Femi Abbas
History is not just a teacher of all times for all living human beings. It is also a permanent school that constantly reminds mankind of the lessons to learn from the various events and experiences of the past as a means of guidance towards the future.
About 900 years ago, an Arab poet of the second Umayyad Dynasty, in Spain, came up with a bewildering stanza that is now more relevant to Nigeria than his own nation and his own time. An excerpt from the poem went thus: “Here is the period in human life about which we had been seriously warned in the words of Ubayy Bn Ka’b and those of Abdullah Bn Mas‘ud; Here is the period in which truth is meant to be totally rejected; And falsehood as well as evil machinations are to be warmly accepted and upheld as societal norms; Should this period continue to swing dangerously (like a pendulum over our nation) without any positive change, the world will surely forage into a stage in life when grief over deaths will become an aberration even as rejoice over the birth of new babies will become an anathema”.
Observation
Today, judging Nigeria’s situation, by what we can see and feel against what we are yet to witness or experience, can any predictionbe more accurate and more appropriate for our country than the abovequoted poem?
With the seeming ongoing resistance to positive change and persistent entrenchment of evil machinations as we are witnessing today, how can there be any hope for a better future? Yet, the charlatans who use religion as an instrument of threat and intimidation through propaganda and blackmail refuse to see the possible danger ahead.
Axis of evil
Today, Nigeria is dangerously entangled in a triangular axis of evil, the consequences of which cannot be foretold with precision. That axis is like a crushing pendulum swinging restlessly over Africa’s most populous country with a threat of ruins. That triangular axis consists of three dominant, vocal blocks of evil. Each of them is an implacable enclave serving as an abode for its designers. One of those enclaves is the abode of politicians, another is for the palace of the clergy and the third is for the igloo of the media.
While the Politicians stand out as the engine room of virtually all the evils afflicting our country, the clergy represents the dangerous chimney through which the polluting smoke of that evil oozes out to suffocate the populace spiritually in the name of God. On its own, the media serves as the megaphone for both the politicians and the so-called clergy through the instrumentality of satanic propaganda.
Disappointing leg
Of the defined evil axis above, the most disappointing leg is the clergy. From time immemorial, religion had stood out as the societal salt used as a preservative for all other ingredients with which to prepare a delicious soup of life for the consumption of all and sundry at any stage. But with the sudden adoption of ‘ashes’ to replace salt as the main ingredient of preservation in the 20th century, courtesy of the capitalist West, how can the soup of life be tasteful anymore to its consumers?
Ordinarily, Salt should be salt in its natural form. To pour ashes on it in the name of spiritual preservative is to deprive it of its natural value and render it totally useless to its consumers. Thus, with the importation of a hitherto unknown brand of a religion from the West, which is bitterly coated in capitalism, Nigeria has dangerously become a polluted country with a suffocating smoke. Those who are responsible for this situation are the fraudsters parading themselves as prophets and are issuing satanic statements with which they deceptively rationalize their claim of prophet-hood.
The role of money
Incidentally, the bottom line for all these evil machinations is nothing other than the vanity called money. Let money be removed from Nigeria’s mode of worship today and sanity will return fully to our society with required serenity.
Today, with importation of ashes as a replacement for salt, religion, like politics, has become a big business in which greedy merchants and charlatans are desperately engaged for unbridled avarice and unlimited aggrandizement without consideration for decency and even conscience. In that case, of what use is the claim of religion without conscience?
Commercialization of Religion which enables private individuals to invest in building of castles, as business ventures, has seriously diminished the value of religion in taste and in substance.
In Nigeria, today, our only respite, as Muslims, is that Nigerian Imams are not engaged in hateful sermons and public incitement to boost their religious businesses that fetch them private, executive jets illegally at the expense of their congregations. Were Nigerian Imams also to commercialise Islam and preach hatefully like some self-hipped charlatans in the name of religion, Nigeria would have ceased to be a country by now.
Warning
Those who take religion as a ‘do or die’ business that must fetch them luxurious lifestyle should know that they do not have monopoly of provocation and threat as the patience of Nigerian Muslims is getting exhausted. Elasticity has its limit.
