Dr Promise Adiele

Promise Adiele

Many people read the Bible for various reasons. Some read it for spiritual revival. Others do so to justify various existential misadventures. Yet, many read it from a parochial egocentric perspective. Many more isolate portions of the book to advance their distorted convictions while preaching the same to other people. Some people read it as a guide to defraud people and blackmail their timid consciences to part with hard-earned money, citing various verses. Of course, many read the Bible as scholars to investigate historical truths, religious incidents, their implications, God’s relationship with man, His ordinance in creation and most importantly man’s duty to man and God.

The Bible is arguably the most misinterpreted book in the history of humanity. But the Bible is true and never changes even though some people mutilate the pages by imputing their illusory convictions and practices which are completely unbiblical. Unfortunately, many Christians who profess their faith at every little opportunity do not understand the Bible at all. Such people, gloat over their self-acclaimed holiness, misinterpret the Bible and mislead the weak to damnation. Fear the person who always rehashes ‘I am a born-again Christian’. The motive is to disarm you and win trust before unleashing evil. They are hypocrites and double-speakers. Real born-again Christians do not advertise it. Their attitudes speak for them.

When the master, Jesus Christ, admonished the Scribes and Pharisees for their unbridled hypocrisy in Mathew 23: 13-32, He was, in effect, upbraiding future generations who would inevitably subscribe to a hypocritical, double-speaking mentality. Events in Nigeria every day corroborate the argument that many Scribes and Pharisees, which the Master talked about, continue to reincarnate and regenerate in various degrees of avalanche. There are many hypocrites and double-speakers in Nigeria. They come in sheep’s clothing but are inwardly ravenous wolves. They overflow with shameless consistency and advertise their despicable trade in official and unofficial capacities.

Nigerian hypocrites do not have honour or any modicum of shame. Their interests range from personal and material aggrandizement to an inordinate quest for public recognition. They are bedfellows with deception and falsehood. While at it, they unconsciously manifest a chameleonic attitude, which only gratifies the devil and all the demons from Hades. A hypocrite is evil to humanity. He is unstable politically, religiously, and socially.

Twin developments in Israel and Palestine, on the one hand, and Plateau State, Nigeria, on the other hand, in recent times have once again beamed a revealing searchlight on hypocrites and double-speakers in Nigeria.

Not long ago, the world was alarmed with the internecine war that engulfed the Middle East following the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Palestine. As usual, many people around the world took positions supporting Israel while others sympathized with Palestine. As the conflagration raged mainly in Gaza, the exchange and support took a religious dimension. While some sects prayed and supported Israel, other people prayed, supported Palestine and even engaged in mindless demonstrations, destroying properties worth millions in value. It is understandable because, in the Israel-Palestine conflict, many lives, including children and pregnant women, have been lost.

Various television stations across the world daily beam disembowelling, depressing images from the hotspot in Gaza. Palestine bombed Israel, and many died. Israel retaliated with devasted fury, and many more died. Every person of good conscience prayed that the conflict should end soon and normalcy returned in that part of the world.

Some Nigerians cried more than the bereaved. They turned it into a daily menu to whet their gluttonous appetite for the Israel-Palestine conflict. Every day, these Nigerians gleefully patronize global emotion by pretending to be concerned with the deaths of innocent children in the conflict. Then, the same carnage happened at home, here in Nigeria. Silence descended on their roofs, they became dumb.

On Christmas Eve, in Plateau state Middle-belt region of Nigeria, murderous scoundrels invaded more than 50 communities in Bokkos, Mangu, and Barkin Ladi Local Government Areas killing over 200 people, wounding over 300 people and displacing more than 12,000 inhabitants of the area.

The deaths were carried out through physical degradation, horror, and the worst kind of inhuman treatment replicated in the Israel-Palestine conflict. In Plateau State, children were beheaded, pregnant women were hacked down, men and women were gruesomely murdered and the lucky ones suffered various degrees of harm and deformity. These people were all Christians who professed and subscribed to the tenets of the Christian religion. Surely, no one deserves to die in such a mindless, repulsive manner irrespective of ethnicity, religion or creed. However, following the deaths of these people in Plateau State Nigeria, men and women in different capacities, who shouted at the rooftop over the Israel-Palestine conflict, were inexplicably struck by some kind of mute paralysis – they refused to see the death in Plateau State or condemn it. That is blatant hypocrisy no matter who is involved.

Anyone who has condemned the death and anguish in the Israel-Palestine war and has looked the other way since the angel of death visited Plateau State is a compound hypocrite. How on earth would you, as a Nigerian, cry over the deaths and killings in a foreign land but look away when the same bloodthirsty sword is cutting across your country? What manner of a hypocrite are you? The hypocrites in Nigeria who have been effusive over the killings in the Israel-Palestine conflict but silent over the same developments in their country are simply afraid to upset the applecart by offending the APC power protocol under whose watch lives in the country have become meaningless. A hypocrite is a wicked, unconscionable person. He is self-serving and sees only what he wants to see. I do not have any respect for any misbegotten hypocrite and double-speaker.

It is more depressing because Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president, declared in a prerecorded New Year broadcast to Nigerians that security in Nigeria has improved since he took over power. Without empathizing with the people who died in Plateau, Mr. President demonstrated the worst kind of insensitivity to a bewildered nation. Surely, the presidency takes Nigerians for granted. Even though we decided to latch onto the lame excuse that the speech was pre-recorded, couldn’t the many media aides find a way to manipulate the situation and insert at least one sentence where the president would show empathy to Nigerians who lost loved ones in that gruesome rampage in Plateau State?

Security situation was the same in Nigeria under Buhari. Each time Nigerians were murdered by terrorists, he only replied with the offensive expression “I am not awah”. When Tinubu said he would continue from where Buhari stopped, many Nigerians did not quite take him seriously. But from all indications, it is apparent that Tinubu will surpass Buhari in crippling the country in every conceivable vista.

In what ways are the killings in Plateau State less of a tragedy than what is going on in the Israel-Palestine conflict? Do the lives of Nigerians not matter or are less important than the lives of people in Israel and Palestine? Are Israeli Christians more Christians than Nigerian Christians? Why would any sane soul who professes Jesus Christ with a conscience condemn killing of children and women in the Israel-Palestine conflict but maintain a criminal silence when women and children, all Christians, are murdered in Nigeria, at home? The failure of our hypocrites in Nigeria to condemn one incident and ignore another incident of the same magnitude implicates a dubious and revisionist mindset which our so-called social commentators, religious leaders and critics harbour in the recesses of their souls. If it is because, our hypocrites do not want to offend the government or even undermine the presidency, it simply follows that they have no iota of moral justification to condemn any form of killings in another part of the world. It simply means that their cries and concerns for what is happening in Israel and Palestine are insincere.

The development in Plateau State is worrisome, and it appears the federal government is handicapped. Some persons have suggested that the people should be allowed to carry arms and defend themselves, but again, the government has frowned and rejected the proposal. How do the bandits get intelligent information to strike for hours without any molestation from our security personnel? How would the bandits sack a whole village and comfortably occupy it, living there peacefully without any molestation from our security persons? Are there complicities? We may not know. But, if we consider that there are solid minerals worth millions of dollars buried in that part of Plateau State, then we can begin to understand what could be responsible for the terror attack and waste of human lives there. Whatever the case, we must all condemn evil wherever it occurs. To condemn killings and murder in another land and keep quiet when it happens on your land is extended hypocrisy that makes a caricature of the Scribes and Pharisees. The Master hates hypocrites.

*Promise Adiele PhD
Mountain Top University
[email protected]
X: @drpee4