Obi makes U-turn, says position on church vigils distorted

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, on Sunday, said his recent suggestion to convert ‘church vigils into night shifts’ has been misrepresented.

The former Anambra State governor came under heavy criticism following his interview on the Honest Bunch podcast released on Saturday.

While emphasising that Nigeria suffers from poverty and is unproductive as a result of two factors – politics and religion, Obi argued that too much time was being spent attending church services from Monday to Friday.

His position sparked mixed reactions among Nigerians with many condemning it as an infringement on religious traditions.

Reacting via a statement issued by his media aide, Ibrahim Umar, in the wake of the outrage, the former governor said his account was twisted and blown out of proportion.

The statement partly read, “Our attention has been drawn to a huge twist in his recent media interview, saying erroneously that he called for the dismantling of churches in Nigeria.

“By the headline given to the interview, the import of Obi’s message has been greatly overturned and grossly distorted to serve a mischievous end.

“The Labour Party leader is well known as a man of strong faith who has enormous respect and love for every religion and tried in the referenced interview to bring to Nigerians how religion can be more effective in their lives.

“Obi, in the interview, was merely underscoring what Apostle James said in ‘Faith without Works is unhelpful.’ When Obi said that he would turn night vigil into production night, he was only stressing the importance of worshipping God through work.

“Even Jesus Christ never picked any of his 12 disciples where they were praying but where they were working as fishermen and tax collectors, among others.

“What we are doing in Nigeria, which Obi’s interview is highlighting as wrong and should be discontinued, is exchanging work for prayer when the two should go together.

“There is no evidence in the scripture that Jesus blessed an idle person. The problem In some of Nigeria’s worship communities is that they are not following St James advisory that we should be doers of the words.”