Yellow journalism
When journalism was a real profession in Nigeria, its practitioners knew that they were like Eskimos living in Igloo. If anything happened to Igloo, the Eskimos’ lives became exposed to danger. Today, however, it has become evident that journalism is just a matter of nomenclature.
What matters to the journalists of today, especially in the Southwest of Nigeria, is the conspicuous immoral padding that reportorial entails. That profession is now virtually a matter of cash and carry in favour of the highest bidder. That is why news reports these days are mere expression of wishes and fabricated stories with which to justify the brown envelopes that serve as padding for most of those parading themselves as journalists.
As for the politicians, nothing is strange. It is a common knowledge that the enclave in which they dwell is the real home of the Lucifer.
But to think that their ruinous actions can continue unabatedly is nothing other than self-deception. Where are the politicians of yesteryears? To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Long live Nigeria!
In Remembrance of a Political Icon When the demise of Nigeria’s first elected Executive President, Alhaji Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari was announced a couple of years ago the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) issued a press statement with which it condoled with all Nigerians including the family of the deceased. The full contents of the statement were as follows: When the media waves came up with breaking news announcing the demise of a Nigerian political icon, Alhaji Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari with a reverberation effect across the world, many Nigerians with rich experience in various aspects of life began to dust their diaries for a recount of the episodes that propelled the deceased to have made history as much as he, himself, was made by history.
Like an elephant
The late President Shehu Shagari’s life was like a huge elephant surrounded by blind men and women of letters and substance.
To describe the features of that proverbial elephant, each of the persons that surrounded it would only be able to give an account of the area he/she is able to touch on the body of the mammoth animal and not the whole of it. Besides, Alhaji Shehu Shagari was such a household name, that no serious political operator or aspirant can afford to discountenance in Nigerian history without incurring an expensive cost.
Religious concern
The aspect that concerns the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) most in Alhaji Shagari’s life’s odyssey was religion. It can be recalled that it was he (Alhaji Shagari) as Nigeria’s first elected Executive President, that approved the sum of N10 million each for the commencement of building a National Mosque and a National Ecumenical Church in Abuja at a time when naira was really strong and the foundation of Abuja as Nigeria’s new capital city was just being laid.
That Presidential gesture, which no religious group rejected, was a confirmation that Nigeria is indeed a multi-religious and not a secular country as being mischievously peddled, in certain quarters, for selfish reasons.
Today, the two houses of worship are conspicuous in Central I Area of Abuja with their grandiose postures, to the finite attraction of foreign tourists who see them as symbols of national unity.
Maitatsine crisis
It is historically unforgettable how the late Executive President tackled, diplomatically and militarily, a frightening national crisis engendered by a dangerous charlatan called Muhammad Marwa Maitatsine from Cameroon, who wrecked devastating havocs in most parts of Northern Nigeria, in the guise of religion, during the country’s second republic. It was his presidential determination to keep the unity of Nigeria intact that checkmated that unforgetable menace.
Alhaji Shehu Shagari was, though, a quiet and easy going personality, nonetheless, he never wavered in taking necessary decisions in the interest of national unity.
His lifestyle
As a Muslim, Alhaji Shagari never hesitated in upholding the principles of justice, fairness and equity which his religion (Islam) emphasizes. As a teacher in the early part of his life, he was exemplary in touching the lives of his students positively and in grooming those students for future leadership.
As a politician, he displayed such a special trait that distinguished him as a template designer and a dark horse in Nigeria’s political racecourse.
His political sagacity
The late President Shagari’s political sagacity was like a major Faculty in the University of Life, into which many forward-looking leadership aspirants in Nigeria were eager to seek enrolment for specialisation in African political education.
Alahji Shehu Shagari was the eminent Dean of that faculty even as the vibrancy of his tenure which remains unequalled, till date, is a testimony to the template he set for Nigeria’s democratic dispensation.
Lessons to learn
For Nigerian generations of the colonial era as well as those of the first and second republics, a major falcon of reference vacated the stage forever leaving some of his surviving political peers to mere dreams in non-effective communicationToday, the country is still yearning for a replica of his exemplary personality in leadership. We pray the Almighty Allah to give us a leader worthy of emulation in our era. Amin.
