By: Francis Olamide
The prayer of a Nigerian carries a distinct aroma into the heavens. The entire heavens recognise the Nigerian prayer from afar. God, the almighty, must be very much acquainted with the prayer of Nigerians, if not tired. Even the prayer-carrying angels must be weary of presenting the petitions of Nigerians to God. And you know Nigerians, they possess great prowess in shooting prayer vocabularies.
Since I was born and now I’m growing up, I’ve never seen a nation whose citizenry will put one leg on top of another to vote an incompetent leader on election day and then go ahead to organise revival, white fasting garnished with prayer crusades and different colours of vigil to invoke the spirit of competence upon the incompetent leader. Is it by force? A man cannot give what he doesn’t have, se eti yin dii nii? You left a professor to vote someone with controversial WAEC results, I see you’re a well-meaning citizen of your fatherland.
E je kama gbadura fun won (let’s keep praying for them) is always their sharp response when you highlight the decadence in their ‘all is well’ nation to them. Daddy, did they use your brain to wrap akara when you went to the polling unit to vote this incompetence? Tell me. Who borrowed your sense on election day? Now you’re using your prayer vocabularies to disturb the heavens. Because God doesn’t sleep or slumber, does that mean you shouldn’t let him properly ruminate on the dimension of thunder that will fire looters of public funds in Nigeria?
Science and common sense will put an end to some things but, no, Nigerians must pray about it.
One of them, a member of Aladura People’s Congregation (APC) once yelled at me, “Ola, we must pray o! This bloodshed in the land is demonic. It’s from the powers of the inner circle. My daddy’s uncle’s sister’s mummy’s aunty has battled it before. Nigeria is under attack from the pit of hell; pray!” Aunty, it’s not from the pit of hell, it’s from the pit of Aso rock.
Well, I think “fixing portholes” has been added to the job description of the angels; the cherubs should be able to provide proper health care; and there’s no way the seraphs cannot provide ordinary pipe-borne water nah. Isn’t it? Since all power belongs to God, prayers should be able to generate enough Kilowatt of electrical energy needed to satisfy the power needs of Nigerians while we pay less attention to power generation policy. Who policy help when there’s prayer?
Tell them about the international companies that are moving out of the country, they’ll still twist you with, “They’re the devils we’re talking about. God is chasing them out” Ah, which devil? Devil is leaving your country with thousands of his former employees jobless? That devil must be hornless with an office in the statehouse.
I don’t know how we don’t know that something is wrong somewhere with our country when our prayer points begin to tilt toward the provision of basic amenities. When prayer for protection from terrorist attacks, provision of good road, provision of healthcare facilities and pipe-borne water supply begins to creep into your prayers, it’s either something is doing your country or your country is doing something. Can’t you see the way people in the UK, US, and Canada are screaming those prayers in religious places? Ehn, tell me. If we remove those things from your prayers, I doubt if you’ll have a devil to chase again. Well, you won’t even know, the land is flowing with milk and honey nah.
See how all your prayers since 1960 have produced plenty crude oil refinery for the nation, many monumental projects apart from the ones the oyinbos left us with, ASUU has stopped striking like thunder, the number of our out-of-school children has drastically reduced, and we even produce more foodstuff than we can take. See how we export our best hands abroad because of surplus development here, and portable water continues to reach all Nigerians. Sisi mii, aku adura o!
