VeryDarkMan and cruel mockery of Arome Osayi — by Bamidele Johnson
Reactions to VDM’s theatrically cruel mockery of Arome Osayi’s facial palsy have been overwhelmingly condemnatory. Justifiably. Very justifiably.
What surprises me is that anyone was surprised he went there. This is what adulation does to people. It removes the brakes, then convinces every impulse is public service.
I remember Sunday Igboho’s schadenfreude when Pastor Adeboye lost his son.
At the time, and certainly in the minds of the easily excitable among the Yoruba, Igboho was Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in one package. He talked an astonishing amount of tripe and some people heard profundity in it. Adulation has a way of turning nonsense into revelation.
Osayi, if memory serves me right, once spoke publicly about his facial palsy, saying God had told him why He would not heal the deformity. I suppose he is sufficiently unbothered by his condition to survive VDM’s mockery of it. The preacher is also remarkably unbothered by the fact that he lies so prodigiously. He is, in fact, an unconscionable fibber.
Understandable, perhaps. Lying is one of the occupational requirements of the trade sector he is in. It is rather like politics. The more confidently the lie is delivered, the more likely some people are to mistake it for revelation. What bothers me more is the selective outrage of people, especially those who identify as Christians.
They are apparently untroubled by the daft lie Osayi told to provoke VDM and by the countless others he had told before it.
This is a man who has made claims along the lines of having met God countless times, having fireside chats with Jesus, encountering Satan begging on the sidelines of a conference in heaven and God knows what else. The same man said that any Christian who cannot speak in tongues continuously for 60 minutes is not a Christian.
Somehow, all of this is treated as a minor irritation.
But VDM’s action has necessitated the re-arrangement of the entire moral universe. Critics have sunk their teeth into VDM who, for me, is visually and behaviourally offensive, while pretending that Osayi is some terrific Godfella, whose only offence is being mocked.
The lying in the name of the God they allegedly worship, the invented encounters with God and Satan, the manufactured revelations and the spectacular theological nonsense are apparently minor inconveniences. VDM’s conduct, on the other hand, becomes treason.
It is a clever way of avoiding the awkward business of saying anything about the prodigious liar who claims to be a son of God.
This is the default position whenever pastors embarrass themselves. Attack the critic. Ignore the nonsense. Turn the person exposing the absurdity into the villain and hope nobody notices what started the argument in the first place. Sinking their teeth into VDM and refusing to remove them does not fool me. It is not moral consistency, but selective outrage they are attempting to pass up as righteousness.
