New Telegraph

Okotie backs protesting youths

…urges Buhari to be a father

 

 

The founder of Household of God Church, Pastor Chris Okotie, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to exercise caution and treat the protesting Nigeria youths like a father and not a commander general of a rampaging army against his own children.

 

Okotie sent the passionate plea to the President even as the cleric did not mince words about his support for the #End SARS protest which has embroiled every state of the federation. In a statement released in the early hours of yesterday, in Lagos, Okotie described the agitations of the younger generation of Nigerians as an indication of divine intervention and evidence of disenchantment with years oppressive order that is about to expire.

 

Quoting the late Chairman Mao of China to butresd his point, Okotie said that if the people no longer fear your power, it is because another power is on its way. According to the cleric: “The authenticity of that statement cannot be impeached when it is juxtaposed with the history of governance. I believe that such is true within the present Nigerian context.”

 

He contended that the power that now approaches is neither political, religious, ethnic nor even – terrestrial. “Rather, it devolves from the Creator who endowed man as a free moral agent. He therefore arrogates to himself the title of emancipator in his quest to dismantle any mechanism of oppression or suppression of the human will,” Okotie added.

 

Okotie continued: “The current youth agitation must be construed in this context. It is an extra-terrestrial phenomenon. It is a divine intervention to resuscitate the moribund kindred spirit of the Nigerian brotherhood. To say that this movement is politically motivated is to submit to jejune partisan stimuli emanating from a reprehensible perennial insensitivity.”

 

According to Okotie protect is tantamount to bearing witness in public. “Such is the propensity of the current youth imbroglio. It is not directed against any political party. It is an altercation with the status quo; it is a vitilitigation against decades of leadership ineptitude and mediocrity. And now they have gone public.

 

They bear witness now to the political imbalances and economic disequilibrium that have characterized the chequered pavement of our walk towards nationhood. They bear witness to the stratification of the Nigerian society that allows the circumstabience of corruption by osmosis.”

 

Okotie added: “They bear witness to a system that has elevated corruption to an institution of byzantine complexity. “The bear witness to a system that has jettisoned their dreams and aspirations into the catacombs of oblivion. “And now they rise against the forces of dissatisfaction, disillusionment and despondency from taking their souls in captive hopelessness.”

 

He insisted that the young people are galvanized by the indomitable spirit of the Nigerian psyche and the relentless cry of posterity. Hence they have become veritable instruments in the hands of destiny to chart a realistic path for the Nigerian  renaissance. “Nigeria is about to be reborn.

 

For indeed, change derives from a vertical impetus that translates into a horizontal movement or exodus. When the season comes the agitation becomes ubiquitous. And when the time comes the mandate becomes an imperative.

 

Untrained in the art of mob opposition, bereft of military discipline and partisan – fanaticism, they march on with their lungs filled with the breath of patriotic desire and their lips pregnant with nationalistic fire, hoping for a better tomorrow.

 

‘They shun ethnicity, religion, the polarization of class distinction and geo-political sentiments. And as brothers and sisters in peaceful arms they march towards the great goal of an emerging nation.

 

They march as an unconscripted army bound by the commonality of being joint heirs of our national patrimony,” Okotie added. The cleric therefore urged President Buhari to please be a father at this point in time and not a Commander-in-Chief; adding that Buhari must treat this matter with conciliatory disposition; and let compassion mitigate the sterner resolutions of your political oversight. “Your paternal superintendence must now over-ride every other consideration and engender a peaceful rapprochement.

 

“Please listen to the Nigerian Youth, no matter how discordant their voices may be. “Let the heart of a father translate the pathos in their desperate exclamations and compel you to reassure them of your paternal commitment to securing them a great future,” Okotie further urged.

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