We have suffered greatly in this era of church and mosque evolutionary trend, an explosion yet to be rivalled by any historical data. A national consensus has emerged that Nigeria cannot continue along the lines of the current economic
disorder and disequilibrium. After more than five decades of independence, the Nigerian religious factor imposed by the capitalist mode of production and its twin bye-products of liberal democracy and the nation-state paradigm appears to be at the end of its original historic tether. The harsh economic reality threw up churches and mosques in the 1990s, with millions finding solace in the ‘houses of God’. But today, we are being hunted by the same church, today we are being bullied by the same mosque. These houses of God have grew wings and have since flew away from God. Now that this reality beckons, then this church must fall, this mosque must collapse!
This religious factor implanted both liberal religiosity and enslaved religiosity in Nigeria. In some cases, you are in a religion as a free man. In others, you are there as a slave. And when ‘Godly’ religions penetrated into our midst, we gulped the whole cup of beliefs, norms and notions. We had the liberty to shout to God who was very close to us, to climb high mountains to see God who was right there at our backyard. And when Christianity exploded in Ile Ife, OAU students erected a signpost that read “Welcome to Jesus University”. Today, the nomenclature has changed due to awry metamorphosis of the ‘houses of God’, with former SUs now riding in SUVs. The church has murdered the truth in entirety, the mosque has buried it. Now that this reality beckons, then this church must fall, this mosque must collapse!
Having finished my idea pitch on Tolerance Academy to a faith-based group in Portugal, I got an invitation to attend a joint religious service organized by the Christian and Muslim community in Aveiro. Right beside me was the former president of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio. He was in the pool of congregation. He was a normal member. He was not surrounded by bullies. He was not treated like an idol. To them, everyman is equal before God. But our church equates man with God, with the truth buried under the tongue. Our mosque shields man from the truth. We now have blood in our hands. Our kinsmen die in strange lands in a chilling re-enactment of the medieval struggle between Christianity and Islam. Today, the enemy may well be your colleague at work, your schoolmate, or even your own blood relation. Now that this reality beckons, then this church must fall, this mosque must collapse!
A new type of conflict, the first truly national war – for want of a better term – is beginning to envelope the entire country. Unlike the old type of warfare, this one is a war without defined battlefields or recognised combatants. The country is one vast battlefield and everyone is a potential casualty. Mufti is often the uniform and there are no bugles heralding different armies or flags announcing regional divisions. It is a war of the mind, being fuelled by the church on one side, and the mosque on the other side. Now that this reality beckons, then this church must fall, this mosque must collapse!
Nigeria has entered a phase of radical disease, of revolutionary paradoxes reminiscent of the approaching end of a historic era. We are far from the end of history. Our ‘houses of God’ now harbor the most extreme cases of regression into animal savagery. In case you still don’t get it, in case the fancy language does not gets in the way of clear understanding, what I am saying is that we have in our hands a rampaging young congregation in our church and mosque, radicalized by hunger, brutish want and millennial misery. There is a feral frenzy to these fellows; there is the manic glint of religious fanatic in their eyes; there is an all consuming raw anger which is implacable in the face of burning fuel supplied by the ‘houses of God’; there is a wild and merciless ruthlessness of resolve which does not recognise the template of law and order or its corollary of logic and rationality. Unhappy indeed is the land that needs a messiah. This is what our church, our mosque are set to unleash on an Olympian scale. Now that this reality beckons, then this church must fall, this mosque must collapse!
We have on our hands a situation in which the middle ground has been obliterated. In sane and ordered societies, when you are confronted by two mutually exclusive extremes and extremeties, you go for the golden mean which combines the strongest attributes of both. But the post colonial Nigeria is not a place of sanity and order. Thieves drain the people and take their ‘Godly’ offering to church and mosque. Hands are laid on political thieves, prayers are offered to those who steal the blood of the people. The people are watching. Now that this reality beckons, this church must fall, this mosque must collapse!
And when God has finished listening to the yearnings of the suffering voices, He will descend on these houses of clay, for they have eaten the forbidden fruit, for they have murdered the truth, for they have taken a limp into worldliness, for they have lost their salt to erosion, for they have danced naked in the face of greed, for they have greased their palms with blood. The world started without man, it will end without man, they should note.
It is me, @Obajeun
2 Comments
Well obajeun..i hope this is not a case of surrealistic writer? All the same , some fundamental issues which centre on gullibility of human mind were raise … This call for self examination..Remember ‘ GOD are not to blame’..
Nice one bro