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In
the past few weeks we have established the significance of the heavenly
signs by explaining that in Genesis 1 it is stated that the celestial
signs were designed to show signs, tokens and omens of divine
appointments between God and man and we said that Jesus indicated that
at the end of the present age there will be signs in the heavens i.e.
the sun, moon and the stars (Luke 21:25-26), therefore these signs are
vital to understanding the times we live in and what actions we should
take.

We
explained from Revelation 12 about the celestial signs pointing to the
Birth of the sons of God and the emergence of Kingdom Ministries
analysing the signs observed as a celestial conjunction between the
sun, moon and the star-sign called Virgo between 1996 and 2000 AD.

We
explained that these Kingdom ministries are actually the beginning of
the manifestation of the sons of God who are teaching the nations and
the body of Christ about the life of God which will soon be harvested
in the church with corresponding manifestations of divine power and
glory.

Wrestling down the dragon-serpent (Revelation 12): 2012 AD

“A
great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the
sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her
head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give
birth. … She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the
nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and
to his throne…. And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels
fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and
prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And
the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth,
and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying
in heaven, now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our
God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is
cast down, which accused them before our God day and night”. Revelation
12:1-2, 5, 7-10 KJV

The
sons of God called the royal priesthood of Melchizedek are now maturing
and in the appointed time will attain to the measure of the stature of
the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4).

Then
they will be caught up to the throne of God as seen by John in
revelation 12, then the Sons of God will be given authority and Power
in order to influence events that will bring the Kingdom of God into
manifestation.

This
will lead to the overthrow of the present evil celestial order of the
dragon or satan and will lead to the establishment of the Kingdom of
God on Earth. This is what John saw as there being war in the
heavenlies and Michael and his angels were in warfare against satan and
his angels and then the devil was cast down to the earth.

The
signs indicating that the time for the overthrow of the satanic order
and the dawning of the Day of The Lord will become evident by the end
of 2012 as a celestial conjunction involving the constellation called
OPHIUCUS (which is between the star signs Scorpio and Sagittarius) and
the sun.

OPHIUCUS
is a Greek word which means the serpent holder the constellation is
given this name because the sign shows a man wrestling with a massive
snake and at the same time with one foot on a scorpion. This is
represents the sons of God that have been given power to overcome the
powers of satan symbolised by serpents and scorpions.

OPHIUCUS
is located at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy and when the sun moves
into position to form an alignment with OPHIUCUS, it will be a sign
that the present age is coming to an end.

The
timing of this alignment being 2012 is one of the reasons that a lot of
films and research is being done about 2012. But it is not the end of
the world as some are crying. Rather it is going to be a signal year
for the church of the Lord Jesus to begin preparing for great upheavals
because of the cosmic conflicts that are coming between the Kingdom of
God and the Kingdom of Darkness and we can already see signs in this
year portending the coming of these events which will bring severe
judgements to the Earth and the heavens in the Day of the Lord.

keysofthekingdom@234next.com

Recently, Catherine
Zeta Jones hit the headlines. This time, not for Oscar winning awards
or for her husband Michael Douglas’ brave fight against cancer. Neither
was it for her stunning Welsh looks or her perfect family. Ms Zeta
Jones had a secret. She was a bipolar disease sufferer.

Bipolar disease, or
manic depression, is a mental illness characterised by depression and
outbursts of mania. Like many mental illnesses, I can’t imagine this as
a nice addition to an otherwise so-called perfect life.

Many have applauded
the bravery of Ms Zeta Jones in talking openly about mental illness.
Mental illness is not exactly dinner party language. “Hey, by the way,
do you know I see a shrink twice a week?”

Mental illness
carries a stigma. Mental illness carries a shame tag. Employers
discriminate, friends lose patience. Families just want you to pull
yourself together. But why so much shame?

Rarely does anyone
laugh at a person with a physical condition. Are we guilty of seeing
such as heroic or brave? Are those who therefore suffer from mental
illness perceived as weaklings and wimps? Less human even?

Jesus sees no
difference between physical or mental illness. All sicknesses are
manifestations of the works of the devil. And Jesus came to destroy
every last one of them. And thank God He did. Because through Him, we
have a hope and a future.

My husband, Eze,
was diagnosed with psychosis for 18 long years. That beats the record
of the woman with the issue of blood! He did the hospitals, the
medications. Yes, he coped with the stigmas, the full works. All
through the years, he sought the end to the torture. Like the next
person.

