General Muhammadu Buhari

Religion has become a big factor in Nigerian politics. In other words, it is used to decide who occupies where in any election. That is why the argument of the religion (Christianity or Islam) of a presidential candidate in Nigeria has generated acrimonious debates. In this article, Osuolale Alalade adds his own perspectives on the matter.

OSUOLALE ALALADE

The deafening hoopla on balancing the presidential ticket between adherents of the two imported hegemonic faiths was not unexpected. But still, the turn that this discourse has taken brings us a step closer to a tragic denouement of the Nigerian debacle. At some point in the bumpy ebb and flow of our troubled statehood and stillborn nationhood, apprehensive observers understood that the unceasing incremental escalation of single minded crusading and jihadist impulses of the two pretentious extra African religious camps were going to bring Nigeria to the precipice. In the least, it was going to further help to consecrate a national consensus on institutionalized mediocrity as the governing principle of Nigerian statehood. In the worst case scenario, the most fanatical would go the way of Boko Haram and insist on their way or nothing: a national cul de sac.

The effusive passion on both sides signals the danger posts of a looming catastrophe for this country. As with the lessons from the various ancient and contemporary theatres of human folly, the usual instigators are not the unruly, unlettered ragamuffins and human debris along the margins of Nigerian society. Rather, they are the hitherto revered and cultivated minds armed with formidable intellectual arsenals to propagate illogicalities that are conventionally associated with blind religious fervour. A vast silent majority of legitimate stakeholders look on wondering where their interests lie in all this cacophony. The passionate gladiators do not belong to this universe of potential canon fodders when push gets to shove.

This unmediated unmitigated religious passion leads to the dangerous “they and us” syndrome. Implied in this syndrome is the explicit repudiation of the commonality of the Nigerian humanity. It is expressed in the illogic that you can only trust your life to your neighbour, only if (s)he worships Oba Olodumare or Chi in the same manner, parroting the same tongue and meditating in the same temple as yourself. It does not matter if you share a thousand and one other attributes with your neighbour. The premise of this kind of vacuous thinking is the sheer arrogance that the most important and trusted affinities of our lives are based on our religion.

It is a historic falsehood, because spirituality is such a private thing and when thrust into the public domain as a contest has always brought sorrow and pain. This development is definitely a perversion of the ethos of our traditional communities and upbringing. It is strange reasoning in the lives of our communities. This illogic discounts the sense of community and nationhood that can be constructively forged with the richness and abundance represented in the myriad of our diversity. This death knell to the practice of imaginative secularity of Nigerian society would cascade into numerous profound illogicalities in our national life. We had better gird our loins for the devastating multiplier effect of our strange thought processes. The road that we are choosing is the assured graveyard of sanity. It can only lead to a maddening hellhole for our future.

Nigeria has struggled and lumbered on under the weight of balancing numerous contrived polarities and dichotomies: tribe, class, gender, age, literate versus the illiterate, dignified thieves versus the dispossessed, minority versus majority, nativist versus cosmopolitan and now, dubiously, Islam versus Christianity. In balancing different tribes and tongues, we created a monstrous concept of federal character, an affirmative contrivance which has ended up debasing the peculiar Nigerian national standard across the total span of personal, community and national endeavours. Our schools and colleges run on the federal character principle. Partly as a result of this, we formally jettisoned the idea of undiluted and puritanical excellence in favour of relative excellence a la Nigeria. The consequence is that today no Nigerian university is ranked among the best first 1,000 universities globally.

So our mediocre colleges produce barely literate graduates, including doctorates, who are functionally challenged and can only be employed by a Nigerian state establishment with questionable values. The products of this uncompetitive malfunctioning system are ensconced in and thrive only in the insulated Nigerian public space where they celebrate and perpetuate their kind. Giving allowance for the very few exceptions complemented by sizeable imports to shore up the system, the Nigerian formal establishment and its public domain are majorly exclusive receptacles or cesspool for the sub-standard.

The paradigm that has emerged from our implicit national consensus has shelved aside every conceivable internationally codified parameters to evaluate quality and performance. We had done all these on the altar of temporary conveniences to promote our irrational partisanships and or crude personal interests. The great cause for concern is that, in the midst of all this cancerous comprehensive dilapidation of our country, intellectuals with hitherto proven sterling pedigree descend into the gutter of truly nonsensical advocacy of unreason and illogic. This would be a national embarrassment in any other clime. The phenomenon of the intellectual as a blind griot, a prodded but independent hireling, has returned to our shores. These intellectuals lie, defame and distort in the warped service of their bogus foreign tin gods that have brought nothing but misery to our humanity. In their service to their gods they abjure the golden tradition of the commonality of the oneness of the children of Olodumare, whatever the coloration, immediate context and the manner of worship.

It is the illogic of blind intellectual griots on both sides of the aisle that drove the unnecessary crisis in Osun State only recently as the visionary Governor took laudable initiatives to begin to bridge the dangerous gaps emerging in the communities attributable to the activities of divisive religious fanatics in the state. The social fabric was being strained and social cohesion in parts of the state was threatened by fanatics who were distrustful of anyone except one of their respective narrow faiths. They would not give up their worn out and obsolete indoctrination pit holes for the good of the future of the next generation. The incontrovertible point is that fanaticism is in nurture and socialisation of society. It is acquired and can be jettisoned by learning healthier social attitudes. It is not a constructive attitude in any society.

This is less so in a multi-ethnic and multi religious badly factionalized society like ours. There is no earthly reason why a President and Vice-President of the same religious conviction cannot be trusted to protect the interests of the nation and to rise above the banality of narrow religious partisanship. And why should anyone of the two-man team be made to feel that he is in Aso Rock to ensure that the partisan interests of his co-religionist are protected. The greatness of Nigeria lies in learning to transcend these parochial sentiments. Any step to entrench this deleterious mindset is a disservice to the future of Nigeria. When this goes full cycle it may come to haunt the very existence of Nigeria as we know it today. This is what the mindset of perpetuating dichotomies does to any people.