The Kneeler-in-Chief By ADEKUNLE ADE-ADELEYE. On Mar 23rd, 2014 at 00:29 Filed under: Featured, News IN 2011, Dr Goodluck Jonathan was elected President of Nigeria and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Before then, and through what Nigerians mischievously termed the doctrine of necessity, the same Dr Jonathan had in February 2010 become Acting President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Notwithstanding the dispute surrounding the 2011 elections or the cowardly invocation of the doctrine of necessity instead of doing the right thing, Dr Jonathan was in both cases effectively Commander-in-Chief, not Acting President. Barely eight months after that amazing interpretation of Section 145 of the 1999 constitution, Dr Jonathan was himself reinterpreting the meaning of Commander-in-Chief in a church. In October 2010, our Commander-in-Chief was at that year’s Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) Holy Ghost convention, where he blissfully and joyfully knelt before Pastor Enoch Adeboye for prayers. The faithful, we learnt, were touched by his zeal and humility. Good. For after all, no one could have suggested he stand to be prayed for. But if the meaning of his kneeling was not lost on him, he would have realised that at that great moment of self-effacement, he took us all, secular and non-secular alike, to our literal knees before a non-secular authority. Surely, the God that hears openly also hears privately. So, why the open show of piety? But if the faithful think Barometer is just being irreverent, well, two Fridays ago, the president proved his great urge to go on his knees has little to do with religion or prayer. To him, kneeling is as religiously important as it is culturally meaningful. During his recent two-day visit to Katsina State, the president found time to visit the household of the late former President Umaru Yar’Adua. Citing the age of his host, he once again succumb to gravity by kneeling before the former president’s aged mother. Again, willy-nilly, 170 million Nigerians accompanied Dr Jonathan on his knees. If he was propelled by his love of culture to kneel, he ought to know there is also a presidential culture that clothes the office he occupies with prestige and mystique that abjure kneeling. For crying out loud, the presidency is the highest in the land, and both old and young ought properly to courtesy before it. And if his propensity to kneel was activated by his gratefulness to the late Yar’Adua’s for elevating him as a sidekick in the presidency, he also ought to have known that majority of us deplore the appalling process that brought him to office, a process indecently manipulated by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Yar’Adua. If no one else will, I must strenuously dissociate myself from Dr Jonathan’s propensity to kneel when the spirit seizes him. I remember how in 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte disallowed Pope Pius VII from crowning him emperor at the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Not only that, to emphasise the separation of church and state, he ensured that while the pope entered the church from one side, he Napoleon entered through the other side of the Notre-Dame. When next Dr Jonathan practices his kneeling frenzy as Kneeler-in-Chief, let it be known by all and sundry that Barometer stood erect beside him in recognition of the fact that the presidency of Nigeria, notwithstanding the country’s many afflictions, kneels before no one. Indeed, if care is not taken, when Dr Jonathan finally meets the Queen of England, whom he has just honoured for leading our colonisers, he could be so awed by her presence that he would go beyond kneeling to hug her butler. inShare Related Stories N10b cash on jet: Reps secure travel logs of Minister’s plane Ekiti: Olubolade, 14 others boycott PDP guber primary Immigration jobs death: Cleric calls for monetary compensation Jonathan meets Pope, seeks inter-faith dialogue in Nigeria
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 01:49:35 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015