Promise Adiele
Nigerian public figures – politicians, clerics, traditional rulers, heads of parastatals, and sundry persons of self-styled importance, as usual, demonstrated an insincere, perfidious attitude during the recent Easter celebration across the country. One after another, these people sent ‘goodwill’ messages to Nigerians, which, to all intents and purposes, were mere lip services hanging loosely on guile and egocentric pursuits. Reading all the messages, from the lowest to the highest of them, these people surreptitiously mocked millions of Nigerians decimated by insecurity, grappling with survival under the crushing weight of the APC’s economic boulder. The Easter messages reveal a coterie of leadership procession with base, self-gratifying inclinations, that strengthen the hands of the people’s taskmasters. Except for Pastor Tunde Bakare, who spoke truth to power, and perhaps Peter Obi, no leader of any hue found it necessary to identify the deterioration of Nigeria on all fronts and call out those responsible for these conditions. The Easter messages from Nigeria’s public figures were a caricature of the conditions in the country, a mockery of the Nigerian circumstances, which worsen daily with no hope in sight.
Christians worldwide and millions of people who adhere to other faiths recognize the significance of the Easter celebration. But the truth is, how many Nigerians celebrated Easter in the real sense of the occasion? From the blood bath in Plateau State, killing fields in Borno State, mindless massacre in Benue State, hunger-ravaged IDP camps, and empty cooking pots in millions of homes across the country, the Easter celebration was an occasion of mourning for many people. These are not existential issues but conditions caused by incompetent, misdirected, compromising leadership all over the country’s governance hallways. Sadly, different public figures chose the Easter celebration to either ridicule Nigerians by endorsing the current misnomer of government or encourage the people to continue to endure hardship just like they endured it during Buhari’s years of the locust. None of these public figures dared to pinpoint the people’s anguish and advise the government accordingly. No, they were all afraid to upset the applecart. Therefore, they played safe and, from the opulence of their homes, spewed hate disguised as empathy. It is indeed a shame of a country that while the country bursts and bleeds at the seams, public figures of different complexions connive at the situation to simply seek relevance. I will concentrate on two different public figures – politicians and clerics.
The last things on the mind of typical Nigerian politicians are the people, those whom they depend on to acquire power. The typical Nigerian politicians love to use the electorate as cannon fodder. These politicians are a study in self-seeking, pleasing motives. Before any elections, the politicians grovel, crawl, beg, plead and act humbly to acquire power. After acquiring power, they erect a wall between themselves and the common people, riding their chariots on the decadent as they display unparalleled smugness and vainglorious carriage to the whimpering of the electorate. During the recent Easter celebration, politicians queued up to give various ‘goodwill’ messages couched in the basest of phrases without any honest commitment to address the challenges faced by the people. The State House of Assembly members, Federal House of Representatives members, Senators, Ministers, Governors, President, suspended governor, and other categories of politicians displayed a regrettable lack of awareness about the socio-economic and insecurity whirlwind engulfing the country. They all wanted to be part of the people’s traducers. Where they were not encouraging Nigerians to support APC and Bola Tinubu to actualize their dream of annihilating Nigeria, they were simply enjoining the people to embrace suffering because it is their birthright.
While well-meaning Nigerians were busy sympathizing with Sim Fubara, the undemocratically suspended governor of Rivers State, the lily-livered politician was busy encouraging the people of Rivers State to support Bola Tinubu, the man who orchestrated his political disgrace. In Sim Fubara’s Easter message, he shamelessly celebrated the president, the architect of his current political misfortune. There are also unconfirmed reports that the suspended governor is considering defecting to the APC to facilitate his reinstatement. Indeed, if the people of Rivers State genuinely voted for Fubara, if he had not colluded with a certain tragic character like Mr Wike to orchestrate the last election, he would have identified with the people of Rivers State and their agony during the Easter celebration. But knowing full well that the process which brought him to power was far from genuine, he gleefully returned to his source of power, which clearly operates at cross purposes with the wishes of the people. Surely, Fubara knows how he came to power and used the Easter celebration to return to his source of power while neglecting the sufferings of his people.
It is indefensible by any stretch of the imagination that no major religious leader in the country has spoken against the killings of Christians in Plateau State and the unrelenting butchering of innocent souls in Borno State and Benue State. It shall take a bit of willpower to restrain myself from mentioning the names of religious leaders who spoke against the government of Goodluck Jonathan but have been struck by dumb paralysis in the face of insecurity and smouldering economic conditions in the country. Except for Pastor Tunde Bakare, who suddenly found his lost voice to condemn the unfortunate economic and socio-political tide in the country, directly addressing Bola Tinubu to stop playing God, no other religious leader found it necessary to speak out against the unrelenting onslaught on Nigerians. While many worshippers fawned in different agonizing shapes of poverty and deprivation, our religious leaders invoked the Biblical injunction which encourages a Christian to turn the other cheek to receive more slaps and assaults from an assailant. From one pulpit to another, these religious leaders encouraged poverty-ravaged worshippers to continue to endure hardship while believing in the power of God to save them.
The Easter messages in all the churches and from different pulpits failed to isolate those responsible for the leathery, arduous conditions in the country. Thus, they mislead the people to focus on imaginary devils, which are at best abstract embodiments of humanity’s warring, conflicting impulses. The religious leaders failed to educate the people that the politicians who make decisions which have consigned them to the penury clan are the real devils, therefore, they must reject them in the next polls. These religious leaders, while entrenching compromise and docility, were simply feasting on the timid, diffident consciences of their worshippers. They failed to tell their worshippers that the family man who honestly earns 150k a month and cannot buy a bag of rice or have a decent Easter celebration with his family is not a victim of any evil attack, but a victim of the government’s economic policies which have devalued the local currency and enthroned inflation. The religious leaders in their Easter messages failed to tell their deluded worshippers that the man who paid 500k in a three-bedroom apartment two years ago and cannot pay 3 million naira in the same apartment now is not a victim of evil invasion but a victim of inflation and local currency devaluation.
Nigerian politicians and clergy persons failed to use the occasion of the Easter celebration to educate the people and expose the incompetence that saunters our leadership corridors. Such exposé would help the people to become aware and make better decisions both in their private and public lives, especially in 2027. It grates on my emotions that those who pretend to represent the people summarily turn a blind eye while the same people are bludgeoned and steamrolled in their country. Regrettably, many Nigerians have resigned to fate in total negligence of Ola Rotimi’s admonition that “to resign onself to fate is to be crippled fast”. It is shameful that Nigerians who should bind as one and fight a common enemy are divided along the lines of ethnicity. It is more disconcerting that some Nigerians, despite themselves, would make excuses for a system that has almost collapsed the lives of over 200 million people. All the insincere, bootlicking messages from politicians and clerics should be struck out of different media platforms because they are insults to the suffering populace. Thank you, His Excellency Peter Obi. Thank you, Pastor Tunde Bakare. Indeed, “we shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free”.
Promise Adiele PhD
Mountain Top University
X: @drpee4