Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Peter Obi, has maintained that having faith without backing it up with the necessary action is unhelpful and will yield little or no result in the long run.
He noted this while refuting claims that he is against the church, adding that his interview was highly misinterpreted and misunderstood.
Recall that the Labour Party flag bearer had in an interview on the Honest Bunch podcast released on Saturday, suggested that night vigils held in churches be converted into night shift as a means of increasing the economic value of the country, and also increase the productivity of Nigerians and Nigeria as a whole.
While emphasising that Nigeria suffers from poverty and is unproductive as a result of politics and religion, Obi argued that too much time was being spent attending church services from Monday to Friday.
This, however, sparked outrage from Nigerians, especially the Christian communities, as many labelled him a hypocrite.
He was accused of flooding the church and attending same vigils in order to identify as a fellow brother in Christ and solicit support.
However, News About Nigeria reports that in a statement issued by his media aide, Ibrahim Umar, in the wake of the outrage, Obi stated that his words were twisted and blown out of proportion.
The former Anambra State governor maintained that his words were distorted to serve a mischievous end.
The statement reads in part, “Our attention has been drawn to a huge twist in his recent media interview, saying erroneously that he called for the dismantling of churches in Nigeria.
“By the headline given to the interview, the import of Obi’s message has been greatly overturned and grossly distorted to serve a mischievous end.
“The Labour Party leader is well known as a man of strong faith who has enormous respect and love for every religion and tried in the referenced interview to bring to Nigerians how religion can be more effective in their lives.
“Obi, in the interview, was merely underscoring what Apostle James said in ‘Faith without Works is unhelpful.’ When Obi said that he would turn night vigil into production night, he was only stressing the importance of worshipping God through work.
“Even Jesus Christ never picked any of his 12 disciples where they were praying but where they were working as fishermen and tax collectors, among others.
“What we are doing in Nigeria, which Obi’s interview is highlighting as wrong and should be discontinued, is exchanging work for prayer when the two should go together.
“There is no evidence in the scripture that Jesus blessed an idle person. The problem In some of Nigeria’s worship communities is that they are not following St James advisory that we should be doers of the words.”
