Basket cases…

A house he bought, brought down the structure and rebuilt it- according to his taste. Every single thing (from electronics to upholstery) he had in that house was imported from his base in Europe…yet, he never slept in that house for one day!

He comes into the house during the day and at night he goes to a hotel. This was his routine whenever he was in the country, for years. When I learned he has put up the house for sale, I asked what the problem was. He told me that the cry of a little girl is heard in the house every night and the numerous “prayer people” he has invited to the house revealed to him that a former owner of the property murdered and buried a little girl in the compound and that explains why the house is haunted.

I asked him just two questions…
“Have you ever heard such cries?’’
“Did you ever spend a night in that house to hear the cry?’’

He could not answer because he has never heard such cries with his own ears but the prayer people, who were introduced to him by his driver, told him that the house is haunted. Eventually he auctioned off everything in that house, sold the house and ran back to Europe.

Seven years down the line, he is looking for a house to buy.
The case of this second guy is quite pathetic, a guy that relocated from his base abroad, had chains of filling stations and a few other businesses. His family stayed back (abroad). They would not know how he got entangled with another set of “prayer people,” who taught him to disturb everyone in the neighbourhood with bell-ringing prayer sessions that usually starts from 11:00pm and ends by 2:00am everyday.

In less than two years, not only could he not afford paying his duplex house rent, he could not even pay his domestic staffs. His businesses were shut down. He resorted to selling his properties to raise the house rent. His landlord, having read the writing on the wall, rejected the ‘offer’ and gave him a quit notice. He had just a few clothes in his car, as he left that house.

Today, he lives in the premises of a particular church on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, where hostel rooms are paid for on a daily basis. He cannot even go to his people because he has been estranged from them for years. The mother, a widow that laboured so much to see that her first son became somebody in life, has been labelled a witch. This guy had a massive undeveloped property in Lagos…that property now belongs to the pastor of the prayer sect that were coming around to pray for him.

Just before he was thrown out of his rented apartment, he was doing the prayers alone…the ‘sect’ claimed the Lord had another ‘cleaning’ job for them-elsewhere.

I still feel they are magnanimous enough to leave some change for him! The third case is that of a man who has what some people used to see as a mansion in the village. Yet, he never slept in that house for one day since he put up that structure. In fact, he has been staying in hotels for over 15 years. Those who are privy to his issues claimed he said that it has been revealed to him that some stuffs were buried in his compound.

He is from a polygamous home where his dad’s other three wives all had female children and he is the only son of his dad, from his late mum. Despite being a prominent member of a church, it’s alleged that there are very few ‘spiritual homes’ that he has not visited in this country.

As far as I am concerned, the issue of the three men I discussed here are cases of paranoia -which most ‘vision-seeing’ prophets have perfected in instilling in the weak. Yet, they do not seem to realize what has hit them.

As a matter of fact, they have become “basket cases”…ever in search of “a new seer.” One who believes in the efficacy of prayers should also be willing to believe that God hears his own prayers-that, to me, is faith!

Funny how some of us lay claim to a belief in God but every action of ours points to the fact that we have more faith in fellow humans than the Almighty Himself.

Challenges will always come, for as long as there is breathe in us…patronising prayer people all over the place won’t make this FACT go away.

Pity is to be bestowed on the man who believes everything these prayer people tell him, he just might wake up one day to realise that he is all alone-in his life.

I forgot to mention that the wives of all the three men mentioned above have left them, a long time ago!