Of Ese Walter and COZA (1)

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Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo & Ese Walter

•    Read Ese Walter’s post on her blog here

We are more conflicted than we would ever agree.  So, before you go commenting on any issue, know how conflicted humans could be. You could say the world and all are so fucked up. And I will agree. I want to speak on what I think of Ese Walter’s alleged affair with Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of COZA (Common Wealth Of Zion Assembly). Know therefore, that what we are now concerned with is a one-sided story of an alleged abuse. We still do not know the truth or who may not be saying it between both parties. Till now, the accused Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo is yet to accept or deny (as best known to me) the rising dust fast forming speckles on him or any further evidence of the affair (aside Ese’s blogpost) known. One thing is sure though, COZA and Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo are gaining free publicity from this. You could call it a bad one if you need to. The number of retweets and mentions @cozanigeria had yesterday showed that their Sunday service’s attendance more than tripled. Many attended the church, Abuja chapter, to really know who this lap-cruising pastor is.

I will only proceed to analyse Ese Walter’s claim (or a confession as she calls it) and see what may have transpired between the two. For all I know now, there is still no basis to build any valid argument on. We can only speculate. And the same will I be doing. I will therefore put my comment on assumption. I will want to believe that there was indeed an affair between Ese and Pastor Biodun. If Pastor Biodun and COZA want us to believe otherwise, they had better stop being all spiritual about this all. This is fast turning into a media war. Only what is required is wisdom. I am afraid God may never speak to Pastor Biodun when to come out of his ‘angelic’ shrine and address this issue. We all want to know what happened from Pastor Biodun and not what God wants to say through him. I believe every man is measured by the level of his wisdom, not how many times he mounts the pulpit. His pastor-hood is being threatened now. He’s losing his pastor toga. I don’t want to see him as a Pastor now but a man who owes everyone a statement. 

One thing is clear though, Ese wrote a beautiful, simple and coherent post, that should make COZA and Pastor Biodun so unsettled. They seem not to be bothered at all about it. Or the smoke screen they put up will rather have us believe so. All these the-Lord-says and the-Lord-must-speak-before-we-speak will only further set more odds against the church and the alleged Pastor. With the gusto Pastor Biodun took to COZA’s Tweeter yesterday, it pretty much seems he is taking everybody for a ridiculous ride. This is what some people have turned Pentecostalism into. The Puritanistic streak we most parade as holiness is hogwash. There is no spirituality in that. This makes one recall the attitude of Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel’s The Scarlet Letter and the hypocrisy of the leaders about Hester Prynne’s travail. Ese Walter may soon be our modern day Hester Prynne.

There have been wrangles on the social media about whether Ese was abused or not from her account, with many waxing in rhetoric to support what they believe abuse is. The issue of abuse need not go any far. From the account of Ese, there was indeed an abuse. Pastor Biodun did that in many manners. One was the abuse of power. Pastor Biodun cashed in on the servility of Ese to sleeping with her. I do not know why some are putting up defences to ascertain the validity of the abuse. That Ese walked into Pastor’s Biodun’s pent hotel room unaided does not mean she might have been consensual in the act. We all know the deference most Pentecostal pastors hold on their members. It is so spell bond, almost always hypnotising. Some of these pastors could command a host of their members into fire and the members wouldn’t flinch. #ITisALWAYStheLordSPEAKING. The pastors are demi-gods. The same spell must have held on Ese as she ‘steeped’ into the room, ended on Pastor Biodun’s lap and started ‘rolling under the sheets’ with him for a week.

When Pastor Biodun resorted to subtle threat: 

“Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo also said to me that he had a dream where I exposed what was happening to the media. Said it was all over the place and that people were calling me the girl that caused chaos in COZA. He also said I should remember the bible said to “touch not God’s anointed.” I immediately started to rebuke the devil and said I could never do anything like that. I was almost swearing with my entire family as I thought really I had touched God’s anointed by submitting my body to be used.”

he again abused Ese emotionally. I could go on and on about how Ese was abused.

However, Ese Walter’s leaves out many questionable holes in her account. With the forewarning that her friend had given her, why did she go ahead with joining the Pastor’s PCU (Pastor Care Unit)? Also, shouldn’t she have been curious about such warning, probably the friend knew what she didn’t know about the church? Why is she calling her post a confession rather than an allegation even when she has a 58 minutes recording of her meeting with Pastor Biodun? Why are the words (slander and justification) italicized in her first paragraph? These are some of the questions we need to ask Ese Walter.

In the first step towards resolving these many loose ends, she may have to host the 58mins recording for us. Perhaps, she wasn’t prepared for the controversy that followed her blogpost. Perhaps, she planned it as one of her inspirational posts on the blog. Maybe not.

Until Pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo of COZA speaks…