Thank God that the
Resurrection Power of Jesus, that same power that raised up Jesus from
the dead, is still available in us today. I met my husband in the 14th
year of his mental illness story. The next four years were a test of
faith for both of us. Faith in the healing power and goodness of God.
Thank God, God’s word never lies. Thank God that the same Word that
cures diabetes cures psychosis. Thank God that the same Jesus that
loved a blind Bartimaeus is the same God that loves Eze.

Jesus is the same
yesterday, today and tomorrow. Celebrities may encourage us to seek
help for mental illness. They may even begin to glamorise the whole
mental health thing. It may become trendy to be taking a happy pill or
to be seen zooming in and out of rehab, or boasting of having sleeping
sessions on the psychiatrist couch. But, God is not new in any of this
business. I like God’s style, however. He offers a permanent solution!

The woman with the
issue of blood likewise had a terrible condition that society scorned.
Thank God she stepped out one destined day to meet her Healer. No
matter the stigmas you may face now due to mental illness or whatever
shame the devil has tried to bring your way, you can step out. You can
rise above the shame and stigma. And take your healing. What does it
matter what society has labelled you? God has another label for you. He
calls you ‘My son’ or ‘My daughter’. Yes, Jesus called the woman with
the issue of blood, ‘daughter’. He wanted her to know that she was now
restored, not only in her body, but into society.

Well, my husband‘s
story had a very happy ending. Who said ‘And they lived happily after’
only happened in fairy tales? Life in Christ has a guaranteed success
ending. Faith works.

In cutting a long
story short, my husband appropriated his healing and ended 18 years of
mental illness, medication, mental hospitals and…shame. The life he
lives today is more glorious than before it all happened.

As we celebrate
Easter this weekend, let us remember that Jesus died for every one of
us. Yes, He died for the scourge of society. He went to hell. Destroyed
the works of the enemy. He made a shameful spectacle of the devil so
that people like my husband can take off their cloaks of shame. Imagine
the devil’s own stigma and shame that day in front of his employees!
Jesus rose from the dead, ascended and sat at the right hand of the
Father. Sat at the seat of authority. And where He is seated, we, as
Christians are seated too.

And that seat has no shame or stigma!

(Zoe A. Onah is the
author of Defying the Odds: One man’s struggle and victory over mental
illness and his wife whose trust in God never failed)

While being
interviewed for admission into the Nigerian Military School, Zaria, in
the 80s, my brother, Uwasinachi, was asked why he wanted to join the
army.

“Because I want to someday become the president of Nigeria,” the nine-year-old replied.

The interview panel
of military officers burst out laughing. All, except one. According to
Uwasinachi, the chair of the panel remained stern-faced while his
colleagues fell over themselves laughing, causing my brother to fear
that he had goofed big time.

Uwasinachi need not
have worried. The school’s quota system allowed only one student from
each of the eastern Nigeria states, and my brother ended up as the
chosen candidate from what was then Imo, before Abia State was carved
from it. Months later, the humourless chair was dead – executed by
Ibrahim Babangida’s regime, following accusations of the man’s
involvement in an abortive coup. Back during the NMS interview, the
officer must have known that my brother’s answer was nothing to laugh
about. Being in the military was indeed the route to political power in
Nigeria.

Within a few years
of that interview, the Giant of Africa had moved on. We were voting to
elect public officers under a two-party system masterminded by the
General Babangida administration. My father, then one of the top dogs
of the defunct National Republican Convention in my hometown, Umuahia,
nominated me as a polling clerk to represent his party in the election.
The pay was N80 per day – a bonanza for a girl who had just finished
secondary school. And so, at age 16, I stood at a polling booth in a
village in my community, and, along with other electoral officials
representing both the NRC and the Social Democratic Party, counted the
votes for each party’s gubernatorial candidates.

The incumbent state
governor won. Some villagers rejoiced, others moaned, everyone
eventually dispersed. Then one of the community leaders came into the
village hall where the electoral officials were tidying up, and shut
the door.

“You’re all from this community?” he whispered in Igbo.

We concurred. The electoral commission preferred to assign officials to their areas of origin.

“You need to
realise that the current governor is coming back to rule this state,”
the man continued, “whether anyone likes it or not.”

He had a point. An incumbent losing in Nigerian elections was as rare as a snowstorm in hell.

