TOBACCO: The Ruthless Killer Next Door

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Today, as I allow my mind to endure the oppressive thought that tobacco still remains the ruthless killer next door, what then shall we call its producers and distributors? The answer can only be simple and straightforward: They are people who prosper at the expense of other people’s lives. They make their billions by ruining other people’s health, and eventually terminating their lives. They should therefore not complain if anyone refers to them as proud, happy, licensed murderers.

Packs of Killer Poison

How these people are able to deaden their conscience to go on prospering and sustaining their own lives by producing and marketing a scientifically confirmed poison whose only benefit is its ability to cruelly terminate the lives of their fellow human beings beats me hollow? Tobacco never adds even the tiniest value to life; it only destroys it completely. Without mercy. This is a fact nobody has even attempted to deny.

The Nigerian president should put the concern for the lives of many Nigerians above his often whispered personal tastes and habits and take another look at the massive freedom granted by his predecessor to tobacco companies to fill Nigeria with their neatly wrapped and attractively packaged killer poison called cigarettes. If he cannot immediately ban the production of cigarettes in Nigeria, he should, at least, put in place stricter regulations that would ensure that tobacco manufacturing would automatically become a very unprofitable venture in Nigeria. 

I call on Nigerians with lively conscience and genuine friends of Nigeria, to join this clearly winnable battle, to flush these heartless fellows out of Nigeria. The question I have always asked cigarette producers is: can they boldly come out in the open and assure me that the commodity they manufacture and distribute to hapless individuals cannot be rightly classified as poison? Again, they should tell me one single benefit the human body derives from smoking cigarettes. Has it not been convincingly proved everywhere, and publicly admitted even by tobacco producers, that tobacco is a merciless killer, an unrelenting cannibal that devours a man when his life is sweetest to him?  If then tobacco is a proven killer, can’t those who manufacture and circulate it in society be classified as murderers? Hasn’t even our own Federal Ministry of Health been shouting and warning us with passion, sense of urgency and alarm that TOBACCO SMOKERS ARE LIABLE TO DIE YOUNG?

What the Health Ministry here is saying is very simple: Anyone offering you a cigarette is only wishing you an untimely death. In fact, he is just saying to you: May you die young! That is exactly what tobacco companies, including the government that issued them the license to transact their deadly trade in Nigeria are wickedly wishing their Nigerian victims! Yes, tobacco companies manufacture products that make people to die young. How wicked and heartless could they be!

Before now, these tobacco companies would erect fresh, beautiful billboards, and fill several pages of newspapers and magazines with glossy adverts. Unfortunately, that option is no longer available to them, because of the ban on outdoor advertising of their lethal products. I am glad that those pleasant pictures of vivacious achievers smiling home with glittering laurels just because they were hooked to particular brands of cigarette which used to adorn glossy billboards and magazine pages, and which had proved irresistible baits to several people, especially youths, have now vanished from the public domain.

As a youth, the elegant, gallant, athletic rodeo man whose image marketed the 555 brand of cigarette was my best idea of a handsome, hard-working winner. My friends and I admired him, carried his photographs about, and yearned to smoke 555 in order to grow up and become energetic and vivacious like him. One wonders how many youths that have been terminally impaired because they went beyond mere fantasies or obsession with their cigarette heroes and became chain-smokers and irredeemable addicts. Managers of tobacco adverts are so adept in this grand art of monumental deception that their victims never suspect any harm until they have willingly placed their heads on the slaughter slab. Indeed, only very few are able to look beyond the meretricious pictures and the pernicious pomp of cigarette promotional stunt and see the blood-curdling pictures of piecemeally ruined lungs and other sensitive organs, murky, chimney-like breath tracts and heart region, the looming merciless and spine-chilling fangs of an all devouring cancer, tuberculosis, sundry lung and heart diseases, and their associate unyielding killers.

Smokers Are Burning Their Lungs!!!! (pix: pulse2)

I want to challenge tobacco companies to come out and tell Nigerians that tobacco, the product they manufacture and circulate in Nigeria, is no more the resilient, implacable and silent killer, the lethal poison and heartless cannibal that seeks accommodation in the midst of hapless humanity with the sole intention of effecting their eventual decimation. I want to hear that cigarettes are no longer generous distributors of devouring cancer, tuberculosis, sundry terminal lung and heart disease, etc.

