Today I’m worried about men of God, wet matchboxes and the fire at the base of the mountains of pastors’ wives. I’m worried about pastors who leave their wives’ needs unattended in the name of doing God’s work.

A pastor’s wife was caught pants down with her butt-naked brother-in-law defiling the clergyman’s marriage bed. The video trended for a while last week. Did you see it? The woman said she was pushed into the act by hunger, sexual hunger. Her pastor husband was focused more on fasting and prayer than fulfilling his conjugal duties. The man of God neglected the fire in between the legs of his wife. He allowed his wife to burn while he concentrated on the fire on his prayer altar. He refused to mount his wife and deliver her from the tension in her loins but instead moved from one prayer mountain to the other.

He must have convinced himself that the fire burning his wife was a fire of lower importance than the fire on his mountain. What did he know? When a woman wants her man, she wants him. She is not impressed by his spiritual exercises or excuses. She will hold on for as long as she can keep the fire under her wrapper, skirt or trousers. And women, especially wives, are good with holding that fire than men. Maybe that is why men take advantage of us. They think because we do not have evidence of a ‘morning glory’ or an angry ‘hard-on’ we do not have desperate moments. What ignorance! What carelessness! That’s why the Pastor stayed on the mountain, ignoring his wife’s cry for help. Did he think being a pastor exempted him from taking his wife to peaks of orgasmic pleasure plateau or that being Mummy G.O. excludes his wife from sexual needs?

Therefore, on Count 1, Oga Pastor was guilty. He left his primary assignment, his first call and allowed the devil to use it to taint his calling and ministry. Because, come to think of it, sex in marriage is holy, God-approved. Bible-sanctioned. So what was the Pastor thinking, that there would be no consequences for leaving his wife’s needs attended? In any case, how long does it take to quench the fire in between a woman’s legs? You can do a one-hour drill. You can also do a quickie. She’s your sheep, pastor. Lead her in the right direction, lead her to wet pasture. But you can’t ignore her. She is God’ gift to you, your helpmeet, the bone from your side. Ignoring her needs is like telling God to ‘come and carry his load’ because you have other more important loads. No sir, you can’t tell God that. The things that happen when a woman’s needs are ignored are far more costly than the little sacrifice of touching her in the right places and taking her to cloud nine twice a week. Okay, once a week. Just give a good account of your manhood when you do your weekly ministration. That’s all.

A pastor friend of mine told me that when you see a man of God prancing energetically on the altar, singing and dancing on Sunday morning, his wife had ministered to him all night. Meaning: a loving night of love puts a spring in the steps of pastors too. Now, imagine what an unhappy, frustrated pastor’s wife will mean and do to the call and commission! Her husband’s prayer will be hindered. What then is the essence of eight months of prayer and fasting if the prayer will be hindered? Imagine the sacrifice, denying yourself food, water, soft drinks for months just so the man in the wheel chair in your church can be healed, only for nothing to happen just because your wife is not being treated fairly. It’s not even as if sex is some bitter pill. It’s sweet, delicious, relaxing, therapeutic blessing from God. Why would a man of God run from a gift from God, a gift that was created before Pastor was formed? I don’t just understand some men’s interpretation on the holy books and God’s thoughts when he created the marriage institution. Is it that they know more than God or they simply don’t know anything at all? You keep your wife on ice for months and you say you love God?

We all need to read 1 Peter 3: 7.

‘Husbands, in the same way, be considerate as you live with your wives. And treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the glorious gift of life, SO THAT NOTHING WILL HINDER YOUR PRAYERS.

Dear men of God, do not waste our faith, the hope of your congregation because that is what you do when you treat your wives unfairly. We come to you. You lead the service, you bless us at the end of the service. We go home waiting for a miracle but you dear pastor, go on to block our testimonies by the way you treat your wives. Today is Saturday sir, make Mummy happy tonight. It is important for tomorrow’s service. Don’t use your I-can-go-without-sex-for-12-months pride to spoil your congregants’ testimonies. Do not hold back tonight. It is not a sin to do your wife well in every style and position. Forget her big hats and flowing dresses, she is just a warm-blooded female waiting for you to quench the fire down there.

On Count 2, therefore, the pastor, whose wife confessed to adultery, in the video is also found guilty of indirectly hindering the prayers of his flock.

But wait, isn’t it suspicious, very suspicious that a man, any man will go without sex for eight months at a stretch? A friend tried to plant a bad angle in my head.

‘Are we sure he wasn’t getting some on the side, outside?’ He asked with mischief glinting brightly in his eyes.

‘He is a man of God!’ I warned him like thunder could follow his blasphemous insinuation.

‘He’s a man first.’ He insisted on his theory. Bad guy, that one.

