This Babangida religion has gone deep into the marrow of the nation and through the foresight of an evil genius, Babangida succeeded in building the cathedral and headquarters of his religion in Abuja, which he cleverly named as The National Assembly. From the revelations of shame at our disposal, we can now rename the cathedral truthfully with its proper name, The National Assembly of Mammon Worshippers. So far, the believers have disguised their identities under obscure label as politicians. However, by the fruits they produce since 1999, they can no longer fool us. They are all sons and daughters of Babangidaism or Mammonism. Money is the only thing they believe. The lives of Nigerians mean nothing to this pack of idol worshippers. The simple teacher of Galilee was spot on when he said, “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” In many theological papers, we have found that God shares equality with people. In essence, the teacher was saying, you cannot serve the people and mammon. In all religions, service to people is a spiritual call and should remain selfless but it is only in the religion of Mammon that this virtue of given ones life in service to others is turned upside-down.
When the members of the Nigeria National or State Assembly deny Nigerians of the services under which they presented themselves to the people for election, they have refused to serve God. Rather than serve God or the people, the politicians have devoted their lives to the services of Mammon and other inanimate materials. They have allowed the lust for money to blindfold their spiritual eyes. They also forgot the advise of the simple teacher of Galilee that it will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
If indeed our mission and desire is to lay the foundation for the construction of the Kingdom of God in Nigeria, then it is glaring that the politicians have foolishly asked for exemption. They sure prefer the Kingdom of Mammon to the Kingdom of God. And it is to the Kingdom of Mammon they shall remain while the host of Common Nigerians shall match into the kingdom of God that the Creator has promised to build for our joy, our posterity and for the glory of humanity using the hands and the intelligence of awakened Nigerians. The more Nigerians come into the truth of existence, the more we shall realise that there is nothing to salvage in Abuja. It is an accursed city and a bolthole for workers of iniquities. We shall advise every sane Nigeria to depart from Abuja before its pollution and corruption infect you. Abuja is a city designed and built in lies to perpetrate chattel slavery, exploitation, injustice and inequality. There is nothing in Abuja for the simple hearted. For those living under the guidance of the spirit of truth, please turn your back on that city. Do not visit it and do not do business with it. Let it perish in its sin and wickedness.
It is remarkably unfortunate that after many years of travail in the hands of the military prodigal sons, the Dishonourable politicians alias political gangsters that were sworn into the National Assembly in 1999 have within few months broken every oath they swore to in the presence of Nigerians. They have trampled on the constitution that they promised to uphold and to defend. They have broken every promise made to fellow Nigerians when they gave their words that they would work tirelessly for our sake, for our welfare and for our posterity. And they have emptied our treasury and put our nation in a far more dangerous position than they met. We have watched powerlessly as they insult our intelligence with their shenanigans, brazen disloyalty and reckless self-indulgence.
Fellow Nigerians, we are not that powerless as most people think. We have just refused to do the first basic thing in life: searching for knowledge and seeking understanding about the true meaning of life and existence. This is the secret of freedom and spiritual sovereignty. The spiritual sovereignty must come first before we can pursue political sovereignty, fight for freedom, redress injustice and establish a civil society based on the principle of equality.
Demystifying the Contributions of Politicians
The democratic experience of the last four years has further demonstrated the impracticability of the current political structure of Nigeria. Because of this diabolical political structure, villains from every community, every local government, every state and every ethnic group have always colluded to capture political powers in Nigeria. We know that these villainous characters found in the national capital city of Abuja, in the capital city of each state, and in the capital town of each local government are shamelessly looting the treasuries of Nigeria and squandering the national wealth. It is a political reality that the communities and the peoples have no legitimate or direct input of any significance in the selection, appointment or election of their purported representatives. The representatives are members of a political cult that recognises no geographic or ethnic boundary.
These villainous hoodlums bonded together by the oath of greed and profligacy are categorically opposed to the letters of the Nigerian Constitution. They do not pretend that they are either responsible or accountable to anybody. In fact, they are laws unto themselves. The present institutions of government are powerless to hold the villains to account. Similarly, the civil societies currently bereft of high moral and ethical values after years of perversion by the villains have no means to place sanction on their representatives in spite of all the nefarious activities the villains sponsored and perpetrated. Obviously, the political groups in their entirety have become a threat to our lives and to the civil societies. In such a macabre situation, it is to the civil society we shall appeal to for action. It is no longer a political matter; the problems bedevilling Nigeria and the issues facing our societies are moral, ethical and life threatening matters.
It is with this understanding that we shall continue to advise Nigerians to focus their minds on the possibility of using civil actions to undo the evil of many years of corruption, mismanagement and ineptitudes of the political actors. Doing otherwise will only confirm what the wise men have said about memory and progress. In case Nigerians still have the opinion that they can put their trust and faith in the political actors to lift Nigerians out of the social, economic and political doldrums, then our sojourn in the fairyland is not over yet. Fellow Nigerians, it is in our best interest to exclude the politicians from the processes that will organise and those that will participate in the sovereign conferences. Let us try the civil societies to handle the work of reconciliation among feuding communities. Politicians are psychologically sick people and congenitally conditioned to seeing power struggle in every social affair. We should understand that rather than extinguish the fire of hate burning all over the country politicians have a way of throwing petrol into the inferno.