 I have heard tobacco companies pay huge taxes to government, award scholarships to indigent students and embark upon several projects to better the lot of the common man in several communities. But how many people have their lethal product sent to their early graves? How many widows, widowers and orphans are they producing with alarming rapidity?  How many people have been lured to calamity and painful death with their tantalizing and deceptive adverts? How many cancer TB lung disease patients do they produce in a year? How many among their hapless employees are gradually ruined daily because of the insidious fumes they inhale during production of cigarettes? It is so saddening that while in several countries of the world, tobacco companies and their owners are being isolated and choked with harsh laws, they have been allowed to invade Nigeria and other African countries with their filthy billions because we have incompetent and insensitive governments that have no qualms welcoming urbane, but ruthless killers in the name of "foreign investors."


A Poison-Manufacturing Giant


I will never be tired of referring to an interesting development in the United States on June 7, 2001 where a Los Angeles Superior Court slapped an unprecedented $3 billion in damages on Phillip Morris, another giant tobacco company, in response to a suit by a tobacco casualty, Richard Boeken, who had developed incurable cancer of the brain and lungs after smoking two packs of Marlboro cigarettes every day for 40 years. This should serve as eye opener to Africans that with several class suits from victims of tobacco, these evil merchants of death can be forced out of the continent. According to the New York Post editorial of June 9, 2001, 56-year-old Boeken who began smoking as a teenager in 1957 claimed that "he continued smoking because … he believed claims by tobacco companies that smoking was safe." He told reporters in a post-trial interview: “I didn't believe they would lie about the facts that they were putting out on television and radio."


Now, that is exactly the issue. Tobacco companies deploy beautifully packaged lies to lure people into taking their fatally poisoned wraps called cigarettes. Their billboards do not present cancer patients treading the cold, dark, lonely path to a most painful, slow death, which is where tobacco happily leads victims. Every society has a responsibility to defend its unwary and the ignorant, and Nigeria and the rest of Africa cannot be an exception. The argument that smokers ought to be dissuaded from smoking by the hardly visible warnings they put out on their packets, and that people are merely being allowed to exercise their right and freedom to make choices, is akin to endorsing suicide as a lawful expression of freedom? Why allow a killer-poison to circulate among humans in the first place? Do we all have the same capacity to discern and resist the allurement of this clear and present danger called cigarettes?

Cigarette Manufacturers Want You To Die Young!!!!


It is widely known that many tobacco producers are non-smokers because they know too well how deadly their products are! In court and in several enquiries, tobacco producers have admitted that their product contains very harmful substances. So why should the government not protect its citizens against it? Tobacco is a killer. So are its manufacturers. Nigerians should rise with one voice and unified strength and resist this cannibal in our midst. The battle is winnable.

scruples2006@yahoo.com
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com

In Nigeria, Yar’Adua Reigns, Obasanjo Rules

(First Published Thursday, July 12, 2007, Less Than Two Months After Umar Musa Yar'Adua Was Sworn In As President Of Nigeria)

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

At various formal and informal discussion points across the country, and on listserv and discussion boards on the cyberspace, Nigerians are not hiding their deep pain and frustration that the obnoxious Third Term Project which they unanimously and disdainfully rejected not too long ago has been so smoothly and successfully imposed on them with such brazenness and flourish that seem to dare anyone who is not comfortable with the set-up to find himself the shortest route to hell. 

The demoralising situation as we have it today is simple: Umaru Musa Yar’Adua reigns in Aso Rock; Olusegun Obasanjo rules Nigeria from Ota.

It is a classic case of post-colonial Indirect Rule. The “Emperor and Conqueror of Modern Nigeria” is still perfectly in-charge and has no intention of leaving any one in doubt about that. He has merely delegated Umoru, one of his very loyal “boys” to stand in for him at Abuja to implement his orders with maximum accuracy. So, while this “accredited Servant-leader” treads softly within the hallowed ambience of Aso Rock Villa with the title of “President” timidly attached to his flowing agbada, full Presidential powers reside at some cozy corner of a multi-billion naira farm in Ota, Ogun State . 

I Am The One In-Charge Here, Right!
A Case Of Post-Colonial Indirect In Nigeria?


