A few days ago, the Governor of Niger state, Dr. Babangida Aliyu, exposed the rump of his fellow politicians when he declared that anyone who does not possess a lying tongue has no business in politics. He advised those who have aversion to lies to embrace priesthood. In other words, there is no honesty among politicians. The Chief Servant’s honest assertion, though shameful, drew negative comments from several quarters. The governor merely called a spade by its name. Anyone who feels offended by the truth from Minna is not being truthful to himself. Small wonder, we are where we are today. Permit me to make an exception here. There is a handful of them, just a handful, that I can vouch for.
Lies predate mankind. Lie-telling is a primordial defence mechanism. We all love telling lies to hide something. The first lesson a child learns as a rational being is to clothe truth with lies. Ever heard of naked truth? Yes, truth, as we all know, is always naked. It has nothing to hide. So, we try to cover its nakedness anytime we lie.
The first lie was told by the devil himself. When he visited the Garden of Eden where our first parents were being spoilt with the best things of life, the deceiver told them a huge lie. He lied to them that the forbidden fruit at the centre of the Garden would not bring any anguish and pain upon them as decreed by their Creator. Rather, their eyes would be open and they would translate into immortality like God Himself. The couple believed the Devil. According to the Biblical account, it was Eve that had the dialogue with the author of lies. She ate the forbidden fruit and later passed it on to her man, Adam. After munching the crunchy fruit, they discovered that they were naked. The lie they bought earned them a dismissal from the Garden, marking the beginning of suffering and toiling which have become the lot of their offspring till date.
We all tell lies to shield the truth. But the irony is that truth has a way of coming out naked no matter how hard we try to clothe it. Regardless of how expensive the dress it, truth would prefer to shed it and emerge naked for the whole world to see.
Governor Aliyu just told us the home truth about politicians being pathological liars. It is also the reason why they are all thieves. One who tells lies will steal, naturally. But the Chief Servant was silent about those who school politicians in the art of thieving… the civil servants. There was this female minister who was sacked by the late president, Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. Her offence? The technocrats in her office got her to dip her fingers in the unspent fund in her ministry at the end of the fiscal year. The booty did not trickle down. So, a whistleblower sounded an alarm. The civil servants are worse than armed robbers. With a stroke of the pen, a tiny clique of thieving civil servants can cream off a substantial part of the nation’s annual budget without anyone smelling a rat. But no gang of armed robbers can achieve that in their life time.
The Chief Servant’s advice that those who cannot tell lies should hug pastoral duties is borne out of ignorance. These days, some of the worst lies are spewed from the pulpits. The heads of most pastors, bishops and archbishops especially those in the Pentecostal system are full of lies. Lies are manufactured to psych up churchgoers. A Jos-based prosperity pastor once fabricated a story of an Onitsha-bound spare part seller member who was arrested in Keffi by the “Holy Spirit”. He terminated the trip, returned to Jos and, at the behest of the “Spirit of God”, surrendered to the church the money he was taking to Onitsha for his goods in exchange for an earth-shaking miracle. According to him, after seven or so days, a miracle fell on his laps, 100 times the amount he was ferrying to Onitsha. The con artist immediately followed up the story with a demand on the gullible congregation to sow seeds and reap in 1,000 folds. It was a rat race to the altar as the worshippers responded enthusiastically to the “fabu”. The pastor was even stunned by the response.
Politicians and pastors are birds of the same feathers. The former steal from the government to enrich the latter. I know a thieving politician who donated a car worth N30m to a highly respected Abuja-based Pentecostal bishop to swell his flotilla of choice automobiles.
Talking about pastors with lying tongues reminds me of an encounter I had with operatives of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) some years ago in Jos. I had forgotten to fasten my seatbelt like a condemned thief tied to the stake awaiting execution. Then, suddenly, I ran into the FRSC hounds. They promptly seized me. When I was about to be booked, I explained that my seatbelt was faulty and that I was actually heading for my panel beater’s workshop to have it fixed.
Flipping up his nose in disbelief, one of them eased his buttocks on the driver’s seat and grabbed the belt. Lo and behold, the belt refused to pull. Phew! I could not believe my luck: I thought told a lie but it was actually a prophecy! After several futile attempts, he agreed with me that of a truth, the belt was malfunctioning. He left me off the hook. But as soon as I zoomed off, I tried to pull the belt again. Believe it or not, the device slithered out with the ease that a morsel of “amala dudu” clothed with “ewedu” soup would slide down your throat. That incident later got me wondering whether I possessed a prophesying tongue. Imagine Prophet Clem!
Clem Oluwole write for Blueprint Newspapers