Who Owns Nigeria?

This biblical assertion cannot be subjected to any controversy neither it be repudiated for any kind of reason taking cognizance the fact that Almighty God, the Creator of every living being, every where, deserves all adoration for everything created both organic and inorganic. Figuring the advent of man in creation and the idea that the scriptures lay claim that the Almighty, Most Gracious, Most Benevolent and Merciful God had endowed man the myriads use and usage of all therein on mother earth, the issue of possession and ownership of objects and subjects have become controversial.

Possession and ownership already possess the possessors to the extent of being badly possessed in most instances.

Ownership of anything at all, connotes the right of possession, the legal right of possessing something. It goes further as a fact or state of owning something which invariably entitles one as having the condition of being an owner of something.

The array of what and who owns what at one point in time or the other presents a continuum from individual’s life, home, social, business, corporate, public utilities, community, national and global ownership. We have concluded in all our relationships with God of our understanding that the individual’s life belongs solely to God the bestowal of all things.

Ownership of wealth has made a number of people and their nations wealthy to certain degrees, the lack or the paucity of wealth including unequal distribution world over, have made bulk of humanity live in tattered penury thus breeding discordant vibes and tunes all over space and time.

When certain individuals become very powerful over and above several others and acquire wealth to very high degree, they continue to feather individual nests against expanding the frontier of collective advantages and general welfare.

Communal and community peace entails where and when common ownership of resources obtains for all to share to certain degree of commonality and egalitarianism. Otherwise, and as it is typical of man almost every part of the world, wealth produced by human beings only benefits a minority amongst them which invariably many deplore.

When there is unity of interest in property and resources, joint owners enjoy in common, the benefits derived from the property owned, as well as the responsibilities the ownership entails.

Nigeria is a country beyond description and definition in terms of ownership syndrome. Though, a geographic expression in God’s created creation, its name, history, economy, resource control, religious and political alignments have all hovered around the thinking thoughts, actions and dictates of different owners at different times.

In pre-colonial Nigeria, different individuals, families, clans, classes and traditional ruling groups laid claim to the ownership of land and other resources repository in land according to geographic spaces, overland, and overtime. Land ownership, possession, acquisition and dispossession brought wealth and peril according to whatever sides of the divide people belonged to.

With the trans-Saharan trade spanning the geographic north of what is today Nigeria and the trans-Atlantic coursing through the south and vast kilometers hinterland, trades and religions introduced a new dimension to ownership structure, many fringes of such now dovetail into whatever kind of political arrangements that we may refer to as systems of governance in Nigeria.

Almost all kinds of political governance have been practiced in Nigeria vis aristocracy, oligarchy, theocracy, colonialism, militocracy, parliamentarianism and democracy in presidentialism, all leading in craze and craziness for ownership without welfares in wealth acquisition and distribution.

At the economic front, ownership of resources, misapplication, misappropriation and inhuman distribution of common wealth seems a vogue and viable pastime of novae riche in Nigeria. Many are so gluttonous about these selfish and fiendish attitudes to such an extent that their actions in mass poverty are partly responsible for mass madness Nigeria is currently witnessing today.

Nigerians are generally getting destructive and possessive of natural, personal and common wealth to the peril of what we have that we eventually would lose out including the perdition of souls in the afterlife.

Nigeria is a country that has all but the generality of its people have nothing on production, manufacturing, marketing, distribution and even on consumption lines. We though boast of having everything good by divine endowment but own nothing by human arrangements so we consume what those foreign countries and their business appendages think we should and push to us all baggage of rubbish. Rubbish they are, but cosmetised in golden packages that glitter but litter our surroundings as waste products culminating in environmental degradation.

Is it then not a truism the impression about ownership of wealth that states, Wealth is not his that has it but his that enjoys it? We sure can boast we have the black gold, the fabric of Nigeria’s national economy, but then, who provides and produces the technology that makes exploration, production and refinery including the marketing of Nigeria’s crude oil that brings the dollars, pound sterling which we plunder and put asunder?

