It’s Easter Sunday

Today is Easter Sunday. It is the commemoration of the great event of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ – the miraculous, dramatic twist to the story of Jesus Christ the Son of God, who personified love, who exemplified humility, who epitomised truth and justice, but who was rejected and condemned to a brutal and shameful death on the cross by the powerful religious and political authorities of the time, for daring to question the status quo, and for proclaiming the truth he knew with passion and without compromise.

Christians believe that his death is the supreme sacrifice that the sinful world needed for its salvation, and his resurrection is the proof that everything Jesus stood for and all he said is true.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ, which Christians all over the world celebrate today is a powerful testimony to the victory of good over evil, the triumph of light over darkness, and the conquest of wickedness, aggression, violence and death, by the forces of love, peace, nonviolence, and life.

The resurrection should remind all men and women of the nature of truth and falsehood. No matter how badly truth is battered and violated, and for however long truth is crushed, it will rise again and bounce back, for truth is indomitable.

Falsehood on the other hand may reign for a thousand years, but ultimately its hollowness and shallowness will be revealed by the light of truth, and it will eventually give way. The resurrection of Jesus Christ demonstrates that the triumph of falsehood is only a mirage.

The celebration of Easter this year once again provides another opportunity for men and women of our country and elsewhere to learn a much-needed lesson on the invincibility of truth, even as falsehood appears to dominate our national landscape.

Easter is the powerful declaration that there is life beyond Calvary. For the oppressed, impoverished, frightened and despondent Nigerians in particular, Easter is a renewed promise of the ultimate triumph of peace, security and prosperity, over the multiple tragedies of our individual and social lives, and the protracted melodrama of our national existence, where we are daily groaning under the heavy burden of a corrupt, dubious, inept, manipulative and callous leadership elite, whose lust for money and greed for power, account in large measure for the theatre of war that our national landscape has now become.

Easter should confer on the Nigerian believer the hope, the trust, and the confidence that all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the last vestiges of primitive feudalism, the prevailing lust for power without purpose, the evil manipulation of the legitimate ethnic and religious diversities in the population by greedy merchants of political power, the demon of kleptomania, along with their nightmarish consequences on Nigeria today, can only hold sway for a while. These evils shall soon crumble and give way to truth, justice, peace, stability, and prosperity.

Furthermore, Nigerian leaders and people can learn something from the life of the one whose resurrection we celebrate. Jesus taught a lot of lessons through his parables and miracles, but the greatest lessons he taught are the lessons of his own life. He taught his followers that there is no greater love than for a man to lay down his life for his friends. And that is exactly what he did. He taught them that those who seek to be first must make themselves last and servants of all. And that is what he did when he washed the feet of his disciples and accepted a humiliating death in order that they may live.

Self-sacrifice especially on the part of those who desire to lead is an ingredient that the Nigerian leadership elite has lacked all the while. Our experience of leadership in this country has often been one of primitive greed, the conquest of the people and the privatisation of state resources, rather than service and sacrifice for the common good.

Far from denying themselves comforts and pleasures that their people may live with some measure of dignity, our own officeholders have often stolen food off the hands of the starving poor, and they have constantly mortgaged tomorrow for the fleeting pleasures of today.

Overwhelmed by their insatiable lust for power and their inordinate desire to further conquer, control and dominate the people, our own political leaders have often subjected the poor people to all forms of indignities, and they paved the way for the emergence of the terrorist insurgents, the killer bandits and sundry criminal gangs that have today brought an otherwise great country to its knees.

This Easter celebration, therefore, challenges incumbent and aspiring officeholders of all creeds in Nigeria, to abandon the road to perdition along which many have been travelling, and to come to recognise that true success and genuine happiness reside not in what people gain for themselves, but in what they do for others. With Jesus’ commitment to a life of love, humility, service and sacrifice eventually vindicated by the event of the resurrection and celebrated annually at this time by believers through the course of history, Easter challenges Christians and non-Christians alike to embrace those higher values (exemplified in Jesus) that will make for wholesome development, and lasting peace and happiness.

Easter should also teach the teeming population of religious people in Nigeria that the core of religion is not the outward display of (often noisy) ritualism at which we seem to excel, while falsehood, corruption, greed, injustice, social indiscipline and political manipulation dominate our individual and social lives. Beyond the outward display of religiosity, Jesus calls his followers to the practice of authentic religion that is to be found in a passionate commitment to love, truth, justice, honesty, mercy, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice. Nigerian Christians and other Nigerians are today challenged to cultivate these elements of authentic religion that are also the ingredients of a more stable, secure, peaceful, and prosperous nation.

On this note, The Guardian wishes all our readers a happy Easter celebration.