The Pungent Hypocrisy Of Nigerians -By Jimi Kusanu

During Olusegun Obasanjo’s democratic regime, a certain state governor pushed for the codification of the Sharia law in his state. There were varying commentaries on this, prevalent among which was the recommendation of the Sharia law as a foolproof legal system that upholds law and morality in a people.

The word Sharia itself, I have come to find out simply means ‘the clear, well-trodden path to water’ which is quite different from the general meaning it is being ascribed, as that list of rigid corporal punishments to be meted out to any erring follower of Islam. After much back and forth, pontifications and bureaucratic clichés, the said governor had his intent accomplished, from which many other governors took cues and the Sharia law became a recognised regional law only in the Northeastern and Northwestern ends of the country. One would conclude that the contriving governor and his acolytes are authors and custodians of secular and religious morality judging by their relentless push for what many would agree is a rather extremely stringent legal system.

In Afghanistan and essentially all parts Western Asia ( the Middle East) where the Sharia law is mainstream, there are instances of limbs being amputated, intense public flagellation, gouged eyes and at intervals, execution for a crime of theft; depending on the discretion of the qadis (judge). The adoption of the Sharia mechanically meant the practice of its dictates. So, in the Northern parts of the country where these laws have been enshrined, it is not uncommon to find young men especially, with half limbs as a result of punitive actions meted out to them by their governors and sanctimonious clerics. However, and rather more ludicrous is the fact that the governor who fought assiduously for the codification and implementation of these laws , when found to have stolen public funds, opted for the secular legal system for his trial. I find that utterly contradictory.

Gandhi said it best, ‘To believe in something, and not live it, is dishonest.’ If you fight for something, it is assumed by all sensible standards that you believe in the entirety of that thing. It is common knowledge, at least to those who have torn off the veil of denial, that religion in Nigeria has become a gigantic business enterprise, Christianity especially. An average data pulled from the internet suggests there are about 80 million Christians in Nigeria. With an aggregate of 500 members per church, that puts the number of individual worship centres at a hundred and sixty thousand. That is lot of churches for a country with a minuscule number of public libraries, also dubbed the poverty capital of the world; just saying. More unsettling is the comportment and overtones of religious leaders in the country.

A fun fact of the 15 richest pastors in the world, Nigeria boasts of three, one of whom recently passed. These men of God are so rich that if you met them in a social gathering, and without a prior knowledge of their occupations, they would be indistinguishable from an archetypal Nigerian politician, professional athlete or a gratified drug runner. They brazenly and obdurately exhibit their wealth in cars, private jets, clothes and accessories. Some of them align with political charlatans during election years and subtly endorse such ignoble rascals by recognising and praying for them during services. As is usually the case, when the said politicians assume office and go about their business of gourmandising commonwealth, thereby shoving the common citizen into more misery, the citizen himself goes back to church, fasts and prays with all fervor he can muster, often times consults with the pastor who then sells him the panacea of hope. He tells him to serve God more steadfastly, and that his misery is as a result of his sinful life. He is demanded to relinquish all vices and hope for divine intervention. The bestial cycle never ends. The above describes the more popular and richer pastors. There are those who are less popular, have little or no reputation to protect. These are the guys in the Orthodox churches, Pentecostal, protestants and evangelicals alike; also the white-garment folks.

Let me be quick to assert that I am obviously not insinuating all or any of these churches are exclusive to one genre of impropriety, a large chunk of them are, however. Reports of sexual and physical abuse in the church are exactly not news in the mainstream Nigerian media. Rape, human sacrifice have also been in the mix. Manipulation, extortion, failed prophesies, gas-lighting have all been perpetuated under the guise of some quasi-authority these pastors position themselves, reinforced by the mere fact that they present themselves as a messenger of a higher being. When news of such reprehensibly egregious acts come to the fore, I am unable to puzzle out the bombardment of defense and rationalisation promulgated by members of such churches and even fundamentalist non-members.

A pastor recently was outed to have defiled a minor and when he was apprehended by the police, the girl’s mother told the law enforcement she would like to withdraw the charge, even though she was not the complainant, to begin with. Religionists and contemptible apologists on social media also pontificated why such matters should be handled within the confines.

of the church and also that the mother had every right to withdraw the charge. It took a few bottles of beer for me to tranquilise after reading and rebuffing such commentaries. It figuratively kept me up at night though, wondering if my people were under some kind of spell, or mass hypnosis.

In the news recently was the barbaric, violent flagellation of a young girl by four adult males in a Quranic school (Madrasa) for the crime of having attended a birthday party with friends in a bar, reportedly also caught sipping alcohol. She was however not the only victim of the sadistic supposed punishment, two other young boys were also involved. Without doubt, it enkindled different opinions in the traditional and social media. Many criticised why such extremity is deemed a suitable punishment for such an ‘offense,’ if there should be one; also of course, there were supportive barbarian think-pieces emanating from miasmic skulls.

I am less concerned with opinions for or against the act, however, the silence of advocates of women/ girl-child empowerment, champions of war against abuse and proponents of gender equality threw me into passing discomfiture. The spectacle was insipid that one would think civil societies and the groups of people mentioned would be so intolerantly aggravated to launch series of litigation against the school. That did not however happen. I theorise this is because, some of them are Muslims who perhaps went through such system and thought it out of their turf to file a complaint out of such triviality against an Islamic school.

Their counterparts who are not of Islamic religious inclination must have reckoned the only person from whom a woman, or in this case, a girl can suffer abuse is a spouse or romantic partner; not parents, religious leaders, teachers, a colleague or superior at work or an entire administrative branch of a supposed religious school. Who exactly are we deceiving? What are we doing?

