I was in the federal capital territory for three days, last week. Abuja-based Nigerian, Wisdom Godwin Idiong, had found a wife in US-based American, Gina Michelle Kellogg, and they had invited me. Unfortunately though, I could only attend twins of the triplets of events lined up. Their civil and traditional marriage rites, on Tuesday and Thursday respectively, were simple and beautiful.
I always like toned down events. No savvy, but I always believe that I see God in them. I always think that the big man who sits high up there does not like razzmatazz. I always suspect people who prefer to prove they are or have something.
The trip was a window of opportunity to visit a few parts of the vast city. Travelling is quite good. Travelling educates, connects, reconnects you. Everyone would act and speak and approach matters differently if they occasionally travel even just outside where they reside.
I was at Beaufort Court Estate, Lugbe, to see a huge family from the southeast. Beaufort is a Cameroonian beer. My 20 years in the beautiful, hedonisticic francophone country filled my mind the 90 minutes I spent in that estate. What a hold Cameroon has on me.
Later that evening, I was at Gwarinpa to see another family; a far younger one, from the south south. I got away that night assured that my home state and indeed Nigeria might be in better hands in future. Our young people -most of them- have dreams and are quite clear-headed about how to. Father in heaven, please help them.
The following day, I was at the National Assembly, to see a senior friend; a Muslim from the north. It was so good to catch up with Alhaji. Then, I was at NNPC Towers but this is a story for another day. Only that the day I tell this story, I won’t tell you this is it.
Still, there are some things to never forget about that particular visit. One, this entry was inspired during, but not by, that visit. Two, I shall soon write in full about that visit. However, three, “please pay attention” (in Global Ba’aba’s voice): be warned that when the time comes for me to recount the beautiful experience at the towers, I shall be quite vague about the nitty gritty of place and persons.
Therefore, even if you can’t, store this part of this entry. If you really look at it, you’d see it has no bearing with our caption today. A great part of what I tell you now is to prepare the way for what should come next week or so. It is a detached conjunctive half rendered disjunctive to grant both halves the independence to be served at different times: for effect.
I pray you are able to glean the clarity needed there even as I move on to tell you that it was also great to have visited Asokoro, Wuye and a few other Abuja places. By the way, there’s no denying that Abuja is back looking every inch like Nigeria’s federal capital territory. T-Sam and Kura who permanently take me around the city, whenever I am in, pointed at the great infrastructure work and others that Minister Nyesom Wike is doing only seven months or so on. I believe that the Bola Tinubu/Kashim Shettima administration shall add tremendous value, these four years.
Let’s rally round them and all other governments across every stratum. Enough of playing politics when we should be enjoying dividends of democracy. Let politics always wait for at least three years; when it would be quarter to elections. After a government has been elected and formed, political parties should take the back seat because the front row ought to be reserved for the people.
Which reminds me. I was on Focus Nigeria, an AiT all-weekday flagship breakfast television show anchored by my friend, Dr Amaechi Anakwue. That Wednesday, the hourlong programme featured two halves. While the first centred on saving our electricity sector with Mr Nick Agule, mine focused on the state of political parties in Nigeria. It is a crying shame that the political class, the elite, are still bickering like spoilt children over position and sharing formula at a time when the masses are in dire need of economic, security and allied welfare solutions.
Nigerians need to see more than these handfuls of cosmetic or superficial attempts at touching lives by people I call impostor helpers. We want to see proofs that our leaders fear God. Politicians should sit up and work for our people. Everything must not and should not be about self.
Now is high time we connected the dots. Nigerians must be thankful that God is not man and man is not God. Just imagine a Nigerian man as acting God, de facto God, even for a nanosecond. There will be too much chaotic topsy-turvy (emphasis mine).
That is to say, there will be no word to define the chaos. Most ethnic groups will be wiped off, most dialects will be banned or you pay to speak it. The fake prepaid electronic (over?-) billing system (that has tormented Nigerians secretly for quite sometime) will become more brazen, even spreading to cover speech, travel, food, drinks, name it. You will find yourself unitsless whenever you really need to eat or drink or speak or travel, etc.
