Sex scandal: If Swaggart was COZA’s Fatoyinbo or Joshua Iginla, by Bamidele Johnson

Geography is destiny. Fall from grace in the wrong place and you are bad news, a punchline and cautionary tale. Eternally. Fall from grace in Nigeria, and you are a divine brand ambassador. If the just deceased Jimmy Swaggart had been a Nigerian preacher, he woulda been a franchise for life rather than the cautionary tale he became.

In 1988, when he was caught with a pleasure hawker (AKA olosho) in a seedy motel, he did what a Nigerian nine out of 10 Nigerian preachers would not do: He cried. Publicly. On live television. With mascara-level drama, he declared: “I have sinned against you, my Lord.”

He said nothing about the ass peddler, though. The olosho said there was no nookie, but he only asked her to pose nude like a Renaissance painting. Odinma.

If Swaggart was of a Naija church rather than a Yankee one, that scandal would have been his elevation ceremony. Instead of shame, he would have received standing ovation. The olosho would have been rebranded as an “agent of spiritual distraction.” Swaggart would have pointed to a photo of his tearful face and declared:“That is the face of a man in deep warfare” while church organ moaned and ushers topple over like ninepins in a bowling alley.

In Nigeria, a pastor can burn down a creche, and his reputation would not go up in smoke among his followers. Look at the COZA chap, a sex scandal magnet, and Joshua iginla. Both have remained bullet-proof.
During a church service in 2019, Iginla of the Abuja-based Champions Royal Assembly gleefully disclosed that both he and his wife, Yemisi, had engaged in extramarital affairs during their marriage, each resulting in a child outside their union.

Iginla claimed it was the wife who strayed first, and he retaliated insemination-for-insemination in obedience to an eye for an eye injunction. That was a spiritual equivalent of the Bob and Rita Marley relationship.

Both churches remain smash hits. Their followers probably think of those episodes as just spiritual attacks and tests of their anointing. If Swaggart was Naija, he woulda built a 50, 000-seat auditorium named something like Mount Calvary Holy Fire Deliverance Mega Centre International, where the choir would sing “Sex scandal o le baye mi je” a la Tiwa Savage. His Instagram bio would read: “Trophy of Grace. Satan tried. God won. NO SHAKING.”

Even the 1991 sequel, when he was caught with another olosho, would not have slowed him down. It would have been framed as a pattern of divine restoration. But Swaggart got defrocked and evicted from the Assemblies of God. If the Nigerian pastor got defrocked, he’d simply set up his own church the following Sunday. His inaugural service would be standing room only. If he cried on the day, the tears would fall onto an imported Italian suit. His followers would join their tears to his like they join their faith and say David also fell and their pastor is human.

Nigerian preachers are only thought of by their followers as human when they are caught messing up and there is no wiggle room. Before then, they are seen as God-tier and are believed when they say they killed a full-grown croc with a drinking straw or stunned a hungry lion into somnabulism with their crusade flyers.

The American preacher never fully regained his authority. He was damaged goods. Cool running, Reverend Swaggart.