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President Yar´Adua As The Real Religious Extremist

September 4, 2009

Pilgrimage Boom! Extending pilgrimage from Israel and Saudi Arabia for Christians and Muslims respectively to plenty more destinations is nothing short of religious extremism in this time and age.



Why don’t president Yar´adua just build a terracotta army each for Christians and Muslims in Nigeria to guard them in afterlife? The president should do just that and give the rest of Nigerians who’re neither Christian nor Muslim breathing space. I’m agitated by the buzz of news making the rounds that president Yar´adua has officially altered and extended the traditional pilgrimage routes visited by Nigerian Christians and Muslims. Officially, traditionally and formally - it used to be Israel and Saudi Arabia. The new timetable has now included Rome, Greece, The Mediterranean plus much more.

Like the Chinese leader Quin Shilhaung Di did in the year 246 BC, president Yar´adua might wake up one morning and starts building ‘terracotta army’ each, to safeguard every Christian and Muslims in the hereafter with our collective money. For this, and other reasons, someone should please, for modesty sake! Tell Yar´adua in a clear-cut language to pump that break and stop his religious extremist expansion. It was out of mad religious fanaticism and paranoia over life-after-death that Shihaung Di in the year 246 BC built for him 7, 000-strong terracotta army buried on the ground to guard him in afterlife. Yar´adua may call his own brand the 'katsina army.' And what’d be there for Nigerians who’re non-Muslims and Christians? Religious fanaticism comes in differing shades and it could be fatal in most cases, consuming time, money and human lives. The president in my mind is a religious fanatic by this hustle to extend pilgrimage over Israel and Saudi Arabia when we’ve more pressing problems pressing Nigeria down.

Quin Shilhaung Di was also credited to have built some addition to the Great China Wall aside from his paranoia for afterlife and his crazy religiosity. President Yaradua should gear up towards leaving a lasting legacy on development, social changes and not just steering religious rigmarole.

I read to my awe from three different Nigerian newspapers that president Yar´Adua has lustfully extended the traditional pilgrimage routes visited by Nigerian Christians and Muslims.  On the 28.08.09, it was reported both by the Leadership and The Guardian newspapers. ThisDay newspaper carried it on the 01.09.09 thus: "FG Announces Fare for Xtian Pilgrimage."

Unprepared and visionless religious zealots of leaders have always drawn Nigeria back. President Yar´Adua, like the military dictator Ibrahim Babangida before him, is taking Muslim and Christian crusade over the very to of it. A reminiscence to the incident that lead to IBB´s 2i/c Ebitu Ukiwe to resign from the Babangida regime when he toyed with enlisting Nigeria into the Organisation of Islamic Conference. I suppose president Yar´adua and the Nigerian senate are aware that Nigeria is not made up of Christians and Muslims alone. It’s unfair for the Orkija, Ogun, Mammy water, atheist, agnostic and sundry other Nigerians membering differing faiths to be excluded from government-sponsored religious dilly-dally abroad. Each time government spends our collective commonwealth to airlift and soothe religious pilgrimages of Christians and Muslims, Yar´adua short-change those Nigerians who’re neither Christian nor Muslim. Chris Ngigi, the onetime governor of Anambra State and his co-persons of the Orkija believe system would also like government to sponsor their pilgrimages to their Holy Orkija Site as fairness, to square up for sponsoring Christians and Muslims. Mammy water, Ogun, Ani, Ifa and other worshippers would as well want government to take them to their Holy Sites in Nigeria for pilgrimage. Nigeria belongs to all of us not just Christians and Muslims. Yar´adua should henceforward stop using our collective monies to cater for the pilgrimages of Christians and Muslims only. If it must be - then, let it be all-inclusive with the sponsorship of all religious colouration and not just the twosome Middle Eastern religions that has government approval seal, to the neglect of our native believers and Holy Sites in Nigeria.

Now that senate is looking for contributors to send their concerns to senate in view of constitutional amendment, I’ll advocate Senate tells Yar´Adua to face the fountainhead of Nigeria’s palaver and stop meddling with religion that’s supposed to be a personal issue. I strongly believe that Yar´adua knows not what a 21st century Nigeria needs. The time is now for the constitution to be amended with a reflection that government leave religion to individuals to sort out for them.

According to Leadership Newspaper reportage on this matter, chairman of the Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission, Arc. Bishop Nicholas Akoh said: "We are grateful to president Umaru Musa Yar'Adua for all his overwhelming support and encouragement to the commission. He has been very helpful to us, and we assure him that this year's pilgrimage will be better that the past. We are prepared to give back to the nation a rejuvenated Christian fold with a renewed mindset to fight corruption'.

That the said Akoh of a person and his religious journeymen would have to go to Rome and sundry religious places so as to learn how to fight corruption is booming mischief. The former New York mayor Rudolf Guilliani didn’t visit any religious site or country before he appeared on the world map as one of humanity’s best crime fighters. Most movers and shakers in Nigeria are as foolish as they’re corrupt and are not ashamed at all. Akoh and his co-travellers had gone to Rome more than once in the past one-month, did they spend government money on these? Sokoto State government spent 300 million on accommodation alone in this years pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. What a waste of money? Money that should’ve been used on education and other development projects in that State. No wonder Northern Nigerians are so backward educationally, their governments having spent their monies on the God industry and other drainpipes.

The extension of pilgrimage to Greece might offer hedonistic Nigerian politicians who lust over anything under the skirt even if it’s their family members, the chance to visit Bacchus the Grecian God of wine and vitality. One would expect them to come back to Nigeria with the vitality of Viagra to enable sugar daddy as politicians to further their exploits in skirt-chasing pervasive career of female flesh. The Yar´adua government would as well have the opportunity to meet the Spartans in Greece to teach him the tactics of warfare so that, with gunboat from the British Prime Minister Yar´adua can sink the Niger Delta in one sweep.

On a very serious note, Senate need to oust the meddling of government in religious matters in the oncoming constitutional amendment. Yar´adua should concentrate on scoring more visible modern goals that up the standard of living of Nigerians than pursuing a concept like religion that has gone comatose in most First World countries where human progress is written with capital letter-P. More so, Nigerians who’re non-Muslims and Christians have been short-changed enough each time government spend our collective monies on Muslim and Christian pilgrimages alone. Money that belongs to all Nigerians shouldn’t be spent on the narrow religious absurdities of Muslims and Christians. We’re all stakeholders in project Nigeria. Nigeria should stop wasting our collective commonwealth on make-believes and figments of imaginations of yesteryears.


S. Njokede writes from The European Union

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