Pentecostal leaders' avoidance of the #EndBadGovernance protests in Nigeria speaks volumes about the protests' ethnoreligious undercurrents.
Just before the #EndBadGovernance nationwide demonstrations began on August 1, the Nigerian Baptist Convention (NBC) issued a statement warning its members to refrain from taking part. Signed by Revd. Israel Akanji, the Baptist Convention's president, the statement argued that "protest is not an option in our current Nigeria" since the country's economic and political problems predate the incumbent Bola Tinubu administration. Rather than waste their time protesting, Revd. Akanji urged members of his congregation to be grateful for the fact that "We have good weather, great vegetation, good rainfall, wonderful sunshine, great human resources, great professionals and wonderful people from all parts of our country."
Revd. Akanji's appeal to disregard the planned protests and appreciate the country's flora did not go down well with his members. For example, in an open letter by a group of "Nigerian Baptists home and abroad," the signatories took Revd. Akanji to task for apparently positioning himself "on the wrong side of history on this matter," therefore missing "a historic opportunity to identify with longsuffering citizens in their time of distress." Rejecting the idea that "organized citizens protest is inherently an invitation or incitement to violence," the thirteen signatories defended it as "a cardinal principle of liberal democracy," and "one of the most effective, peaceful instruments through which citizens can seek accountability and better performance from their elected leaders."
The foregoing epistolary exchange between the Baptist Convention president and his dissident flock apart, most religious leaders gave the #EndBadGovernance protests a wide berth. Significantly, members of the influential Pentecostal elite who typically need no invitation to speak on urgent national matters, including those like Bishop David Oyedepo of the Winners' Chapel International and Pastor Tunde Bakare of The Citadel Global Community Church, both of whom, due to their well-documented antagonism to President Tinubu, might have been expected to weigh in on the side of the protesters, maintained a studied silence. Deducing the probable reasons for this silence is crucial for understanding the complex ethnoreligious undercurrents of the protests, which themselves are a pointer to the constant interplay of religion and ethnicity in the unceasing struggle for state power in Nigeria.
One probable reason for the silence of the General Overseers is the argued innate conservatism of Nigerian Pentecostalism. Particularly when it serves its group interest, the Nigerian Pentecostal elite can be relied upon to affect distance from the political fray, embracing a pseudo-statesmanship whereby a "non-partisan" appeal is made to political gladiators to sheathe their swords in the name of national concord. The fact that no such appeal was made in this case, whether to the protesters or to the state, could mean that the pastoral elite had no political dog in the fight; more plausibly, it could be an indication that perhaps its interests are best protected by maintaining radio silence.
This leads us to a second probable educement for the Pentecostal elite's abstention, which is that it may have been motivated to remain above the fray in order to avoid upsetting a member of the tribe, First Lady Remi Tinubu, who is an ordained pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG). Unlike in previous dispensations since 1999 when either the president or his vice was a self-declared Pentecostal, the First Lady is the closest that Nigerian Pentecostals have been to the seat of power in a Muslim-Muslim Tinubu administration. Were Pentecostal leaders motivated by an understandable desire to preserve their relationship with their sole "representative" and means of access to the seat of power?
Might this religious motivation have been further compounded by more straightforward ethnic ones? In other words, were the Pentecostal leaders, the apparent hostility of some of them to Tinubu notwithstanding, wary of playing into the hands of those who may have sought to hide behind the protests to cause problems for Tinubu, a Yoruba co-ethnic?
If that was the case, the pastors can at least point to the manner in which the protests unfolded across the northern region as justification of the wisdom of their decision not to get involved. In a story of two different protests, demonstrations across the northern region were marked by more instances of violence, with no fewer than twenty-two persons feared killed by security agents in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and Kano, Niger, Borno, Kaduna, and Jigawa States, respectively. Furthermore, contra to the simple insistence by their southern counterparts on ending "bad governance," some northern protesters openly called for military intervention, while others in Borno, Kaduna, Kano, and Katsina States were pictured waving Russian flags. The Department of State Services (DSS) has detained seven Polish nationals for their alleged involvement in the protests, and some local tailors it believes were involved in making the Russian flags. Might the Pentecostal pastors have known or been briefed in advance about this apparent "fifth column" element to the protests? Was the attack on the zonal headquarters of the RCCG in Kontagora in the northwestern part of Niger State in any way connected to the protests?
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Be that as it may, it was not only in the north that the ethnic element figured in the protests. Part of the reason why many in the Lagos area were reluctant to join the #EndBadGovernance protests was due to a desire to avoid what happened during the 2020 #EndSars protests when "Yoruba-owned" businesses and interests were ostensibly targeted in the name of resisting law enforcement impunity. The hashtag #IgboMustGo, which gained prominence momentarily in early August and was instantly condemned by the authorities, must be appreciated against this backdrop.
Ultimately, "reading" the #EndBadGovernance protests through the reaction of the influential Pentecostal elite allows us to analyze and understand them as a social drama, one that played out at a critical moment in the all-important struggle for state power in Nigeria.
