Architects of own misfortunes
– degenerating to Jahiliyya zeitgeist; the darkest unGodly time in Arabian history
Adamu Muhammad Dodo
Things have fallen apart, citizens are no longer at ease and the centre could not get to hold; using the titles of Chinua Achebe’s novels, a student of literature, taking a non romantic view, sees Nigeria as a failed state, destroyed by cluelessness and heartless leadership with the actors’ apparent inability to play the gods, while arguing, as Ola Rotimi would that “The Gods Are Not to Blame
Who are the gods! The fathers? The mystical? The kinds Jamie Uys, the South African filmmaker considered “Must Be Crazy”?
Nigerian President is blamed for his inability to play even the Messiah some citizens think of him or would want him to be, in fixing the country’s plethora of problems, perhaps, with the divine command, “Be and It Is”, pointing out that he had earlier declared he has the solutions to the problems and that as a leader, he should take responsibility for failure as much as he is being credited of the successes.
Some citizens accused security officials of responsibility failure to nip insecurity in the bud; “the assignment, which provides food on their table”.
Little is pointed to the poor ladership at the grassroots level; the local council to have had strong collaboration, not in thieving or complicity to banditry but to ending the criminality by dealing decisively with the criminality.
The Governors, are by certain conspiracy, also mischievously exonerated from the blame, though they are the accounting officers in their various states, the security, some citizens would conceive, lies with the presidency.
While the citizenry takes fame in the blame game, the insurgents; kidnappers, and/or bandits take the fame in shaming the state and the citizenry to have been united like broom to clearly clean by sanitising the system, the security and the country.
The insurgents have summarily assumed the position, typical of the early aliens narrated by Achebe, where he articulated that “the white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart”. (See Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: The African Trilogy)
Imam of FMC Yola Mosque, Malam Haruna Yawale, joining other scholars of morality and religion, would however caution the faithful against relying on creatures, heaping a divine task, challenging them to heal the nation, ignoring the Creator as much as overlooking the unGodly practices the followers engaged in, yet looking for freedom.
While another Qutba in another Mosque pointed out that leadership; good or bad, is a reflection of followership, calling on the faithful to return to reality, recommended societal reorientation as a collective responsibility, Yawale has warned against giving creatures the Creator’s attributes, as the ultimate peace and security could only be provided by Allah SWT as much as food, shelter and weather.
Yawale recommended seeking for divine intervention by being remorseful, repenting, seeking for forgiveness and intensifying prayers against a rather collaborative corroding forces.
The insecurity, Yawale pointed out, could either be a divine punishment for community’s covenant with immeasurable offences, and perhaps unpardonable sins being committed with impunity by the degenerate savages of the generation, taking the country back to Jahiliyya zeitgeist; referred to as the darkest age of Arabian history, or the ugly, to the point of unbearable situation is served as a divine test of “our strength in faith”.
Whichever is the case, relying on creature as Messiah, makes an obnoxious missionary, an opening for the machinations or masonry to thrive, the Qutba would caution, while calling on the faithful to rely only on Allah with piety for any difficulty and test to pass with ease.
War against insecurity is a collaborative effort; a collective responsibility; “the insurgents are not carved out of wood, though they can have forests and creeks as their hideouts, they are within us, why are people shielding them only to blame leadership for insecurity? Another Friday Qutba would join in considering this expostulation.