The God Factor in Nigeria's Politics
By now, it ought to be clear to the politically discerning that the Nigerian political leadership has totally lost all sense of purpose in directing the affairs of this state. The political leadership has reached a point where nothing seems to make any sense to it about the act of ruling a plural state like Nigeria. This diagnosis applies not only to the Jonathan administration alone but equally to most of the past administrations too. The present and past administrations have all been captives of a complex political manoeuvres and calculations that practically incapacitate them into governmental blunders of yet-unfathomable existential socio-economic magnitude.
The Jonathan administration has the honour of accentuating the captive theory of incapacitated government to a new, dumbfounding height. Remotely, to follow Prof. Osaghae's historical theory of the Nigerian predicament, Jonathan sits atop a huge governmental apparatus of a crippled state. However, this theory is doubly tragic because the crippled state has reached an alarming juncture where it now spawns crippled leaders exemplified in all ramifications by Goodluck Jonathan.
Another morbid symptom of lameness in Nigeria is the alacrity with which the Nigerian leadership throws up its hands to the heavens-to God-for the resolution of its national problems in perplexed hypocrisy. Public prayers have been a serious part of our national life for a while now. Visit any ministry and you see civil servants bowing supposedly pious heart in supplication. Of course, this does not prevent accepting the necessity of gratification the next hour.
Today, the Jonathan administration added a new twist to the template of national spirituality when the FEC decided that the second stanza of the national anthem becomes the official prayer at all public functions in Nigeria. The second stanza reads:
"Oh God of creation,
Direct our noble cause.
Guide our leaders right,
Help our youth the truth to know
In love and honesty to grow
And living just and true
Great lofty heights attain
And build a nation
Where peace and justice
Shall reign"
This is definitely a spiritual invocation to an infinite being to intervene in a national predicament where everything has gone awry: faroukian corruption; inordinate violence; political ineptitude; economic mismanagement; social anomie; existential uncertainty in all forms; etc.
Apart from this, there is also a national trajectory to the spiritual invocation. The first stanza implores Nigerians to arise in collective nation building. Yet, that has failed to happen in fifty two years of statehood. The reason basically is that the leadership itself has failed to arise in personal example and accountability. Credit therefore ought to be given the leadership for coming at this critical juncture to this crucial realisation that the "compatriots" can no longer be patronised! And what better place to turn for help than to God who can do all things! And the anthem rises to the occasion in pointing upward. Of course, God will stop Boko Haram dead on its violent track. He will rain manna down all over Nigeria; he will become the coordinating minister for the economy; and he will eventually cure Nigeria of all its national malaise! And then Jonathan and his ministers can resume their wonted political tomfoolery.
The Jonathan administration thus proved-again-that the Nigerian leadership is not only clueless about its developmental role, but significantly that it has not come to term with its culpability in extraverting its responsibility in sham spiritual excesses.
I wonder what God is thinking about Nigeria and what He intends to do. If I were God, I already have a terrible plan borne on the wings of instantaneity.
Adeshina Afolayan
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
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