The sun has set on the Trump administration and with it the most interest in Nigeria’s persecuted Christians of any US administration.

But with it also goes the credibility of Christian conservatives in America and the shine on US democracy as a whole.

It was reported that an 18 year old girl turned in her mother and uncle as insurrectionists but 197 Republican Representatives who could have been killed in the insurrection didn’t hold the president accountable for his role. We must be a nation of laws.

The list of 10 GOP Reps who voted for truth and accountability in the most odious attack on the US government in living memory didn’t include the “Christian” Reps I have come to know, respect and work with.

My assessment of the Democrats and Republican administrations is this:

The Democrats were truthful about the situation at home but deceptive about the situation abroad (Nigeria) while the Republicans were truthful about the situation abroad (Nigeria) but deceptive about the situation at home.

Even in Nigeria as bad as things are, when the security service invaded the parliament, Nigerian MPs defied them and acting President Osinbajo immediately fired the Head of the DSS that same day. His courage in taking out president Buhari’s dreaded relative resulted in his being sidelined by Buhari’s kitchen cabinet after the president returned. However the VP’s action is one of the shining moments of the presidency in defense of democracy.

VP Pence and VP Osinbajo are decent Christian men and lawyers who had the unenviable duty of serving men not the least bit their betters.

But even after Pence chose to uphold his constitutional duty at risk to himself and his family, almost 200 Republican Reps chose to side with ignominious history than defend democracy!

In law we have something called “contempt in facia curiae” (contempt in the face of the court.) This refers to an action done right in front of the judge for which the offender is immediately cited by the judge. The President’s insurrection against the congress happened right in front of the congress and yet!

Trump’s presidency tested the validity of James Adam’s thesis that, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The immorality and irreligiousity of one man coupled with the complicity of others confirmed it.

Wilberforce famously said his chief life duties were the “reformation of morals and the abolition of slavery.”

This week I am convinced that the chief mission to America is

the reformation of unChristian manners of the church and
the abolition of racism

Also last week I wrote this:

“Ironically my conservative friends who are quick to quote Bonhoeffer’s heroism in the face of Hitler, are enablers of the coupists who yesterday overran the Capitol.

But their insurrection was not to overthrow an evil regime but rather to reimpose a deposed regime of Hitleresque megalomania who superintended the deaths of hundreds of thousands of citizens.

The similarities are uncanny, as Trump is a Germanic racist, right down to some of the insurrectionists wearing pro Auschwitz regalia and one with an insignia that six million Jews killed were ‘too few.’

The American right is nothing if not hypocritical, aspirationally misappropriating honorable icons but acting diametrically opposed there to.”

Full disclosure, my earliest advocacy in DC was with Evangelicals Governmental Affairs in the 90s. It really doesn’t get anymore politically conservative than that. But the hypocrisy, betrayal, double standards, racism and outright heresy pushed me away from people I realized had the form of godliness but denied the power thereof.

That said I wish our colleagues who served this administration faithfully Godspeed in their future endeavors.

I think I will leave you with a final thought.

I agree that “elevating political ideology over theology is idolatry. “

However what is even more insidious in America is conflating theology with ideology which is heresy!

In Nigeria we fear the political violence of Muslim extremists and in America we fear the violence of Christian extremists.

I cannot deny the threat from claimants of my faith who a Muslim Nigerian American Professor has called “Talibangelicals.” We shouldn’t have Christian jihadist!

US conservative Christianity has lost its way.

I hope the prodigal comes back home.

It is sad that there is no African President today who is closer to American evangelicals than Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni. However he has held his country in a decades-long autocratic stranglehold and currently is abusing the opposition in the elections.

His American friends have not persuaded him to do the right thing for his nation and democracy over the years.

There must be consistent truth. Museveni must bow to the circle of life.

Even Buhari who was in power decades ago like Museveni, left and came back and has nothing to offer and is even much worse than his first outing, how much worse is it that Museveni has remained stagnant all these years?

African must not be the graveyard of the dreams of our youth. No wonder our young are dying in deserts and drowning in oceans to escape a continent barren of hope.

Emmanuel Ogebe is of US NIGERIA LAW GROUP, Washington, DC.

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