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[size=14pt] God Is A Nigerian? By Michael Egbejumi-David [/size]

[b] A few years ago, I was a medical student in
beautiful Brazil. One of the more popular samba/
carnival music of that time had a line in it that were
God a Brazilian, life would be a grand carnival.
Clearly intended as a feel food line, nevertheless, I
could see the rationale behind those lyrics. The
evidence was all around me.
Brazil is a stunning country with exceptionally
beautiful people. Wonderful landscape, wonderful
beaches, wonderful clean cities. Don’t even get me
started on their women! The place has very modern
infrastructures and efficient, functional systems.
And its citizens certainly know how to enjoy
themselves. Everything works. Recently, that
country overtook Great Britain as the sixth best
world economy. As a young man from Nigeria, I
thoroughly enjoyed my years in Brazil and would
happily recommend the place to anyone without
hesitation. And as stated earlier, the lyrics of that
song resonated with me.
But just last week, the Nigerian Ambassador to the
US, Prof. Ade Adefuye, perhaps in a fit of non-
alcoholic wine-induced fervor, pronounced God a
Nigerian. The man is a Professor of History so it is
difficult to understand the criteria he used before
declaring God a Nigerian. Nevertheless, we are
Nigerians; we are used to making grandiose
statements like this.
However, the Prof did make some insinuation along
the lines of it being a miracle of sort that there was
no coup d’état during the Yar’Adua – Jonathan
transition. He also murmured something about us
getting close to the precipice and pulling back.
Apparently, for him, these feats make God a
Nigerian.
Until Adefuye made his proclamation, I didn’t think
that God was that cheap. I always thought that God
was not the author of confusion. I always thought
that God loathed filth. I always assumed that
immovable corruption was anathema to God. Also,
that immortal line, “Let there be light” always left
me with the impression that God would abhor any
permanently NEPA-infested environment.
I used to imagine that God would be reluctant to
endorse a poor province whose legislators,
paradoxically, are the highest paid in the entire
world. A place where every big man oppresses
everyone else every day - especially the poor -
doesn’t immediately strike me as a place to be
identified with God. A habitation given to frequent
and seemingly unending cult and ritual killings, I
felt, would struggle to impress God.
Where social and national development always take
a back seat to personal and short-term gain; where
government officials and other Party bigwigs steal
without let; where people in charge sabotage oil
and electricity provision for the sake of their own
pocket; where government and military personnel
actively steal and smuggle fuel across the border in
ships that simply disappear afterwards; where
infrastructures are wickedly allowed to crumble just
so a Governor or someone else can get his 10% cut
from the award of a new contract; where the entire
civil service has been constituted into a massive
obstacle course that citizens can only successfully
negotiate it with a fistful of money; could such a
place be synonymous with God?
Obsessively, our leaders cart away the money set
aside for the provision of hospitals and for
healthcare. Many of our citizens are left to suffer
and die daily from preventable diseases. But some
of those leaders have their own hospitals abroad,
and most of them frequently jet-out for basic
checkup, routine operations and eye check. That
kind of place could not be God’s favorite post code,
I would have thought.
Could God find proper refuge in a place where
political leaders strip completely naked, gulp down
putrid bloody concoction and then swear an oath of
fealty to some evil spirit and to a godfather? Could
God feel at home in a place where young ladies and
sex are routinely traded for government contracts?
Furthermore, I was always under the impression
that God could not habituate for long in any place
where bribery is the unofficial legal tender. God, I
had assumed, would hold in contempt a land where
illogicality, injustice and neglect are official State
policies. I thought God would be snippy about a
space where Pastors and Imams lie as a matter of
course and mercilessly exploit the poor. God
perhaps might want no part of an area where chief
Pastors slap church members or hammer steel nails
deep into the heads of children and infants.
I would have thought that God would hold a dim
view of any locale where his children are regularly
slaughtered ostensibly in his name. In fact, I was
operating under the assumptions that were God or
his son to pass through Nigeria; He would bear a
huge tree stump with which He would clobber most
of its citizens in their places of worship –
particularly its Pastors.
But now Adefuye tells us that God is simply loving
it in Nigeria. That his green-white-green uniform is
well starched and pressed. That pure water is his
favorite brew. He just loves galloping his chariots
along pot-holed and urine-drenched roads –
whenever Mrs. Jonathan and other government
officials allow access.
Well, I guess I have been wrong all along. This is
life; we learn something new every day.
My own take however is that, Nigerians, we have
become bone lazy. We don’t want to do what it
takes to become great. Our collective psyche has
been attuned to the ‘miracle’ channel, the miracle
mind set. Even our University students who ought
to know better and who ought to be more versatile
in their thinking and in their approach are largely
given to the ‘God will take care of things’ doctrine.
We all seem to want the good life but without
putting in the commensurate hard work and making
the necessary sacrifice. It is easier to hand
everything off to God than to roll up our sleeves, get
down and dirty and do all that is necessary to
transform into a great society. That is what is done
in all progressive nations. But here, we seem
content in only wanting to pray and fast ourselves
into greatness. And even at that, some of us will
still pay a junior Pastor somewhere to do the
fasting for us. With all of our natural and human
resources, with all of our enviable endowments, we
are still in the back waters, bobbing along on a river
of superstition.
And that was Prof Adefuye’s driver, I’m sure. That
has become our mentality now. It was in this same
Nigeria in 2008 that a chairman of the Independent
Corrupt Practices and other related offences
Commission (ICPC), Rtd. Justice Ayoola
announced at a public conference that the ICPC
was going to go spiritual in its fight against
corruption. Specifically, he said, "Come September
7th, we are going to God the almighty. We are going
spiritual about it.” The man said all of that and still
kept his job because that has become the standard,
that has become our norm.
When our big men have conned, pillaged and
looted; when they have carted away everything
around them and there is no protest from the
people, they are inclined to believe that God is on
their side. And before long, like their Ambassador
colleague, they begin to think that God must be a
Nigerian.
But Nigeria has always struck me as the exact
opposite of what God would intend. Endless
exploitation of the poor, endless disorganisation,
endless inefficiency, endless 419, and monumental
corruption doesn’t strike me as a trademark of God.
And all that false religiosity and mealy-mouth piety
ain’t fooling no one either – least of all God. [/b]