Sunday
December 6, 2009 |
Remember that some older columns are available
in PDF)
**********
At At the slightest provocation – in
fact, often at no provocation at all – Nigerians invoke God’s name. In
today’s column, I imagine a letter God has written to Nigerians titled
“You’re on your own.” Here goes.
Beloved Nigerians (yes, I call you beloved even though many of you are
among the world’s most unrepentant sinners), I’m going to be blunt.
I am getting impatient with what you call prayers. Many of you let out
deafening screams and shrieks in the name of praying. It’s as if you
think I’m deaf – that I won’t hear you unless you shout, punch the air
like bad boxers, and contort your faces into strange expressions, like
unseasoned Nollywood over-actors.
In fact, if I weren’t indestructible, I would since have lost my hearing
for all the noise many of you make while praying. If I appeared before
you in physical form, I’m afraid some of you would long have poked out
my eye for all the jabbing you do when you pray. Please take note: my
perceptual faculties are sound; they’re so flawless that even the word
“perfect” is too imperfect to describe them. My hearing, for instance,
is so good that I even hear the heart’s silent murmur. Please quit this
rude habit of howling you mistake for prayer.
Irritating as I find your style of supplication, you have other habits
that really, really gall me. One is how you bother me, day and night, to
give you the things I’ve already granted you in prodigious quantities.
Another is your ceaseless pleas that I do for you what you should be
doing for yourselves.
What great gifts haven’t I bestowed on you Nigerians? I gave you a huge
supply of rich arable land that should make you the envy of other
nations. You can grow all kinds of food on this land – yam, cocoyam,
groundnuts, rice, potatoes and more. Yet, a few among you bask in greed
and wallow in conspicuous consumption while the majority goes hungry.
Then I buried massive reserves of some of the most treasured natural
resources in your land, among them tin, coal, and oil – the 20th
century’s black gold.
Again, you have allowed a gluttonous few among you to steal the wealth
that should belong to all. Look around you, how many of your African
neighbors can boast even a fraction of the resources I have blessed you
with? For that matter, how many countries in the world are as richly
endowed as you?
What has all that wealth done for you? Nothing!
No roads. Each year, your politicians and rulers pocket hundreds of
billions of naira that should be spent on roads. Instead of sending them
off to jail, what do you do? You garland them with empty titles and
include their names on your roll of national honor. Instead of calling
them criminals, you celebrate them. Instead of covering your noses in
their presence, many of you grovel before them. You flatter them with
the names of “Leader,” “stakeholder,” “prominent Nigerian,” or “Mr.
Fix-it.” You baptize them as chieftains when you ought to address them
properly, as thieftains.
Each year, thousands of you perish in horrible accidents on the
country’s ill-paved or neglected roads. In other countries, these
avoidable deaths would trigger outrage at the rapacious politicians who
did away with the budget for roads. Not in Nigeria. Instead, you raise
your over-loud voices to heaven, as if I decreed that the roads be in
ghastly condition. You call down “holy ghost fire” on the faceless
witches and wizards you blame for these road casualties.
Such demons exist only in the deceptive imagination of your imams and
pastors. The simple reality is that bad roads and deplorable driving
habits cause accidents.
Yes, when you should hold your politicians accountable, you embrace the
abracadabra of some so-called “men of God” who preach that accidents are
caused by marine spirits. Such superstitious nonsense sometimes fills me
with pity, other times with holy rage.
The culture of mediocrity extends to every sector of your national life.
As I write, the man you call your president is lying in a Saudi
hospital. Ask yourselves a few simple questions. Why do your leaders
always fly to other countries for medical treatment? Are there no
qualified Nigerian physicians to treat their ailments? Why are most of
these experts living and working abroad? How do the leaders treat the
Nigerian doctors who are home-based? Are they encouraged with funds to
do their research? Does the government provide equipment to enable them
to serve the rest of you when you fall sick?
