The late music maestro, Sonny Okosun, apparently mystified by the opaqueness of Nigeria’s future, wailed: “Which Way Nigeria?” However, he prayed that Nigeria should not die.
Sadly, many years after the man died, Nigeria is in death throes, still tottering on edge and likely falling apart soon, if urgent remedial steps are not taken.
Such measures do not include the sheepish NAFDAC ban on Sniper, the suicide-friendly insecticide. Banning the poor chemical without its kinsmen like otapiapia and ropes or relocating the Atlantic Ocean into which Nigerians are known to plunge is, to say least, pedestrian.
Has Sniper not long been with us? How come it suddenly became this deadly?
Because Nigerians are hurting badly. Frustration and depression have taken their toll on the citizens such that those who can no longer endure foolishly take the cheap exit door, thereby leaving far more problems behind for their bereaved loved ones.
Until the authorities tackle the scorching hardship in the land, I am afraid they may have more suicides to contend with.
Unfortunately, some of those who force their way into office compound the situation by leaving governance and tactically dividing the governed against one another.
In fact, Nigeria could be likened to the problem captured in Songs of Solomon 8:8-9 where some had a queer problem as regards their beautiful sister who had no breasts. They were at a loss what to do when suitors came asking for her hand in marriage. They admitted though that she was a virgin but vowed to protect her.
How apt. The trouble with Nigeria is complex and defies logic. At least, these brothers in context knew that their sister was a virgin. They knew she was a woman only lacking breasts and vowed to protect her. In the case of Nigeria, we cannot even say if she is a hermaphrodite. All we know is that she had arrogant breasts with abundant milk now sucked so dry they no longer tantalise. Her virginity has since gone because she has been sorely raped by bandits in power. Who would protect such a sister, and how?
Poor motherland, violated by her own profligate children now torn across pretentious religious lines, manipulated by antagonists who fear neither God nor man.
Angry Christians locked in rare churches misfiring Holy Ghost arsenal against inveterate enemies. Bigoted Muslims miscounting their beads on self-sent errands. Most of these angry warriors have not seen the inside of churches and mosques for years. Yet they are always willing soldiers for nebulous battles and thrust out the religious card to confront the fire lit by virulent pests eating up the throne.
All over the country, the prayer points are fierce and thunderous! ‘The heavens must fire them. May they die a shameful and disgraceful death. May their firstborn die like in the days of the Pharaoh of Egypt and their entire family sleep and never wake up. May they be roasted by the Holy Ghost fire (in Jesus holy name)!’
Not so, brother. Many of us send the Holy Ghost on the wrong errand, calling down His fire to consume real and imagined enemies. Fall and die prayers have invaded the church and the brethren easily get more animated once warfare prayers are announced than to worship God and hear His word. We have become specialists in jungle justice and taking the law into our own hands, deciding who dies or lives. But wait o, are we not complicit and may be praying against ourselves? Do you not think we would achieve greater and quicker results if we get angrier against sin and its manifestations?
Of course, I know the cut is too deep. So, we emotionally charged resort to fighting for God. The psalmist, David said similar vengeful prayers but Jesus taught us to pray for even our enemies. Is Jesus not better company than David? And, by the way, why did not this same David kill King Saul, who was after his life on the occasions he could have done so without stress?
Brethren, I don’t hope you expect that I would just allow my enemy to chop off my head just like that. No, that would be suicide by other means. Nevertheless, my hope is built on nothing else but trusting in the Lord to defend me and deal with my enemy as He pleases; leave him to live or kill him, according to His will.
What if He doesn’t save me? Quite unlikely! Even if such should happen, so be it. It also means either of two things: He wants me home with Him in heaven, a better place than here, or my prayers could not ascend to His holy hills because of my unclean hands.
The latter seems more like the case with us today. We call on God we do not really know, who knows us not. We have abandoned our first love in preference for mundane, transient pleasures, turning the church into a trade centre for wonky miracle workers and seekers.
Let us remove the clog in the channel of communication to our Great God so that He would turn again to us and heal our land. Did He not tell us to humble ourselves and pray? So far, we have been praying, calling down ineffective thunder without first humbling ourselves. It is not in the much noise we make; we actually incapacitate our God when we put the cart before the horse.
Humility refers to repentance from our waywardness and worldliness; from the altar to the pew. Humility means taking our eyes off the till and focusing on heaven. Humility means making the church a pious place of worship and prayer, not an exhibitionist discotheque and fashion binge where half-clad morons sashay across desecrated altars. Humility means mortifying the flesh and steeling it against seductive laps of preponderant Delilahs scattered roundabout. Humility means looking for lost souls, not poaching already saved souls from brethren churches or comparing whose cathedral is bigger or contemplating when it will be time for my private jet. Humility means turning a new leaf and returning to the Lord.
Until we humble ourselves, dearly beloved brethren, the bile we spill on the thieving rogues in power is in vain.
Of course, you have no right to hate a man God created. It is your choice to continue to call down fire, thunder, and brimstone or whatever if you wish but tarry awhile… All these years you’ve done so, why has our oppression not abated; why has the strength of those we abhor not waned but instead continued to wax stronger by the day while we mourn our misfortune?
The politicians have done it again. We are angry that elections were rigged. Did you actually vote? Did you not rig in your own polling booth? Why is it such a big problem if one thief outsmarted the other? Before you burn down the rickety country, are you sure God has not given us what we deserved?
In Lagos, after their fetish Oro cult failed, miscreants massed onto the streets against the Igbo, the traditional fall guy whenever there is an issue to settle in this country; a people that had no candidate in a purely Yoruba contest became fodder for ethnic chauvinist, who maimed many unrestrained. Now they have poisoned the common stream from which both peoples drink; wahala dey.
However, it is the usual game the bourgeoisie play. Again, they have set the proletariats against one another; the poor against the poor; the oppressed against the oppressed, in a fight over who milks our common patrimony.
I have watched video clips of the surging crowd of protesters but I saw neither the gladiators nor their loved ones. All I saw was disdain, as they throw Stalinist grains on the path of mentally manacled chickens. We fight; we kill and are killed in vain. O’foolish Nigerians, who has beguiled you?
I laugh in Swahili at our ‘open’ secret police, the Department of State Security, DSS, which, instead of rolling the tape and arresting anti-state elements, chooses to issue bland warnings. Yet a man crying for protection against attacks on his people in Lagos is easily hauled into detention. Abeg, tell me something else, jare!
Please, use ‘your teeth to count your tongue,’ but, don’t drink sniper. Let us re-inflate our country’s flattened breasts, otherwise, what shall we do when the comity of nations gather?