What makes the matter even more revolting is what clearly looks like the utter helplessness of President Yar’Adua, a 56-year-old former academic and two-term governor, with enormous powers of State at his disposal, before such a repugnant affront from someone who now sees himself as some kind of “Senior President”, as somebody pointed out last Friday. This is very sad.

Now, even though Yar’Adua became president through what has been widely described as the worst election in human history, the only hint of consolation in that horrible, broad-day electoral robbery was the hope that by May 29, 2007, Nigerians would be rid of the flamboyant incompetence, and pugnacious person of Aremu Obasanjo, the man whose entire energy in the past eight years appeared to have been solely channeled into the accumulation of so much unearned resources to build himself the wealthiest dynasty this side of the sea, while the country he was supposed to be ruling decayed beyond what anyone would have imagined was possible. Nigerians just wanted a breath of fresh air, an entirely new face, but unfortunately, they have been shortchanged once again. The man they had become sick and tired of, and thought had gone for good, is still very much around. 


Yar'Adua: Merely Reigning?

It is not only Yar’Adua that appears so helpless. For the past one week, I have read several columns on this matter, and all I have seen are passionate appeals to former President Obasanjo to, please, leave Yar’Adua alone to rule Nigeria the way he deems fit. Now, this makes no sense at all. Should we be begging an ex-president, obsessed with a grand illusion of boundless powers he no longer possesses, to leave the man with the real, statutory authority and powers alone to function? No, wait a minute! This would have been most laughable if it was not such a serious and pathetic matter, with far-reaching consequences to the survival of our nation.

As the nation’s opinion moulders weep and beg Obasanjo to, please, take his retirement in good faith and quickly dump himself in the unedifying company of failed leaders where he ought to feel very comfortable, and allow Yar’Adua free hand to conduct the affairs of the nation, what none of them appears to be asking is whether Yar’Adua himself is even desirous and eager to be rid of the overbearing influence of Obasanjo? Is he really ready to take charge? Are we sure that the “Servant-leader” is not even too grateful that Obasanjo’s meddlesome and looming shadow are providing perfect alibi for what is gradually appearing as his stark visionlessness? I would certainly want to know those great ideas of Yar’Adua’s which Obasanjo’s meddlesomeness is preventing him from unfolding! The truth, as we know it, is that Yar’Adua never wanted to be president, and so, he never sat down to draw up anything that vaguely looks like a blueprint for the country’s redemption.

When he was conscripted by Obasanjo and imposed on both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Nigerians at a time elections were merely a couple of weeks away, he was too preoccupied with the thought of winning elections to have any time to concentrate and think about how he would rule Nigeria. And so when he eventually became President through the “Iwu-ruwuru” elections that took place last April, one of the first statements he made was that he had no plans of becoming a “Jack-of-all-trade” President. A nice statement though, except that it left a bold hint that the man who uttered it was already feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of Nigeria ’s problems.  


Olusegun Obasanjo: Power Behind The Throne?


Quite early, Yar’Adua began to make a singsong of the “Energy Challenge”, how he was going to confront it headlong, overcome it, and give Nigerians an uninterrupted power supply. This, if you would remember, formed the high point of virtually all his usually terse, uninspiring campaign speeches. It is more than forty days now since he became President, and the impression of him out there is that of a pitiably confused leader groping his way through an impenetrably dark alleyway. I am yet to encounter anyone with the slightest hint of how he plans to confront the ever-worsening “Energy Challenge.”

All he did the other day, to the consternation of many Nigerians, was to summon the same gaggle of failed “experts” in the Ministry of Power, the same people that ensured that Nigeria remained submerged in pitch darkness throughout the eight dark years of Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime, and ordered them to either come up with a blueprint on how to solve the nation’s energy crises immediately, or he would declare a State of Emergency in the power sector? So, with all the talk about tackling the “energy challenge” headlong, the Servant-leader had no clear idea what to do? So, all these while, his hope had been on the same dead woods that could not achieve anything for a whole eight years? What a shame! I am sure, that it is equally becoming clearer to him that the Niger Delta problem which he promised to solve in a couple of months is much more complex than he had imagined.

