It is strange, very strange, that we have yet to see the customary flurry of “prophecies” from pastors about who will win the next presidential election. The season is upon us, politicians are circling, yet the prophetic industry, normally quicker to the microphone than a Lagos area boy is to a stalled car, has remained strangely quiet. A silence this deep in a profession this voluble deserves attention.
When Buhari was running for a second term, numerous pastors “prophesied” that he would lose. One went further, declaring that he would die if he dared to contest. Buhari is, of course, dead, but only after completing another four years and then spending two more picking his teeth and presumably avoiding ze oza room in Daura. A prediction with a margin of error of six years is no prophecy, but an actuarial table that any insurance clerk could have produced with considerably less theatrics.
The predictions about Tinubu losing were even more dramatic. Too many pastoral mouths, foaming at the corners like a Lagos danfo conductor’s armpits, announced his defeat as though reading from a result sheet they had personally collated. One even claimed he would be arrested and that someone else, Osinbajo, I think, would be asked to take his place.
The ledger of failed visions is never audited and nobody ever asks a general overseer to refund the faith of the people who believed him.
That prophecy, like many others, went as far off-target as Gabriel’s penalty in the Champions League final, sailing so far over the bar that the ball may still be in orbit. What astonishes me is the absence of consequences. If a striker missed as prolifically as these pastors, he would be dropped. If a doctor’s record were as dire, his licence would be in jeopardy. The prophet, however, is bullet-proof because his congregation teems with livestock.
The ledger of failed visions is never audited and nobody ever asks a general overseer to refund the faith of the people who believed him.
So, I suspect the present hush is not repentance. Repentance does not appear to be part of the trade. It is risk management. Having been bombed twice in recent elections, they have discovered the virtue of caution. Their god, who spoke with remarkable clarity in 2018 and 2022, has developed a severe case of laryngitis in 2026.
Maybe the prophecies have not disappeared. Maybe the prophets have simply discovered that silence, unlike prophecy, cannot be fact-checked after the results are announced. Analysts get it wrong and it is understandable. They do not claim to see visions or hear from God. That difference needs to be highlighted.
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