- Written by Obinna Akukwe
IN
Nigeria, it is prayer everywhere. The churches, mosques, shrines,
forests, mountains, rivers, trees and every available space, have been
turned to prayer centres and yet the most insensitive form of governance
is hoisted on the nation. Armed robbery, ritual killings, kidnapping,
rape and injustice abound everywhere. Poverty,
sickness, despair, frustration and attendant mediocrity and negative tendencies are the results of all our prayers.
Now, we have the newest addition,
suicide bombing and reckless waste of human lives. A lot of people have
asked the question: Where is God when all these things are happening?
Nigerians pray all manner of prayers,
70-day fasting, 70-day deliverance, 40-day sallat, Ramadan fast,
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, pilgrimage to Mecca and other dedicated sites
of worship, and yet you cannot entrust an adherent with your spouse for
24 hours.
During Gen. Sani Abacha’s regime,
marabouts were imported from Mali, Sierra-Leone and Senegal, when their
Nigerian counterparts failed to kill the National Democratic Coalition
(NADECO)chieftains with prayers.
These professional prayer warriors couldn't tell Abacha that Nigerians were tired of his dictatorship.
During Olusegun Obasanjo’s
presidency, a lot of prayer warriors in the Villa were allegedly busy
impregnating NYSC members serving in the Villa in the guise of securing
permanent employment for them while the tenure elongation crisis was on
the verge of ruining the country.
Obasanjo saw so much hypocrisy that he had to resort to a combination of Africanism and his faith to survive.
Another group of prayer warriors
have held President Goodluck Jonathan hostage in the Villa. They
frighten him every time with gory prophesies, while they smile to the
bank.
Everywhere, people are praying. All
these prayers are hypocritical prayers. The Bible says in 2 Chronicles,
chapter 7, vs. 14, ‘If my people, which are called by my name, shall
humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their
wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin,
and will heal their land.’
The prerequisite for God to answer
prayers and heal Nigeria is repentance. In the Bible, King David humbled
himself when Prophet Nathan told him that he had sinned.
He tore his clothes and wept for many days until God had compassion. His Nigerian counterpart will do the opposite.
Our leaders travel to Jerusalem and
Mecca and, in the midst of the solemn ceremonies, co-ordinate how the
next round of looting of government treasury will be clinically
executed, and then they go back to finish the ceremonies.
Once the pilgrimage is over the Nigerian prayer warrior comes back to his church or mosque with the aura of answered prayers.
Then the poverty-stricken
congregation will hang around him to receive favours (after nights of
fasting and days of sallat for God to touch his heart).
God must be seriously solicited to
touch the heart of the looter of public funds or else his church or
mosque members will not receive any crumbs from the loot.
The impoverished parishioner or
mosque member knows that he was one of the people who directly or
indirectly put him in a state of poverty, insecurity, hopelessness and
helplessness and, therefore, he equally begs God to give him the
opportunity to partake of the looting of the national wealth, since the
congregational leaders have not cared to query the thieving but
important looter on the source of his wealth.
The prayer warrior in Nigerian
church or mosque is a hypocrite. Let his pastor or imam sermonise
against sin, corruption, greed, inhumanity to man and disrespect for the
feelings of others and he will get offended and leave the congregation,
withdrawing his much needed funds.
However, call for prayer that all
his enemies should die, including members of Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission and justices about to reverse stolen electoral
mandates and you will see all sorts of acrobatics, gymnastics,
incantations, invocations and madness all in the name of prayer.
There is no doubt that he that comes to equity must come with clean hands.
A thousand noisemakers may be in a
church but God hears only the 10 who have decided in their heart not to
follow the crowd if given the opportunity.
If the combined prayers of these 10 men cannot move God or ward off the impending evil, then calamity is visited on everybody.
That is the problem the nation is having with Boko Haram and other conflicts plaguing the nation.
The dynamics of prayer is such that
if your prayer is for personal or family matters, you could easily
connect into the remote sites where the angels will attend to you on
behalf of God.
However, if your prayer were of
general application, corporate in nature and of concern to the masses of
people in your territory then other dynamics will apply.
You must be sufficiently qualified before you can represent a state, region or nation in a prayer bouquet.
A hypocrite could pray personal
prayers and God will still answer because he is stirring personal
spiritual space; however, you must have enough locus standi before you
stir a communal spiritual space in a prayer session.
You must be potentially better than those you are praying against.
Let the Nigerian prayer warrior
decide to live by the tenets of his faith which is: ‘do unto others as
you wish others do unto you,’ and before you raise your voice louder
(even in a bush or atop a tree) the Almighty God will answer and drive
off those evil rulers who refuse to change for the better, out of our
political space on their way to perdition.
Elombah.com
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