It is always good to hear from God – through the men of God, of which there are probably fifty for a measure of gari in the country today. When they speak, as they often do, with a measure of self-confidence that rings hollow, telling us what God told them to tell us, they want us to accept divine assurance that things are not falling apart in our country, even if the bottom is rattling and threatening to spin out of control.
About a week ago or so, the general superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church, Pastor William F. Kumuyi, brought us an important divine message that should put our minds at rest. He said: “Nigeria will not break, that is what God told me and I believe him.”
It makes sense to accept this message as a divine guarantee that no matter how much the politicians hack at the taproot of our nation, this country will still stand tall, unshaken. Those of us who fear that the politicians, driven entirely by their naked ambition and venality to either grab power or hold on to power, are pushing our country to the precipice with a reckless speed can now heave a sigh of relief. We need not fear, says God through Kumuyi.
Predictions about Nigeria breaking up are nothing new. They have a long history. A nation in permanent conflict with itself cannot but evoke such predictions by amateurs and practised hands alike. This break up demon has cast a long shadow on our country for most of our years as an independent country. Our leaders, in agbada and khaki, have fought it every which way they could. The sheer number of legal, administrative and constitutional steps taken to blur differences in tribes and tongues towards the ultimate objective of building a country and people united by their common destiny is mind boggling.
No nation has tried harder and certainly none has failed harder than ours in this regard. If we still see the shadow of the demon and still hear the drum beats by its pikins, it means that the challenges to our corporate existence have become even more complex and complicated. Faux divine assurances put a dangerous spin on those challenges because they lull us into a false sense of security.
May 30, 1967, took us down that dangerous path when the former military governor of the Eastern Region, the late Lt-Col Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, showed what is a possible when a nation takes its challenges and problems for granted. It took 30 months of an expensive and bloody civil war to make the sun set on Biafra and avert the disaster the man felt compelled and justified to visit on his country. It jolted us.
No country is a divine creation. Every country, to borrow from a Nigerian musician, carries with it the possible seeds of scatter, scatter. None of us prays for the fate that befell Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Sudan and East Timor to befall our country. But we should quit believing, as Kumuyi put it, that “God has a purpose for bringing Nigeria together.”
The Boko Haram insurgents now control a sizeable portion of our national territory in the north-eastern parts of the country. Their primary objective is not the unity of this country but its break up. Their war against the Nigerian nation cannot be accepted as a form of purgatory this nation must pass through on its way to its own heaven. Therein lies the snag with Kumuluyi’s message from God.
I have always acknowledged in this column and elsewhere that men of God are in the business of marketing hope. Sadly, what most of them are marketing is faux hope; a sugar coated pill that lulls our leaders into believing that they can sleep on because God is at work.
2015 is a year of fears. We fear the consequences of the do-or-die political culture that is anathema to participatory democracy. We fear the consequences of the culture of impunity and the scant regard for the rule of law and their implications for our democratic rights. We fear the entrenchment of a political culture that confers on those who hold power the right to hold it in perpetuity. This is the ugliest and the most repellent face of our national politics.
Above all ,it is the year of fear induced by a prediction by an agency of the United States some years ago that if things continued the way they were, Nigeria would be a failed state by 2015. Many Nigerians wrongly understand this to mean that the country would break up next year. Not true. A failed state is simply one that cannot discharge its statutory responsibilities to its citizens. Security ranks number one in this cocktail of statutory state duties. A failed state does not necessarily break up. It is characterized by anarchy. Somalia is the prime modern example of a failed state. Somalia is a country of one race, one language and one major religion. Some food for thought?
Our men of God are among the most dangerous elements in our country today. Their capacity and moral authority to speak truth to power are impaired by their compromise with those they should be herding to the narrow path of honest leadership and moral rectitude. They anoint our politicians on their way to rig elections. They extol our politicians who brazenly steal our common wealth. They are in cahoots with the looters of our collective wealth. Politicians hop from one church to another, garnering assurances from our men of God that God has chosen them and guaranteed their electoral victory, thus implying that God has no take on election rigging.
Politicians hop from one church to another, garnering assurances from the men of God that God has chosen them and guaranteed their electoral victory. God has no take on election rigging, abi?
I have always wondered: If, as they claim, God loves this country so much, why does he allow all these dodgy characters to ruin our country at every level and squander our riches and our potential greatness? Why does he allow people to brazenly rig elections and hold on to power? Why a God of justice allow our politicians to corrupt our judiciary and pollute the temple of justice? And why does he allow pastors to lie, steal and defraud in his name? I think God needs to come clean now.