Cost of living will become totally impossible as bill for electricity, food, housing, petroleum products and sundry essential needs will increase, daily. A Nigerian man as God will introduce oxygen tax, personal borehole tax, freedom levy, happiness permit, health levy, etc. You will pay tax to go to school, pay tax to graduate, pay tax to go on youth service (or double to skip the yearlong exercise) and pay tax to be employed. There will be so much exploitation and oppression, riots will sprout up every other hour.
You see the tithe fraud we are toying with now, right? Under the reign of a Nigerian man-God, tithe will have a name change because it will be all of 90%. People will pay (not give) soft and hard tithes: that is, in cash and in kind. They will pay 90% compulsorily even in anticipation of a blessing or answer to their prayer.
A Nigerian man-God (who may well already be performing a dry run, as we speak) will run a full-fledged transactional kingdom. People will pay to have his phone number, pay for him to answer their calls, pay to have him answer their prayers, pay to have him protect them, pay separately to have him protect their family, etc. People will pay that God for him to love them, for him to be their father, for him to kill their enemy. The reign of a Nigerian man as God will be the very worst of the very worst forms of a purported divine monarchy.
The man-God will listen to, believe and act on even the flimsiest blackmail. He will readily withhold goodness that God has sanctioned just because an idiot flew a kite. He will think he is the next best thing since ice cream and therefore will refuse to see or listen to reason or superior argument. He will alienate himself, day by day, until he is too late to be redeemed.
He will charge people whom he calls and they will be many, very many. He will further charge those he chooses and they will be few, very few. Church founders will pay through their nose and whatever else is there to gain acceptance, recognition, members and more members and indeed renewal of church name. The current commodification of the gospel will then pale into child’s play.
Services hitherto enjoyed free and abundantly will be epileptic. Electricity will be snuffed out when people need it but available in some doses while they sleep. Food choices will be limited. Water will be scarce, permanently.
Under a Nigerian man-God, favour will be abolished. Cynicism and sadism and such other evil isms will be the order of the day. There will be gloom everywhere you go. There will be so much wickedness everybody will clamour for the return of the real deal, the only true God.
There will be no mercy. There will be too much killings. People will be slaughtered like goats. Blood sacrifice will stage a big comeback.
There will be a new decree regularly either to ban something good or to take away a benefit or two. Imagine banning the celebration of such good news as childbirth, promotion, recovery, etc. Imagine announcing that thenceforth people can only gather over bad news such as accident, death, demotion, etc. Imagine all the worst imaginations because that is all a Nigerian man-God is capable of and giving.
Dear Nigerian woman, don’t celebrate. When I say Nigerian man, I mean Nigerian person; woman is embedded; of course. In fact, the Nigerian woman as God will be double tragedy. Our girls will see and hear pepper.
The girls will work in horrible environments and not get paid by Madam God because, I mean, they are too young and have nothing to do with money. A Nigerian person-God will keep people in perpetual subjection, subjugation, slavery. If you break one of his laws, you break all and must die. The arrogance and falsehood and all other forms of ungodliness that you find on the pulpit now will quadruple then.
There will be no love in his actions, inactions, speeches and body language let alone in those of his representatives. They will enforce corrections like the pseudo God they are or represent. They will spread hate and self as well as fear and death. Alas, those who know their (one true) God will instantly see through the shenanigans of this human God and his agents by the way they lie, promise and fail, and by the way they ignore or mistreat or take advantage of or use and dump even their family, helpers, dependents, etc.
Fortunately, there’s good news, eternal good news. Man can never and shall never be God. And, God shall never be man. Our God never transacts business.
Our God never plays politics. Our God never deceives. Our God never approbates and reprobates. Our God never proposes and disposes.
Our God simplifies everything. Our God forgives everybody and everything so long as you believe in Jesus. Dear Father, thank you that You are not man neither is man You. We are forever grateful and justified to glorify You for all the sweetness You offer us, gratis.
Our Father: we know that we make you too small in our eyes every day, the way we pray anxiously and faithlessly. We know that we almost always assassinate your character, painting you as a hater, killer, magician instead of as the very divine epitome of love, life and truth. You know, Lord, we know not these things that we do. We rejoice that You not only already forgave us, you add for good measure eternal life so that no man, no power, no spirit -purporting to be You- can succeed in dribbling us.
Thank You, Father. No man is God. Our God is not man. Apart from Christ and life, this reality is man’s other greatest blessing.
God bless Nigeria!