‘What if his matchbox is wet…?’ it’s possible, right?’

‘Oh wow, that is very possible.’ He’s my friend and I know how to divert his attention from one interesting theory to even more colourfully interesting ones.

Seriously though, if a man is hiding out on prayer mountains for eight months, avoiding his wife’s bed and bosom, it is safe to assume that his matchbox is wet. A wet matchbox will have wet matchsticks. Wet matchsticks can’t produce sparks, least of all light a fire. Now, that is sad and a natural disaster that we cannot hold Pastor responsible for. But he should have taken his wife into confidence so they could have sought medical and psychological help. To just hide behind church activities, fasting and prayer is both unfair and unwise. We all know that when men’s libido starts waning, it’s like a death verdict for them. They first go into denial, then feelings of shame, anger and then self-help of all shades. You do not want to know the risks and danger they expose their livers and kidneys to just so they can raise the dead, if you get my drift. The small sachets of this and that…Ale, aleko, opa eyin, and of course, Viagra and its blue cousins. May the Lord help our men.

Ladies, when you notice or suspect that your man’s matchbox is wet, don’t let him fool you with ‘there’s an important match at 11 pm.’ Or, members of the Men’s Fellowship are starting a 30-day fasting and prayer. Don’t let him sleep on the couch. Help him get his groove back, after all you were the great beneficiary when he was doing it everywhere in the house. There are many ways to dry his matchbox but this is a family platform, we will have to take the details somewhere else. Right.

Finally, to Mummy G.O. who decided her husband’s brother was the alternative to her husband, it’s a shame, ma, you are guilty on that count and your sentence will have no option of parole. Your brother-in-law on top of you or under you was not the solution. Oh no! Even if that was a cry for help, it was a shameful cry. There are many ways, many options, many devices you could have resorted to. There are sex toys. At the very worst, you could have done what you did far away from the homestead. When you have diarrhoea, you do not defecate close to where you live but you, ma’am, you stooped and defecated in front of the family house. Now, you have stained your husband’s calling. You have called his manhood to question. You have damaged your own name, title and position. Instead of people sympathising with your eight-month dry spell in sexual wilderness, you are now the butt of jokes. It is really difficult to come back from this. But it is possible.

▪︎ Egbemode ([email protected])

Remember the good old days of Finance Houses in Nigeria? Our young men achieved success overnight. One minute they were marketing officers and the next, they were on the management floor. Those places were real magic places. And you know how young men who come into money early run things. They simply remember their long-gone ancestor, the prodigal son in the Bible. Exactly.

They lived large and spent money like it was going out of fashion. The set-up of the Finance Houses didn’t help matters much either. They paid more attention to glamour than the deposits. Their buildings were chrome and glass. The new rich boys dressed in the best of the season. Or have you forgotten that that was when such expressions as ‘power dresser,’ ‘yuppies’ and ‘upwardly mobile’ joined our lexicon?

Those were the magical days when the streets were full of 26-years old green horns who became treasury managers straight after doing their NYSC year in remote farm settlements.

They drove Daewoo Racer, Daewoo Espero, Hyundai Excel, Sonata .Then, affairs were straight from best sellers, complete with expensive perfumes, chic restaurants, and weekend trips. Husbands performed their God-given roles and wives did their wifely duties. Girls milled around the glamour boys. The boys picked, chose, and discarded as they wanted. Yes, they were spoiled for choice. Shameless desperate uncivilized girls fought over them in public places. But it was fun and dance for the lucky ones. But you know how it is with things that are too good to be true. The Finance Houses soon fizzled out, collapsed like a pack of cards.

Suddenly, the big salaries and posh cars disappeared. Some of the directors of the glass and chrome offices were declared missing or wanted or both.

The fine girls left the fine boyfriends who no longer had enough money to give them. Engagement rings were returned or kept as ‘retirement benefit.’

The search for Mr Right, who dwelled in greener pastures resumed. The home girls were wary. The fast-lane ones worried about how soon the easy life would return when things would return to normal and the days would be lit again.

Their prayers soon got answered as resourceful Nigerian blokes came up with new tricks. There was advance fee fraud (419), armed robbery, Otokoto, and now Yahoo, yahoo plus, and yahoo plus plus.

The bad fast girls were back in business. All that mattered was the posh cars and bright lights. Who cares where the money came from?

With careless, greedy mothers all over the place scheming and swindling, more and more of our girls are today falling into deadly traps and becoming raw materials for diabolical concoction of desperate get-rich-or-die-trying boys. These days, you wake up to one stranger-than-fiction story or the other. A young pretty girl the other day alighted from a cab and stripped herself naked in broad daylight. Another one has been menstruating since she returned from a ‘baecation’ in South Africa with her young ‘Boo’ who has since dumped her.

