These videos were shot just before April 27th, 2021, in preparation for laying the foundation stone of Petra Institute, Effurun-Otor and to mark my 62nd birthday.
We sprayed herbicides on the grass and later set them on fire after some days, but this anthill kept burning for several days, even after a very heavy rainfall that extinguished every other fire.
For me, it was like a family, church, business, or country.
The anthill had a hard waterproof exterior. The exterior was hard and insulated from fire, water, and cold. It is usually produced by each ant mixing its saliva with sand to form this hard exterior. The security, safety, or sustainability of any institution, business, or community is a collective effort of every citizen or member with the consciousness of sustainability of a legacy.
One of the greatest challenges my age bracket and my seniors are facing is the fact that our children, particularly in the Niger Delta, no longer feel the need to form a united and formidable family legacy. Even children of clergymen create the cracks from which the enemy will penetrate the family legacy. I have trained children overseas like many parents, but a time comes when they sometimes want to deviate and destroy the family businesses that trained them. In fact, sometimes, even before the burial of the matriarch or the patriarch, the struggle to partition the legacy has started, and within a few years, the inheritors would have destroyed their inheritance.
This attitude is not common among Middle Eastern nations. Their family businesses endure from generation to generation. I preached a message in the early part of this decade titled, ‘10 years from now‘. One of the things I predicted is that some general overseers were going to translate to glory in the years between 2020 and 2030. Tragically, in the last few months, there have been quite a few deaths. But the important questions are: “Will the fire quench?” “Will the flock scatter?”
Are many of these large and numerous services we are holding in one building, each Sunday, with one general overseer preaching and doing all the miracles, sustainable, if the unexpected unfortunately happens? Have we trained men who can step in like Joshua or Elisha or who can run our family businesses and event centres?
The fire continued burning because the anthill was built on the stump of a palm tree that I fell. There was enough flammable content.
Do our members have enough content to keep the fire burning even without us? These so-called motivational messages that Dr. Apoki Charles and his motivational people are preaching, can they produce Christians that can stand perilous times? All these church members that we send buses to convey to church and serve snacks, can they stand persecution?
We are stuffing our members with prophetic declarations and promises every Sunday and by text messages everyday. Do they have a sense of kingdom responsibility beyond the seeds they sow in our altars?
I feel something is fishy somewhere.
How can ISWAP made up of hardened 12-year-old children and about 300 men capture Shekau of Boko Haram, and all the troops and billions we have spent on our soldiers, air force, and navy could not achieve that over many years with so many lives lost? Is it that our soldiers are not war-hardened enough and have become sloppy and flabby?
Do you remember how the church in Turkey was building the Hagia Sophia and comparing bishopric titles and Ataturk conquered them?
Is it the kind of messages Dr. Charles Apoki is preaching now that spurred him into missionary work to remand homes, prisons, motherless babies homes, villages, etc. with Bishop Mensah Abrampah and our team in those days?
Is the fire of the Holy Spirit still burning in the bones of young men and women or it is the joy of comedians coming to entertain our ‘audiences’ not congregations?
I remember the song we used to sing “We must go to set the captives free“. Today, we and our members now have permanent seats in churches and have become captives of sweet messages and titles.
Dr. Charles Apoki, you don’t run a church and your vision is to raise one million African entrepreneurs? Why don’t you add one million African evangelists? Dr. Apoki Charles, you are guilty as charged of negligence of the primary responsibility of your calling.
I speak to our politicians: Do you still have the fire of Zik, Awolowo, Enahoro, Aminu Kano, Balewa, Mrs Kuti, Margaret Ekpo burning in your spirits? Or it is how to loot and jump from party to party? Do the political class of today have the developmental drive of Sam Mbakwe, Jakande, Rimi, Balarabe Musa?
We have left more reasonable developmental issues, and it is cows and herdsmen that people, from the President, governors, and even a SAN, and an attorney general, are discussing. Are we not ashamed of the primitivity of open grazing? Don’t these hypocrites travel overseas and see modern animal husbandry. Have we become so stupid to be discussing cows and herdsmen for nearly 16 years? Our leaders and all those who defend their primitive impulses need psychiatric treatment.
The Nigerian army I grew up to meet has lost its vision and focus. Their strength is only displayed in flogging civilians and have degenerated to shooting a fruit vendor because of banana.
Please, Arise O compatriots; Nigeria’s Call Obey. To serve our father land.
If care is not taken, we shall be worse of than Yugoslavia. Our heroes past would have laboured in vain.
Please don’t comment if you are not guilty like me.
God help us.