The community
leader went on to explain that, when the governor eventually inspected
the voting records from all over Abia, he would see that, even though
he won in our community, it was only by a narrow margin, signifying
that our people were not fully behind him.

“That will affect
how much help he renders to us – whether he repairs our roads and
provides us with other social amenities,” the community leader
explained.

With his little
point made, the man watched while the senior officials of our team –
from both the NRC and SDP – looked through the records to determine how
many registered voters had not turned out to vote. One by one, each
absentee voter was accredited. Then the result sheets were amended to
show that those absentees had cast their votes for the incumbent
governor. Satisfied, the community leader dipped into his pocket and
extracted some cash. My teammates – three middle-aged men who spoke
Igbo amongst themselves but switched to English whenever they had
something to say to me – must have imagined me as too young and
innocent and civilised to notice that they didn’t share the booty with
me.

That experience was
proof of what many Nigerians had always suspected: the outcome of
elections had little to do with whether or not we turned out to vote.
However, April 16, 2011, saw me standing under the blazing sun for
about six hours, waiting to vote for the first time in my life.

I stood on one
queue to get accredited, waited for hours before I could join another
queue to ascertain that I had indeed been accredited, before joining
yet another queue to cast my ballot for the presidential candidate of
my choice. Some of my friends reported spending about eight hours at
their polling booths, enduring a process that the head of the African
Union observer mission and former Ghanaian president, John Kufuor,
described as “cumbersome”. Nevertheless, none of us had any doubts that
it was worth it. This time, our votes would count.

Despite
post-election violence and allegations of voting irregularities in some
states, my Nigeria has definitely come a long way from when all you
required to exercise power was a uniform and a gun. The story should
have a better ending come 2015..

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, an editor at NEXT, is the author of the novel “I Do Not Come to You by Chance”.

Jonathan won the election, Buhari second and Ribadu third.

Jonathan’s PDP attracted 22,495,187 votes or 58.89
per cent of the votes cast. Buhari’s CPC took 12,214,853 votes or 31.98
per cent and Ribadu’s ACN 2,079,151 votes or 5.41 per cent. Seventeen
other parties shared the remaining 3.72 per cent of the votes. That is
a very sizable margin for winning an election.

There are protests claiming rigging as we have
come to expect over the years of Nigeria’s election and the courts have
shown that they will give the fullest attention to any case of
electoral fraud brought before them. But whichever way you cut it,
these elections have been a significant improvement on previous
elections in Nigeria. What do the independent electoral observers say?

The Commonwealth Observer Group, the European
Union (EU) Election Observation Mission, the African Union (AU) and the
National Democratic Institute (NDI) all acknowledged the vast
improvement and praised the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC)
accordingly.

Alojz Peterle, Head of the EU Observer Group said, “Election day showed a generally peaceful and orderly process.”

The Head of the Commonwealth Observer Group and
former President of Botswana, Festus Mogae, said that problems in the
conduct of the election were negligible and Nigerians should accept the
outcome.

“Though there were minor technical or procedural
imperfections, they were not related to mischief. I think the election
was credible.”

Both the Commonwealth and EU teams noted that
there were shortcomings in the electoral process that will be detailed
in their respective final reports.

And thus, the point that Goodluck Jonathan must
ensure that the process of electoral reform is continued. To that end
he must give Attahiru Jega the mandate for INEC to continue the reform,
give him the resources to complete the job and a timetable to produce
the results. There can be no reason why 2015 elections should not be
the best that has ever been seen in any African nation and that means
no rigging, peaceful, free and fair.

Then there is the task of getting on with the job
of running the country and it is here that President Jonathan has a set
of tasks that most Nigerians would agree need to be addressed. Some,
such as power sector reform and signing off the Petroleum Sector Bill,
are hanging over from the previous term. Others such as setting up a
sovereign wealth fund protected by the constitution, as this column has
previously advocated (On Watch: Oil Opportunity, March 13, 2011) would
be a good way of preventing the excess crude account from being
plundered and preserving a portion of Nigeria’s oil wealth for the
future.