The flashy guys with no defined business address are back in town and it’s so easy to fall for them. Fortunately, there are signs and characteristics that set apart this breed of men. He is 32 or thereabouts, money makes up for whatever he lacks in looks or dress sense.

He drives G-Wag, Lexus gleaming black, in the mornings and has an array of convertibles for evening swags.

He wears designer wristwatches and shoes. In fact, each fashion item from his head to toe carries mind-blowing price tags. He has all manners of call cards. The reason is he has a chain of businesses ranging from importing condoms to crocodile. There is always a bevy of bleached girls around him as he moves from nightclub to nightclub, mixing all kinds of powdery stuff with alcohol.

The way he spends money tells all his right-thinking neighbours he is either going to go broke soon, die young or end up in jail or all of the above. Unfortunately, the death of one has not diminished the zeal of more to join the evil wagon. Easy life, soft life, soft money have all become the albatross of decency. Bad parenting is making our boys into little demons who seek money in all the wrong ways and wrong places. But I am more worried about how our young women, our precious daughters are getting sucked into the destructive cauldron. For the desire of something as flimsy as bone-straight, double-drawn lace front wig, our girls are being ‘used’ to cook blood money.

To a non-African, that is a strange concept, but here, it is a sad reality.

And to worsen an already deadly trend, the girls these fast boys used no longer have to die ‘after use’. They are allowed to wear their designer wigs and false lashes but they are empty shells, according to a pastor friend. He told me this sad story.

‘One of these bad boys came to my church and gave his life to Christ. His confession was long and terrifying. He told me that most of the beautiful girls we see around have been ‘used’ for money rituals. The boys no longer need to kill them physically. They just do what they need to do on a sacred bed sheet, chant some lines of incantations, for five or seven days, and the fate of the victim is sealed. The victim is quickly dumped by the man once the ritual is complete.

‘They start by wooing the girl with expensive gifts. That is followed by a vacation where her full attention is on the man. According to my new convert, when they return, the guy starts picking quarrels over inconsequential things and then dumps her. The sad thing is even though the girl looks okay to all, she is finished. She is not likely able to have children even when all medical reports say she is fine. She may never be able to hold down a good job or make a success of any business.

‘Indeed some of them may never be able to find husbands because there is already an evil mark dedicating them to someone’s pot of wealth. In other words, many of the girls you see around are empty shells.’

Did that leave you shaken? I was covered in goosebumps when I heard the story. And this is just half of it. Occasionally these days, when I see a fine babe swinging her waist, I ask myself, is she still whole or she has been used? Imagine buying a basket of big snails and finding that they are just healthy brown on the outside but empty shells.

Dear mothers, my dear sisters, and daughters, this ugly trend is heartrending. It’s not a matter we can invite the police into or a case we can prove in court but it is a present palpable evil. The mean glamorous, fun-loving, sleek man doesn’t even look like the mean things he’s capable of but the polished look is only skin-deep, for the discerning, that is. He talks and drives like an Italian.

His money is not inherited or from a long chain of family business. His money is his. Ask yourself how he made so much at age 30. Are his decent parents also dazed at the rate at which their son ‘arrived’ suddenly?

He most likely belongs to many societies and clubs that on the surface look like social associations. But they are cults. He is too far gone to consider leaving. His blood brothers are his lifeline.

He owes them and his life is in danger if he betrays the oath.

Girls who flock around him are taking big risks and if you are involved, you need all the luck you can be wished. This dude may offer you his kind of romance and glamour. He may spoil you with money. But remember he may also be cut down in his prime.

His brains may get spilled all over your bedroom wall in the middle of the night. His offended blood brothers may send goons after him. His cult may ask for your blood for the next sacrifice.

You may end up as accessory after murder. Whichever way you look at it, greedy girls who flock around men of questionable income are not likely to end up well.

Then, what’s the worth of all the glamour dollars and pounds sterling if you can be dead or widowed at age 25 or worse still, end up an empty shell, a walking corpse designed to move from one disappointment and failed venture to another?

▪︎Egbemode ([email protected])

At the just concluded 2nd Quarter National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the International Federation of Women Lawyers, FIDA Nigeria, at Akure, Ondo State, the ladies found time to unwind and let down their hair.

Preparation for hiking up Idanre Hill. The Chairperson and other delegates were geared for the 600 steps hike

FIDA Abuja Chairperson, Chibuzo M. Nwosu, the General Secretary, Mojirayo Ogunlana-Nkanga and the Welfare Secretary, Ifeoluwa Johnson all smiles after surmounting the hurdles to the top of Idanre Hill