WHILE WE ARE PRAYING FOR NIGERIA

At my son’s school it was science exhibition last Saturday. And one of the teachers narrated a story about a friend travelling from Nigeria to Dubai. While hovering over Nigeria as they flew, it was darkness, pitch darkness, but as they hovered the Dubai airspace, there was light everywhere. I thought all we need do is pray. Pray we get there!

We pray a lot in this clime. Last month, adherents of the two major faiths were engrossed in prayers. I wonder what they prayed for; who prayed what, who they prayed to, and for whom they had prayed. So, a man prays for a wife, he gets it, proceeds on a conjugal bliss on his bed and then prays that his manhood rises; what will we not pray for; we defend, endorse, pray and hold thanksgiving services for certified thieves because of ethnic cleavages and wail persecution because “na my brother”, and play rhetoric of crass marginalisation.

While we are praying, civil servants are committing all sorts of crimes. Students will not read, they are told to pray for retentive memory and bind the demon of failure and the rest is simplicita! Our football teams and sports representatives do not make preparations for tournaments; they just lay about and ask Nigerians to pray for them.

A president is sick, we don’t use the situation as an opportunity to tackle our chaotic glorified- patentmedicine- store health system but we pray for him. Maybe, we should in prayers call on the terrestrials above to punish even to five generations of those who through their actions insist that Nigerians will not have constant, reliable electricity.

We should beseech the god of our ancestors to punish in full measure, leaders, teachers, and professors, parents that have contributed to a fallen standard of education. Those that have contributed to the educational rot ask Ifa to make sure they watch their wards rot away.

Be they in PDP, CPC, ACN, JNI, CAN, traditional institutions, youth bodies, and opinion leaders and all that trouble Nigeria and conspire to keep it perpetually on her knees. We must pray that Orumila exposes them, brings them to justice, as we have by our actions accepted that we cannot do anything much but pray.

Let’s do nothing but pray against those enemies that are responsible for potholes, death traps on our roads, that they will meet their waterloo on those roads that they could have facilitated their repair but chose to turn a blind eye to.

While we face hard and trying times, tightening belts in almost disappearing waists, we pray that those whose harmful designs of cannibalistic theft have denied the larger populace quality healthcare, infrastructural development, clean and potable water, good roads and functional education will be cut off in gruesome manner, like horror movies their lives will be a crate of unprecedented disaster, both in public and private.

Enemies of Nigeria, whether Igbo pastoralists, Fulani herdsmen or Yoruba meat choppers, let us pray they are beseeched with problems beyond them. You are a contractor, you have collected the upfront, shared it with the ruling party, the governor’s wife, son and aides, and the drugs were not supplied – God will not forgive you.

In prayers, let us shout, you rapist, kidnapper in an Evans mould, armed, and pen robber. You sell question papers for qualifying exams, you are a crooked pastor, imam and voodoo priest, may the Almighty Allah reward you in same portion you have dealt others with.

We are so concerned about the president, when a host of us will never meet or have never met our local councillor to demand accountability of any form. Many do not even know the name of their local government chairman, except he is a brother or relation that has denied us one borehole contract or given us one to come “join and chop”.

We lambast the president (because his inaction makes that task painfully easy), while our local streets are paved deathtraps. We celebrate everything, from going to Mecca and coming back as strangers to traversing Jerusalem or Rome; pray the heavens down during Jumat services and Sunday worship.

A nation geographically endowed, well-situated, yet continually cloned with masquerades as leaders and people. My simple summation is that we, you and I that spend hours praying, doing nothing, praying for leaders that are ordinarily from amongst us but become tin gods and are ready to pounce on us, telling us that no court can try them, living in stupendous splendour with no care and fleecing us, are the problem.