O NIGERIA!! BELOVED FATHERLAND!! ARISE AND FIGHT BACK!!

Our beloved nation is in the throes of the kind of wastage of lives, the kind we have probably not seen before except during the civil war. People are being kidnapped, raped, wounded, maimed and frankly killed in different parts of the nation daily; and for different unholy and unGodly reasons, or for no reason at all!! Many killers end up blaming the devil! And no, the wasting of lives in our land is not limited to the activities of criminals, insurgents and bandits, Beloved. There is more, much more, happening all over the nation!! Here is a short list of the activities of the wasters and destroyers in the land; and I have not listed them in any order in particular ….

1. Young girls, even boys, and babies and toddlers, are being raped almost on a daily basis! Many are gang-raped and they get torn apart and their little bodies damaged by the force of a wicked pervert trying to force his grown manhood into their tiny privates! Girls can no longer dwell in safety or run errands freely, some paedophile will grab them, take them into an uncompleted building or his room and violate them! Some of these little girls are reported to have been serially gang-raped by different men on different occasions in their own neighbourhood! The worst part is that little girls are no longer safe even in their own beds because their father or uncle or brother will creep into their rooms in the middle of the night and defile them!! The spiritual and psychological results of this violation of innocent children are yet to be seen; and the fallout will be unmentionable and tragic if these children do not get spiritual and psychologic support and healing!
2. In homes, violence has increased! Husbands killing wives, wives killing husbands, boyfriends killing girlfriends and vice versa at the slightest disagreement! And the reason is not always because of financial strain because it was reported that a female lawyer stabbed her husband to death, cut off his male organs, placed them in his hand and then called his people to come and get him! All because, according to her, he was having extra-marital affairs! Parents and guardians are physically abusing their children and wards, leaving horrendous marks of abuse on their little bodies! Sometimes they are maimed and even beaten to death! Ah! Lord have mercy!!
3. Nobody is safe in their homes and in the streets and on our highways any more, except those whom God keeps! God has now been reduced to become our sole police and military because the capacities our security forces are stretched thin! Worshippers, especially children, are not even safe in our places of worship any more as one or two may disappear during the Service! The greatest danger in the nation used to be armed robbers but now it is kidnappers and ritual killers looking for human blood and human parts to use in money making rituals or for the power-hungry rich and powerful to get more power, usually political!!
4. Then there is banditry in the North which has become a wonder and amazement because they have intimidated and overwhelmed the Governors to the point of them negotiating with these unrepentant deadly criminals! They negotiate today in one state, claim repentance, drop their arms only to move to another state, re-group, re-arm themselves and start their work as virulent merciless destroyers and wasters!! There is also the distressing issue of the incessant decades old killings in Plateau State and Southern part of Kaduna State – of mostly Christians – and the displacement from their ancestral lands by wild merciless marauders.
5. This is probably the best place to bring in the decade-old insurgency in the North East and its distressing fallouts! Imagine the horror that, apart from the original pest, the deadly Boko Haram and the breakaway Ansaru, a fraction of that dark destroying and displaced ISIS has found refuge in our land after it was flushed out of the Middle East! They even dared us by giving themselves a name – ISWAP, meaning a branch of ISIS in West Africa!! The insurgency has left thousands raped, maimed and killed, and millions displaced from their homes by these wild untamed gang of insurgents. Hundreds of our innocent young have been kidnapped and the innocent females turned into premature stolen brides or sex slaves while the innocent males are turned into insurgents themselves; forced to kill along with the same insurgents who likely eliminated their own families!! Heart-breaking!! Millions of Northern eastern Nigerians are displaced from their homes and have been living in IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camps for years. It is unimaginable the sufferings that go on in those refugee camps, even perpetrated by the very hands of those whom the government gave the task of caring for these displaced suffering innocent souls! Tragically, this means that the IDP camps are mostly no longer the places of refuge which the Federal Government intended them to be.
6. Then there is the distressing and terrible unimaginable corruption still being perpetrated by those whom the government placed in charge of the affairs of the different sectors of the nation, even the security forces, from the police to the army and the navy! Haba! Even under the watch of the New Sheriff in Town, President Muhammadu Buhari, the globally acclaimed anti-corruption Crusader? How did these deluded thieving officials imagine they could possibly get away with all that sleaze when all manner of devices and checks and balances have been put in place to detect looting early? The result is that our senses are assaulted week in week out by the scandalous exposure of terrible corruption still on-going in government agencies and the private sector. They are being exposed early all thanks to the whistle-blowing policy of the Federal Government and their “no sacred cow” stance.
7. Lastly, our religious bodies are not left out of the evil being perpetrated in the land! We are horrified daily to read what so-called Pastors are doing in the darkness of their enclaves. The nation reeled in horror last year at the heart-wrenching account of the ritualistic sexual abuse Busola Dakolo suffered in the hands of her trusted Pastor, Biodun Fatoyinbo of COZA, as an innocent teenage virgin! Then followed on YouTube the horrific accounts of the dark happenings at T.B Joshua’s Synagogue Church of all Nations (SCOAN)! Not forgetting the N10,000 miracle dip in a pastor’s swimming pool in Abuja! All these are just unimaginable happenings and gross abominations in the tender Eyes of the Holy God! And can we ever forget the heart-breaking pictures of our precious emaciated young ones, chained and locked up in some Imams’ so-called correctional homes all over the nation? The sight reminded one of German concentration camp survivors found by the Allied forces after the Second World War! Unmentionable wickedness and cruelty!!

