Sannu Tor, Sannu Tor

Abu Onyiani

In The middle years of the first decade of the 21^st century, a few greedy and disgruntled members of a large ancient middleclass family in Benin City sat down to meet. In the meeting, they decided that they were going to sell the family house that was at Isekhere Street before the patriarch who was old, ill and dying gave up the ghost, all because they felt the richer members of the family refused to take care of them. So they went to a famous thug who was notorious for being a land grabber and a revenue collector for the Lucky Igbinedion’s administration and sold the property to him at a giveaway price, with a simple caveat, he was only to take over the administration of the property after the patriarch was dead and buried.

The patriarch died shortly afterwards, and in a family meeting just after the burial, the family discovered the property had been sold. Instead of getting angry, the first son of the late patriarch laughed hysterically like the Joker. He said he was already rich, and didn’t need the property. He had a considerable number of properties in Benin City, and had trucks that gave him big money weekly. He even laughed at his own son who was one of the key plotters. The other children of the late patriarch who weren’t involved in the sale were all doing well in Europe, and it was obvious they had no need for the property that was sold. They even mocked the “fools” who sold a property they could have inherited.

The plotters were ashamed, and they knelt down and begged. The other members of the family who were doing well immediately raised money, and gave to them, so they could approach the man they sold the house to, to tell them they wanted to return his money since they had no actual right to sell it in the first place. They went, but they left with injuries because the man they sold it to wasn’t having it. His thugs beat the living daylight at those who dared try to cancel the deal he had made with them before. That very day, he brought in trucks to demolish the property. I was just back from school that day when I saw numerous people scrambling to carry their properties away from the building that was besides ours. There was a carwash in the building, and the carwash boys were left stranded, and so were the hairdressers and fashion designers who had shops in the building. There was a church branch whose pastor had fled with the members a few months earlier or so, leaving only a few church equipment, and they too were in danger of being destroyed until good Nigerians carried them out and called the general overseer of the church to come and carry her stuff, her name was Prophetess Dr. Rachel Idahosa, but I didn’t know this at the time.

In 2012, my parents had had enough of living in the city centre, my mum was fed up with how she was being treated at work and was desperately craving for a change of work. The Landlord of the property we wanted to move into at “Three House”, Upper Sokponba Road had promised my mum she could erect structure to start up a business as soon as she moved in, a promise he failed to keep, but that is another story. On the side of the house was a church, a storey building. The ground floor was the main church, while the first floor was living quarters for the general overseer and the young vibrant pastors under her tutelage. I remember I didn’t want to attend the church because as soon as we moved in, the few clansmen and friends we had from that area started warning us to stay away from the church because they employed diabolical means to further their spiritual exercises. Actually they did occasionally pray with Goya cooking oil, razors, brooms and needles because they carried a spiritual significance, according to them.

I stayed away only to a reasonable extent, because the church had a well that served as a source of bathing water to us and a lot of other people in the street. Our landlord had only made plans on paper to sink a borehole in our house. Nonetheless, the young pastors were friendly, I particularly liked a pastor, the one they called Evangelist Efe, he was handsome, and although he had his own faults and he wasn’t the most fluent preacher, he made up for it with his interpersonal relationship with people. People mockingly called him Bonitus behind him, in mockery of the fire accident that almost took his life a few years before, the whole of his right leg is covered in scars till this day. I took a liking to him, as if I knew my own mum would go through the same ordeal ten years later.

Evang. Efe was the one who drew me to the church, and he looked truly resplendent that Sunday I first went to church. He wore a brown shirt that was sewn with buckle and straps and I remember wishing I had owned a shirt like that that day, but I had rejected the shirt when he gave it to me a few months later for personal reasons. After service, while we were talking, I applauded him for his drumming skills. We started talking about music, and before that evening ended, he had promised he would teach me how to play drums if I joined the choir group. That idea was totally agreeable to me, because in 2009 when Micheal Jackson died, my biggest regret was that I didn’t feature him in one of my musical albums. Like all children, I dreamt of being a pop star, and was devastated when my secondary school crush announced to me that cold morning that the smooth criminal was dead. It had rained that morning, and the few students that made it early to school were forced to assemble in an unused classroom instead of the open space in front of the SS1 block. Joining the choir was a chance to prove that I had the best voice in the world.