It’s relatively easy to tell the President how to
run the country. Being President and implementing these suggestions is
probably the hardest job in Nigeria. However, this should not deter us
from constructing a list for Mr President’s attention. On my list of
‘things to do’, I have the following:

1. Roll out the power sector reform

2. Sign the Petroleum Industry Bill

3. Review and restructure the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation

4. Set up and constitutionally preserve a Sovereign Wealth Fund

5. Reform the Solid Minerals sector

6. Roll out an economic stimulus package for the north that has agriculture and mineral development as its core

What does your list look like? If you were
President, what would be the top five items on your list of things to
do? Let me have them and I will compile a list of the top 10 items
based on the most popular put forward and we will bring them to the
attention of Mr President.

But whatever the list of jobs to be done, Mr
Jonathan will need a first rate team around him to ensure that there is
delivery on every target that is set. Under Umaru Yar’Adua, some
ministers simply did whatever they wished regardless of presidential
instructions. Jonathan inherited some prima donnas and some rogues.
These people simply must not appear in the new cabinet.

The Petroleum Minister, Diezani Allison-Madueke,
is in the twilight of her political career, although she may not yet
have realised it, and must be replaced if the oil and gas sector is to
be cleaned up. The EFCC will continue to exist in the shadows until
Farida Waziri is replaced with someone whom Nigerians and the
international anti-corruption agencies respect. If the north is to see
some serious attention to economic growth and development of key
infrastructure, then the ministries of agriculture, solid minerals and
water resources require outstanding appointments.

We won’t have to wait long to find out who is to
be trusted with building a future that we all hope will bring sustained
improvement in the quality life of every Nigerian.

onwatch@mail.com

Are the political
parties not to blame for this post-election violence because they
failed to educate their supporters on what it TRULY takes to be elected
as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria?

No matter what one
told the fans of any of the candidates and/or the political parties
prior to the elections, they would just not accept that personal
opinion about the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would not count. Love
or hate the party, everything favoured her: the numbers, the reach, and
the mathematical formula thrown up by the 1999 Constitution as amended;
these were the factors that would support a president’s general
acceptability to majority of Nigerians, whether you liked it or not.

The test of ‘General acceptability’ is specified in S134 (2) (a) and (b) of the Constitution:

A candidate for an
election to the office of President shall be deemed to have been duly
elected where, there being more than two candidates for the election-

(a) He has the highest number of votes cast at the election: and

(b) He has not less
than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least
two-thirds of all the States in the Federation and the Federal Capital
Territory, Abuja.

What this means is
that one’s wishes mean zilch! So too, do perception of popularity,
fanatical acceptance and/or uncanny popularity in one region of the
country. This law, OUR law, recognizes six zones: an average of six
states a zone. If the Constitution recommends the President-elect win
at least two-thirds of ALL the states in the Federation and [in
addition to] Abuja, that is 24 states, at six states a region
therefore, it means that the Constitution expects him to be the choice
of a minimum of 25 per cent of ALL voters in a minimum of four regions
or 24 states.

This politics, one
agrees, can be a bitter pill to swallow. One had previously mourned the
loss of straightforward You-defeat-me-and-I-lose-to-you elections; you
know, the type where people vote, we count the votes and he who scores
the most wins. Human beings, we JUST like to complicate our lives! If
not, why qualify a straightforward requirement further by specifying
exactly what it SHALL mean when the President-elect has “the highest
number of votes cast at the election”?

It is also not for
nothing that the Constitution makes the country one constituency, so
that regional strength will come to nil when electing the president.
Reach is paramount. You are forgiven if you thought scoring high per se
meant anything; in addition, the candidate must make sure there is
nothing left for his opponents to count. Don’t forget that total number
of votes cast will also depend on voter response to the voting itself.
If many don’t vote, there won’t be votes to share, will there? Beyond
registration before and accreditation on the morning of election,
people must actually vote.

In Lagos State for
instance, where about six million are registered, it would be
interesting to see how the parties fare if almost everyone came out to
vote. The truth is that the most popular [ruling] party in any state
mobilizes more; perhaps because the ruling party corners all official
privileges and perks that come with being affiliated to or with a
serving government, to the dismay of other parties in the state. Access
to government owned media by opposition parties is still not equal! And
it is a fact that only ruling parties ‘in’ government can afford to
campaign to ALL the corners of a state or country. Opposition
candidates can NEVER spend as much as the incumbent. Therefore, it
shouldn’t surprise anyone that Goodluck Jonathan got votes even in
those areas where he was perceived to be weak. You underestimate the
power of a presidential campaign by an incumbent
Really-Constitutionally-Powerful President at your peril!