Why do you put up with fake leaders who travel abroad at your expense,
but who do nothing to ensure you have access to decent health care when
you fall sick? Why can’t you insist that, unless they meet one
condition, they can no longer use your funds to fly abroad? That
condition is this: if they can’t, or won’t, fix the country’s health
care delivery system, then they must first budget funds for each and
every sick Nigerian to be flown abroad as well. You must refuse to
underwrite their treatment in countries other men and women have
organized well.
Today, hundreds of thousands of you die yearly from malaria and other
easily manageable diseases. Far too many women die giving birth – a
rarity in most other countries. Again, why don’t you rise and chase off
the wreckers of your lives, the despoilers of your present and future,
the looters of your treasury? Why, instead, do you turn to pastors and
imams to intercede on your behalf for divine healing?
A few years ago, your former president flew in an American pastor to
come and deliver miraculous healings. Did any of you wonder why the same
president, when he’s sick, consults a foreign doctor instead of a
foreign pastor?
Let me spell it out again: the pastors who tell you that some invisible
dark forces and principalities are behind the senseless deaths of sick
Nigerians are plain liars. Hear me well: they are unscrupulous scam
artists who exploit you with superstitious tales. These deaths occur
because of two related reasons: one, that most of your so-called leaders
are simply unconscionable robbers, and, two, that many of you – out of
moral cowardice, ignorance or some parochial principle – allow the
contemptible usurpers to get away with carting off public funds.
Oh, how you Nigerians sometimes test my patience! You rig elections, and
you say it’s God’s doing. You steal power, and you say – knowing it’s a
lie – that only God gives power. You embezzle billions from the public
treasury, and you say – again, knowing it’s a lie – that God has blessed
you. Some of you then pay ten percent of your loot to a sham pastor – as
if it’s possible to bribe God. Other ruthless thieves among you take up
knighthoods in one denomination or another, or make a fetish of going to
Mecca, or build a private chapel or mosque. Do you think that God is an
accessory to fraud, or will ever be impressed by a robber’s gestures,
however seemingly grand in the eyes of mere mortals?
It irks me to hear Nigerians say that only God can solve your problems –
when the solution is well within your grasp? Did God manufacture your
problems? Your leaders (who are actually rulers, for they can’t lead)
buy up swanky real estate in South Africa, Dubai, England, Europe, the
US, even in neighboring Ghana. Do you not know that true leaders, not I,
built up these countries and their infrastructures?
Do you not remember how you once regarded Ghana as a basket case? How
that country’s citizens flooded the streets of Nigeria in search of any
menial job that was to be had? Today, Ghanaians leaders and followers,
working together, are revamping their nation. Some of your former heads
of state have fatter bank accounts than Ghana. Yet, Ghanaians have
husbanded their resources and are achieving a nation they can be proud
of, and others commend. Ghana’s cities and many rural areas now enjoy
virtually uninterrupted power supply. How about Nigeria? It’s a
narrative of failure. After squandering billions of dollars on fictional
power projects, your leaders can’t guarantee 2,000 megawatts on a good
day! No wonder your leaders, shameless as ever, now flock with their
mistresses to Accra and other Ghanaian cities for weekend romps and
revelries. But I wonder: Why do you accept this decrepit existence?
Here’s the bottom line: I’ve given Nigerians more than their fair share
in natural and human endowments. It’s up to you to achieve the change
you want – or else remain captive to woes. Begin today – not tomorrow –
by committing to moral conversion. You’re world champions in praying.
It’s time to start acting. Work for the change you desire. If you
believe in God, then let it show. True believers don’t engage in corrupt
acts. They don’t steal elections, nor do they rest until hijackers of
elective office are swept out.
Know this, ye Nigerians. It’s not God’s job to build your roads and
hospitals, to sweep your dirty streets, to do the work of your doctors,
to drag your corrupt leaders before a magistrate, or to kill those you
permit to destroy your collective lives. Listen to Fela: Don’t shuffer
and shmile. And to Bob Marley: stand up for your rights!
