THE MESSAGE
The Identity of Satan
By Femi Abbas
“When a matter of trust is kept in the custody of an untrustworthy person, expect the end of time”.
Hadith of Prophet Muhammad (SAW)
Preamble
If anything is called Satan, and that diabolical entity truly lives in the midst of humans, Nigeria must be its abode. As a mysterious
Entity, Satan may not be physically perceivable with any specific identity, but its slough is evidently vivid in the pervading evil machination generally called politics. And, the elements often called politicians in Nigerian society are its undeniable agents.
Politics is like infectious leprosy. Any contact it makes with human fingers will surely render those fingers ineffective with contagious implications. The evil of politics in any given society is like the slough of a snake which has no life of its own but scares the people around with its empty appearance.
Reminiscence
Since independence in 1960, Nigeria has hardly experienced any calamity that did not emanate from politics. Thus, like the Island of Ithaca of yore, in Greek mythology, today’s Nigeria harbours a sphinx that poses unanswerable question to her citizens. And, any individual or group that fails to correctly answer the question it poses may be instantly devoured by that mythological sphinx.
Paradoxical Odyssey
Today, Nigeria has become a paradoxical odyssey on which the only ferrying vessel is politics. And, the driving engine of that vessel is money which seems to be a foremost determinant of individuals’ Hell or Heaven on earth. We are now in an era when the source of money no longer matters as much as money itself. What really matters today is not how decent you are as a person but how heavily loaded your pocket is monetarily. In a nutshell, a pecuniary rich rogue is by far more relevant and more important in today’s Nigerian society than a decent, poor gentleman. As a matter of fact, the popular norm in today’s Nigeria is that the era of decency has gone with the winds of fables.
Today, only the size of a person’s purse determines the status by which such a person is recognized in the society. And, that is the new definition of pedigree.
It is not surprising, therefore, that men and women of letters, as well as high caliber professionals and even intellectuals are now struggling to become servants to mere nonentities who, by hook or by crook, have been able to seize the opportunity of occupying public offices as a means of gaining access to the control of the public treasury.
In contemporary time, the world has changed so much that the same money which used to run errands, as a servant, for man in the past is now the master that sends man on errands with authority. And, without hesitation, man serves money so passionately with relish that nothing called shame is in existence again.
The lost Paradise
In the face of money, today, conscience has become a lost paradise that no one wants to regain. And, with its disappearance, human dignity has also become an old wife’s tale. Whither Nigeria’s tomorrow in all this is a fundamental question awaiting a fundamental answer.
In the wilderness of avarice and aggrandizement to which Satan has lured man through money, Nigerians of today have lost the culture of dignity which was highly cherished by their ancestors and any sense of nostalgia for it seems to have been lost forever. Thus,
in its solo and chorus, the song of this era has become a monstrous substance called ‘STOMACH INFRASTRUCTURE’ which is now the tap root of the tree of crimes.
The Last Bastion
Ordinarily, in the past, whenever a hopeful country found itself in this kind of messy situation she quickly resorted to the last bastion as solution. And, the last bastion, in this case, is religion which is supposed to be the first sociological estate of the realm. But can there be religion without Clerics? Where are the Clerics in today’s Nigeria? The conspicuous absence of genuine Clerics is an indication that Nigeria, as of now, is a country without hope.
Sailors without Compass
Most so-called clerics in both Islam and Christianity in Nigeria today are like sailors on a strenuous voyage who have lost the compass that should guide them through the waves of oceans while their congregational voyagers engage in tendentious prayers for safety on a turbulent sea waves.
To those fraudulent clerics, religion is no longer the path to salvation but a means of access to material wealth even as they have relegated morality to the background.
Here is a country in which clerics do not only preach material prosperity but also live in stupendous affluence in the midst of their wretched congregations who seem to be perpetually gullible. Here is a country in which certain lousy clerics are either known for trafficking in drugs or for gun just in search of satanic wealth. One can still recall the episode of a non-Muslim foremost Nigerian self-acclaimed cleric who took a contract mission to South Africa, some years ago, which ended up in a fiasco. That mission was for shopping for arms and ammunition to be supplied to the then Federal Government as a patronage. Besides, how can one forget the case of an alleged N7 billion bribe paid to certain non-Muslim clerics by the same Federal Government, which caused a wild brouhaha in Nigerian media.
Here is a country where neither conscience nor morality has a role to play in religion as the so-called clerics have banished both and thus become, not just accomplices of political rogues, but also the dogs of those rogues barking towards all directions in defense of STOMACK INFRASTRUCTURE. In this kind of situation, where will Nigeria be in history tomorrow?
