Check this glossary of terms – full body slam, choke hold, choke slam, hip toss and you would be forgiven for thinking of the dangerous exploits of professional wrestling. You are wrong. These are the ‘deliverance’ moves of the latest rave in miracle land, Chukwuemeka Ohaenemere Odumeje, aka Indabosky Bahose, aka the lion. Odumeje is the founder of the Onitsha based Mountain of Holy Ghost Intervention and Deliverance Ministry also known as the Land of Freedom.
The liquid metal, another of his monikers roars, like a true lion and his supporters’ clap, prance and dance. I never envisaged writing about this comic, but when a murderously invisible virus locks down the world, comic relief becomes a legitimate distraction from the aura of mortality and morbidity. As they say in Nigeria, politics is important but religion is more importantly.
The Liquid Metal as Odumeje addresses himself is the east’s contribution to a burgeoning industry that begs for regulation. Instead it is left to thrive on its own whims. The danger is in the way people lap up on any diet of illusion to the suspense of reasoning and concrete action.
Megalomania dressed in the vestige of religion is a danger to any society. Properly managed to know its limits and bounds, religion could be a force for good; left unhinged in the hands of characters with obvious mental health traits it could wreak incalculable havoc as anyone who knows the origin of Boko Haram and other such sects know. Clerics compete with science over a pandemic. One religious leader believes the protective lockdown is a calculated attempt to asphyxiate the growth of his brand of religion and openly challenges it. Political actors taking decisions for the best interest of the public are vilified as insensitive. These people, who expected
rivers to flow with corpses as predicted are now openly angry that only a few deaths have occurred.