I was soon a chorister with the church, and was so active that my “Lord Father” declared I had to choose between him and the church. It was both amusing and depressing because a few years before, the man had threatened to throw me out of the house because I stopped attending church. Now he threatened to go to church to embarrass me at the slightest instance. Man even locked me out on a number of occasions and I had to beg and beg before he allowed me in. One day, I decided I had had enough and went back to church to sleep. It was the first time in my life I had ever slept in a house where they ran their generator till day break. That brought about a war with my father, but this is not that story.

It wasn’t long before they had an important program in church, and on the list of pastors, I had seen a name I wasn’t familiar with as amongst our pastors. I was shocked, I had been a faithful member for months, and I didn’t know him. I even asked if there was a branch I didn’t know of, and the answer was no, or nehi in street slangs. Since the former pastor of the branch that was very close to ring road “ran away” with members so many years ago, the general overseer had not given any room for any other pastor to catch her unaware again, a clear case of once bitten, twice shy.

Anyways, the program came and a vibrant but sylphlike dude mounted the pulpit, preaching and vibrating in a tempo that would have shamed the fiery Elisha. He even declared that an amen wasn’t enough for him or god at the end of his prayers. Instead, we were to bark “AMEN! AMEN!! AMEN!!! FIRE” at our highest decibels. We barked gladly, to please the most high. After the service, I began to investigate, but it seemed that those who knew the story had sworn an oath of secrecy, because they guarded the information I needed in a way that would make Nigeria’s apex security agency, the DSS green with envy. But I did not relent.

It was some time before I was to glean some information off sources that were close to the church’s hierarchy. Apparently, this new pastor (at least to me) was the first son of the General Overseer, Prophetess Idahosa. Apparently, he had been suspended for failing to control his libido. One person who made me swear to secrecy told me this pastor was suspended because he had drugged two sisters who came to see him by adding weed to the beans he cooked for them. He had then slept with them while they slumbered under the influence of what he gave them.

The only thing that came to my mind when I heard this story was the man we called Alhaji Umoru who lived close to us when I was in primary school. He was dating and sleeping with two sisters who were in the habit of fighting because of him every weekend. Sannu is a Hausa word that means hello, but we thought adding tor to it would mean he slept with two sisters especially as he was in the habit of replying you with whatever you said to greet him. My own mother tried woefully to deduce the reason why I and other children giggled whenever we exchanged “sannu tor, sannu tor” with Umoru.

A year away from the church and he was acting brand new, ordering fasting and prayers, and speaking in tongues in a way that would make Christ Embassy members cower in fear and defeat. Worse, they hid his purported crime away from the public, as if he had not atoned for it.

Around this time, a pastor of this church who was particularly gifted with words and music began to work on a branch, a short distance away from where the former branch was, and in a short time, the branch blew. The small rented store could no longer hold members who went there to worship. The pastor even spoke glowingly about how much he hoped to achieve with his office as the head of a branch, saying it was God’s revelation for him to head that branch. God works in mysterious ways, and he proved this once again because he revealed to Prophetess Idahosa, much to the chagrin and shock of we the members that the pastor at the end of the branch was to be recalled to the headquarters, while his own son was sent to head the branch, a branch that was dead within months. She made the pastor who grew the to be the Head pastor of the headquarter, garlanding the position in  passionate speech she gave, but it was clear to me what she wanted to prevent, another pastor running away with her members.

Today, she is dead, and her sons currently carry the baton.

The last I heard, most of the key members and officials who were there at the same time with me were no longer there, due to reasons too numerous and diverse to mention here, but this tale merely reinforces the truth that no matter how morally damaged a child may be, his parents if they are Pentecostal pastors would do their best to rebrand them, so they can hand over the business to them when the time comes.

Now I have no problem with the church and its officials, to a very large extent they were kind to me, they even officiated the service of songs ceremony of my dad who died in 2013 even though he never attended a single service. Nevertheless, the truth remains that Pentecostal churches in Nigeria has become a business where leadership position of authority is sexually transmitted and passed on from father or mother to child, however morally deficient or stunted they are.