Presidential candidate faces a dilemma as religious factor threatens to undo campaign. 

Within the space of a few months, fifty-five-year-old evangelist Olufunmilayo Adebayo, popularly known as Mummy G.O., has gone from the relative obscurity of downscale Iyana-Ipaja, Lagos, to the most discussed subject in contemporary Nigerian Pentecostalism. The target of a blizzard of savage internet memes and unrelenting mockery, the founder and leader of the self-styled Rapture Proclaimer Evangelical Church of God (RAPEC) has been getting all the attention in a context where the leading—and mostly male—clerical figures dominate the news as a matter of course.

Last week, following a breakdown in its negotiations with the Nigerian Federal Government, the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (ASUU), the umbrella body of faculty across the country’s public universities, embarked on a four-week “comprehensive and total strike.” ASUU had pleaded its case with various pressure groups and interested parties in the education sector before deciding that the most effective way to get the government’s attention was to go on yet another strike. The Nigerian public has reacted with understandable resignation. The latest strike is the union’s second in two years; the last strike in 2020 lasted nine months, effectively obliterating a whole academic calendar year. Data compiled by a local newspaper show that between 1999 and 2020, “ASUU went on strike for a total of 1,450 days.”

Late last year, the Ghana Police Service issued a statement in which it warned those it referred to as “doomsday prophets” to desist from prophesying or face prosecution and a term of imprisonment of up to five years. It reminded the Ghanaian public that “it is a crime for a person to publish or reproduce a statement, rumor or report which is likely to cause fear and alarm to the public or disturb the public peace, where that person has no evidence to prove that the statement, rumor or report is true.”

This update represents violence in Nigeria and related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger from October 17 to October 23, 2020.