Ronaldinnioh:
2018- OUR HOPE IN DEEDS, PROPHECIES OR CONSERVATISM？
Nowadays, virtually everone is a prophet, you do not have to be so spiritually grinded or own a church before you can tell the future. Especially for those who understand the system quite well, all you need are the obtainable facts in the environs, connected with history, you would predict scenarios and tell fortunes or its reverse. Possessing a church would have just been a faster way to money rituals, just as it is in virtually all the nowadays churches. The preaching for you to pay offerings and sew seeds is more than that of evangelism that Christ even commanded. The scientific predictions of marx, lenin, trotsky, luxemburg and many others, centuries ago, are very much evident around us today. They were not religious prophets, rather, social scientists. Without controversies, their scientific predictions are very much valid than those of our General Overseers. Some of who would prophesy by 31st December, only for us to begin to see the reverse and happenings different from their prophecies, as early as by January 1st, and you begin to wonder what went wrong with the validity of their spiritual endowment. We still remember some who saw vision of a prosperouos first half of 2016, and others who even said it was H. Clinton that would win U.S elections. The introduction of another fuel subsidy removal by Buhari government in the early first half of the 2016 did not only wreck lots of Nigerians,especially in the face of little or no payment of salaries, but, the year 2016 was a financial calamity throughout the year for mass of Nigerians, including the pastors themselves, by what the government tagged recession. My pastor was one who later confessed how the economy batterred his family. I smiled because himself had earlier prophesied a prosperous year.
What is hard for the religious leaders and followers to understand is that, what drives the affairs of any society or country, to include the fortune and misfortune of her citizens is far from any spiritual prophecy, hope and illusions. The economic realities determine those things, they even determine the so called religious participations. And by economic realities , we mean the activities of people aimed at sustenance and comfort, the level of such sustenance and comfort. The validity of the economic realities determining religious participation was seen on the sunday that preceded XMAS, how very large mass of christians had to sacrifice church service to queue endlessly at filling stations for PMS. With such an instance, one would undoubtedly agree to Karl Marx's position, that religion would wither away by itself with time and by the social reality which continually make people realize that solution to economic frustrations does not lie in the churches and mosques, but in the deeds of mankind to solve them. Quite funny, our churches prophesy virtually the same lines at every cross over nights, only for the same people to come back in the next year and hear the same lines, without their conditions changed for the better, even sometimes worsened. If, perhaps, better or worse, it must have been how well the people have garnered themselves within the biting economy, and not by the prophesies. The unreliability of prophesies would have even been confirmed by those whose conditions were worsened by the economic situation in the latter year, despite the G.Os' speeches in tongues.
I am a CHRISTIAN and I am also serving the living GOD. But, who and what determine the people's comfort in 2018 and the years beyond？To some, it is by begging and praying to government to make good policies, to some, it is by praying to God and hoping on prophecies for their success, to some, it is by waiting to vote out APC or BUHARI in 2019 to have a better Nigeria, while to others it is by organizing to struggle against the neoliberal policies. As much as the former strategies would resort into mere good wishes that may never materialise into realities of the expected prosperity, but the latter would guarantee all others.
The 2017 pointed attentions to serious crises in the future, in fact it was a prelude to more economically violent years ahead. With such level at which the cost of living has been falling the living standard of average Nigerian to slump dwellers, the ruling class is still doing everything possible to maintain their loots and raise more loots to keep up with their luxurious greeds. In achieving this, we can only expect more marginalizations and extortions in all establishments controlled by the elite class, more unpaid salaries and allowances, more underfunding and corruption in the education sector, increased poverty and crime rate, all of which would force Nigerians to anything devoid of morals to survive. Consequentially, for those who will be ready to resist beyond morals, 2018 is a year of heated struggles and agitations, be prepared！ Many institutions are likely to begin fee increment policies, arguing out their position that it would no longer be rational to maintain the current fees based on the condition of the economy. The expected incessant increment in fees across tertiary institutions and victimizations that will follow will break out serious struggles of resistance too.
Rosa Luxemburg was correct when she said it is either socialism or barbarism. The international war and weapon threats against one country and the other is an instance, that without the people taking democratic charge over the economy and organizing a fight back against the elite policies of profit over the poor majority, the result would be lawlessness, bombings, burglary, and lots of more barbaric happenings. Or what can we say of the Nigerian federal government that is planning to expend billion of dollars on fighting insurgency, when people are owed backlogs of salaries, no local production or infrastructural development and cannot fund education that can engage people's minds from terrorism.
Sooner than later, the FGN might have to budget all its budget on fighting all Nigerians, because with the headless way they are piloting the country affairs, insurgency for survival would be rising from every street and every corner of this country. We shall overcome.Happy New Year!
InternetGuru You have spoken well but, from the standpoint of one who feels that religion esp Christianity has no part in nation building maybe, because of our many failures. The problem I think it's not the prophecies as messages from God but the "prophets " As a Christian you will agree with the biblical test of a prophet. Nigeria is a very religious country but we are not a theocratic state, so our leaders have been applying all the textbook protocols yet we are where we are not moving forward. Other nations have through their leaders solved their problems, through our leaders ours increase. Israel was in dire need of food to the point that mothers were killing eating their children because they were beseeched round about them by the enemy, in that moment the man of God prophesied the impossible, you know the story. Besides the prophecies of Nigerian pastors to the nation, which the government will not heed even if it's true, has the government heeded to the warnings from scientific bodies, from statistics, or other bodies predicting food shortage for example. Wouldn't it be right to say that Nigeria is led almost by charlatans whether they be church leaders or leaders on the secular side of the nation. Happy New Year! |
HNY.