The following Scriptures best describe our land right now –

Isa.1:21-24

How the faithful city has become a harlot! It was full of justice; Righteousness lodged in it, But now murderers. Your silver has become dross, Your wine mixed with water. Your princes are rebellious, And companions of thieves; Everyone loves bribes, And follows after rewards. They do not defend the fatherless, Nor does the cause of the widow come before them. Therefore the Lord says, The Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, “Ah, I will rid Myself of My adversaries, And take vengeance on My enemies.’

Ezekiel 7:23-27

Make a chain, For the land is filled with crimes of blood, And the city is full of violence. Therefore I will bring the worst of the Gentiles, And they will possess their houses; I will cause the pomp of the strong to cease, And their holy places shall be defiled. Destruction comes; They will seek peace, but there shall be none. Disaster will come upon disaster, And rumor will be upon rumor. Then they will seek a vision from a prophet; But the law will perish from the priest, And counsel from the elders. ‘The king will mourn, The prince will be clothed with desolation, And the hands of the common people will tremble. I will do to them according to their way, And according to what they deserve I will judge them; Then they shall know that I am the Lord !

 The tragedy of it all is that many who should know better blame it all on this administration that only took over the helms of affairs five years ago as though it all started after they took over! They blame it all on poverty. They blame it all on President Muhammadu Buhari, claiming that he is responsible for the poverty in the land even though his administration has invested in numerous poverty intervention schemes. How can he be blamed for poverty in the land? What about the greed and avarice of the average Nigerian who sees success as the number of material things he/she accumulates? What about those who see manliness and power as the number of wives they ‘marry’ and the array of concubines they maintain outside their matrimonial homes, pushing them to steal to maintain their lack of Godly temperance?

Imagine the decadence of a newly-elected Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who, on getting his humongous undeserved allowances at the Senate, made a bee-line for a sex-toy shop to squander our money; and did not even shy to beat up a young woman in the shop! What about those who must have political power by all means and even take ritual baths in human blood to achieve it? Is this government responsible for all that? How in the world did this government, headed by two decent monogamous statesmen with simple tastes, instigate the ravaging scourge of paedophilic rape taking place even in our homes? Haba! The worst part is that Christian leaders who should know better – that we are not dealing with flesh and blood when we see such ravaging evil in the land – do not shy to stand on their pulpits, jettison the Gospel and prayer and join in the blame-game! Oh! How the heart of God must be aching!

From the above Scriptures, God never arbitrarily lays the blame for the wickedness of the people on their leaders except where the leader is personally complicit! And, the reality is this – our government will not face the judgement seat of God with us; we will be there all alone, individually answering for the things we ourselves did all by ourselves. God is not unrighteous.

Now, let me share with you something someone posted on WhatsApp after this administration took over and began to plug holes through which our treasury was being looted before their advent; and these measures immediately resulted in loose free funds promptly becoming scarce in the society –

Multiplier effect of corruption

1. A young man works for one of the state ministries. His salary is 120K. He makes 15,000 everyday on this desk (N75k a week) engaging in corrupt practices. As a result, he spends the daily cash as he cares. Living large and far above his legitimate income.

 2. He visits the local joint every evening and buys drinks for friends, and area boys. They hail him. He is married, but has two girlfriends. His “income” is enough to take care of them. The Asun seller at his favorite joint is happy,  the joint owner is happy.

 3. Everyone was benefiting from his “income”. Friends, family, area boys, joint owner, Asun seller, girlfriends, wife and his church.  Life was good.

 4. Then suddenly the ministry implemented the Treasury Single Account (TSA) at the beginning of PMB administration. His extra “income” disappeared and he had to adjust to the reality of event and live within his real income. That wasn’t easy.

 5. Initially he reduced his daily visit to the joint to 3 days a week and stopped buying drinks for everyone. He reduced he plates of Asun. The Asun seller started to find it hard to sell a full goat each day and resorted to buy half.