No doubt, Obasanjo is clearly enjoying the show, filling a gaping power vacuum that clearly exists. When he said that the reason for his “reforms” in the “PiiiiDiiiiPiiii” was to change it from a Movement to a Party, where discipline would reign, so that his successor would not encounter the massive indiscipline he suffered, it was clear he was merely erecting an out-of-office power base for himself. He handpicked his comrade-in-arms and loyalist, Brigadier-General David Mark, and made him Senate President and installed a certain Patricia Etteh as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Next, he shoved aside Tony Anenih and installed himself as the PDP Board of Trustees (BOT) Chairman, and equally formed and became Chairman of what he calls PDP Legislative Agenda Committee whose business, we’re told, would be to vet the bills to be presented by PDP Senators and House Members. Already he is the “Life Leader” of the PDP.

In the light of the amended PDP constitution, the Party (read Obasanjo) is supreme, and even higher than both the president and the governors, and can dictate to them. And to underline this fact, Obasanjo recently summoned a meeting of the governors in Ota. That those wishing to be ministers had to lobby at Ota instead of Abuja is no more a secret; ditto for the fact that the list of the ministerial nominees were delayed until it was approved by Ota.

So, it is true that Obasanjo still rules Nigeria , but he is doing so, because Yar’Adua thinks he should. Or put another way, it suits Yar’Adua to still have Obasanjo in charge, while he enjoys the perks of office without the responsibilities that go with them. And at the end of the day, when another four years of devastating failure must have been successfully enacted, Yar’Adua can conveniently come up with the theory that he was not allowed to implement his ‘superior ideas’. So, please, no one should insult our intelligence any more with the old wives tales about how helpless he is before an overbearing ex-president! Because he knows full well that if he truly wants to halt the entire charade, he can. Even this morning!

What, for instance, stops Yar’Adua from threatening to resign and giving as reason his unwillingness to have history credit him with the disastrous outcome of another man’s decisions? It would be interesting to see how Obasanjo would respond to this challenge. Either way, both Obasanjo and the PDP are losers. At least, Yar’Adua would be able to redeem his name if he is forced to make good his threat. After all, he never wanted to be president.

 Again, he could dust up the PTDF file and set up an Independent Commission of Enquiry to look into its management and, in fact, the whole Oil Ministry since 1999, and follow it up with a pledge that anybody implicated, “no matter how highly placed” would face the full weight of the law! The heavens would not fall.

Nor should he fear impeachment by the Obasanjo foot soldiers in the National Assembly, because the mere thought of its implication to the contentious issue of power shift would effectively kill the thought in the legislatures. Even if they now impeach him and his deputy, both Obasanjo and the PDP are still at loss.   So,  that option would remain unattractive to them.  

So, please, spare me all these tales about Obasanjo’s overbearing influence on Yar’Adua, as if both the Inspector General of Police or Chief of Army Staff reside and take orders from Ota. Truth is: Yar’Adua is not yet ready to take over power. He should be sincere enough to tell himself that. When he is ready, we will know. He is still content with merely reigning in Aso Rock, while ‘Senior President’ Obasanjo rules Nigeria from Ota. That’s probably what he wanted from the beginning. What a sad situation.
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scruples2006@yahoo.com
www.ugochukwu.wordpress.com
First Published Thursday, July 12, 2007

 

2007 Nigerian Elections: Why Maurice Iwu Failed

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

 

Last Saturday Prof Maurice Iwu and his “Independent” National Electoral Commission (INEC) went all out to shatter the expectations of Nigerians for orderly, free and fair elections in the country, by enthusiastically delivering to the nation a bundle of astounding failures and searing disappointments.


 Despite the revolting chest-beating presently going on in INEC quarters and the (unsurprising) vulgar commendations emanating from the dark covens of the People Democratic Party (PDP), everyone now knows that Iwu and his INEC were simply unprepared or unwilling (or both) to take Nigerians beyond the usual sad, discomforting stories that had attended the past elections in the country, especially, in 1999 and 2003.  
Indeed, last Saturday’s elections have been described as the worst in the history of the nation.  The open and transparent rigging was simply unprecedented. 







Prof Maurice Iwu


Obviously, INEC had another agenda, which it did not even attempt to hide. What Nigerians are therefore seeing as devastating failure is, in the skewed thinking of Iwu and his motley crowd at INEC, “an assignment well executed”. And if you look around you, you will see that those they unambiguously worked for are smothering them with superfluous praises, even in the face boundless failure, horrible malpractices and overwhelming gloom across the nation.   


