Yet Another Ritual of Wishes and Prayers

Best wishess

In the spirit of the season, everyone is wishing Nigeria well, but how many people are truly concerned about turning those wishes to reality by doing things right? Vincent Obia writes

Nigeria is reeling and celebrating. In the wee small hour of Tuesday, as the world readied to mark the birth of Jesus Christ, whose coming Christians celebrate as a turning point from wickedness to love and humility, a terror gang opened fire on worshippers at a Christmas Eve service at Jiri, in Yobe State. They killed the pastor of the church and five others among the congregation. It wasn’t a one-off incident. It has been a common tragedy for Christians and other innocent Nigerians.

On the day before Christmas, pirates kidnapped four crew members on an Italian vessel off Nigeria’s coast, about 40 nautical miles from Bayelsa State. Piracy and kidnapping in oil-producing Delta is said to be second only to the waters off Somali.

Atop the crisis of insecurity, there is the misery of abject poverty in the midst of plenty. Infrastructure decay and lack have almost become synonymous with Nigeria. Youth unemployment across the country is on an alarming rise while corruption has become the most popular religion of the elite.

Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, recently said corruption in the country was being elevated to a “national lifestyle” and “a status symbol… instead of treating the cankerworm with total disgust.”

He said, “Corruption does not have tribal, ethnic or religious differences. It is a language understood by everyone in Nigeria today.”
Yet at the Christmas season, everyone is preaching hope, wishing the country well, and emphasising the lessons of Yuletide. Those on whose shoulders blame for the bulk of the country’s woes rests are among the most vocal preachers.

“Christmas and the lessons of Jesus Christ’s mission on earth have great significance for us as a people and there can be no doubt that we all, irrespective of our religious beliefs, can draw immense strength and inspiration from the Messiah’s enduring personification of selflessness, dedication to duty, and commitment to the well-being of others,” President Goodluck Jonathan stated in his Christmas message to the country.

He preached the virtues of peace, tolerance, faithfulness, honesty, justice, fairness, wisdom, knowledge and understanding, which Christ taught and exemplified. But these are virtues that have remained the rarest features of leadership in Nigeria since the last Yuletide, when a similar festival of sermons was marked at the various power centres across the country.

As a usual ritual each time an event of religious significance is being celebrated, leaders from the political, religious, and traditional institutions fall over themselves to issue statements of hope. They pray the best for the country, yet make little effort to ensure the realisation of their wishes and prayers.

This Christmas time has seen a lot of good wishes and prayers for Nigeria. The Pope, too, has prayed for the country, just like he did during last year’s Christmas.

Every Nigerian leader is telling the citizens to keep faith with Nigeria, but the same leaders are hardly doing anything to make the country a place that the citizens can be proud of.
Senate President David Mark, in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media, Kola Ologbondiyan, urged Nigerians to embrace peace, love and harmony.

Mark said, “Christmas is a season to give and expect little in return. It’s a time to preach peace and exemplify it in line with the coming of Christ.” 

The ruling Peoples Democratic Party, in a goodwill message signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metu, said, “The lesson, Christ, though the Messiah, was born humble and humbly served and saved mankind should guide and further fire our zeal to place the people first.”

Speaker of the House of Representatives Aminu Tambuwal called for renewed faith in Nigeria, commitment and hard work, saying, “The Christmas period is a time for deep reflection on the teachings of Christianity and what Jesus Christ stood for.”

Despite the lofty prayers, the leaders have maintained a system that encourages indolence, poverty, and the growth of a lazy and weak bourgeoisie whose survival is almost entirely predicated on a patron/client relationship with the government. The system favours the elite, who enjoy a politics of sharing. The worst hit is the masses, those without access to the treasury or effortless wealth.

But the masses remain the most gullible in a fraudulent power game that reinforces economic rent from crude oil and discourages production. This is unlikely to change any time soon. But change is possible if only the country’s leaders can pause and reflect deeply on their own messages.
ThisDay