Just to let my people know

A group of travelers embarked on an overnight trip from the Middle Belt region to Southern Nigeria. Along a potholed road near a forest, an armed gang attacked their bus. Some of the travelers lost their lives in the gunfire of the bandits. Others were abducted and taken into the forest. One of the abductees fled from the kidnappers in an attempt to escape. In the process, he fell into a ditch. He reached for his phone to call his family and let them know about the unfortunate incident.

While on the phone, he felt a strange movement around his feet. He flashed around the faint light of his cell phone screen and glimpsed a dark, log-like creature. His heartbeats skipped and increased at once. The moving dark creature was a python that had already occupied the ditch with its devouring mode fully activated. With no chance of escape, as the snake began to coil around the young man, he decided in that dreadful moment to let his family know how he was being constricted and would be swallowed by the snake.

This heartbreaking story represents the Nigerian experience. The fight for political independence was a journey through the night of colonial subjugation. Successive years of military dictatorship engendered a disruptive horror that led to the ongoing state of our cold-blooded democracy, which seems like a dungeon with reptiles.

Nigeria is far from the “destination” of national socio-political and economic independence. The inability to prevent the worsening crisis of insecurity, poverty, hunger, and disease can no longer be blamed on a lack of creative proposals or ideas. Instead, the ugly situation stems from a lack of patriotism and an increasing spirit of selfishness and ill will. Our impulse for personal benefits supersedes the pursuit of the common good.

The current reality in the country separates the wealthy from the poor. This socioeconomic inequity accounts for dissimilar experiences. While the rich unite in seeking sustainable comfort for themselves, the poor remain in a mutual alliance of pain and suffering. Based on the above story of the travelers, some Nigerians are more comfortable proceeding along the path of the abductors without any attempt to make things better. Like protesters of bad governance, those committed to pursuing freedom keep encountering increasing challenges and unpleasant experiences.

The failure to achieve the dream of a better Nigeria is commonly attributed to poor leadership and corruption. This was a recurrent theme in every declaration of past coups d’état during the military era. However, successive military regimes’ dashed hopes inflated the yearning for a civilian government. A desire for democratic governance became a song of Nigeria’s aspiration for the promised land. “Democracy” eventually “dawned” in 1999, but twenty-five years later, the suffering and pain of Nigerians keep worsening.

After years of fervent prayer for Nigeria in distress, it now seems like a readiness to die remains the last option. This should be perceived neither as a prophecy of doom nor a defeatist lack of will to live. Instead, it is an imagination to illustrate what life has become for the majority. Death keeps knocking at many doors due to hunger caused by economic stagnation, inability to afford medical bills, fatal wounds from machetes/gunshots of kidnappers and bandits, or cardiac arrest from despondency over the high cost of living.

Nigeria is at a critical stage where some citizens must express their final thoughts and prayers for the most critical decision. When I recently expressed my loss of hope for Nigeria, a friend retorted, “Hope is the only thing left for Nigerians.” Indeed, according to G. K. Chesterton, “Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all.” Nevertheless, the Prophet Isaiah’s counsel to Hezekiah is needed now. When Hezekiah was terminally ill, Isaiah went to him and said, “The Lord says: ‘Set your house in order, for you are about to die; you will not recover'” (2 Kings 20:1).

Struck by these harsh words from the Prophet, Hezekiah wept bitterly and prayed wholeheartedly to God to look kindly upon his past good deeds. Thus, the Lord heard his prayer and granted him fifteen more years of life. The critical question is whether a similar warning can be taken seriously in Nigeria. Do we even have any past good deeds to invoke, like Hezekiah, in a plea to God at this harsh moment of national distress? Notably, Hezekiah spent the years after his recovery to execute many reforms, exemplifying the spirit of a strong and “righteous” leader, which provided renewed hope for a flourishing life in Israel.

Without a doubt, heralding hope amid the growing despair in Nigeria is crucial, but the true meaning of hope must be clear. In biblical understanding, hope is the confident expectation of God’s promises for something good. This expectation places a moral responsibility on the expectant human subject. Hence the adage: heaven helps those who help themselves, or as St. Augustine is quoted to have said: “God created us without our consent, but He cannot save us without our cooperation.” In other words, humans have a moral duty to choose between alternatives, to accept or reject the fulfillment of God’s promises. We can only expect things to be right when we are willing to do things correctly.

In our broken socio-political Nigeria, an eclipse of distress has enveloped the land with colors of deceit and hopelessness. A lack of leadership aggravates this sickening experience with insurmountable frustrations. Curiously, during the #EndSARS protest of October 2020, the Nigerian government expressed frustration over its inability to dialogue with the protesters since the protesters allegedly had no leaders. The government conveyed a similar concern during the recent #Endbadgovernance protest of August 2024. This underscores the leading cause of anguish among Nigerians: frustration prevails where no leaders exist.

It is tragic to note that Nigeria has been “kidnapped” and doomed to perish in a tribulation of failed leadership and unpatriotic “greed for gain.” The government keeps breaking its social contract with the people, and many people now resort to seeking an opportunity to exploit others. The recent rhetoric over the Dangote refinery revealed predatory economic practices that sustain a chokehold on Nigeria.

We continually ask God to be on our side without desiring to be on God’s side. We have prayed and “hoped for peace, but no good has come, for a time of healing, but there is only terror” (Jeremiah 8:15). As Nigeria celebrates its 64th independence, with the majority of the people profoundly paralyzed by the current socioeconomic afflictions, it seems fair to just let my people know that the only hope we have left is to accept the fact that we are already dead. Awareness of this reality must not lead to greater despair, but it should inspire a resilient collective resolve of citizens for a better society against government failures in setting standards of an enduring good for the present and posterity. We surely deserve better than a hopeless tragic end.

Fr. Paul Utser, Ph.D. writes from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

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