The decision by the Wigwe family to exclude their late son’s church, the elitist City of David (COD), RCCG, Lagos from his burial programs is all shades of excellent.
The level of insensitivity shown by the lead pastor’s wife, Mrs. Siju Iluyomade by organizing a sumptuous party to mark her 60th birthday just a week after the tragic passing of their church’s leading member and unparalleled financier who died alongside his wife and first son in an air crash in the USA, is callously Unchristianly. It’s dancing makosa over the very fresh graves of these church members and rubbing tarodo pepper on their surviving family members’ grievous wounds. It is in bad taste and such range of insensitivity wails to the highest heavens.
What happens to a postponement or even a cancellation in their honour considering their relationship? What happened to our sense of sensitivity? Excuse me, how is the birthday party sacrosanct amidst this traumatic occurrence?
And did you see her pinkish Cinderella dress and the entertaining local giant masquerade and Flavour the Crooner titillating her while at it? How does one ever juxtapose this debauchery side by side with the wailing of the Wigwe’s family including his aged mum and dad, siblings and surviving three kids? Who else should show the coziest compassion other than his spiritual family? What happens to the biblical injunction to ‘mourn with those who mourn’?
Hey, billionaire banker and cofounder of Access Bank, founder of the Wigwe University amongst other accomplishments, Mr. Hubert Wigwe was no ordinary member. His N1Billion loan helped facilitate the building of their recently launched mega church building amongst other hefty helps narrated by the lead pastor himself following Wigwe’s passing.
But Wigwe weighed much more; his philanthropic work extended far beyond his church, including the educational scholarship suppprt for hundreds or even thousand of students via the HOW foundation which he also founded. Despite the bias many of us hold against his Access Bank, their CSR work in the health sector, nonprofits and for enterpreneurs and other endeavors surpass most banks in the country. In his death Nigeria lost an iconoclastic asset while millions lost lifetime opportunities. Yet for his church ‘mummy’, her birthday and associated Makosa with what mattered most.
Besides Wigwe, his wife Chizoba, also a very successful business woman ,must have been an asset as well to the church. The couple were both in their mid 50’s. The young man who died with them was their heir apparent, their firstborn child, all burnt to death in a foreign land. A traumatic incineration of potentials, dreams, a tragic end!
And these were the members whose church’s ‘mummy’ could not mourn beyond a week while the rest of the country, most of who didn’t know them in person, were still reeling in shock and grief.
Yet if Pastor Mrs. Iluyomade ever knew that Christianity’s essence revolves around compassion, she didn’t need to be told to postpone or even cancel this wild party just a week after the horrible deaths of the tri who were their members and worse, members of one family.
At this point we also should be asking Daddy G.O., Enoch Adeboye if he still has any grip over these scandal~prone mega RCCG parishes where members’ socioeconomic standings typically dictate their clergy positions and not their spiritual stands. The mega parishes whose standards differ drastically from the spiricoco ‘normal’ classic parishes even if they are within same religious denomination.
Can we say the truth for once concerning religiosity in Nigeria without the fear of being struck down by a swipe of the ‘Annointed’s fingers ? Can we? Shall we?
We are losing our humanity in this country and people who should lead the way by their humane examples, body languages and the symbolisms of their actions don’t give a single hoot. How can you even hold a sumptuous party to mark a birthday as a religious and public figure and not a charity outreach in the midst of widespread hunger in the land if you really get God’s mind, ehn? Where is the compassion sef? Haba.
Anyway, thanks to the Wigwe’s family. And no, please don’t rescind the decision. Let COD continue partying, after all, ‘life must go on’.
Enough of the rubbing of wounds by the insulated elites of the land.
Enough.
By Betty Abah
