Nigeria’s Senate President is making empty promises

Sir: Those who have read my African Ancestral Heritage in Christian Interpretations (More Books, Amazon.com, etc) would have noticed some departure from some earlier authors, including insistence on inclusive language, graciously imposed on us by the Academic Dean, Prof. Teresa Okure, Catholic Institute of West Africa, Port Harcourt, in affiliation with University of Calabar and the fact that my book rejects “gods and goddesses” for African divinities, since God has no such rivals in traditional Africa and not even the Virgin Mary is called a goddess in the Catholic Church.

Although Allah is incomplete without mentioning Prophet Muhammad in Islam, and he is indeed referred to as the Friend of God, Muslims do not address him as god. On another note, someone said that when Miss Olayinka Ajani arrived three minutes late to a meeting of the women wing of the Masquerade Team, she was chastised by the Chairperson, Prof. Oyeronke Olademo, who said “We should not set a bad precedence.”

What I note, personally, is that it is only when Muslims trample on the rights of Christians in one school or another that they (Christians) remember the law of Nigeria that grants religious equity to all and sundry; vice versa between Muslims and Christians, and not when the two religionists conspire to exclude the adherents of other religions.

That is one of the fundamental issues; the issue of Islamic and Christian imperialisms bedeviling Nigeria, and is the matrix of all other forms of injustice, including the unjustifiable war against the Boko Haram Islamic sect-community of men, women and children that did not attack anybody until attacked, ravaging human lives and economic resources, 2007-2015, to which the current President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB) has added protection of the Fulani herdsmen terrorists, with worse dire consequences for human lives and the economy, 2015 till date. How can Nigeria rulers be reveling in Islamic and Christian imperialisms, against the Constitution that forbids state religion, and at the same time expecting peace and progress to reign?

If the former President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, former Senate President David Mark, and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, should look back, what will they consider to be their achievement than the enactment of the law that is promoting hostility against homosexuals, just because the Bible and the Quran prejudicially state that God cursed homosexuals? Do the Bible and the Quran state-so, or that the two books are misinterpreted? What is certain is that prejudice against homosexuals is age-old and God never sent down any book, but there is no human society without homosexuals. We read about homosexuality among wild animals who know nothing about the sin of Adam and Eve.

GMB, Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara played similar roles with their predecessors, 2015-2019. It is now the turn of GMB (unless the court decides otherwise), Ahmed Lawan, and Femi Gbajabiamila. What should Nigerians expect?

Since 2015 till date, it has been worse crisis, worse carnage and worse economic destruction, and there is no end in sight to bloodshed and economic annihilation, since GMB, like Yar’Adua and Jonathan, is bent on defeating rather than seeking peace with Boko Haram. Beyond that, GMB is bent on establishing with public funds grazing colonies for the Fulani herdsmen, through which the Fulani Muslim hegemony hopes to conclude the unfinished task of their jihadist wars of the nineteenth century. That is the danger that GMB and his cohorts, including Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Adams Oshiomhole, Samuel Lalong, Lawan, Gbajabiamila, et al, constitute.

Prof. Ọlọjẹẹde Oyeniran Abiọjẹ, University of Ilorin.