Iwu’s abysmal failure should come as a surprise to no one who had keenly observed the untoward path INEC had treaded with unqualified glee. For several months, the commission left its own job and preoccupied itself with what should not be its business. It allocated an unfair share of its time and resources to ensuring that candidates whose faces were not liked in Aso Rock were roughly shoved aside, so the anointed ones could smile home with unearned victory. At one point, (I think at it was at the Appellate Court), the presiding judge had to ask INEC what its business was in a case of disqualification of candidates. 



Olusegun Obasanjo


Yet, the commission remained undeterred. Its loyalty, clearly, was not to the Nigerian people, but to a tiny cabal of unpatriotic characters who derive peculiar animation from seeing Nigeria remaining backward and chaotic. 
Despite several court rulings stating clearly that INEC had no powers to disqualify candidates, Iwu had continued to speak and act as if disqualification of candidates was the only job INEC was set up to perform. In fact, the commission got itself so distracted with this thankless, extraneous job that little or no time was left for it to prepare for the elections. 


 Perhaps, that was part of the script, to deliberately make the elections to fail, so that the crises that might possibly follow would create an enabling environment for the resuscitation of the obnoxious Third Term agenda. But, unfortunately, as has become clear, the Third Term stuff will never find a fertile ground in Nigeria again. It is dead and buried, and so Iwu is left alone now in the quadrangle of shame, to grapple with the failure caused by lack of preparations and insincerity of purpose, and be soaked with all the bashings and public odium for the massive charade that took place last Saturday.

Umar Musa Yar'Adua


INEC’s obsession with the disqualification of candidates that stood in the way of Aso Rock’s anointed candidates was most pronounced in Anambra State, aside the obvious (prominent) Atiku case, which was pursued to a most ridiculous extent. While the commission eagerly accepted a court order it claimed was quietly served it by the Chekwas Okorie faction of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) to not accord recognition to the Victor Umeh-led faction of APGA (which had fielded the incumbent governor, Peter Obi, as its candidate), it blatantly refused to honour another court ruling which held that Dr. Chris Ngige, the former Governor of Anambra State, whose tenure Anambra people still remember with immense relish and refreshing nostalgia, is eligible to contest the gubernatorial elections. 


By preferring one court ruling to the other, INEC was only betraying its desperation and doggedness to execute what looks like an unambiguous mandate from Aso Rock to ensure that all formidable oppositions in the race are shoved aside in order for “Dr” Andy Ubah, Aso Rock’s own candidate, to be imposed on Anambra people. 


 And now, that Igbo leaders of thought, under a better-focused and independent-minded Ohaneze-Ndigbo have made it clear that no election took place in Anambra, let’s see whether Iwu and his masters can afford to ignore them, or dream up another strategy to weather the challenge.   



PDP Logo




It does seem that Iwu’s troubles are increasing as his task becomes more complicated. Last Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that INEC lacks the power to disqualify candidates, and that Vice President Atiku Abubakar, whom the commission has deployed every energy and resources to hound out of the presidential race is eligible to contest. 
Who now will  Iwu obey? The Supreme Court or his “Supreme leader” in Aso Rock? What is the implication of this ruling to the case of other candidates, which INEC stopped from contesting last Saturday’s elections? Is there nothing that could be legally done to redress the injustice meted out to them, by an electoral commission that cared less if unwanted and unworthy candidates are imposed on the people? 


I think that further interpretation should be sought from the Supreme Court on the fate of these candidates. The Supreme Court must realize that the judiciary is fast acquitting itself as the only credible arm of government in Nigeria today, and so must save the people from the trauma of being governed by those they did not elect. By this ruling, the Supreme Court has endorsed the popular sentiment that the issue of disqualification candidates is so profound and strategic a matter to be left to the whims of an administrative body like INEC. Or else, we will continue to witness this kind of very repulsive abuse to which such a provision was subjected by the Obasanjo/Iwu mob! 
By the way, I thought this was supposed to be a “computerized” election?


So, why was the whole exercise dominated by papers, as of old? Why did it turn out that several people whose names had been fed into Iwu’s magic computers could not find their names in the badly arranged registers on election day?  The names were not even arranged in alphabetical order. What kind of computers were incapable of doing something as simple as that? Sometimes, it took the poorly trained INEC officials a lot of time to find the names of voters. This caused so much frustrations.  


