Pastor Philip Olubakin vs. The “Comfortable Christianity” of Our Age

December 1, 2025 OLAOLUWA AYOMIDE

Pastor Philip Olubakin’s Rebuke: When Personal Corruption Meets National Collapse

The stark words of Pastor Philip Olubakin cut through the comfortable numbness that many have adopted in the face of our national crisis. His statement isn’t just pastoral counsel, it’s a moral indictment of a particular kind of failure that flourishes while society burns.

The Anatomy of a National Agony

Let’s name the dimensions of our collective pain:

The Unbearable Pain: Daily, families are shredded by violence. Parents bury children. Children become orphans. Communities that once celebrated harvests now mourn their dead. The psychological trauma is becoming intergenerational, a nation walking with a permanent limp of grief.

The Unreasonable Violence: There is no logic to this carnage, no political cause that justifies the kidnapping of students, the slaughter of farmers on their lands, or the targeting of travelers. Violence has become entrepreneurial, a grotesque industry where human life is the cheapest commodity.

The Institutional Failure: When citizens pay taxes and pledge allegiance, they enter a social contract. The most fundamental term of that contract is security. The state’s primary function is the monopoly on legitimate violence to protect its citizens. Our government has defaulted. This isn’t just incompetence; it’s a fundamental breach of trust. The protective walls have crumbled, and the watchmen are asleep, or complicit.

The Side-Chick Syndrome: A Metaphor for Moral Decay

Pastor Olubakin’s most piercing observation connects the public collapse to private corruption: “In the midst of all these pains, you are still keeping side chicks.”

This isn’t merely a condemnation of adultery. It’s a metaphor for a deeper sickness, the prioritization of selfish gratification amid communal suffering. It represents:

Distorted Priorities: When the national house is on fire, the decent person grabs buckets and helps rescue the trapped. The corrupt person rearranges the furniture in their private room, concerned only with their comfort and pleasure.
The Breakdown of Covenant: Just as marriage is a covenant, citizenship is a covenant. Adultery shatters the marital covenant with betrayal. The “side-chick mentality”, the pursuit of selfish gains while ignoring communal duty, shatters the social covenant. It says, “My pleasure matters more than your pain.”
The Bandit Within: Calling such a person a “bandit” is prophetic accuracy. A bandit preys upon the vulnerable for personal gain. What do you call someone who, while their neighbors are being physically kidnapped, chooses to emotionally and morally plunder their own family? What do you call someone who diverts their resources, attention, and moral energy toward secret indulgences while the community is under siege? They may not carry an AK-47, but they are looting something just as vital: social trust, familial stability, and the moral fabric that holds us together.

The Connection Between Private Vice and Public Collapse

Societies don’t collapse solely because of external enemies. They rot from within, starting with the normalization of small betrayals. The man who betrays his wedding vows has already practiced the art of deception. The leader who lies in his home has mastered the craft for the podium. The citizen who abandons their duty to family is already primed to abandon their duty to community.

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The “side-chick” is a symptom of a hedonistic individualism that says, “As long as I am comfortable, the wider chaos is not my problem.” This is the exact mentality that allows banditry to thrive: a society of people looking out only for themselves becomes a jungle where the most violent predator wins.

A Call to Moral Consistency

Pastor Olubakin’s cry is for integrated integrity. We cannot demand transparency from our government while living secret lives. We cannot beg for security on the streets while creating insecurity in our homes. We cannot condemn the bandit in the forest while tolerating the bandit in our hearts.

The rebuilding of our nation starts with a ruthless moral inventory, in our halls of power, in our places of worship, and in our private bedrooms. Protection begins with character. Security is rooted in fidelity, to our promises, our families, and our fellow citizens.

The path forward requires turning our gaze outward from our own appetites to the unbearable pain around us. It demands replacing the “side-chick mentality” with a “samaritan mentality”, one that sees the wounded neighbor on the road to Jericho and stops, binds wounds, and pays the price for restoration.

Our nation will be healed not just by better policies or stronger armies, but by better people. People who choose covenant over corruption, sacrifice over selfishness, and collective survival over clandestine pleasure. The banditry within must be disarmed before we can hope to disarm the banditry without.

Conclusion: From Indictment to Awakening

Pastor Philip Olubakin’s fiery rebuke is more than a condemnation; it is a stark mirror held up to our collective conscience. He draws a direct, uncomfortable line between the sprawling, public catastrophe of a failing state and the intimate, private corruptions we too often excuse. By labeling the morally bankrupt individual as a “bandit,” he collapses the false distance we place between the violence “out there” and the betrayal “in here.”

The message is clear: a nation cannot be rebuilt on the foundation of broken people. The infrastructure of integrity, honesty in our homes, fidelity in our relationships, and selflessness in our priorities, is the bedrock upon which physical security and functional governance must rest. We cannot genuinely protest the plunder of our national treasury while quietly plundering the sanctity of our own homes.

Let Pastor Olubakin’s words serve not only as an indictment but as a call to a personal and collective awakening. The fight for Nigeria begins not just at the ballot box or the protest ground, but in the daily choices to honor our covenants, prioritize the common good over private gain, and replace a hedonistic individualism with a sacred sense of neighborly duty. Only when we disarm the bandit within can we truly hope to reclaim our land from the bandits without.