The knowledge of the age-long antics of politicians informed the suggestion that it is still possible to organise communities without the cynical attitudes of a political culture that desires to seize power in order that a cabal of hoodlums can secure the ‘legal’ opportunities under electioneering to lord their evil wishes on the people. This writer has consistently voiced the fact that Nigerians cannot see the way forward until we turn our backs on the professional politicians; until we reject every solicitous suggestion that emanates from the polluted minds of professional politicians; until we accept the reality that this depraved calibre of Nigerians called professional politicians are the problems and not the solution; and until we ostracise them or put criminal tags on them in every society and community.
The current national attitude that worships at the altar of professional politicians because they are in possession of stolen lucre is one of the visible symptoms of a spiritually decadent society. If we may ask the sycophantic Nigerians that cuddle to the professional politicians, where is your morality? Where is your ethical standard? Where is your principle? Where is your self-pride? Where is your self-respect? Where is your godliness? These questions become pertinent when scoundrels with money can easily receive gratuitous salutations of ‘Baba Ke’! ‘Ranka dede’! ‘Gaga no gwu’!, from Nigerians all in the name of securing a daily wretched ration of gari or apu or tuo. These are the signs of spiritual decadence and of endemic social symptoms of a society on its way to performing collective suicide, eventual self-annihilation and final extinction from the face of the earth.
It is worth reminding fellow Nigerians that the professional politicians are not in the majority. In fact, the politicians are in the minority in every family, community, local government area, state and ethnic group. Unfortunately for Nigeria, the politicians are the few apples that spoil the lot in the basket. These inherently corrupt elements have succeeded in infecting societies with their degenerate manners, cultures and attitudes. They have infected every family and every community with insidious lies, treacheries, hypocrisies and cynical life styles. The professional politicians are men and women of easy virtues and worse than the professional prostitutes. While prostitutes sell their wretched bodies, professional politicians sell their precious souls.
Fellow Nigerians we have to keep harping on the politicians as loudly and consistently as we can until fellow nationals get the message that the political structure of our dream cannot be erected on the flawed principle that placed absolute faith and trust on any group of miscreants popularly known and called professional politicians. That this type of political practice is the vogue all over the world does not make it sacrosanct or unchangeable. As we mentioned in one of the early essays, awakened Nigerians must look beyond the popular but ungodly political models found in USA, Britain, Russia and Saudi Arabia. If we are indeed serious about a National Sovereign Conference that will fashion a workable and simple political structure for the administration of a people-oriented society built on the sound foundation of love, justice, equality and freedom, it has to be unique to us. Let us sing it loud; we are on a mission for something special, something unique and something very new.
We believe that the Creator of heaven and earth who is more than aware of the suffering of the innocent peoples on planet earth shall be our guide through the spirit of truth as we search for the perfect model of a civil structure that will serve the needs of every Nigerian and not the greed of the eminent Nigerians. Hence, on our part we shall call on fellow Nigerians to let us use our God-given senses to screen off the professional politicians from our affairs; and let us treat them as pariah, plagues and lepers until they showed remorse and repented from their evil practices. This is the only way by which our societies can avoid the deadly pollutions and decadent infections of high-level immorality that the professional politicians are championing across the nations; and it is the only way we can escape the natural catastrophe of a social implosion and imminent collective extinction. You had better believed it, this is a serious matter. The evil and the excessive carnage this depraved set of humanity are bringing into communities and societies all over the world, if left unchecked, will definitely lead to the end of humanity as we know it.
One of the gains of a successfully organised Community Sovereign Conference (CSC) shall be the revelation of hidden and unknown local talents. The local talents would have displayed their mettle for all to see as they work tirelessly, voluntarily to organise and to bring the CSC to a safe and secure conclusion. It is among the budding local talents that the communities will select those to represent them at the Local Sovereign Conference (LSC). We shall again repeat this process of identification of talents at the LSC to select those that will represent the local government at the State Sovereign Conference (SSC). Again, the performance-related activities of participants at the SSC should determine those that will represent each state at the Regional/Ethnic Sovereign Conference. The same process should determine the representation at the National Sovereign Conference by selecting among the participants at the Regional/Ethnic Sovereign Conferences those Nigerians that have the mental and spiritual discipline to contribute meaningfully to the National Sovereign Conference.
If Nigerians can successfully exempt the professional politicians from these processes, the conference would have much of a success. We should remember that the politicians never participate in any altruistic programme without coming along with hidden agenda. They are just impossible people. They would rather see the social process of building a humanist civil society fail than for them not to be in control of such society. We must be vigilant. Our aim is to do away with politics and politicians. It is possible to organise society without the current global practice of political party mayhem that the moneymen and women of the world have turned into an orgy of violence, blackmail, vendetta, assassination, etc.
