Similar to its much criticized “Prayer
for Nigeria in Distress”, the Catholic Church in Nigeria has for more than a
decade now been saying another prayer it titled “Prayer Against Bribery and Corruption
in Nigeria” which holds thus:
“Father
in Heaven, you always provide for all your creatures so that all may live as
you have willed. You have blessed our country Nigeria with rich human and
natural resources to be used to your honour and glory and for the well-being of
every Nigerian. We are deeply sorry for the wrong use of these your gifts and
blessing through act of injustice, bribery and corruption, as a result of which
many of our people are hungry, sick ignorant and defenseless. Either, you alone
can heal us and our nation of this sickness. We beg you, touch our lives and
the lives of our leaders and people so that we may all realise the evil of
bribery and corruption and work hard to eliminate it. Raise up for us God
fearing people and leaders who care for us and who will lead us in the part of
peace, prosperity and progress. We ask the through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen”.
While agreeing with the overall
intention of the prayer, I have always faulted the letters and the spirit as
bored by the very particular line in this body of prayer where the drafters
asked God to “Raise up for us God fearing
leaders…” and quickly closed the prayer.
It is one line of prayer that I have
a lot of problem with. It reflects the typical Nigerian attitude to problems in
their society even where they are the thickest core of such problems. It is
never their problems to solve. Never! It must be solved by someone else and in
most cases that someone else is God.
“Raise
up for us God fearing leaders”? Perhaps from Mars or Neptune, I guess. Or
better still from ‘Proxima Centauri’ to be brought over to the Earth by the
ESA’s Rossetta spacecraft, which its lander, Philae, is currently touring a
comet that’s ten years away from Earth and when it finishes from that comet mission
it will then race over to the Centauri in perhaps a thousand years to make
itself available for those “God fearing leaders”
to travel in it to the Earth and then to Nigeria.
Yes, those God fearing leaders must come from somewhere else even though we
are a country awash with a majority population that knows God very personally
and that never speaks a word without having first decorated it with the name of
God and millions of his aliases which we are very hyper-skilled at their
invention. The other day, a friend of mine was telling about THE WORD OF GOD as
if it was the latest discovery to end , in just one seconds, the Ebola outbreak
in the three West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone put
together. Come and see the passion so much built into his expressions!
The point is, while the historical
Catholic Saint Francis of Assisi prayed “Lord make ME the instrument of your
peace. Where there is hatred, let ME sow love; where there is …, let ME …”; the
Nigerians have been busy asking God to “Raise
up for us God fearing leaders…” and that’s it! They don’t envisage a role for
themselves in the whole matter. They don’t want to have any hands in bringing about
the desired situation. It’s God’s business and God’s business only. QED.
I for one have always had a differing
view on a matter like this and accordingly did make my own version of that Nigerian
Catholic prayer, towing more the line of Francis of Assisi and have always
asked the God Almighty to MAKE ME one of those God fearing, good political leaders that this poorly governed society
called Nigeria, and indeed Igboland, truly desperately need at the moment, to
shine blazing lights where there has been pitch darkness of misleadership.
Knowing full well that you and I
have our respective roles to play in the matter at hand, just as the God
Almighty have His, I’m challenging each and every one of us, the God-knowing people of Nigeria, to be ready
to play these roles very well. And it’s already time to get to work! It begins
with you supporting me both in prayers and in concrete practical actions. Not
just prayers alone, please!
Similarly I have challenged the God
Almighty to do His part, if He be truly God…, while I have already began taking
the small steps towards this whole matter of “Raising ME as one of the God fearing political leaders in Nigeria”.
Finally, before I welcome you all
into the new year of 2015, may I first usher all of us into an amazing prayer I
first read as a young pupil from my father’s copy of the March 1980 edition of
the Reader’s Digest; a simple prayer I have adopted as a personal creed ever
since then. It was a very simple but powerful personal plea credited to an
anonymous Chinese student and added by the magazine in a collection of prayers
said to be the favourite prayers of then Bishop of Canterbury, late Robert
Alexander Kennedy Runcie, in celebration of Runcie’s new enthronement that
month as the 102nd Primate of All England. The prayer says:
“O Lord, change the world. Begin, I
pray thee, with me.”
May I then wish you and yours a Happy,
Prosperous New Year and enough involvement with me in making it The Year of Revolution Made Simple.
Thank you and God bless.
(African Democratic Congress Aspirant for Membership of the Abia State House of Assembly 2015)
Email: abazondu@gmail.com