In Kaduna for
instance, it was not enough for the Congress for Progressive Change
[CPC] to score 1,334,244; it should have frustrated PDP with over two
million votes. Leaving a massive 1,190,179 votes to PDP was bad Math.
But look at Imo State; PDP selfishly swept 1,381,357 votes, leaving a
measly 14,821 for ACN in second place and 7,591 for CPC in third place.
In other words, President Jonathan made it difficult for any party to
score an extra 25 per cent in Imo State, taking the glory alone there,
but sharing CPC’s glory in Kaduna. Politics, like law, is an ass! Is it
just too painful for those who voted differently to accept that 22
million Nigerians like GOJO?

The ancients in
Judea had no concept of zero. That is why a period of what seems to be
at most 40 hours comes out as ‘the third day’, with Good Friday being
the first day and today, Easter Sunday, the third day on the morning of
which the tomb of Jesus Christ was found empty.

Conversely, by
counting the non-event of April 2 as a zero, it is not out of place to
look forward to Tuesday April 26 as ‘the third day’ of our general
elections cycle in Nigeria.

Until last week,
one could have said that it is state elections that excite the most
passion and strife in Nigeria, and that the third day of elections
might present even greater challenges than those of the second. But
now, some politicians whose candidates lost the presidential election
are complaining. Even the Action Congress of Nigeria, whose
presidential candidate had earlier conceded defeat, is ‘analysing
voting patterns’ instead of consulting its own agents and doing its own
mathematics.

It is not
reasonable to complain that 90-something per cent of the voters who
turned out for the presidential election in the south-south and south
east chose to vote for the winning Peoples Democratic Party candidate:
there are people all over the federation who can attest that at their
own individual polling stations, the votes all went one way. Indeed,
the grim joke in the two zones where Muhammad Buhari hardly campaigned
at all is that there must have been some rigging for him to secure even
the few votes that were recorded in his favour, so meagre was his
support there.

It is more
reasonable to suspect results where there was an unusually high
turn-out of registered voters last Saturday. But did that high turn-out
produce Goodluck Jonathan’s victory? There are grounds for suspecting
that those figures have less to do with election-rigging in President
Jonathan’s favour (since he might still have had both the necessary
plurality and the percentages of the vote for victory even with a lower
turnout) and more to do with practising for next Tuesday’s state
elections. Nigerians are certainly fed up with being told that “he
would have won anyway”, but it is precisely to show what would have
been the margin of that winning (if at all) that the parties must
gather the results from their own agents. It will be interesting to see
whether the states with the most hotly contested gubernatorial races:
where the incumbent knows that he has not performed well, or is
unpopular, or facing a strong challenge, are among those with the
magically high turn-out numbers for the presidential poll.

After all, while
the so-called ‘Modified Open Ballot System’ of accreditation and
simultaneous voting across the country remains the best way of
conducting a credible election where the voters’ register remains
suspect, it would have been naïve to imagine that desperate people
would not be working overtime to see how they can defeat the system,
and perhaps to use the presidential election as a ‘dry run’.

At this stage, it
is impossible to tell whether the coming third day is going to herald
any kind of glorious resurrection for the Nigerian nation. We’ve
certainly had the death part of the Easter story, and it is
particularly poignant to think that youth corps members – on whose
shoulders much of the credit for the successful conduct of the
elections rests – have been killed by other young people protesting the
outcome of the elections. Much work needs to be done among those
disaffected young people who could not accept or understand that the
fact that they themselves all voted for one candidate does not mean
that the candidate must necessarily win an election in which all parts
of Nigeria are voting.

Attahiru Jega, the
INEC Chair, can probably say a few things about being on the receiving
end of shouts that veer so wildly from ‘Crucify him!’ to ‘Hosanna!’ and
back again. But he was given a Herculean task with far too little time
to accomplish it. So with the imperfect architecture that the outgoing
National Assembly cobbled together out of the Mohammed Uwais-led
Committee on Electoral Reform’s recommendations, the best we should
have expected was – not a ‘free and fair’ election (which would have
required an effective way of monitoring campaign spending, media
access, and the use and/or abuse of government resources) – but a
credible poll which accurately reflected the votes cast by the
electorate on polling day.

With even those
modest hopes seeming rather dead and buried, it would probably take a
miracle for the coming polls to be better than the two that went
before. But then, aren’t those just the kind of hopes that, at
Eastertide, are realised on the third day?