Captain Nigeria

While Nigerians sit in darkness, the political class argues only about how to divide the money!

The Abuja— Auchi— Benin— Lagos road once carried my dreams to the University of Abuja. When I graduated in 1998, it was still a good road. Today, it carries the weight of broken promises.

When Kukuruku arrived in Texas, the first thing he wanted to find was a place of worship, a place that worshipped in a similar manner to the place he left behind in Nigeria. A friend of his father, whom he was staying with, was a Catholic. As a born-again Christian, Kukuruku has been told about the sinfulness associated with Catholicism. Their method of worship was said to be mysticism rife with paganism, where the absolute surrender of self is not to Christ but to a deity that lacks Christ’s spiritual harmony with the Church. Also, the dissonance created by the Catholic Church as to the hierarchy between mother and son fit in God’s heavenly body had created some firestorms in Nigeria’s fledging Evangelical circle, saying Christ’s mother was not the one crucified on the cross of Cavalry and therefore has no special place inside the Church.

With what he has been fed about Catholicism, Kukuruku had nothing good to say about Catholics — and his host was among those he saw trying to rob Christ of His glory by deeming Mary, Christ’s mother, as His equal. So, when his host suggested he try a Church frequented by Nigerians, he gladly took him up on it.

When Kukuruku arrived at the nondescript building, having been dropped off by his host, he thought, “What the heck is this?” But upon entering the building, he saw there was so much space inside than the outside building would want one to believe. It was good to find men his age in the Church who wanted to hear recent news from Nigeria. They also wanted to know if Kukuruku was going to overstay his visa, and if yes, was he ready to find an American woman to marry to get his papers. Kukuruku disappointed them all, for he did not come with any catchy news to share and did not intend to get married to an American woman. The reason he couldn’t share some salivating news with his self-pitying audience had nothing to do with a lack of interest in what was happening back home. It was just that a couple of months preceding his departure for the United States, Kukuruku embarked on a fifty-day six 6:00 am to 9:00 pm fasting that afforded him no time to watch or listen to the decaying political, social, and economic situation in his home country. And the reason he didn’t intend to marry an American had more to do with a woman he considered his soulmate, whom he left behind in Nigeria.

Knowing that his visa would expire after six months, but rather than do something about it, Kukuruku embraced God more than he had already done, expecting God’s manna from Heaven. Embracing God in the most intimate way possible means he had to starve to get God’s attention. His preacher back home had made it clear that to get what you need from God, one should be prepared to visit the book of Mathew 17:21, “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting,” said Jesus Christ to some of His disciples, who couldn’t fathom why they could not cast out a demon lurking within a helpless man’s soul — even after they had been given the power to do just that.

Kukuruku was banking on the same process that got him to the United States – fasting and prayer. Having fasted and prayed for fifty days, calling on God to provide him with the necessary resources to get him to the United States, he had received what he needed. Coincidence be damned! It was through God he got what he needed. Having been blessed with the needed resources, there were still some snags here and there, and Kukurukuattributed those snags to what he felt he did while his fasting.

Nigeria’s Evangelical Churches have strict codes of conduct, especially during fasting. The Bible was strictly followed literally for a reason. One thing that most Evangelicals in Nigeria think gave them an air of superiority, if not for anything else in God’s universe, was their closeness to God. They were closer to God than Western countries who have claimed Christianity as their birthright since Apostle Paul’s voyage to Rome. First, a Nigerian Evangelical would say that American Evangelicals can only fast from 6 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. but would eat some donuts and drink some coffee in between. Europe is said to be the worst, spiritually. Some Nigerian Evangelicals think moral decadence has eclipsed the puritanical teaching of God’s Word. Over in Europe, the Pope is seen as the only one who can fast.

To counter that narrative about American and European Christians’ inability to fast as commanded by Christ, some Evangelicals in Nigeria, who are in the minority, argued that Western Evangelicals have nothing to fast about. Their argument is based on the belief that people fast in Nigeria only because they are hungry and live in poverty — wanting God to rain manna from Heaven like He did the Israelites during their tumultuous journey from Egypt.

