Is It the Will of God? – By Dr. Kunle Ojeleye

Posted by admin Articles, Columnists, Kunle Ojeleye, NNP Columnists Thursday, April 5th, 2012

By Dr. Kunle Ojeleye | Calgary, Canada | April 5, 2012 – I recently received with great sadness the news of the passing on of a very dear uncle of mine, Dr Bayo Adisa-Balogun at a relatively young age. How can a medical doctor who in the morning had attended to his clients, collapse in the afternoon whilst relaxing in his own house, and die before he can be gotten to the hospital?

As I was pondering on the tragedy of a nation we call Nigeria, where you cannot dial 999/121, where government hospitals/medical centres are not only far away from the people they are meant to serve but have become venues for people to die rather than get healed, I read the piece of news where JayJay Okocha told Sports Vanguard in Lagos that Muamba [the Bolton player that collapsed on the football pitch some days ago] is lucky, he is not playing in the Nigerian league. “Here, he would have been a dead man. He would have become history.”

Okocha’s comment indeed brought home to me how much Nigerians have been conditioned to accept poverty as a way of life by politicians and religious leaders to the extent that we accept nilly-willy everything going on within our social landscape as “the will of God” or “our destiny” (“ayanmo wa ni, kadara wa ni”).

Is it the will of God that the basic necessities of life which citizens of other nations take for granted ( and which Nigerians actually took for granted before the middle of the 1970s) should become non-existent when oil wealth arrived?

Is it the will of God that for =N=50, you should go and vote a man with no antecedent into political office so that he can rob the nation blind and deny you of the basic infrastructure needed for you to have a life worth living?

Is it the will of God that a man should be awarded a contract, not perform it but use the money to buy cars, marry more wives and yet walk around freely without any repercussion?

Is it the will of God that millions should be dying of hunger in the midst of plenty that is flaunted around by those who have gotten wealthy through ill-gotten means?

Is it the will of God that whilst millions have nothing to eat, a few are wining and dining with millions of Naira at a sitting without blinking an eyelid?

Is it the will of God that our society should become so shameless to the extent that an Oba (a Yoruba Oba for that matter) would rape a lady and yet have the gut to be asking the court to demand the victim show her private part to confirm she was not hurt in his immoral act?

We don’t care about performance, morales, virtues, decency, honesty, forthrightness, etc any longer. We are the happiest bunch of folks on planet earth – happy to be cheated by all and sundry; happy to be denied what fundamentally belongs to us; happy to be abused; happy to be rigged out of existence.

As Asiwaju Bola Tinubu recently stated in his interview with The Sun, “Nobody will fight for your freedom for you…You have to go and struggle for it”. Are Nigerians ready?

As days go by, it does seems to me that until things fall apart, when the centre cannot hold, and mere anarchy is loosed upon the nation, Nigeria will not change for the better.

“Turning and turning in the widening glee, the falcon cannot bear the falconer. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” (Chinua Achebe).

N.B.

Firstly, this article was written before I saw the post by Tochukwu Ezukanma titled “Men of God and the Will of God in Nigeria”. I am convinced that there is a reason why, in spite of not knowing each other, we both titled our write ups on “the will of God”.

Secondly, I wish to make it distinctly clear that this article of mine as above, has nothing to do and does not make any inference (directly or indirectly) with the 60th birthday of the Asiwaju of Yorubaland, Bola Tinubu.

When I have legitimately made money with friends and associates, I have every right underneath the sun to come together and pool resources with family/friends/associates of like minds to throw a decent bash when one of us turns 60, 70 etc.

As I stated in my comment on a friend’s post on a social media network, “Yes, our politicians have nothing to gloat about. But when a man, in spite of the challenges of life and attempts to truncate his existence has attained the age of 60 by divine grace, he has reasons to celebrate with his family, friends and associates as he may so wish. As such, I do not have any issue with a man who has legitimately earned an income, spending it the way he likes. That is fundamentally his right because he has fairly laboured for and earned the income”.wp_posts