Even after Pastor Enoch Adeboye had distanced himself from the arrest of a TikToker who disrespected him Olumide Ogunsanwo (SeaKing), the church PR unit still put out a notice overriding him. The church claimed that Pastor Adeboye weighed in before the video was reviewed. After watching it, they think, “It has become necessary to allow the law to take its course.” I will not pretend to know how the church’s PR unit runs, but this is one of the instances in which wisdom would have been profitable to direct them regarding their public communication.

From the clumsy wording of their statement, one is unsure which video they said had not been reviewed when their pastor commented on it. Was it the original one by Ogunsanwo or the Concerned Christian Youth Forum that stated why they got him arrested? Either way, saying their G.O. spoke out of turn is unbecoming. However, that was not the only part of their statement that was poorly thought out. Also, saying the law should take its course on a spurious issue such as this is merely hiding behind a needle. It is, in fact, what moral cowardice looks like.

Even a child in Nigeria knows that no law anywhere fully defines our lives. What we call the law is mostly a bunch of suggestions enforced based on the contingent circumstances. The “law” can easily be set aside if certain characters with money and influence want it. Just recently a legal luminary announced he—and unilaterally too—instructed his lawyers to instruct the police to withdraw a criminal case from the court. That is how the police are remote-controlled by small men with big egos who will pursue a random social media user over comments they should be too important to notice.

Sometimes you wonder why the countries that invented these social media networks do not have incidents of billionaires, pastors, CEOs, politicians, public officials, lawyers, religious organisations, etc., convulsing over online insults. How come their police are not jobless enough to drive across multiple state lines to arrest people over online comments and incarcerate them until some big man instructs otherwise?

Nigeria’s supposed elites can afford to be petty because of the nature of our laws and the defective policing system. The police in Nigeria are not—and we can argue that they have never been either—an autonomous agency that carries out its constitutionally stipulated duty with detached professionalism. They are mostly errand boys for the rich and powerful, and therefore largely shorn of principled competence. Things have grown worse with the current IG Kayode Egbetokun, under whose watch a record number of abuses are being perpetrated by the police. They have always been abusive and oppressive, but under Egbetokun, they have elevated pursuing social media commentators into a defining agenda. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that Egbetokun is overcompensating for the insecurity of being branded an “illegal IG” and cannot rein in the sadistic officers under his watch. His illegitimacy makes him cover his appearance of weakness with needless brutality. His legacy will be that he oversaw an era where the police took their institutionalisation of injustice to stratospheric levels.

The only reason that Ogunsanwo was arrested and detained was because some people who could influence the police decided to flex their power.  What law was the RCCG referring to that had become necessary to be enforced? No law anywhere stops us from disrespecting our elders. Respect is a cultural norm, an ethical requirement necessary for a society to function, but there are no legal obligations to accord them to anyone by default. Even Jesus Christ called Herod a “fox”. If it were present society, some people would have been yelling that Jesus should have respected constituted authority. Jesus routinely criticised the Pharisees and Sadducees, the religious leaders, intellectuals, and elders of his time. If someone does the same on TikTok today, people like VDM would jump out and criticise them. What exactly have eyes not seen before?

I hope the RCCG learns a lesson from this and, going forward, knows what it can afford to do or not as arguably the largest Pentecostal denomination in Nigeria. As a church, it owes it to the public to always project higher ethical standards in its conduct and public communication. If the worldly standard is for those with social clout to subject critics to an unjust system of punishment to satisfy their ego, the church must act differently—and better. You are not called to be the same as the world; you are supposed to project higher moral standards. It is not for nothing that Jesus envisioned the church to be a city set on a hill.

Here is what I think is the problem: for far too long, Christians have openly rued how Muslims get away with using violence to settle scores when they feel disrespected. I suppose copying that same propensity to demonstrate power is what drove the Concerned Christian Youth Forum to try and enforce respect “legally” by subjecting a critic to police abuse while vowing to hunt down more. The RCCG’s press statement gave them away as supportive of such initiatives to deter the others who have turned frequent criticism of its G.O. into content-making. Unfortunately, that is a path that is not only unsustainable but also diminishing.

They ought to know that as they grow into a formidable institution, they will naturally attract a lot more anti-establishment sentiment. Their response should not be to outsource their responses to gbàrànmídelérù initiatives like Concerned Christian Youth Forum who will do the dirty work of beating up critics while, like Pontious Pilate who washed his hands off the crime for which he was morally culpable, they pretend it is simply the law doing its thing. If they see themselves as a church organization that will still exist in another 100 years, then they ought to think and act long-term in their approaches to issues like this. They should take cues from centuries-old churches like the Catholic Church that has maintained their institutional dignity in the face of relentless criticism from all sides. Imagine a world where the Pope uses the police to chase down his social media critics.

The RCCG should act with similar self-regard and set aside pushing silly correspondences to the public. They are not the first church that will be criticized, and they are not going to be the last. Powerful religious organizations routinely face scrutiny, and they absorb some of the severe criticisms. I am not talking about simple observations lobbed from the corner of a bedroom by a TikToker wielding a Tekno phone, but critical attacks from formidable cultural organizations who take on churches on aspects of their doctrine. Do those churches fold up and die? No. When they respond, they do not fly into a rage. They project the ideals of Christian ethics and intellectualism.

If the RCCG cannot handle just one TikToker, then what hope is there for them that they would know what to do if someone ever writes a popular book about them like Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code did with the Catholic Church? What if someone makes a popular show that criticizes their doctrines like The Book of Mormon did with the Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church? The Latter-Day Saints first baulked, then turned the popular satire into a promotional tool for their church. It would have been a mess and a missed opportunity if they had chosen to arrest the artist.

The RCCG has a university, a structure from where they can build an intellectual agenda to defend what is best about them (and restructure their shortcomings). Instead of abridging possibilities by taking the shortcut of violence, they should invest in creating their own apologists—people trained in cultural studies/theology who can project the positive side of them to the world to balance the negative narratives about them. That strategy will take exposing their people to the best education, polishing them until they are equipped to push back at their critics with intelligence.