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.
