By Chidi Obineche
In the tedium of the 2015 presidential electioneering, a Catholic priest, Rev Fr Ejike Mbaka crept up stealthily from relative religio- politico obscurity to national consciousness with an abrasive revelation of the divine rejection of ex- president Goodluck Jonathan and an emphatic affirmation and ordination of Muhammadu Buhari in his stead. And it came to pass. With utmost respect and trepidation, a massive siege has been thrown around him every bend of the way for his portal prophecies.
He has remained circumspect, eerie, crimson blank to his prompters and unyielding to the extent of refuting certain allusions credited to him. But the resolve melted in the maelstrom of the New Year. With the sartorial ambience of the holy book ostensibly from Isaiah 64: 4 “ God will do what he said he will do”, the man of God brutally appealed to President Buhari to perish the ambition of running for a second term in office to avoid disgrace. Mbaka in the last three years has assumed the role of a radical messianic prophet, a Nazarene/ Hebraic interventionist with the rare pedigree of always looking ahead. The mark of his prophetic insight burns through Nigeria.
Having wound up in demonstrable fulfillment in the Jonathan episode, he seems to be joining Greg Laurie in saying that “Bible prophecy is not given to scare us but to prepare us for what’s ahead”. Those in utter spite and disdainful of prophecies often align with Eric Hofer’s ordinance that “Those in possession of absolute power cannot only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true”. For the rabid supporters of the president, this lone straw offers a helpline and sensitivity to blindness. As half- blood of the eldest dogs in the party they would feign the patience of the saints waiting for the “serpent” to eat his own tail. They are resplendent in the hackneyed belief that “the prophecies of our imagination can be pretty accurate”- Rob Brezsny. They swim in torrents of their dreams where the soul needs to find its calling to be happy.
But this is beyond the paranormal or the pretensions and duplicity of “feeling good”. Sometimes wrong helps us find the right just as firestar picks the best cat for the job. The Mbaka prophecy sums up in a magnet that creates a brand, a reality and a rhapsody of perceptions. In this regard, ordinary living is itself an act of prophecy. Men of God hardly waiver, cringe or be cowed in the face of trouble. They almost always stand firm as a rock and sometimes appease the anger of the waves. Their stronghold is in their consecration to God. They are immovable because they know that God works and that they need to be all there and live it to the hilt.
They press forward because they owe the grandeur of their lives to the will of God. They are firm and invincible because they tinge and abound in the work of God. They are tenacious because there is a heart of strength, a heart that has the power to make things happen. Mbaka may not be the oracle at Delphi, that neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign; he may not be the great oracle of the East India where power turns to void; but everyone echoes with Ralph Waldo Emerson that “Every man is hero and an oracle to somebody, and to that person, whatever he says has an enhanced value.”Messages come from the God of heaven in breathed spell, in hideous hum, but they are divine, all the same. The rightness and uprightness also reside in the cells of the priests of heaven. Every messenger has an internal watcher, a knower, an inspiratrice, a mediatrix, a maker, a creator, a listener who endows him with a mind that enables him interpret eloquently and effectively the oracles delivered by the deity.
Ejike Camillius Anthony Ebenezer Mbaka( Rev Fr) is an ordained priest of the Catholic Church. He is a resident priest at Our Lady’s Parish, Emene in Enugu state and the founder and Spiritual Director of Adoration Ministries, Enugu Nigeria( Amen) He is the only son of late Humphrey Ogbuefi and Felicia Mbaka, both of Amata Ituku in Awgu Local Government Area of Enugu State. He was ordained a priest on July 29, 1995.