Stephen Ojapah MSP
And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death (Revelation 12:11). This verse focuses on Christians during the persecution of emperor Nero and Domitian. Christians, the scriptures tells us are overcomers (Romans 8:37; 1 John 5:4-5). Those who are going through a lot of tribulation are targeted specially by the evil one, but the bible makes it clear to us that: they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives even unto death (Rev 12:11).
As Christians, we believe we are redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb (1 Peter 1:18-19). This supreme act has taken us away from the kingdom of darkness and place us in Christ’s kingdom (Colossians 1:13). For the Christian, our testimony of Christ’s divinity and His omnipotence assists us in conquering the devil in all his works and empty promises (Luke 1-13). Victory in Jesus does not come in the form of earthly success or prosperity. That is why the church will refer to the Christians that where brutally martyred by emperor, Nero and Domitian as victors. St Paul will say to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). When faced with the possibility of martyrdom, he confessed, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
While the blood of the Lamb reminds us of the supreme Sacrifice of Christ for us, we look at the Stained flag of Nigeria, with the blood of countless Nigerians as a supreme price that many innocent Nigerians have paid for our survival in this country. Each time we gaze at the crucifix, we remember this event of love. In our context as Nigerians, we remember the endless killings and daily bloodbath across the country. In a most spectacular manner we remember the killing of innocent unarmed citizens who were protesting with the Nigerian flag at the Lekki toll gate on Tuesday the 20th of October 2020. In a recent viral video Miss Africa Russia representative from Nigeria Miss Udeh Chiamaka Victoria has walked the runway with a blood-stained Nigerian flag at the recently concluded Miss Africa Russia pageantry. Udeh, holding the Nigerian flag with bloodstains, walked down the runway to register solidarity after the alleged shooting at Lekki Toll Gate during the #EndSARS protest. The event held on Sunday, June 13, 2021, in the capital of Russia, Moscow.
A stained flag should bring to our consciousness a sense of national grief, a stained Nigerian flag should awaken us from the silence in each and every one of us. Most importantly a stained flag should make us hold our politicians accountable. While we pray and ask for God’s pardon for the citizens whose blood we have allowed to stain our flag; all that we have left is our voices for questions and for prayers. There are so many countries and cultures who have remained eternally appreciative of their fallen citizens, who died with the stained blood of their countries flags. Abraham Lincoln is one.
The Pike County Historical Society at the Columns Museum is home to the Lincoln Flag, bunting that had been used as decoration on President Abraham Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., the night of his assassination in April 1865, museum director Lori Strelecki said. The flag is a main draw for the Pike County museum, she said, so it tries to keep the flag there for the busier summer months.
But the museum hopes to loan the flag for a couple of months during the slower winter season to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Md., where it could be displayed next to fragments of Lincoln’s skull. The flag also could visit the Soldiers’ Home in Washington for the opening of its new Hall of Heroes. “I’d like as many people to see it as possible,” Strelecki said. The flag hangs in a glass case at the museum, its sizeable blood stain visible from across the room. As Strelecki explained, after the president was shot and before he was moved from the theater, his head rested in the lap of an actress from that night’s show, “Our American Cousin.” “The doctor asked everyone in the box to leave, and they didn’t think it was appropriate to just drop (Lincoln’s) head on the floor,” Strelecki said, “so they grabbed the nearest thing to cushion his head.”
That happened to be the bunting. Strelecki said theater manager Thomas Gourlay then took the item from the theater and later left it to his daughter, Jeannie Gourlay Struthers, an actress who was in the wings at Ford’s Theatre that night. Struthers later married and moved to Milford in 1888, passing the flag on to her son, V. Paul Struthers. The family used to hang the flag on their porch on Independence Day, Strelecki said, and Struthers even took it to show at school. He donated it to the museum in 1954.
Recently a strand from the flag that had fallen to the bottom of its case was incorporated into the National 9/11 Flag, which was recovered from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and restored with pieces of flags from across the country. The connection came full circle recently when the museum received a piece of girder from the World Trade Center for its collection. The flag isn’t the only piece in the museum’s archives with a link to the night of Lincoln’s assassination. When the flag came to the museum without any fanfare, accompanying it were some of Struthers’ stage costumes and shoes, Strelecki said. “It was just an actress’ trunk that ended up coming to our museum, and this (flag) was in it,” Strelecki said. “For the longest time it was displayed on, like, a shower rod in the library.”
Even with the stained flag of Nigeria and many other countries round the world, there is never a time when the teaching of Jesus is suspended, if anytime, this is the most appropriate time to speak the Gospel of Christ, and his teaching about love and forgiveness. St Cyprian, in his Catechesis on the Lord’s Prayer said: “God commands us to be peacemakers and to be of one heart and one mind in his house; and what he made us at our second birth he would have us remain, men reborn. We are sons of God, and we are to persevere in the peace of God; we share in the one Spirit, and we are to be one in heart and mind. So it is by the prayers of a peaceful man that God can be brotherly concord”.
Finally, when Abel and Cain first offered sacrifice, God did not look at their gifts but at their hearts. So it was the man who proved acceptable in his gifts. In offering his sacrifice to God, with a blameless heart, Abel the just, the peacemaker, taught others a lesson: when they offer their gifts at the altar, they should approach with the fear of God, with a pure heart with holiness and a spirit of peace. It was entirely fitting that he who offered God’s sacrifice with these dispositions should himself become subsequently sacrifice to God. He was the first to bear the witness of martyrdom, and in the glory of his blood we see the beginning of the Lord’s passion, because he possessed the holiness and peace of Lord. It is men and women like this who are crowned by the Lord, and stained the flag, men like this who will be claimed as his own by the Lord on the Day of Judgment.
Fr Stephen Ojapah is a priest of the Missionary Society of St Paul. He is equally the director for Interreligious Dialogue and Ecumenism for the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, a member of IDFP. He is also a KAICIID Fellow. ([email protected])