 6. The young man’s girlfriends started to feel the heat too. No more iPhone 10. The joint owner noticed a drop in sales. The young man finally stopped visiting the joint after a month. The area boys started feeling his absence. The effect cascaded down. 

 7. The young man started spending more time at home with his wife and kids. The family had to readjust to the reality of the new normal. His hair stylist noticed the young man suddenly stopped tipping.  He will even wait for his N200 change after haircut.

 8. Things are different. Times are hard, they all cry. The young man is blaming Buhari, his wife is blaming Buhari, the area boys are blaming Buhari, the girlfriends are saying Buhari must go, the joint owner is saying Buhari killed the “economy”

 9. The Asun seller is cursing Buhari, the hair stylist is insisting Buhari is too old to rule. This is the story of our nation where corruption fuels the “economy”. Those who are not engaging in it are benefiting from it.

 10 This tread is not about Buhari’s achievement or failure, but rather about the “multiplier” effect of corruption and how we have built a system largely driven by corruption. It’s about policy implication (good or bad). It’s about the choices we have made.

Finally, the young man had to withdraw his kids from what he called expensive primary school his kids attend.  He added:”what are they teaching them there sef ” Obasanjo didn’t go to a private school. I just laughed

My Take:

Most of the so called rich men and women in Nigeria before now were feeding fat on the populace, imaging a level 15 officer in a state ministry sponsoring two of his/her children’s education in Europe but when TSA came to effect, free money dried up but Buhari was blamed for the inability to fund children in Europe! Awon ole jati -jati, ofan a je l’oju onile. (Meaning “Wretched thieves! Eating the house-owner’s food right in front of his face!” This is the Yorubas’ classical rebuke for rats!)

I simply copied and pasted this totally accurate depiction of Nigerian’s present situation, from one of my WhatsApp group chat, with all the errors intact. With few exceptions, this post precisely mirrors the decadent society this administration met on ground in 2015, Beloved!

REPENT, O NIGERIANS! STOP THE BLAME-GAME, TURN FROM YOUR WICKEDNESS, YOUR UNBRIDLED AVARICE, YOUR PRIMITIVE IDOLATRY AND ALL YOUR WICKED WAYS; COOPERATE WITH GOD AND THIS DIVINELY ORDAINED GOVERNMENT TO CLEAN UP THE MESS AND USHER IN THE NEW NIGERIA OF GOD’S DREAM, IN JESUS NAME!

The fallout of our wickedness has brought the anger of God down upon us and our nation, and our sins have allowed our gates to be left wide open for even foreigners to come in and afflict us! We are told that most of the insurgents and bandits are not even Nigerians!! God allowed even the deadly ISIS to join them and punish us and we sink deeper daily into the muck of our own self-made stinking mess!! He even allowed the deadly COVID-19 from the Orient to afflict us. We need to STOP and think and begin to retrace our steps along the path of God’s righteousness before the nation is engulfed in all these various and varying sin-ignited fires raging all over the land! And, our President, the War General who, as a military Commander in the 80s, summarily routed out of Nigeria, a foreign band of insurgents called ‘Maitatsine’, declared recently that he has done his best as the Commander in Chief of our forces in this present Boko Haram et al insurgency war. Now it is our turn as Christians to stop murmuring and lamenting and rise up en masse and cooperate with him to do our divinely mandated part, viz if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 11Chro.7:14

The power and mandate to seek for the solution to national disasters have been given to us, The Church; it was not given to the government!! We are supposed to be the shield and the mediator for our nation! Hear another place where God says the mandate and the weapon were given to us –

Jer.1:9,10

Then the Lord put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me: “Behold, I have put My words in your mouth. See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms, To root out and to pull down, To destroy and to throw down, To build and to plant.”’

THE WAY OUT

Beloved, there is no need for us to re-invent the wheel. The Bible has told us plainly in many places what a nation mired in crisis needs to do –

11Chro.7:14

When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

 Isa.1:16-20

Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow. “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord , “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land; But if you refuse and rebel, You shall be devoured by the sword”; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

 Joel 1:13,14

Gird yourselves and lament, you priests; Wail, you who minister before the altar; Come, lie all night in sackcloth, You who minister to my God; For the grain offering and the drink offering Are withheld from the house of your God. Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; Gather the elders And all the inhabitants of the land Into the house of the Lord your God, And cry out to the Lord.

