Something happened last weekend that should not be glossed over or swept under the carpet. When the news broke, it was first reported as mass abduction of 77 children by a Christian cleric. But later it was clarified. The children were held underground in a sort of doomsday church—the Whole Bible Deliverance Church, located at Valentino Area of Ondo town, Ondo State. Moments later, new facts emerged. They were not all children; many adults were among the hostages. The police spokesperson later said early findings indicated that the persons were kept in the basement by a pastor preparing for rapture.
According to Christian doctrine, the rapture is the expected moment when Jesus Christ shall return to earth to “snatch away” his faithful followers and ferry them to heaven. However, the timing of the future event is not clear, as the Bible only indicates that Christ would come like “a thief in the night.” This has forced uncountable Christian ministers to manufacture their own personal interpretations of how and when the event would be. Many of them fixed dates for the rapture but all failed.
The most popular of such was the infamous Great Disappointment in the Millerite movement. The term was the reaction that followed Baptist preacher, William Miller’s proclamation that Jesus Christ would return to the earth by 1844, what he called the advent. But October 1844 came and his many followers were disappointed.
The pastor in Ondo reportedly told his members that the rapture was going to take place in April this year but when the rapture failed to happen, he gave a new date for September 22. He then persuaded his members to move to the church premises, go underground and began the countdown to the new date. That was when the police raided the church. Josiah Peters, the assistant pastor, said the decision to keep people in the church was in obedience to an instruction from God.
It is instructive to note that this development comes weeks after the Ekiti Police Command invited Nuah Abraham, the pastor of Christ High Commission Ministry, Kaduna State, for questioning over allegations of asking church members to pay N310,000 to prepare them for rapture. According to the police, Abraham had asked his church members to relocate from Kaduna to a camp in Araromi-Ugbesi in Omuo-Oke, Ekiti State. The pastor told his church members that the relocation was in order to “prepare for the end of the world.”
However, some of these disappointments did not just end up at the emotional level. Lives were lost too. One of the most popular of such fatal disappointments happened in the United States of America in 1993. The Waco siege, also known as the Waco massacre, was the law enforcement siege of the compound that belonged to the religious sect, Branch Davidians, led by the doomsday preacher, David Koresh, near Waco, Texas. It was a joint US security agents’ operation, after suspecting the group of stockpiling illegal weapons.
The incident began when the US forces attempted to serve a search and arrest warrant on the Branch. An intense gunfight erupted, resulting in the deaths of four government agents and six Branch Davidians. It was followed by a siege that lasted 51 days, after which a fire erupted, resulting in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children, two pregnant women, and Koresh.
There are parallels to be drawn between Ondo and Waco. Meanwhile, just like in Waco, the pastor of the Ondo church is also named David. The first is that 25 children were involved in both. The second is that the brainwashed faithful were waiting for rapture and they were disappointed but the pastor spun another tale, shifting the date. So the brainwashed followers stayed back in captivity, expecting rapture. The third is that the church’s apocalyptic trajectory changed when a charismatic assistant pastor came into the picture (A witness in the Ondo case said the church changed when Peter Josiah became assistant pastor and brought in destructive “heretical” teachings). The fourth is that law enforcement agents raided their hideout.
The only place where the story diverged is that while the Waco believers fought back with arms and incendiary bombs; the Ondo congregation allowed themselves to be led to the station like lamb to the slaughter. And, this is where we must beam our spotlight.
Religious radicalism is so deep-rooted that the Nigerian Police must not drop their guard. Indeed, the job just started. The pastor who brainwashed these 77 congregants has already indoctrinated himself. To be more specific, he definitely believes that Jesus Christ is coming back on the new date he gave them: September 2022. Personal experience has taught me that folks like this are listening to an inner voice no other person hears. That voice is real, and because of this, there is a force behind the message. That force has the capacity to lead others into the mission set out for the original hearer.
The message and the charisma of such leaders are like a whirlpool sucking every member in. In most cases, the brainwashed victims require psychotherapy before they could revert to normal lives. For instance, the victims of the Owo affair had allegedly abandoned their homes while some had disowned their parents for the church, claiming that their parents were not teaching them the way of God. The victims had allegedly been kept in the church for over six months while some of them had abandoned schooling to be inside the church. To them, the words of the doomsday preachers are the words of God. They are willing to do whatever the leader tells them to do—“whatever” underlined.
It is usually a textbook case of Stockholm syndrome. The victims never for once see themselves as victims or their captors as villains. They see their hostage takers as crusaders and prophets. According to one of the reports, the father of one of the victims, Michael Olorunyomi, said his 21-year-old daughter had returned home but refused to eat since last Saturday in protest against the arrest of the pastor. On the same hand, many other children saved by the police from the doomsday church refused to leave the police station, protesting and insisting that their pastors should also be allowed to go.
Therefore, this operation must not end by sending the captives home. Some of them are more dangerous than the pastors that taught them. The only thing needed to push them into extreme religious violence is perhaps a manipulating politician, just like in the case of Boko Haram. Indeed, when we look closely, we could easily see the same course in the evolution of the terrorist organisation, Boko Haram. Mohammed Yusuf started the movement as a doomsday Islamic sect promising heaven to his adherents while warning them of a possible Jihad. So, at his death, Abubakar Shekau took over.
Truth be told, many Nigerians are already on the way to Waco. We are a very religious nation and that has provided the citizens with a coping mechanism. When the politicians cannot provide basic amenities, our God tells us not to worry, as the Second Coming is around the corner—when all our needs shall be met. However, it is an error to assume that because the citizens are docile and not on the streets protesting the misadministration of the country, they are immune to the biting hardship in the land. No. Citizens are simmering on the inside like the belly of a latent volcano. It may look cool on the outside but it is red and boiling on the inside. The “God” that told them to be calm, could change the tempo in a twinkling of an eye.
