While we are still praying for Nigeria…

By

Prince Charles Dickson

At my son’s school was a science exhibition last Saturday. And one of the teachers narrated about a friend traveling from Nigeria to Dubai. While hovering over Nigeria as they flew, it was darkness, pitch darkness and as they hovered the Dubai airspace, light everywhere.

I thought all we need do is pray. Pray we get there. Rubbish!

We pray a lot in this clime…Last month, adherents of the two major faiths were engrossed in prayers. I wonder what they prayed for; who prayed what, who they prayed to, and for whom they had prayed.

So, a man prays for a wife, he gets it, proceeds on a conjugal bliss on his bed and then prays that his manhood rises, what will we not pray for; We defend, endorse, pray and hold thanksgiving services for certified thieves because of ethnic cleavages and wail persecution because na my brother and play rhetoric of crass marginalization.

While we are praying civil servants are committing all sorts of crimes. Students will not read, they are told to pray for retentive memory and bind the demon of failure and the rest is simplista! Our football teams and sports representatives do not make preparations for tournaments, they just lazy up, about and around and ask Nigerians to pray for them.

A President is sick, we don’t use the situation as an opportunity to tackle our chaotic glorified patent medicine store health system, but we pray for him.

Maybe we should in prayers; call on the terrestrials above to punish even to five generations those who through their actions insist that Nigerians will not have constant, reliable electricity.

We should beseech the god of our ancestors to punish in full measure, leaders, teachers, and professors, parents that have contributed to a fallen standard of education. Those that have contributed to the educational rot, ask Ifa to make sure they watch their wards rot away.

Be they in PDP, CPC, ACN, JNI, CAN, traditional institutions, youth bodies, and opinion leaders and all that trouble Nigeria and conspire to keep it perpetually on her knees. We must pray that Orumila expose them, bring them to justice as we have by our actions accepted that we cannot do anything much but pray.

Let’s do nothing but pray against those enemies that are responsible for potholes, death traps on our roads, that theirs to will meet their waterloo on those roads that they could have facilitated its repair but choose to turn a blind eye to.

While we face hard and trying times, tightening belts in almost disappearing waists, we pray that those whose harmful designs of cannibalistic theft has denied the larger populace quality healthcare, infrastructural development, clean and portable water, good roads and functional education will be cut off in gruesome manner, like horror movies their lives will be a crate of unprecedented disaster both in public and private.

Enemies of Nigeria, whether Igbo pastoralists, Fulani herdsmen or Yoruba meat choppers, let us pray they are beseeched with problems beyond them. You are a contractor, you have collected the upfront, shared it with the ruling party, the governor’s wife, son and aides, and the drugs were not supplied–God will hammer you o!

In prayers, let us shout, you rapist, kidnapper in an Evans mould, an armed and pen robber. You sell question papers for qualifying exams, you are a crooked pastor, imam and voodoo priest, may the Almighty Allah reward you in same portion you have dealt others with.

We are so concerned about the President, when a host of us will never meet or have never met our local councillor and demand accountability of any form. Many do not even know the name of their local government chairman except he is a brother or relation that has denied us one borehole contract or given us one to come “join and chop”.

We lambast the President (because his inaction makes that task painfully easy), while our local streets are paved death traps. We celebrate everything from going to Mecca and coming back as strangers to transverse Jerusalem or Rome, pray the heavens down during Jumat services and Sunday worship.

A nation geographical endowed, well situated yet continually cloned with masquerades as leaders and people.

My simple summation is that we, you and I that spend hours praying, doing nothing, praying for leaders that are ordinarily from amongst us but become tin gods and are ready to pounce on us, telling us that no court can try them, living in stupendous splendor with no care and fleecing us are the problem.

The next time you are asked to pray for Nigeria…say no, pray for yourself…the problem is you; it’s me, and us…We pray to a Christian God at the beginning of a function, and close the same with a prayer to a Muslim Allah and then in the same function discuss how to steal because really its nobody’s business how anything is run.

There is no need of a key, if we do not know where the lock is, prayer without works is dead…I said so, I know so and as you take your eyes off this, you know it too.

We need still all the mirage of some songs of victory and some dude telling us that God has answered our prayers and that the devil was in trouble in Nigeria; a foolish child is not much better than a dead child. The day cometh when action backed prayers will be said, no one will escape that day—only time will tell.

Prince Charles Dickson

Currently Prince Charles, is based out of Jos, Plateau State, and conducts field research and investigations in the Middle Belt Region of Nigeria with an extensive reach out to the entire North and other parts. Prince Charles worked on projects for UN Women, Search for Common Ground, and International Crisis Group, among others. He is an alumnus of the University of Jos and the prestigious Humanitarian Academy at Harvard and Knight Center For Journalism, University of Texas at Austin. A doctoral candidate of Georgetown University

Born in Lagos State (South West Nigeria), Prince Charles is proud of his Nigerian roots. He is a Henry Luce Fellow, Ford Foundation grantee and is proficient in English, French, Yoruba Ibo and Hausa. Married with two boys, and a few dogs and birds.