Economic mismanagement attendant to crude method of ownership has again betrayed our unique cultural excellence in traditional norms, ethical tilts and forward looking attitudes of past epochs to that of unenviable modern crudity of corruption riddled life of especially highly placed Nigerians, to the extent we no longer can own up to culture of honesty, probity, responsibility and godliness. What Nigerians are believed to truly own amongst comity of nations is nothing more than corruption galore.

In protest against mundane ownership, Nigerian religious bigots are carrying ownership syndrome to religio-spiritual level that may end us not having God at the end of the day as we flagrantly destroy works of his creation in this part of creation. We destroy plants, animals and fellow beings because of sectional wealth acquisition thus making potent what Pythagoras had posited and detested several centuries ago. According to him; As long as men continue to destroy ruthlessly the living beings from the lower kingdoms, they will know neither health nor peace. As long as they massacre animals, they will kill each other. In effect, who ever sow murder and suffering cannot reap joy and love.

Houses of worship of all religious persuasions and inclinations, their congregation, priests, pastors and imams have turned to dens of thieves, the meeting places for work and worship. Ownership of God is being battered and bastardised by superiority and inferiority complexes associated with religionists ideation of the Creator. Bob Marley felt like bombing the church because according to him, he knew the preachers were telling lies. Nigerians under the apprenticeship of religious observances are slashing throats and delivering bombs all over Nigeria.

The Holy Prophet (SAW) is reported as saying; Two hungry wolves let loose among sheep are not more destructive to them than a man’s greed for property and self-esteem are to his religion.”. (Tirmidhi). In whatever our conviction is placed, position and status we are, or aspire to attain and not minding how very much we intend gaining the whole wide world through claim of the ownership of Nigeria, just as King Solomon says, Vanity upon vanity, all is vanity.

Better still, Happy are those conscious of their spiritual need.” Matthew 5:3. Greed for materialism In Nigeria daily gives rise to war of expansion in wealth ownership to the discredit of our natural unity. In greed and incessant wealth acquisition we are now daily redrawing the cadastral or property maps of Nigeria to suit our mundane appetites. The North is laying claim and never would like to divest itself from political power, the South says the booming economic resources lie squarely in its geographical belt while the fabric of 1960 sovereignty of Nigeria now keeps getting shattered and scattered by religious feelings manipulated into total mundane selfishness.

In the opinion of Mahatma Gandhi earth provides enough to satisfy every mans need, but not every mans greed.

In greed inside which many Nigerians swim arising from uncontrolled appetite for expanse of owning the entire Nigeria’s resources and wealth, few are strikingly rich while generality are daily getting deadly poorer and poorer. Boasting of having God’s blessings in resource endowment is not enough claim to true ownership but having all the proof to total eradication of poverty which is a canker worm in every and all parts of Nigeria.

Invariably, Nigerians of today because of agonizing poverty all around, bemoan their plights and carry aggrieved minds as the only possession they possess.

We should however note that all the insecurity problems we are facing today are all hovering around inequality in our national ownership which needs be addressed to avoid the ugliness of uncontrolled revolutionary agitations and blood bath it could lead to.

We should please remember that; Conditions in a society have to be very bad before men in large numbers will undertake its overthrow by violence. Men will not risk everything for nothing.

It is impossible to sin in good company so says Cardinal de Rohan but the way our revolution is going which in many quarters is called the Jihad makes obvious the glaring fact that; The jihad is not the Jihadist acts that confront us on our screens and in our newspapers, for this Jihad seeks no self glory, power or grandeur.

Whatever we think we either own or own not as individuals, groups and as a nation, the Holy Quran 7; 29 equally and aptly reminds us all,The earth belongs to Allah: He bestows it as heritage on whomsoever He pleases of His servants and the pleasing end is that of the righteous.