In many places voting could not take place. Election materials in several cases arrived so late or did not at all. Many Nigerians were disenfranchised including Ikemba Nnewi, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Senate President, Ken Nnamani, Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State, Action Congress (AC) Vice Presidential Candidate, Edwin Umeh-Ezeoke, President-General of Ohaneze-Ndigbo, Dr. Dozie Ikedife, Emmanuel Ibeshi, AC Gubernatorial Candidate in Cross River State, and many others, because voting did not take place in their wards. INEC would have to look for better liars to try to convince us that this was not deliberate, to put some candidates at a disadvantage. So, in spite of  all the noise about INEC’s state of preparedness, this was what Nigerians got after all. So unfortunate. 
Again, despite all the stern-looking, gun-wielding soldiers unleashed into the streets to intimidate everyone, ballot boxes were still stolen, and stuffed with already thumped ballot papers. Were these perpetrated by privileged hoodlums?


By the way, I thought Iwu had promised us that his computers would detect multiple-voting?  How many of such were detected last Saturday? We surely would like to know, because so much time and energy was wasted on this Data Capture machine stuff (or whatever they called it), and Iwu had stubbornly insisted on using them despite the position of many Nigerians and the National Assembly on it. He must be willing to tell us the advantage that has accrued to the process as a result of their usage. 


Well, I have heard it mentioned here and there that the only consolation for the very disappointing elections held last Saturday is the realization that no matter the outcome of the overly fraudulent exercise, President Olusegun Obasanjo would certainly show Nigerians his back on May 29. The belief is that foundations for a new and progressive Nigeria can only be successfully laid at his back. 


Indeed, there is an ever growing consensus that the most outstanding legacy of the outgoing regime in Abuja, apart from institutionalization of corruption, glamorization of incompetence and failure, and extreme lawlessness, is, perhaps, our gradual graduation from massive rigging of elections to no elections at all. It is most unfortunate, and what Nigerians must insist on is that such a satanic practice must go with the regime that instituted it. 
After massively rigging the elections, Obasanjo has flooded the streets with gun-wielding, stern-faced soldiers to intimidate everyone into silence and suppress and crush any form of dissent. Nigeria today looks like a typical coup day, and everyone lives in fear. That is Obasanjo democracy. Democracy of fear and intimidation. 


Well, the main loser in the whole charade they are calling elections would of course  be Prof Maurice Iwu who would always be remembered on the wrong side of history as the man who sought to gratify the narrow interests of a tiny, unpatriotic few at the expense of the national expectation for progress and democratic stability. Whatever ugly incidents that these elections are throwing up will surely be blamed on him. 


In Imo State, for instance, the Governorship election was cancelled because of alleged eruptions of violence, yet in some states where worse things happened, the elections have been announced and applauded by the PDP/INEC. And mark you, the elections into the State House of Assembly in Imo State in which the PDP achieved a “fraudslide” victory was not also cancelled. INEC is yet to tell us how it determined that the violence was only perpetrated in respect of the governorship polls, even though the two elections ran simultaneously. 


But what everyone knows is that INEC/PDP cancelled the Gubernatorial election in Imo State and fixed a run-off election on April 28, so that the PDP which had expelled its Governorship candidate can now have the opportunity to field another candidate and equally rig him in. Nothing can be so outrageous. Iwu does not even pretend at all about where his loyalty lies in this election. 


 Well, after the all this mess, Iwu would certainly sit down to count his losses, just as the nation is doing now, and determine where the rain began to beat him. For instance, the way he had gone about his present job had led some people to probe his past, and some questions marks now accompany his academic reputation. When the clouds have cleared, and this strange PDP/INEC assignment is over, he would have to grapple with this, and the fact that he shattered the hope of his people. 


