Today, I want to write on the importance of demanding accountability from leaders. Accountability has to be demanded. If you don’t demand accountability from leaders, they may not provide it. If we see autocratic leadership in life, whether in the place of work, in church or society, it is at times due to the people not demanding accountability.

Before we blame our leaders for their autocracy, we need to look inward: are we holding them to accounts? Maybe they don’t know the impact of their actions. What roles have we played in creating the leaders we have now? Many of them did not start this way, we are complicit in what they became.

It has been a very interesting couple of weeks in Nigeria. In his column Matters Miscellaneous”, Olatunji Dare, described by some as the finest satirist Nigeria has produced, wrote that Buhari has a double. You only need to spend five minutes reading this article before you realise this was a tongue in cheek article. It is mind boggling if you claim to read this article and did not realise it was a satire, especially when he put these paragraphs at the end:

"Kanu, or whoever began the tale, and those who have been peddling it, should update their material.

I can report authoritatively that representatives of the Jubril family, having discovered the gigantic swindle, suddenly showed up in Abuja the other day and demanded to be compensated with a power-sharing arrangement at the federal level in perpetuity, plus 50 percent of Nigeria’s oil revenues for ten years in the first instance. Failing this, they warned, they would tell their story to the whole world.

I can also reveal that the Nigerian authorities have entered into frantic negotiations with Jubril’s family to head off what is sure to earn a double entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s Dirtiest and Worst-kept Secret. The UK authorities are mediating.

Meanwhile, dependable sources tell me that Abuja is close to unraveling the true identity of the fake Jew parading himself on faked foreign soil as Nnamdi Kanu."

How can you read this passage and not realise that it was all tongue in cheek and not intended to be taken seriously?

Yet, one of our well educated and famous pastors mounted his pulpit, and quoted this article as authority that Nigeria is just about to be colonised by another African country! Watch the video here. More concerning is the air of prophetic authority and invincibility that accompanied the pronouncement of this famous and larger that life Pastor. All these on the back of a satire!

Of course the revered pastor came under fire and he fought back with the following statements:

"Authority shall be domiciled in the church in the last days and if anybody is angry, it does not matter. Let all political gladiators hear this, if the church says no, you are going nowhere,” he said

The time comes when the church says, you die and you die; run mad and you will run mad. It is not something that we organise; it is by the hand of God. You can be upset, it won’t change anything"

The power described here is “awesome” and some will find it scary and this is the very reason why pronouncements by these “powerful” and “authoritative” men of God are feared across the land and nobody wants to be cursed by them. Yet, with this “awesome” power, how come the man of God did not discern he was reading satire? I hope that these authority can be let loose in Boko Haram land and in the North Central part of Nigeria where many Christians have lost their lives to the herdsmen. If we shift the headquarters of Pentecostal Christianity from Lagos and Abuja to North Central and North West and demonstrate this power that we have to the whole world, I am sure that the whole world will sit up and take notice, talk less of the whole nation.

Thankfully, Olatunji Dare has come out to make it clear beyond any doubt that it was a satire :

"Instead of laying the matter to rest, my intervention this past weekend gave fresh wings to the tale of the Buhari Double, taking it far and wide, and in certain influential circles imbuing what was intended as entertainment with messages and meanings to which I do not subscribe.

My November 27 intervention, “Buhari’s Double,” it is necessary to insist, was conceived and executed in a satirical spirit. And that is authoritative."

Now that Olatunji Dare has written again to clarify his comments, will the man of God now go back to his pulpit and educate his members across the world that the authority of his last pronouncement was just a satire by a clever and gifted writer? If he does that my respect for him will increase significantly. If he doesn’t, will his followers demand some accountability and explanation? How come something that was cloaked in the prophetic and heavenly authority turn out to be so wrong?

If we don’t demand authority from our leaders, they may not have incentive to account to us. Even the bible says that if somebody prophesies, others should judge. This is because we see imperfectly on this side of eternity, according to the bible. It is dangerous to believe that a human being can not get it wrong. December 31 will soon be upon us and fresh prophecies will be released across many pulpits and many will take them as direct word from God.

I will end with a quote by the man of God himself. He wondered aloud: “how can a nation… be held spellbound like this country?”. This is a good question. However, who holds this nation spellbound? Let me know if you have an answer to this.

https://ajarofclay.co.uk

I read the post, tried to comprehend but the weed is too porefwul

Was Aisha doing satire as well?

I am not saying Buhari does not have a double. Neither am I saying he does. All I wanted to say is that Olatunji Dare’s article was a satire and can’t be a basis to draw such a conclusion.