Date Published: 12/20/09

In the spirit of the season

As we celebrate Sallah and the yuletide as Muslims and as Christians, we must try as much as possible to keep our perspective on what’s truly important.

This is certainly not the time to eat and drink alone. It shouldn’t be a time for engaging in anti-social behaviour, frolicking around or indulging ourselves in some other excesses. Rather, it should be the time for sober reflection. It is a time to take an inventory of our lives and ask ourselves some very fundamental questions as a people and as a nation. How have we been living our lives? Why were we created by our maker and for what purposes? It should be a time to ask, why we were created and placed in the geographical entity called Nigeria. Why weren’t we here a hundred years ago or why not a hundred years later? Why now and why Nigeria? Why not some other country?

It may well be that we are here at this time and in Nigeria because we are significant to this generation. It should be a time to really sit back and do a thorough x-ray of how we have lived our lives as a people and as a nation until now. It is a time to actually remind us of certain truths. And this is actually what the season is all about. Have our lives been in consonance with the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Prophet Muhammad? Have we truly been faithful to the tenets of Christianity and Islam? If so, why is our world in this fouled state?

Our world today is a very crazy world. The world is all messed up and upside down, confusion all around, and our dear nation is no better. There is something fundamentally and basically wrong with Nigeria and indeed the world.

It is not as if we don’t know enough. On the contrary, we are living today in a very knowledgeable world with so much information overload. Through this abundance of knowledge, and increasing globalisation due to an interconnected world, we have succeeded in making our world a neighbourhood; the challenge however is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.

And so, for us to live in a better country and in a better world free of crime, violence and so much hate, we have to use the opportunity of the celebration to retrace our steps and rediscover in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. some lost precious values.

Two of such most important values that we have to rediscover are-our moral value and our God value. We’ve got to rediscover that our world anchors on moral foundations and that there is a God behind the whole process.

Now, the fact that the world rests on moral foundations indicates that there are moral laws governing the globe just like the universal laws of gravity which if broken have unpleasant consequences. We don’t jump off skyscrapers in adherence to the law of gravity. So also we suffer the consequences if we break the moral laws.

A lot of people in our nation today especially our so-called leaders do not realise that they are living in a moral world where the most important law is the law of love, which if broken have dire consequences. Such people just can’t stand up for their convictions and so they judge what is right or wrong based on majority opinion.

But the truth is that some things are right and some things are wrong. It is absolutely wrong to hate and it is wrong to steal the collective wealth of Nigerians and stashed it away in foreign accounts abroad. It is wrong to pitch the North against the South. It is wrong to incite religious violence in the Northern part of Nigeria and political uprising and hostage taking in the Niger Delta. It is wrong for our leaders to embark on the dangerous policy of deliberately killing our education sector while they send off their children and wards overseas for quality education and training. It is wrong for these leaders to cripple our healthcare delivery system while they use State resources to seek and get quality healthcare for themselves and their families in Western nations. It is wrong to pursue vendetta and selective justice in the ongoing war against corruption and it is eternally wrong to discriminate in the name of racism, tribalism and nepotism. It is just as wrong to utilise the yuletide as an opportunity to waste our lives in riotous living. The God of the Universe has made some things to be absolute in this world.

Let us use this auspicious time to kill the attitude of “Whatever works is right.” Let us kill the bandwagon attitude of “If everybody is doing it, then it must be right.” The Holy Books are very clear about this. The Bible in Exodus 23:2 says, “Do not follow a crowd to commit evil nor shall you testify in dispute so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice.” And the Quo’ran in Surah 7:86 says, “And set not in every road, threatening and hindering from the path of Allah those who believe in Him, and seeking to make it crooked…”Again, Surah 41:43-“The good deed and the evil deed cannot be equal. Repel (the evil) with one which is better…” Let us kill the attitude of “It is alright to steal and rob as long as you steal with dignity and rob with a bit of finesse.” Let us move beyond the notion of breaking every other commandment so long as we do not break the 11th commandment.

And finally, we’ve got to rediscover that there is a God behind the process. Most of us do believe in God and in his existence. But so often, we affirm his existence with our lips and deny same with our lifestyle-a new dimension of atheism. This is very dangerous, more dangerous than traditional atheism. A lot of us have become so much engrossed in today’s sophistication in technology, cybernetics and globalisation that we have unconsciously forgot God. We must come to understand this, because no matter whom you are, where you are and what you’ve got, you are going to have to need God one day. Let us stop paying lip service to God and start paying life service instead.

Comrade Eneruvie Enakoko

(CLO Chairman in Lagos)