 Joel 2:12-17

Now, therefore,” says the Lord , “Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the Lord your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm. Who knows if He will turn and relent, And leave a blessing behind Him— A grain offering and a drink offering For the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion, Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; Gather the people, Sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and nursing babes; Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, And the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests, who minister to the Lord, Weep between the porch and the altar; Let them say, “Spare Your people, O Lord , And do not give Your heritage to reproach, That the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ”’

Looking at these two passages in the Book of Joel, something happens when the first call to fasting is obeyed – the Lord Himself raises up a formidable and fierce army and invades the land. This army is described from verses 1 to 11 of chapter 2, concluding thus –

They run to and fro in the city, They run on the wall; They climb into the houses, They enter at the windows like a thief. The earth quakes before them, The heavens tremble; The sun and moon grow dark, And the stars diminish their brightness. The Lord gives voice before His army, For His camp is very great; For strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; Who can endure it?

 “What? The LORD Himself, Yahweh The Man of War, actually invades a nation? Are you sure?” Oh yes, Beloved, He has done it before when He needed to deliver His People from Egyptian bondage and Pharaoh refused to let them go –

Ex.3:7-9

And the Lord said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites… Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. ‘

And on the last night before the flight from Egypt…

Ex.12:12,51

For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord…. And it came to pass, on that very same day, that the Lord brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt according to their armies.

This strategy has been tried and tested since God said these words many millennia ago. Therefore, Israelites never waste any time to turn from their sins, cry to God in their helplessness, drop into a fast in repentance, and God has never failed to hear their prayers and heal their land as He promised. A notable example which is similar to our situation presently is recorded in the Book of Judges chapters 20 and 21. The tribe of Benjamin, the smallest of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, rose up to fight the other tribes minus the tribe of Levi who did not bear arms but are dedicated to the service of Temple worship. Though a fraction of the other tribes in number, the warrior Benjamites trashed the other ten tribes TWICE and slaughtered not a few! And –

Then all the children of Israel, that is, all the people, went up and came to the house of God and wept. They sat there before the Lord and fasted that day until evening; and they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord.                                                                                                                                    Judg.20:26

God heard their prayers and gave them a resounding victory the next day.

As well, the great nation of America has always used this strategy, notably during the wars their nation fought in times past. Notable examples are –

1. In 1775, the Congress declared a day of fasting and prayer for the whole nation for the reason that a new nation was being formed. This led to the Declaration of Independence on July 4^th, 1776, celebrated till date by Americans as their Independence Day.
2. On May 9^th, 1798, during the war with France, President John Adams called his people to a day of fasting and prayer, “that our country may be protected from all the dangers which threaten it”.
3. President Abraham Lincoln was faced with a civil war which lasted from 1861 to 1865, fought to abolish slavery in the USA and to preserve the unity of the nation. On the 30^th of March, 1863, he made a famous declaration, calling his people to a day of “national humiliation, fasting and prayer”, fixed for Thursday 30^th of April 1863. In the July following the fast, the bloodiest battle of the war was fought and God gave Lincoln’s army the victory. This was considered as the war’s turning point, leading to freedom for the slaves who were till then being used as labourers in Southern plantations; it led to the abolition of the slave trade and the preservation of the unity of the States.
4. Apart from the fasts called by the leadership of the United States, there are other regular fasts called by Christian leaders, notable among them is the Evangelist Billy Graham, as well as a group which calls all American Christians to fast every Wednesday. This group has a web-site and they publish prayer-points for each Wednesday fast.

Did I hear you say “Nigeria is a secular state”? Really? A nation with Churches and Mosques on every street and shrines in every grove? Nah! We may not have a state religion but we are a very spiritual people who have varying modes of worship and various God/gods that they worship. And no matter because the enemies we face do not mostly ask about your God/god before they kill and maim and rape and kidnap; and the money that government officials steal has no religion!  We all need to cry to God with one voice, to the God our Creator Who loves us and does not want us to suffer and perish!

Is this even Biblical, for Nigerians all religions to cry to God together? Oh yes, Beloved! During the terrible storm that almost killed all on board of the ship which Jonah was travelling in, the Captain called for prayers from all those on the ship, they all prayed and God heard them!

Jonah 1:4-6

But the Lord sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up. Then the mariners were afraid; and every man cried out to his god, and threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten the load. But Jonah had gone down into the lowest parts of the ship, had lain down, and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him, and said to him, “What do you mean, sleeper? Arise, call on your God; perhaps your God will consider us, so that we may not perish.”

For further reading –

1. Shaping History through Prayer and Fasting by Derek Prince
2. Rees Howells: Intercessor by Norman Grubb
3. Hand on the Helm by Katherine Pollard Carter
4. Prophetic Fasting by Dr Bunmi Binitie
5. Arise, O Africa! Resist and reject the invasion of the wasters and destroyers!! An article on this blog

16 October 2020