When the Watchman Sleeps: A Sunday Word for a Wounded Nation

By Oludare Ogunlana & Fatai Adeosun

Brothers and sisters, hear me as a watchman on the wall, for that is the burden God has laid on me.

People do not understand when the Scriptures teach that no sin is small in the eyes of God. Yes, it is so. Do not deceive yourself that your little habit of petty stealing and diverting public money into your pocket is different from killing a human being. The seed is the same. Only the harvest differs.

Today, banditry and kidnapping for ransom have spread across Nigeria. People now kidnap themselves to raise money. People fake cancer to defraud the public and milk sympathy from innocent souls. And every day, the people in power tell us everything is fine, endorsing the rot with their silence and their smiles.

How many of you did not see the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu, visit Nigerians jailed in Ethiopia and broadcast their jubilation as a national triumph, posting the celebration video as though convicted citizens abroad were a trophy for the President?

I do not speak against the faithful clergy who serve God in honesty and poverty. I speak of the celebrity preachers. It is public knowledge in Nigeria that our richest pastors cannot show one clean source for the wealth they flaunt. Their tithes and offerings flow from hands they should never touch, and they bless what they should rebuke.

Look closer at those who lead us. Some of them are convicted felons who lied their way to the top. Criminals have become our celebrities, and now they sit among those who make laws for us at the National Assembly. The notorious smugglers and land grabbers are the very ones who stand up and promise to defend the South West from terrorist invasion. The thief cannot guard the gate.

And hear this, for it is the heart of my grief. Only days ago, on Democracy Day, the police fired tear gas at peaceful citizens who marched against insecurity in Abuja. They struck down Omoyele Sowore until he collapsed and was rushed to hospital, his only crime that he dared to cry out for the safety of the abducted children of Oyo and the bleeding millions of this land. Amnesty International condemned it. SERAP condemned it. Yet where were the churches? The same pastors who can no longer open their gates because bandits rule the roads found no voice to condemn the beating of a man who stood for all of us. They were silent. Their silence is a sermon, and it preaches their cowardice.

So here is the bottom line. A community that breeds small thieves carries a big tendency to diversify the trade into banditry and organized kidnapping. The crime rises because too many of our religious leaders have been possessed with the spirit of lies. Satan has taken over their tongues. They compete in illicit wealth, collaborating with the very people who torment us.

Hear me well. A nation that rationalizes cybercrime and justifies defrauding foreigners is inviting a bigger problem upon herself. What you excuse abroad will mature into a monster at home.

And any country that prioritizes religion above spirituality and education will reap only the fruit of fanaticism and underdevelopment. Religion without spirit produces noise. Religion without knowledge produces ruin.

I tell you the truth. On the last day, many of these loud and golden pastors will stretch out their hands to Jesus, and He will look at them and say, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you. They prophesied in His name while they dined with kidnappers. They sang His praise while they buried His justice. The robe could not hide the rot.

The government has failed and collapsed completely. It has abandoned the people, and every Nigerian is now left to look out for himself. We cannot keep blessing the small evil and then weep at the great one. The two are one tree.

So I leave you with this charge. Do not only pray. Prayer without courage is a candle in a hurricane. Faith without works is dead, and a nation that kneels but will not stand will be ruled by those who neither kneel nor fear God. Rise. Speak. March. Demand the freedom and the safety that are your God-given right. Defend the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. Stand with the one who is teargassed for telling the truth, because tomorrow the gas will reach your own door.

A watchman who sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, the blood is on his own hands. I have blown the trumpet this morning. Now rise, Nigeria, and stand up for your freedom. Heaven helps the nation that first finds the courage to help itself.

Go in truth. Go in courage. And may the God of justice make you ungovernable to every tyrant and tender to every victim.