WHERE ARE MY SPIRITUAL DAUGHTERS?
Who will be my spiritual daughter, please? It is somehow late though. It should have happened while I was an undergraduate at OAU. I would have enjoyed plenty cooler ministry too. I would have been the reason why somebody’s daughter was always calling home for more foodstuffs and pocket money. I never cooked meat all my life in Ife, and I didn’t prepare amala. There were low-budget canteens at old Buka where I was always satisfying my appetite for Amala(white). (My appetite too was cooperative with my purse. It never pushed me to buy Ogunfe or catfish. ) The aftermath was always crazy. I would just enter the library and sleep off.
I and my friends were broke. It was like being broke was part of the criteria I used to select friends. Some were not my friends when they had little money in 100 level. We became friends when they were broke and I only knew about their heydays through stories and some nice and quality stuff they got before the economy melt them down. Those were the souvenirs of their good old days before they deemed me worthy of friendship.
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In Awo hall, you could hardly differentiate between the broke guys and the buoyant ones. Within a few weeks of staying in Awo, guys from a well-to-do background would have started imitating the broke ones. We Pako guys were very influential. Some of these guys would in solidarity with us keep their nicest clothes and refrain from telling us stories that could make us curse our births. You would only know about their real status when you eavesdrop on their conversations with their family members. There was a time a guy was telling his Mum not to send any money again till the following month. It was like I was watching a comedy skit. How on earth will you be blocking money from entering your account? And there I was without up to #1000 in my account. Fingers truly are not equal!
We knew about some at the close of the semester when their parents came to convey them home in exotic cars.
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Imagine me having a female fashion of these guys as a spiritual daughter. Perhaps, I would not have had reasons to spend my meager pocket money on Amala at old Buka and later on at New market. They would have covered up for me. I could have been eating a nice amala with nice soups like ‘Consumer’. Consumer was the nickname of a roommate in part one at Angola. The guy was studying Consumer Science and he was also in reality a consumer. Right from part one, this guy had started enjoying cooler ministry. While my bunkmate was always preparing a badly looking Amala Lafun and Egusi concoction with egg, Consumer would just receive a call, and boom! he would just come with correct black amala and okro soup with fresh eja Titus that has been fully baptized in a good looking stew. He would now majestically sit on his upper bunk at the full glare of all of us. He had different sisters serving these menus. I could not resist the urge to partake in that perennial feast one day when I saw a plate of a well garnished fried egg being accompanied with very soft loaves of bread. It took up to ten years before I ate such a rich, delicious, and well garnished fried egg again. Each time I asked this guy about the sources of these nice meals, he would just tell me they were just his fellowship sisters, more or less like ‘daughters in the Lord sha’.
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But I was not a qualified spiritual father to anyone. I was the only one that could not speak in tongues during our foundation school impartation service. So, they said I was not a genuine child of God. I also did not fall when the spirit was falling my colleagues. They said I didn’t release myself to the spirit. I was too strong and solid for the spiritual ẹ̀fásẹ̀ of the ‘god of man’. Tell me, whose daughter will want to submit to spiritual fatherhood of brother Gideon who suddenly became Ogidiolu and was fond of wearing native attire to church with a Yoruba Bible until Oni Olamitide bought an English Bible for him as a birthday gift in part 2? The major Bible verses I could recite offhand were in Yoruba.
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I could have shone in choir. But, I could not pretend to vibe to the English songs they were always singing. Abi how will I be dancing and shouting ‘yeah’, ‘glory’ to the unheard lyrics? I once asked a jubilant girl seated beside me at ECU one day to tell me the lyrics of the ‘phonetic-pampered’ English song the choir was ministering one day just to be shocked by her response that she didn’t hear anything. Her gesticulation was a complete betrayal of the song.
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If you want to know how lightweight you are, you should love a fellowship girl that is loved by a fellowship exco. You have lost the race my brother. Because your crush is a spiritual daughter of someone with an emotional entanglement placed on public restrictions till the end of his tenure in the fellowship. That’s how one brother will just place an embargo on your crush. You will just be wasting your actions and performances. There was a friend who loved a damsel in her fellowship. That girl was my colleague at a Jamb tutorial center in Oshogbo. We both gained admission to Ife the same time. My friend who was also active in the same fellowship this girl was attending had to tell his fellowship president about his feelings towards the lady, and the president promised to help him talk to her. Shortly, he started seeing the babe and the president together and he was happy that the president was passionately delivering his message. When days and weeks of constant open conversations went by between the babe and Mr. President without the guy getting feedback from the president, he had to remind him. That was when the president confided in him the ‘mind of God’ that he should forget about the girl because the guy was not spiritually compatible with her. However, God told the president that he, the president was the chosen man for that babe and he was not ready to waste God’s time, he had to hit the ground running. That was how they carried my friend Burnley win, Man City lose.
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What is wrong in a spiritual daughter washing his spiritual father’s clothes? Afterall, he is not staying in Awo hall. But me I stayed in Awo Hall; another disqualification! Fajuyi Hall was a fertile land for such father and daughter relationship. You could just see a lady kneeling down in Fajuyi Hall while a male student, a fellowship exco who had already been rechristened ‘Pastor’ would be publicly laying hands on her.
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One of the modern mysteries to me is still how students in citadel’s of higher learning sheepishly submit to their fellow students and start seeing them as fathers and mothers in the Lord. This is why many of these senior or top-ranked fellowship excos find it difficult to do any other things than to become pastors at all cost after school. They are so accustomed to being deified by sheep. Plenty of them are now church owners or pastors with ready-made adult sheep. If this is not the case of Toyo baby and pastor Timi Adigun, I believe it must be closely related. The arrogant pride in that bros describing himself as her spiritual father is ‘hungrying’ me. Who does not want a spiritual daughter that can splash 90% of her income as tithe to her spiritual father? The prayer is that may our biological daughter not fetch water in her pockets like Toyo baby.
By now I would have had plenty spiritual grand children. I would have been eating ‘ounje omo’ and ‘ounje omo omo’. And by now, I would have become a deified god. But, I defied the gods.
Ogidiolu
280122
