Map of Nigreria

Let’s Pray, Yahaya Balogun,

By Yahaya Balogun

“Sincere prayer is a potent religious and miraculous weapon for conquering surmountable and insurmountable problems.” -Yahaya Balogun.

O Lord of creation, please, direct our compatriots to the right path. Direct Nigeria’s noble course. Nigeria is in a security crisis! Change the collective heart of a nation in collective grief. Our ways are not your paths. Your instructive ways are not being followed in truth, love, and the right track in Nigeria. In an abundance of hypocrisy, everyone in our country “prays” and wants to be under the banner of your grace and blessings, but you’re far from being a hypocritical God. A nation in mourning has departed from your ways and in a blight disregard to your righteousness and religious instructions. You are a beneficent and merciful God. Your grace is one of the pre-existing conditions of blessings for those who are following your instructions. Most Nigerians have fallen short of your trust because you are aware that most “religious” but ungodly Nigerians acquiesce to the rots and corruption in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, all religious sects combined in Nigeria hypocritically worship you with the expectations of unconditional favors and blessings from you. Whereas your holy manuscripts explicitly espoused that: we cannot dwell or wanton in sins and expect more blessings from you. Nigeria is one of the blessed nations on the face of the earth, yet Nigeria represents one of the capitals of poverty in the world. O, Lord! What can we do to curry your favors? O Lord, what can we do to earn your unblemished blessings for a nation in urgent need of your mercy? We have sinned against heaven and before you. We have so much innocent blood in the hands of our living and deceased leaders. There are great injustices in the land. O Lord, soften the hearts of our rulers. How Nigerian stakeholders run after peace and security without the provisions and availability of necessities of life or things that make human beings live a decent living is sickening and a mirage.

Sadly, every day, every hour, minute, and second in Nigeria is ensconced in wanton destruction of lives and mental deformation of innocent Nigerians. The impoverished Nigerians blame one another for the woes of our leaders. Yet, your creatures are confused, neglected, dehumanized, and pauperized by your privileged and higher animals—the Nigerian leaders. The privileges you gave the Nigerian higher animals (leaders) in our kingdom have been abused and misemployed by the custodians of our commonwealth. O Lord, your sacred lordship over our nation has been a (un)disguised blessing and uncountable accountabilities. Leadership is a combination of responsibility and accountability. While you are accountable to yourself and bestow abundant blessings to countries that listen to your instructions, our mortal leaders are unaccountable to the people they lead. Our leaders are existential threats to Nigeria’s growth and development. We, the people, have lost the moral code and sacred compass bestowed upon us as your holy grail (i.e., your object of the knightly quest). We are collectively and dangerously journeying on the road to nowhere. But we strongly believe in your control of normal and precarious human affairs. Our collective optimism and belief in your power shall not be waived to recoup our lost glory.

O Lord, the solutions to our numerous problems in Nigeria are not far-fetched. The keys to our earthly issues are at our collective fingertips. The Nigerian crisis does not only require your holy hands, and it’s expedient to come to our aids. All we lack is the collective contentment to live a normal life. Touch the kernels of our minds to reason and see beyond our selfish and mundane existence. Teach us with your heavenly wisdom and decree to understand the nothingness of the world. Please give us the wisdom to understand how to resolve our communal problems.

In our country, illegal wealth acquisition, jealousy, selfishness, corruption, and instant gratification are a way of life. Every day in Nigeria is one day, multiple troubles. Every man or woman that worships you in truth and deeds knows that your blessings superabound in our lives. How to deploy our abundant human and material resources has been our burden and bane of development. We are good people with the wrong amalgamation of unconnected structures by the brutish British. Unfortunately, our unique diversity and languages have been abused to the detriment of the shareholders of our collective cultural heritage. O Lord, give us the willpower to detach our blighted nation from the vestiges of colonialism, neocolonialism, and glorified slavery.
Chastise those who are hypocritically and fantastically corrupt, and bless more, those who labor with their sweat to live a decent and holy life.

O Lord, all we ask at these hours and from now on is the forgiveness of our generic sins. We know we have committed numerous sins that make Nigeria short of your glory and blessings. Please, lord, treat us like the proverbial and prodigal son in the holy book. Nigeria is one of your fertile lands and the cradle of human civilization—our land is one of your promised lands for distributing your grace for humanity. We are good people with a wrong orientation towards life, but we can be better people. Bestow upon us your compassion, mutual love, and grace to worship you in truth and with sincerity of purpose. The mental and physical sufferings of our people in our homeland are too much for us to bear. You’re a beneficent and merciful God. You bestow your unblemished favors to those who obey your inimitable instructions.

O Lord, we promise you, at these hours, and henceforth to be a representation of the best of your creatures. Give us our daily bread to wine in your abundant security, grace, and favors. We are poised and determined to go to your equity with clean hands and healthy minds. We believe in you and your unending promise to enrich us with blessings. We will go forth to follow your injunctions in other to reap the benefits of our collective submission to your sacred instructions.

O Lord, thank you for hearing our collective cry, and in anticipation of giving us our collective heart desires.

A.M.E.N….!!!

Yahaya Balogun wrote from Arizona, United States of America.