We say No to Killings …’ among others.
It is important to note that President Jonathan left office in May 2015 so that prayer walk or protest would never have been directed to him neither did the displayed captions show that it was a protest against the government or the president particularly but if you insist it was a protest against the president then it must be against the sitting president in 2020 who was Muhammadu Buhari.
Next, Pastor Adeboye was seen criticizing President Buhari on more than two occasions, one was during his cross-over service on December 31, 2020, when he had just been denied the right to hold the crossover service in his massive auditorium in the Redemption camp due to Covid 19 restrictions and had to resort to a virtual cross over service, he took out some time to swipe on the government for their policies that ‘did not make sense’.
Again, when eating in restaurants was prohibited for the same COVID-19 protocols around the same time, the former Mathematics lecturer and Ph.d holder jokingly threw a jab at the Buhari government saying if they stopped people from eating in restaurants they could not stop the common man that eats in buka neither can they stop him from buying and eating his bole.
And just one more, during the Naira design palava in December 2022/January 2023 when Buhari was still in power, during his Holy Ghost Service on the 4th of November 2022 he said ‘They want to redesign the naira so that even if it cannot buy bread let it be beautiful’ while expressing concerns about the depreciating value of the naira and the economic hardships faced by Nigerians, questioning the government’s focus on making the naira “more beautiful” when many people are struggling to afford necessities like bread.
On the flip side during the 2012 Ocuppy Nigeria protest against the Jonathan Government, Adeboye kept quiet all through, also note that he even hosted and prayed for Jonathan during his Holy Ghost Congress programmes, unlike their successors.
I think it should rather be seen that Pastor Adeboye has always been on the neck of APC governments and it’s extremely unfair to say the Octogenarian supported the APC governments and protested against Goodluck Jonathan
But then I can understand the frustrations of Nigerians perhaps that’s why the Man of God has played the fatherly role in the whole saga but then it will be more constructive for us to focus our energy and indeed our talent on the things that will take us out of the woods rather than pointing fingers on those we think ‘our power reach’.
