By Kenneth Tadaferua
And they built the golden calf, and the multitudes of the people bowed, and they worshipped, and they adored, and they rejoiced before it.
They cared not about Mount Sinai. Nor about the ordinances and commandments of the Most High God, nor did they remember Moses. They ignored the bright burning Light on Mount Sinai.
If you know not the light and the salt of the earth, how can you be the light and the salt that lightens and sweetens the earth. In their poverty, sicknesses, terrors and hopelessness, they turn not to Light but to the golden calf.
Then they go home and in the emptiness of their hearts they ask, why am I so wretched, why is there recession, why can’t I feed my family, why are there no jobs, no money, no electricity, no contracts, no trust, no good schools, no hospitals, why are our daughters turning to prostitutes and our sons, yahoo-yahoo experts, thieves, and criminals, why are they joining cults to adore the devil in other to get fraudulent jobs and deals?
The answer lies in the private foreign bank accounts and foreign real estates and other foreign assets into which their golden calfs stash their patrimony. Ignorance is a disease but it does not stop its dire consequences from maiming your body, your heart, your spirit and your soul.
Continue. Rejoice, adore, worship and bow before the golden calf in great multitudes, with music from drums, pipes, cymbals, guitars, gongs, flutes and pianos. If you wish, say the prayers of the hypocrites and call the name of the Holy One, God, the Father Almighty, Eternal Majesty and attempt to mock His Light before His Holy Alter with church services.
But He would not be mocked. Go ahead and worship the golden calf. But turn not tomorrow to your neighbour to ask: Why is life in this country so hard and why are we so cursed? For you are neither light nor salt.
So Continue.
Meanwhile, Chief James Onanefe Ibori, the Ogidigboigboi of Oghara. I welcome you back from your long travails. If you are wise, you will call it purification by the Lord, for He seeks to teach you holy lessons, humility and fear of God. You will be surrounded by pagans and greedy, selfish men who you led before your incarceration and continued to lead during your long prison term and probably intend to continue to lead on your return.
They have built you into the golden calf with lies and untruths. They have misled some folks to worship and adore you. But they are the Pharisees and Scribes and the Chief Priests who will lead you to perfidy if you listen to their selfish chants and litanies proclaiming you, a god.
You know you are not. You know your sins and ills. You know how you and your cohorts, in particular, your hand chosen successor governors and political leaders of the state have and still cream it into a wilderness. You know how your army of locusts rendered the many into penury while you and the army plundered the people’s patrimony into huge private foreign bank accounts and real estates in the UK, USA, South Africa and Dubai among others.
But God Almighty, the font of holiness, mercy and compassion has given you another chance and another life opportunity to throw away the garb of “smartness”, to dispense of your old ways. He calls you to the Divine Alter to repent and be blessed into a new kind of leadership among his people. To be Christ like and to become the light and salt of the earth. It is a hard change but it is for your salvation and eternal joy.
You may not remember but I was on the editorial board of Thisday Newspapers when you visited the Board as governor of Delta State in 1999. I asked you during our questions session if you are aware that from the Delta borders with Edo State, through the vast reaches of Koko, to Oghara, Idjerhe Clan to the borders of Eku down to the borders of Warri and borders of Sapele, with at least 300 communities are each without a single private or public clinic, single maternity or single hospital?
In the sixteen years, eight of which you ruled the state as governor and the other eight years in which your hand chosen cousin, Emmanuel Uduaghan (who ironically is a medical doctor) was governor with billions upon billions of Naira at your behest, one teaching hospital at looting costs, was located and built in your village, Oghara. No matter how little, I thank you for that gesture.
But cottage hospitals could have been built in every community within the 16 years, even if operational costs are to be borne by the communities. The horrors of disease, poverty and joblessness ravaging our people are terrible to behold. Endeavor to visit the inner villages and even towns to see the desolation for yourself.
The locusts you put in charge of your political structure are raping the people. They have stolen lands and built whole streets in their names with no value added to the constituencies they lord over. They attract no industries, no investments, lack initiative and vision, build no markets, create no jobs. They walk, even among their people who they have impoverished, with armed escorts. They arm the youths and turn them to killers and thugs. They have made, stealing, cultism, cheating, lying, selfishness, inflation of contracts, abandoning contracts etc the sick values of the people.
James Ibori!!!!! You have the golden chance to discard your golden calf image, to cut off the high priests of that cult and to wear the golden cassock of Light. It is up to you. It is either you be the light that lightens or you be the salt that has lost it taste with perfidy as consequence.
I hope you choose well. Rest a while. Read deeply the holy scriptures, meditate on your readings, pray for enlightenment and then contemplate for divine direction according to His Will.
I will pray for you too.
Welcome back, James Ibori.
![[Video]: Uduaghan, traditional leaders attend Ibori’s thanksgiving](https://thenewsguru.ng/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Ibori1-1.png)