Indeed, this INEC Chairman would be remembered as the man who was given an opportunity to advance his nation’s progress but he chose to conspire with a tiny congregation of retrogressive and dishonourable characters to abort the prized dream of his nation. Most unfortunate, indeed.
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scruples2006@yahoo.com

Pastor Enoch Adeboye On Indecent Dressing

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

[I was very glad when I stumbled on a report that Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) recently came down hard on the very nauseating culture of indecent dressing ravaging our landscape today, which is even sneaking into the church, damning the souls of men and women, and even being rationalized by some obviously backslidden and lustful pastors. Given that Pastor Adeboye heads one of the largest churches in the world, I am very confident that this ungodly trend would be significantly reversed if, by this timely crusade, he is able, at least, to successfully ensure that his own congregation alone is rid of it, and all his pastors join in denouncing and isolating it in their various local churches around the world. Indeed, such a feat would equally rub off on an appreciable number of the millions of his admirers and listeners around the world who are not members of his church.  It is with these in mind that I reproduce Pastor Adeboye’s remarks on this very important subject, which was forwarded to my box late on Saturday by an online magazine. Although I am not a member of the RCCG, I admire Pastor Adeboye’s very uplifting simplicity and exemplary lifestyle and I feel greatly honoured to provide him further platform to take his very edifying message of reclamation to an even wider audience.]:                 

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“What is this? Modern fashion? Purity in the inside and not on the outside is fake! You are only de­ceiving yourselves, not God. Also purity on the outside but not inward is fake. You can’t tell me that God sees your inside, that you are clean inside, holy or righteous, when the way you dress cannot differentiate you from a prostitute on the street. Your outward dressing is a true manifestation of the spirit inside of you. You will know a madman by his dressing, which includes his/her peculiar manner of hairstyle. It is something known worldwide. The hair grows carelessly, gets twisted and continues to overgrow. While the rest of us would quickly rush to the barber to look neat, the mad­man cares less.


Pastor E.A Adeboye (Pix by Vanguard)

What you see on the head of the modern-day boys, girls and ladies is the madman’s hairstyle. Truly, the spirit manifesting in them is that of madness. Since the spiritual controls the physical, this is the naked truth. There is the manifestation of the spirit of madness in modern dressing and hair fashion.

When you dress half-naked, when you refuse to cover necessary and vital areas of the body because of fashion thereby exposing your body parts to the world, what you are saying as a lady is this: “Come to me. I am available. I am cheap.”

No wonder we have a high level of unmarried adult ladies everywhere. I now see the reason behind the high level of divorce rates among those who are married. The ladies are simply blind. If anyone approaches you in the tattered dress you put on (in the name of fashion), no matter how highly placed you are, he has one thing in mind: sex, to suck and drop you.

Ladies, what do you gain when you leave your breasts half covered? Even as a married woman, you still go to the level of putting on those tattered, dresses (you) call fashion. In your ignorance, you choose to compete with your daughters who should be scolded by you! Are you truly mad in the spirit? When you go out in this tight fitting breast­-exposing dresses, whom are you hoping to attract again? Your husband at home or someone else somewhere? Are you dressing like that to become somebody’s  concubines or sex partners? Ladies, is your multi-coloured hair style a sign of maturity? What statement are you making by such a dangerous signal?

You cannot tie your man (to yourself) by dressing (half) naked nor make a success of your marriage by stupid fashion. Most men are no fools. Men who also allow their wives to dress in lewd or licentious manner are stupid, silly husbands who care not for decency and godly behaviour. They even encourage their wives, daughters and sons to dress in conformity with satanic wishes and dictates of demons.

I met a boy the other day and was touched by his funny manner of dressing. I saw him dressed like a cowboy and all that nonsense they call fashion, including an earring. When I asked him why he needed to appear so, he told me that his mother bought them for him. He told me that he didn’t really like that manner of dressing and that,   somehow, he felt bad appearing like that. I then explained to him the spiritual implications of what he was doing. In reply, he said: “I know all along that my parents don’t like me, they don’t care whatever happens to me.”

It’s amazing and disturbing when I discovered that some parents actually fear their children. Some leave them to unholy decisions and disgraceful ways of modern life. “She is an adult. There is little I can do to correct her,” some normally say. Many would even say: “It’s the modern way of life. Let her enjoy her life.” They have forgotten that it is such attitude that brought a curse on Eli, the high priest and his whole family. There are many families today who are living under one curse or the other inflicted [on them] by their grandparents and even those that are still alive by their careless attitude to life and living life the way they want. They lack self-discipline. Anyone who transgresses must pay the price. Broken homes, truncated relationships and manipulated destinies can be avoided if we respect God and worship Him in holiness and truth for this is the way God wants.

scruples2006@yahoo.com