Why Christians Shouldn't Believe Their Pastor's Security Promise & Rely Entirely On Prayers In A War Situation

By Anayo M. Nwosu

Chief Theo Nwosu was very pregnant with anger and anxiety as he reclined on this cane chair inside his Ozuobi (or separate small lounge for receiving visitors) waiting for my father, his only brother, to return home from Sunday service.

Sunday masses were no longer conducted inside St. John Cross Catholic Church, Akwuegbo Uruagu Nnewi but under the shade or cover of mango trees as Nigerian Airforce jet bombers were fond of throwing bombs on to built up houses including churches as the civil war got more serious.

“Francis my brother”, Theo started as he sighted my father , “ I just received a terrible news.  Okoli and Anierobi our cousins have been killed in the Battle of Abagana even though Biafra Radio said that our forces taught Nigerian soldiers a bitter lesson”, Chief Theo Nwosu told my father with extreme bitterness.

“The challenge is how to break the news to Nwazoro and Ngbogor, their poor mothers that their sons are no more”, my uncle uttered with a lowered voice.

Then he threw his bomb: “what about all those prayers by Rev. Fr. Ikeobi assuring the new conscripts into Biafran Army that they would return home victorious and alive?

“Who is now to blame?

“Is it the priest or us that believed in his protection assurances?”, my uncle ended to an understanding of his equally confused brother.

“Francis, you may remain a christian but with what I have seen and experienced, I have realized that I’m better off with the  religion of our ancestors we all abandoned  fifty years ago when our deities refused to prove their potency by allowing the whiteman and his converts to clear the fearsome evil forests and erected their churches.

“It is clear to me that nobody, not even the priest is sure of the efficacy of the promises he makes. But they mindlessly keep pronouncing assurances without caution”, my uncle ended.

Who would blame Chief Theo Nwosu?

One could stomach the delayed answers to prayers but the death of the person expecting the answer was very difficult to understand. Not after he had donated his yam tubers, plantain heads and basketful of Ukwa or breadfruit to the church as “payment” for the expected answers to his protection prayers.

The least expected tragedy was to happen.

Biafra, the people of God, lost the war to “devilish” Nigeria.

And my uncle bade the church farewell. He returned to his known terrain and found peace. At least he knew that not all demons could be exorcised. The ones that could not be cast out are appeased by sacrifice at road junctions.

Like my uncle and his brother in the late 1960s, I could relate the frustrations of the Benue, Taraba and Plateau people. They too are praying as my father and a host of christian Igbo nation did during the Biafra/Nigeria Civil War, expecting God to come secure their farms and their people.

When the war ended, christian leaders who seemed to have mastered how to control their followers told their docile bereaved members to keep thanking God in all situations.

My neigbour once told me that he hoped that “African christians would one day learn, as the whiteman who sold the religion to them has since discovered, that in a human’s hands lie his altitude in life.

Prayers can only guarantee you a slot in heaven but not security on earth. You may be lucky once or twice but not all the time the gunman comes around.

That could be the reason why many miracle working pastors move about with armed security escorts.