However, the self-fulfilling belief that the human nature is intrinsically deficient has dictated a host of pragmatic realpolitik policies that are devoid of moral or ethical considerations in most civilized countries. Unfortunately, this belief has managed to slant political theories of governance in the direction of power struggle, of seizing power by force and trickery, and of instituting state administrations based on the use of fear, intimidation, manipulation, sleaze, cajolery, and other vices common with low-lifers of our world. This form of political practices mistakenly called democracy has pushed the world into a global state of anomie. The antics of governments and their secret agents have since disenfranchised a very high proportion of the national population from participating in the legitimate political processes of their society.
We need to emphasise that the on-going craze for western democratic culture of party politics with all the inbuilt corruption of money power can never serve the needs of Nigeria or Africa. It is mere wishful thinking to believe that Nigeria or Africa can import this mindless amoral practice and expects it to yield a good harvest of morality, probity and high ethical standards. Every good student of history knows that the acclaimed western democracy is nothing but a corruption of the political ideals spurned by the city-nation states of ancient Greece. For Nigerians to lose sight of the core principles that informed the original design of democratic practices is to end up in hell on earth particularly, if we insist on adopting and practising its counterfeit versions sponsored by the western world. The devious philosophy and brutal strategies that the western world adopted in the early stages of their economic, political and religious evolution are no longer available to any race on earth. In today’s world, if any race tries to practice just five percent of the method used by Europeans for the establishment of the political and economic edifices in Europe and America, such a race will encounter accusation of genocide, crime of cruelty against humanity, terrorism, etc.
Indeed, the world has moved on, it is truly a global village. Consequently, if Nigeria and Africa wish to rise from the pit of exploitation, Nigerians and Africans must have to go deeper in the realm of knowledge. We must endeavour to excavate the purest ideas that are practicable in serving the collective needs of our people. Aping the west as is commonly done by our so-called educated elites is to consign Nigeria and Africa permanently in the lowest position in the comity of nations and among the peoples of the world. If we insist on retaining without modification our present mentality, we shall only confirm the truth in the statements of John Stuart Mill when he states, “He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation”. We must remember that the west is up there in the material hierarchy because of the access it had and still have to chattel slavery and slave labour. For curiosity sake, can we ask which race of the world is Nigeria or Africa targeting for enslavement? Can we not see that without slavery and the exploitation of the weak for cheap raw materials and cheap labour that the western civilization is practically non-replicable?
In concluding this phase of the letter-writing project we need to reiterate that the National Sovereign Conference is not about sharing cakes, it is about removing the impediments that make the baking of cakes in every community impossible. Religion does not say we should force charity or zakat out of people. Charity or Zakat should remain in all purposes a free voluntary act dictated only by human compassion and divine love for others that are unfortunate in life. The constitution that forces a community to give up 99.9 per cent of its resources, wealth and capital without their full consent is a state legalised robbery. The SNC, among other things, intends to redress such injustice in a federating state; it intends to establish a political relationship of equal partners that would freely agree without duress to share their labour, intelligence, wealth, capital and life amongst each other in/with love. There ought not to be any clever manipulation to deny participating partners of their wealth under any disguise whatsoever. The present situation in Nigeria where we rob Peter to pay Paul in the name of national unity is evil and it negates the principle of justice, peace, respect, liberty and equality.
It is important to remind Nigerians that our country is not yet a haven or the paradise of our desire and dream. The daily suffering, pain and agony in the country are real and these are still the lot of our people from the north to the south and from the east to the west. The fundamental objective that dictates this effort is our belief and faith in the redeeming nature and the powers of spiritual rebirth within humankind. Our sole intention is to create awareness among Nigerians about this natural power that resides within each of us, about the need to cultivate the birth of this power, and about the fact that we can use this power to correct and remove the evils in our lives, societies and nations.
As Tom Paine stated above, “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and women. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered…. If there be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” The struggle and the battle for the spiritual soul of Nigeria can never be easy. We must never forget that we are trying to wage a peaceful battle on the tyrannical groups that have been feeding fat on the carcases of fellow Nigerians. We must accept the reality that this group of vampires will not go away quietly. We must challenge and vanquish them by the sword of knowledge and truth. It is only through the light that the knowledge of truth brings that we can eventually drive away the darkness in our nations. The workers of iniquities are more effective in darkness but under the glare of light, these degenerates are powerless.
Fellow Nigerians, let it be said at the end of the year 2003 that this was the year when the host of awakened Nigerians put all their faith in the power that the knowledge of truth gives to all those who seek sincerely and search faithfully for the truth of existence. Once again, let us leave the political fools alone to their electioneering, to their religious and political games of mammon worship, and to their blood-shedding activities in the name of power. Their electioneering has nothing to do with the project of National Sovereign Conference. If anything at all, it is a diversionary tactic to dull the pain they have caused Nigerians and to lure Nigerians away from the critical issue of restructuring Nigeria. We must no longer fall for this kind of low-level deception anymore. Let us be prepared to face this trouble of tyranny in our time so that we can gladly and proudly bequeath peace, freedom, justice and equality to our children.
In The Spirit of Truth
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
A Common Concerned Nigerian
