It happened 13 years ago, but somehow it started trending again on social media. It is the video of the founder of Living Faith Church Worldwide and Covenant University, Bishop David Oyedepo, slapping a young lady, who was among a small group of church members standing in front of the congregation, ostensibly in answer to an altar call for deliverance from witchcraft. The bishop asked her, “When did you get in there?” Referring to her joining the world of witches. The young lady replied, “I am not a witch, I am a witch for Jesus.” This answer got the man of God enraged, and he slapped the woman, declaring that Jesus did not have witches. But as the lady insisted, she was a witch for Jesus, Oyedepo, scolding her in disgust, proclaimed, “You are not set for deliverance, and you are free to go to hell!” He moved to the next woman on the altar call line, whose answer sounded somewhat like the first lady’s. “I am not a witch, but I used to dream I was with them.”
The response from the second woman is noteworthy because experiences in a complex world teach that there are nuances, and things are not usually the way they seem. For an unenlightened citizen, neurosis and psychological regression are enough to drive one into fear of witchcraft initiation. And in a nation where pastors and imams take over the work of psychologists and psychotherapists, there is no other therapy but ‘deliverance’ in any perceptual concern.
I find the trending video disturbing because, in an age of inquiry, knowledge, and personal discovery, a man of God of elevated intellectual, spiritual, and entrepreneurial standing as Oyedepo could have easily mustered enough self-possession to calibrate societal problems as they arise. But he chose to be crude.
Meanwhile, it must be mentioned that at that time, a Lagos-based lawyer, Robert Igbinedion, had filed a suit on behalf of the young lady, at the Ogun State High Court for enforcement of the lady’s fundamental rights to freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment, human dignity, fair hearing, and freedom from discrimination. Igbinedion sought an award of N2bn as ‘general and exemplary damages’ against Oyedebo. However, an Ogun State High Court sitting in Sango Ota, Ogun State, later dismissed the N2bn fundamental human rights suit, on the grounds that the affidavit filed by Igbinedion did not comply with Section 115 of the Evidence Act.
Yet, it is obvious that while the case may have been closed in the court of law, it has yet to find closure in the court of public opinion. This is obviously why it has been resurrected in the social media space.
To me, the lesson we must learn is that we are all humans before being Christian, Muslim, atheist or freethinker. This should be our common denominator. Indubitably, Nigeria is cursed with contradictions. We claim to know God so much, but we watch our society crumble and unravel right before us. Have we ever wondered why China – an areligious nation – prospers more than Nigeria? We throw up the God mantra at every given chance while swimming in rot, whereas the Chinese are more successful in cleaning up the corruption in their society without evoking the curses and blessings of any holy book.
The optics of the video are damning, hence, the opprobrium it generated internationally. For starters, it serves as a brutal reminder of the suffering many women (especially widows) and children endure in rural Nigerian communities because of accusations of witchcraft. These unfortunate allegations have led to lynching and mob action on innocent young and old citizens. Sadly, not one person could scientifically prove these accusations, as they are all rooted in fear, ignorance and superstition.
Therefore, for the founder of a leading intellectual hub to be seen endorsing the victimisation of alleged witches says a lot about the paradox in our society. It is a clime that fails to help the helpless and refuses to understand the misunderstood.
As citizens, we seem to be operating on a default setting: quick to judge and swift to assert our own righteousness. And because human nature is sinful, we go the extra mile to create subterfuges and false pictures to sell ourselves as holy. We refuse to acknowledge that the fundamental teaching of the Christian faith is reformation, and by its nature, reformation is not a one-time event. It keeps polishing the human spirit until the perfect time. It keeps fighting temptations by suppressing the Mr Hyde in our personality and elevating the Dr Jekyl.
The other troubling reality is that religious leaders will not hesitate to wine and dine with the entire bunch of corrupt politicians. They will never for one moment call the political elite out for their sins against God and country. This is why their altar calls are always selective. The witches are ‘delivered’, but no altar calls are made for other categories of sinners like illicit drug dealers, contract inflators, election riggers, adulterers, givers and takers of bribes, and certificate forgers.
There is yet another way to look at this curious case. What if the woman on Oyedepo’s prayer line was born with some creative gifts, which defies reasonable explanation due to our cultural context? We often hear of white witchcraft or white magic, and many people are convinced that most of the Western technological inventions emanate from this. White magic has traditionally referred to the use of supernatural powers or magic for selfless purposes.
Moreover, many issues of life are no longer only available in the dual cast of either black or white. There are many hues to every phenomenon. A modern society that wants to increase in strength must have a way of interrogating every new idea, instead of demonising them or using one brush to paint everything that passes. Our intelligentsia must not allow itself to be infected by the intellectual laziness that has waylaid our political elite.
Of course, there is something known as Christian witchcraft, and a simple internet search would confirm this. For instance, there was a convention of Christian witches in Salem, Massachusetts, USA, in 2018. There are also well-searched academic works on this topic, which show that it is amassing traction as a religious idea. In the “On Knowing Humanity Journal 6(2), July 2022”, Jeremy McNabb published a paper, titled “Three Paradigms in Emerging Christian Witchcraft”. His introductory premise is instructive.
“At the beginning of 2019, before I enrolled in the Master of Theological and Cultural Anthropology programme at Eastern University, I inadvertently stumbled into a Facebook group that claimed to be an online meeting place for Christian witches. Upon further searching, I found several more scattered across various social media outlets and requested to join nearly all of them. Surprisingly, as I was accepted into these groups, I found that there was more substance to them than I had initially expected.”
If you want to find out what is wrong with our economy, do not look beyond our borders. When members of the intellectual cadre are ready to burn witches at the stake – as it was done many centuries ago – we cannot expect radical ideas and revolutionising concepts to emanate therefrom.
This has left our society rotten and degraded. Hypocrisy and deception have become the order of the day. The real witches are not caught in the web of the churches because they are too influential and wealthy for ‘deliverance’. Indeed, they set up their own churches and employ the pastors to help them launder their ill-gotten riches. Like this, they create the whirlpool of superstition and ignorance that sucks everything into the bottomless pit and prevents us from finding our head above the waters of poverty, disease and backwardness.