American Evangelicals, as Kukuruku found out, were more interested in politics and the social sins of the masses that bore a resemblance to the Pharisees’ orthodoxy than spare gullibility to fast one time, if only to ask God for peace to reign among the races that would end the political body of hate that is at the center of what ails America.

Kukuruku sees fasting as purity that takes a soul to the Mount of Septuagint. There, the soul would see the transfiguration, not of Moses and Elijah, but of Christ and the Apostle Paul.

Kukuruku was four years into celibacy when he started his two-month fasting. The reason he became a celibate after he gave his life to Christ was because he wanted to make his old ways of life—fornication, cheating, telling lies, and being Satan’s messenger,things of the past. According to the scripture in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new,” A man who lives a life of celibacy would not fornicate, cheat, tell lies, and would not be initiated into being a messenger for Satan, for according to his Church, it is women who are responsible for all the above.

But it became easier said than done when Kukuruku met Morinike, who was a new member of the Church he worshipped in Lagos, Nigeria. If Kukuruku was just a born-again Christian who still had s*x with Church women, as many fake born-again Christians do, it would have been easier when he met her. Morinike was a beautiful girl with the genuine skin color of a black African woman. Her charcoal skin defined her slender body. The Church as a place of worship was supposed to be a place where the eyes of a born-again Christian are blind to a beautiful woman, but Kukuruku, for some reason, decided long before he met Morinike that his eyes would never be blind to a beautiful woman, whether inside the Church or out of it.

He had only known Morinike for five months when he started his fasting. Kukuruku was preparing to travel out of Nigeria. Morinike became the girl he wished to marry. Like most men who have been tempted and fallen prey to lustfulness when seeking God’s face, Morinike was his Delilah, the same Delilah who seduced Samson. Morinike, who knew Kukuruku was fasting, also knew he was celibate and did things untoward that would change his plans before and after he left home.

For many days while fasting, instead of including prayer as part of his waiting on God and as commanded in Mathew 17:21, Kukuruku chose to ignore that and instead indulged in the first sin that led to Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden of Eden. It started with something like:
“Kuku,” Morinike called him, “now that you’re about to leave for America, what’s going to happen to us?”
“Happen to us? What do you mean?” Kukuruku asked.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I am talking about,” Morinike said flirtatiously.
Kukuruku did know what she meant. A girl like Nike, as Kukuruku called her, was the kind he would like to have as a future wife. If Christianity, as practiced by his Church, was less about the burning in hell after a guilty verdict in the heavenly court, he thought he would have had s*x with Nike several times already. But the fear and the thought of burning in hell after death was the biggest restraint that checked his s*xual impulses, which had been tamed for four years.

Morinike was not different from other Nigerian women. All she wanted was to get Kukuruku hooked as he was about to leave home for overseas. By constantly teasing him with her exposed breasts, she was inviting Kukuruku to please feel the fullness of her breasts. She wanted to use the fullness of her breasts to seal any opening that would endear Kukuruku to other females as he was about to sojourn to a land far from home.
“I’ll come back after a year overseas to marry you, Nike,” Kukuruku told her.
The look on her face, just a quick expression that disappeared in a second, portrayed a doubt about his sincerity. During the months they had known each other, had been magnificent, kind, and generous, but his refusal to touch or hug her worried her a lot. She wanted to make sure he would not forget about her once he was gone. What Morinike didn’t know was while she wanted to feel Kukuruku’s touch and his kisses, Kukuruku wanted to feel her touch and her kisses as well, even if that led to a pit of hell fire gnashing its teeth at them.

In Nigeria’s Evangelical Churches, especially the one Kukurukuwas a member of, having s*xual thought alone goes against the doctrine of the teaching of the scripture, so it wasn’t unusual for him to have some memory lapses when he would try to picture Morinike’s outward appearance. He knew that Morinike had very dark skin, the prime skin color women of his people were proud of and the skin that lured boys into puberty and their transformation to adulthood overnight.

