WE ARE FINISHED!

Nigeria has become a nightmare from which every hope to wake up has vanished. We live in a different universe where everyone is afflicted with the same diseases of restlessness, hurrying and jostling along with life, and seeing nothing but money and blinking material attractions. We seemed to have forgotten ourselves and got carried away by the promptings of our base instincts. Money, for us, is the new golden calf that almost everyone genuflects in humble subservience. We ascribe the highest value to it and will go to any extent and concede anything to get it. Everything is money, money, and money! Nothing can excuse this abnormal mental state that had gripped the collective psyche of Nigerians much more than any other people on the globe. 

That we are sinking fast towards self-destruction is very clear to everyone, and it is strictly our own making. It is not only that the educated and elderly ones are dangerously myopic and evil; the young ones are in a terrible condition of mind with no hope of being rescued. What is happening now in Nigeria is scary and is the result of the factors, which are like cancers, have metathesized, and now are leading us to premature death, not only as a nation but as individuals. We should always know that the state of mind of individuals sums up the collective consciousness of a nation. This is not difficult to understand if we know we share a common fate, and that fate is that we are finished. 

THE GOVERNMENT

Nigeria has no government, and no society can survive without a government. This is because government creates structure and organization that enthrone order, accountability, regulation, support, and responsibility that ensure the proper functioning of the state. Without a government, everything goes south, and there is an extent to which damage is inflicted in a system it becomes impossible to revitalize and fix. This is the current situation in Nigeria. We are damaged beyond repair and whoever promises you hope in the coming elections is ignorant of the extent of the damage and of the empty shell that stands for a country called Nigeria today. If anybody thinks Nigeria can be fixed, he is totally out of his mind. Nigeria is done and gone, and we must cease all the pretenses and embrace the reality of this situation of things. If we must survive, we must look for an alternative umbrella or structure to move under as a people.  

What we see as the government in Nigeria and its political stakeholders is a monumental farce put up to ride roughshod over the people whose indolence and ignorance are no less contributory to the sorry state of affairs. We do not have leaders who understand the role of government with the governed. Nigerians are like orphans (children) with no one to care for them. They have no food, no home, and no hope but they must survive at any cost. It is this desperation to survive without any support system by the government that gave rise to this unusual “money mentality” that is now the last phase before our total effacement. Since we are to survive, we must have the money to do so. If you don’t have money, you will die of hunger. The idea is to look for money and get it by hook or crook means, and saunter around in our society that now believes “the end justifies the mean.”

But the root of this misgovernance is the endemic corruption that comes without punitive measures against offenders. With time the corruption in the system became a culture that finally destroyed the government and left Nigerians with none to depend on. Instead of the government serving the people, it abnegated its responsibility and everything that ought to be put in place (such as good transportation, a constant power supply that will attract investors, and investment for job opportunities) was buried on the altar of corruption, greed, and ignorance. The people walk the street and are desperate to survive. When we say that we are finished, it is necessary to understand this in light of the depth of corruption in Nigeria that had our fingerprints on Nigerian institutions that had gone comatose as crime scenes. There is no place free from bribery and corruption in Nigeria, and yet there is no space without a church. What an irony?

EDUCATION

Education is not only academics, but academics is no doubt constitute substantially the foundation of self-development and growth of a person. There is no doubt the failure of the government spills over to the family which is the cradle of education of a human person. Since the people are left without a support system, parents adopt the desperation occasioned by the circumstance to feed the kids and run the family. And this desperate struggle to survive makes involvement in corruption very easy and normal and makes them focus every energy on money. While the parents go about daily with a “money mentality,” the kids learn the lesson that everything is money. If you don’t have money, you are nobody, and no respect, no regard! Just get the money even if it involves destroying other human lives, as long as you are not caught, you command the respect of your parents and the chief of your town.  

Academics that could have served as a counterforce to parental inadvertent miseducation in the families in this regard, is dead in Nigeria. The family “money mentality” culture could’ve been re-evaluated by a schooled child to see the danger such an idea portends for him as a human being. Or better still, be taught good morals and values by the educators that would have a lasting impact on his life. But since we don’t have a government, we don’t have schools. This is why what pretends as a government has no interest in our public schools and the future of the young ones is bleak. The teachers and educators who are still coping with the schools see their jobs as means of extortion. The students invariably get the message that everything is money. Today we have a generation that doesn’t believe in the value of education but sees money as an idol everyone worships and that deserves consecrating oneself. When you see that these young ones prefer to go after money against the pursuit of education and knowledge, you will be less optimistic about Nigeria.

CHURCH

Church in Nigeria, and Africa, in general, is a business venture taken up by criminals, parading as pastors, prophets, prophetesses, and ministers. It has become an industry for netting money from the gullible and unsuspecting folks. It is a den of robbers who are stealing in the name of Jesus and fleecing on the indolent spirits. Many that pretend as churches in Africa and Nigeria, in particular, are in reality occultic shrines that rose from the ashes of human sacrifices. Those who operate these diabolical warehouses as pastors are spiritual highway robbers who are Lucifer’s henchmen on a mission to drag millions to damnation at this end time. 

No country on earth has as many churches as the number of churches in Lagos state of Nigeria alone. What this means is that given what serves as churches today, Nigerians are living down below. We appear to have many degenerate spirits amongst our people functioning as pastors and so many deceived followers running after them towards destruction. The church that is supposed to stand as a prophetic voice that redirects our focus to the eternal values of the heavens through love is set up as snares to swindle the people after filling their confused heads with empty doctrines. You are free to disagree, but facts are stubborn.

In a country that is now described as the poverty capital of the world, these so-called pastors own private jets. In a country where suffering and hunger accompany men like shadows, supposed men of God are least empathic to the plight of the church members? When the gospel and evangelization are about affluent lifestyle and luxury, amidst strangulating poverty, it is not difficult to know whose messengers they are.

It is clear that the crazy proliferation of churches in Nigeria has introduced a different reality to the people that it not only helped to exacerbate the condition of life, but it also took away the people’s capacity for clear thinking. Nigerians are made to believe that their salvation from hardship and existential trouble will come from heaven. This is why they will rather gather in a church and be praying on working days and hours than do the needful that will give them results. Their neocolonial oppressor in form of pastors made sure that there is a program in the church for the church member every day of the week, just to make sure that the people are milked dry from offerings and tithes. When Nigerians are in prayer houses, Chinese, Indians, Singaporeans, and many countries in the developing world are on their jobs, working to change their conditions. This behavior is no other thing than the effect of the modern church conditioning to believe in illusion for the benefit of the illusionist (pastors). When the majority of the people behave in this manner, it is clear we are finished.

NOLLYWOOD

The advent of Nollywood in the Nigerian theater space contributed immensely to the shaping of the collective consciousness of Nigerians adversely today. Movies or motion pictures are part of art meant to educate and mold the minds of the people to positive life through the representation and re-enactment of human experiences. The underlined word here is “positive,” and when it is replaced with “negative” as Nollywood has done so far, we end up destroying ourselves. It will be disingenuous not to acknowledge a few positive movies from Nollywood. But when an industry that ought to be guided by censorship is infested with corruption to the extent that it threw caution to the wind and let garbage serve as movies, it becomes quicksand that will consume a generation.

Nollywood and its corruption helped to destroy Nigeria today. We are in this messy state is also because of the rubbish Nollywood sold to the people, especially the young generation.  

To be continued…