Politics, Palace, And Pulpit In Nigeria; A Tale of an Illusion -By Abolaji Adeniran

Undoubtedly, pulpit, palace and politics in Nigeria form a major component of our national life. For a developing country like Nigeria, our interaction and social behaviors often revolves around our faith or believe system. Thus, the pulpit and the palace represent a major instrument in the possession of political power in Nigeria, ignore one of them and lost out. The pulpit which represents the place of worship is highly exalted in Nigeria. Little wonder, churches and mosques outnumbered manufacturing companies in the country.

The choice of an average Nigeria’s voters in an election is often based on the faith the candidate in such an election professes. Thus, candidates run to these men of God to seek for spiritual endorsement while some even claimed that God instructed them to contest. On the other hand, the traditional institution also plays a fundamental role in the victory of a candidate. Our traditional rulers being the representative of gods on earth seek for relevance by giving traditional title to politicians, ask former president Goodluck Jonathan, and he will explain to you how they aided his victory and subsequent defeat.

The traditional rulers who are expected to preserves patrimony in our society, have become more influential in our contemporary society, reason why highly educated and distinguish individuals, successful in their chosen career do all they can to assume this honorific title of a monarch.

The above illustration clearly explains the dilemma of a developing nation in quagmire in the face of plethora of resources, and how good governance has been relegated to the back stage and replaced by ethnic, religious and tribal argument. It’s difficult to fathom how a country richly blessed like Nigeria still wallows itself in the toga of ruination. The citizens in their attempt to escape from this ‘hell’ drove in their hundreds in a bizarre manner to north Africa countries to seek for ‘save haven’ but unfortunately, losing their life in the process while others are often auction for slave, justifying man inhumanity to man. However, reasons for these couldn’t be far fetch; the business of nation building has being left in the hands of sinecurists. The major problem with this entity called Nigeria is that, we get the fundament things wrong while giving much emphasize to inordinate things. Fundamental things like; investing massively in education and infrastructures, science and technology which are the bedrock towards a sustainable development.

Electoral campaign around the world often evolve around these contemporary issues but unfortunately here in Nigeria, issues centers around religious and tribal sentiment which gives unnecessary attention to the religious leaders as well as the traditional rulers.

Education is in comatose, rate of unemployment is alarming, public health centers are disaster, infant mortality and polio are still medical problems we talked about in Nigeria of the 21st century. But guess what, issues such as tithing, religious and ethnic bigotry and other jejune things matters to us most. It is often said that a nation get the leaders it deserves. Thus, the quality of our leader is a reflection of who we are as a people; a set of people who waste productive time in religious odyssey, whose choices in an election is based on primordial sentiment irrespective of the quality of a candidate. Our continuous and unnecessary glorification of these primordial sentiments deservedly, bequeaths unto us a society of today in which bribery and corruption and politics of clientenism and patrimonialism are order of the day.

Sadly enough, despite our assumed religiosity, we have continued to march into an unredeemable tailspin.

Undoubtedly, there is a place for religion and tradition in every society just like the traditionalist have argued in the approaches to the study of politics and evidently seen in United Kingdom but when the two takes preeminence over the institution of the state, it becomes a catastrophe or perhaps, an unmitigated disaster. Our religious and traditional institution should be majorly concerned about promotion of virtues, moral and Godly teaching that are capable of rescuing us from our infamy rather than their invidious and injudicious endorsement of politician. When we do this, we create a check and balance system in government because of the fact that criticism will be largely devoid of ethnic, political and religious bias.

Abolaji Adeniran is a political scientist writes from Ilorin, kwara state.