Skin color had always been a topic of contention in the community he grew up. As a young boy, and even now, Kukuruku’s skin color was distinctly different from other kids. The color of his skin was different from the charcoal skin that was prevalent. The kids he grew up with tormented him for daring to have a skin color that was a shade lighter than his playmates. They were not envious of his skin color; they just thought it was awful not to have the perfect black African skin color. Thus, he made a promise to himself to find a woman who was the darkest in the whole wide world when it was time for him to get married. And Morinike fit that description perfectly. One could say that his love for Morinike was mostly fueled by her creamy, dark charcoal skin.

As his departure for the United States rapidly approached, Kukuruku decided to look in the eyes of the woman he had not until that moment looked into, in part so as not to commit the sin of s*xual reproach in God’s Holy tabernacle.

When Kukuruku met with Morinike that evening after he had decided he would look into her soul by seeing her in the flesh rather than in spirit, he was not disappointed. He saw her as a woman, not an object of purification of the Church. He touched and felt her with the sole intention for extraction of s*xual flavor. He was in the middle of his fifty days of fasting and prayers, yet the urge to fill his stomach, not with food, but with the exhilaration from having their lips touch occupied his mind.

Normally, when they met, it was always “hello” and “hi” without touching each other. That was Kukuruku’s guiding principle if his acceptance into God’s kingdom was to be maintained and without putting God’s name in disrepute. But today, rather than saying hello, he hugged Morinike for a long time — more than the Church decreed was necessary. Morinike was taken aback. She had wanted this all along, to feel his flesh. Although she liked his devotion to the Church and his fasting and prayers, living in the spiritual realm perpetually leads to the abandonment of our physical flesh, which, in her mind, needs constant nourishment from the opposite s*x.
“Are we ok, Kuku?” Morinike asked suspiciously but liked the hugging and the closeness of their bodies.
“Why, Nike?
“Because…” Morinike cried.
“Because what?” Kukuruku said, smiling.
“Well, you’ve never hugged me this much since you and I met,” she said, looking into his eyes.
“I know I haven’t, but there are reasons why I haven’t, which I believe you must know,” he answered.
“Have those reasons disappeared, Kuku? I don’t want to be held responsible for your backsliding in your walk with God,” she said as she slowly stepped away from him, maintaining an inch or two of distance but still close enough to feel him.
“What do you want, Nike? I thought you would like it. I’m not sure if it’s ever possible to understand women,” Kukuruku said, feeling disappointed and hurt. “If I should leave for the States without hugging you as I did a moment ago, I might not be able to smell you from the distance, Nike.”
“How will you not forget me when where you’re going is full of women to pick from?” Nike said with concern in her voice and on her face.
Kukuruku looked into her eyes, pulled her close and kissed her on her full lips. His eyes were shocked into dilation, and he felt a movement between his legs. Then he heard that voice that comes only from God. “Go and wash your mouth — you are a man of filthy lips.”
To his surprise, Kukuruku lashed out at God, saying, “I will not wash my mouth, majesty God. I love her lips, for they are as sweet as the autumn flowers.”
“What was that, Kuku? Are you ok?” Morinike asked, shocked and confused.
“I am ok, Nike. God wants me to be pure every time; He wants me to wash your lips off mine. That isn’t going to happen. I’m only twenty-four; I have been pure for four years, no s*x, not smiling at women, not looking at them; it has been me and Hisgood book, and He won’t even allow me to steal a kiss without intruding.”
“Snap out of it, Kukuruku. It is your guilty mind, not God; leave God out of it,” Morinike ordered, not sure whether to laugh or hug Kukuruku.

That was the only time he kissed Morinike before he departed for the United States, but the kiss would be very stubborn to shake off when American women opened the doors of their hearts for him to enter TO BE CONTINUED…