You Will Go To Hell, CAN Chairman Tells Corrupt Leaders
The Lagos State Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Mosignor Benard Ayodele Okoduwa, has told corrupt leaders in the country to get prepared for hell.
The clergyman also stressed that hell was the final place for leaders who enriched themselves while the people they are meant to serve languished in poverty.
Mosignor Okoduwa, who said this at the lying in state of the country’s late nationalist, Pa Anthony Enahoro, at the Onikan Stadium yesterday afternoon, used the story of the rich man and Lazarus in the Bible to emphasise this point.
He maintained that the late Enahoro lived a life of service to the people instead of looting the treasury like the current politicians in the country
“Chief Enahoro was not convicted and jailed for stealing public funds, money laundering or drug trafficking, not for dubious business transactions, bribery and corruption or for engaging in any of the social and moral ills of our society today, but for standing by what he believed in – the emancipation of the Nigerian society from the politics of self destruction to one of justice, equity, peace and progress, honesty and mutual respect.
“While we are happy and feel proud of the legacy bequeathed to Nigeria by Pa Anthony Enahoro and other great and patriotic citizens like him, there are other people who spend their lives playing dirty politics of bitterness, creating confusion, involving in shady deals and claiming political victories as their birthright.
“Others spend their lives acquiring and amassing wealth by any and every means even if the common people must suffer in the process. They live with big or ill-gotten wealth and deprive the majority of the citizens of their states and nations their rights to decent living,†the Mosignor said.
Using more illustrations from the Bible, the clergyman said God punished a lot of people for being selfish.
“A man who acquired so much wealth built a bigger ban to put his crops and said to himself, ‘you have much to live on for the future. Live and drink and enjoy life my soul.’ But that night, God said to him: ‘foolish man, this very night your soul will be required of you and who will have all these wealth you have acquired?’â€
He lamented that the country’s leaders had failed to learn from history that wealth and power are transient and cannot guarantee eternal life. Such people, he said, would do well to read the story of the rich man and Lazarus in the book of Luke.
He added that the rich man was punished not because he was rich, but because he was self-centred, stingy and unsympathetic.
“Our leaders must prefer to have the fear of God before anything else and allow the spirit of God to guide their thoughts and action knowing full well that one day, they too will stand before the judgement of God,†he admonished.
—Eromosele Ebhomele
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