It’s foolish to argue with a man who says God said. You take it or leave it. At this time of the year, persons who claim they have seen the future by some divine connection inundate the public with predictions of what is going to happen in the new year.
Even outside the realm of faith, predictions can be hazardous. There’s hardly any effective way of keeping predictors honest. A student of Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Russian revolution, once said of him that the proof of his farsightedness is that none of his predictions had come true yet.
Yet, since the future is the only bargain store where hope is the currency, we can hardly resist looking in.
I’ve been doing that in the last few days, but unlike in the previous years, I started this year by looking at how much of the divine predictions made on the eve of 2013 actually came true in 2014. A certain Prophet Babatunde Ayodele of a Lagos-based evangelical church, who claimed he predicted the Bellview and Sosoliso plane crashes in 2005, was at it again in December 2013.
Among other things, he predicted that there would be a massive surge in oil prices in 2014, a devastating sea surge in Lagos and deterioration in the health of First Lady Patience Jonathan, almost unto death. By the time of writing this piece, just about 12 hours before New Year’s Eve, none of the three predictions had come true.
In fact, the year was closing with record lows in oil prices, beach parties at the shores of Lagos waterfronts and a First Lady in robust health and set to claim the prize of ghastliest public commentator of the year.
But to be fair to the prophet, he was on point on the removal of the PDP chairman, Bamanga Tukur, who was already in purgatory when the prediction was made, the oil workers’ strike and the catastrophic warfare between former president Olusegun Obasanjo and President Goodluck Jonathan.
For 2015, two predictions have struck me so far. They are the one by Pastor J.T. Kalejaiye of the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the one by Primate Olabayo, founder of the Lagos-based Evangelical Church of Yahweh.
First, Kalejaiye. In his column in the Sun last week, Mike Awoyinfa quoted Kalejaiye as saying there would be a “pleasant surprise in 2015.” He reportedly told the congregation to “go and mark my words.” Kalejaiye lamented the level of corruption in the country and asked whether it made sense to play the religious, ethnic or crony card in the face of the suffering in the land.
The key thing he said was surprise, which has sparked off a huge debate in cybernistan about what he really meant.
Most think Kalejaiye is pro-Buhari/Osinbajo, especially because the APC vice presidential candidate is a senior pastor in Redeemed Church. They insist that the “pleasant surprise” means Buhari/Osinbajo will win the February 14 presidential poll.
My advice to both sides is neither to get mad nor complacent. Anyone who follows these things closely must understand by now that the first rule of divine prediction is to leave enough room for manoeuvre. The prediction must be pointed enough for you to get the credit when it goes right and vague enough allow for deniability when it goes wrong.
By the same token that some have claimed Kalejaiye was speaking of an upset, if it doesn’t happen, it might also be safely argued that Jonathan’s survival, in spite of the tough odds against him, will also be a pleasant surprise.
You only need to read the last part of Awoyinfa’s column where Kalejaiye was apparently speaking of Governor Kashim Shettima letting the Chibok girls go ahead with their exams in spite of an alleged warning to the contrary, to get the point. He was for APC and against it at the same time.
Yet there’s obviously one prophet who doesn’t mind hanging out to dry. Primate Olabayo is not a stranger to controversy. He predicted that Al Gore would win the US election in 2005 only for George Bush to emerge. In 2010 he prophesied that the tide of the post-election crisis in 2011 would sweep Jonathan away. The violence, which didn’t need a prophet to happen, occurred and over 1,000 lives were lost.
And Jonathan? He transformed from a lamb to a lion, and very much in charge.
Olabayo is at it again. He has, among other things, predicted that there might not be elections next year, and that even if elections are held, there would be a stalemate. According to him, the seat of the president is not vacant; in other words, expect Jonathan to win. The talk of whether or not there would be elections next year or the chances of the elections ending in a stalemate are not exclusive matters of divine visitation. It’s being spoken about in the ivory towers and discussed in beer parlours. Was that not the whole point of Bolaji Akinyemi’s open letter to Jonathan and Buhari in which he asked them to sign a pact of restraint?
If we’ll have to listen to Olabayo – for foretelling beer parlour common wisdom – then he either has to get a fresh anointing or we enlist him in the book of fake prophets.
And in case he thinks we’ll forget this gaffe as we have the previous ones, we’ll wait to see the result of the governorship election in Lagos which he said would be won by the PDP. Except if the hosts of heaven have been enfranchised and are under divine instruction to line up behind Bode George and Jimi Agbaje, I don’t know how this would come about.
The structures in Lagos, from the ward level up, are so firmly in the hands of the APC that any prediction of their displacement can only be a joke. But Olabayo might respond that in God’s book, there are numerous examples of the triumph of the weak over the strong. Only a fool will argue with a man who says God said.
We’ll see. February 28 is not a century away.
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