The double standard approach between religious and secular organisations , the rich and the poor, the educated and illiterate, the man and the woman, the old and the young appears as some kind of worldwide ubiquitous phenomenon; in Nigeria however, this disparity in judgement and lack of objectivity is domiciled on a very steep slope. The Sharia practice makes this quite conspicuous for public office holders, particularly the career politicians. It has never been recorded that any of them had had his limbs amputated or flogged publicly after being outed for stealing public funds.

The Kano State governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, was recorded to have furiously stuffed his agbada with numberless wads of Dollars and predictably, business went on like nothing happened.Religious, moral and social pundits found themselves voiceless despite the unmistakable video evidence. It is more ironic that in Kano State, thousands of beer bottles are destroyed at intervals by some Islamic policing unit. They say consumption of alcohol is intolerable in Islam, but their officials queue up at the FCT fragmentarily to receive their allocation of aggregated revenue generated from states such as Ogun, Lagos, Rivers that license the production of alcohol. Births the question if in Islam, theft is permissible from the rich or highly placed, since reports emerge frequently of random residents of Northern states being publicly flogged, disgraced, and punished for offenses such as petty theft or romantic partners found seated side-by-side in uncompromising situations. The hypocrisy stinks.
Nigerian self-acclaimed intellectuals take the gold medal of sanctimony; bunch of arrogant, hungry, sycophantic earthlings. I am a dedicated, although not popular user of Twitter. It is the only social media platform that appeals to me. So, I encounter a lot of these guys on there. Undoubtedly, your right to vote any political aspirant, whether rogue or level-headed is absolute and inalienable. It is your undeniable franchise.

However, as a consequence of spasmodic pontifications, ability to string words together, and stooges congregating around you, you find yourself amassing a large followership, that confers on you a high level of responsibility and probity. Prior to the internet, this set of people had no relevance, now though, they are a massive instrument in the hands of any serious politician to win an election and I have a problem with that.

The build-up to the 2019 general elections was indeed a messy one. The incumbent administration of Muhammadu Buhari had, by popular opinion, been a complete failure. Between 2015 and 2019 which was his first term, Nigerians experienced an unrivalled level of multi-dimensional poverty; also to add to that is the widespread tier-5 level of insecurity and acts of terrorism in the country. According to Premium Times, 25,794 Nigerians were killed due to insecurity in Buhari’s first term.

I could not stomach the chutzpah of self-acclaimed Twitter intellectuals who took up the job of rebranding the oblivious, incapable and nepotistic president in the 2019 pre-election campaigns . They sang his praises and proselytised his gospel to their cronies. At the superficial level, many would not have words of reproval for them. Their bank accounts must have been replenished with hundred of thousands, perhaps millions of Naira. I, however, condemn them at all levels. They adopt the methodology of the pastors. When everything goes further south, as it has evidently eventuated, they log in to their accounts again and make attempts at redemption. You might as well publicly proclaim yourself as political hardware.
My observed impropriety of Nigerian educators is not much of hypocrisy in the actual sense of the word, it is as a consequence of an illusory sense of superiority. It is also of internalised subjugation and inessential need to hegemonise pupils under their tutelage. A short story about the famous astrophysicist and astrobiologist Carl Sagan told by his apparent protégée Neil deGrasse Tyson compels me to draw parallels between the Western education system and Nigeria’s. No doubt Carl Sagan was a prominent scientist and educator , however, according to Neil, when he applied to Cornell University for his introductory degree, Sagan was unwittingly instrumental in his commitment to astrophysics.

Short story further abridged, him, a random black teenager from the Bronx got an invitation letter from the famed scientist to come on a tour of the campus and he would be willing to be his guide, ultimately gifting Neil a copy of his signed book and inviting him to his home in Ithaca, New York for dinner with his family in case the train delays .This is for no other reason than Neil being a nascent enthusiast of the cosmos; Sagan’s field of discipline. For reasons of motivation and building up interest in a freshman, I do not think it gets better. This humane gesture goaded Neil, if he ever gets half as popular as Carl Sagan, to conclude to treat students with utmost respect and endearment, which I attest he does graciously.

Nigerian educators contrarily, particularly university lecturers, would rather masticate on wet denim. In their classrooms, they imbue themselves with the ointment of infallibility and robe up in the cloak of divinity . I try to make sense of the psychological rationale behind this frame of mind and I have been unable to come to a better hypothesis than a manifestation of internalised subjugation. Teaching and learning should be mutually fun, cohesive and cordial; otherwise how would their respective intended purposes be achieved. Nigerian lecturers would intimidate, dehumanise and extort( sexually,;for female students) their students for the singular reason that they can. They have been equally, socially and economically subjugated by the leaders that the only recognised recipients of their latent angst and bitterness has to be their students. The word “leader” or any variant of it in the last sentence or any portion of this blurb only appears to convey semantic correctness; also for lack of close synonyms. I consider Nigerian “shot callers,” opportunistic cowardly scoundrels, not leaders. That would be a desecration of the word.

The vast majority of the Nigerian society consisting of professionals, business-people, clergymen, etc. are a sycophantic, hypocritical bunch and I cannot emphasize this enough. I cannot describe to which depth my repudiation of this variety of people travels. Artisans, food sellers, market women, transporters and all kinds of everyday people are not exempt in this hypocrisy Olympics. The average man is lurking, and psychoanalysing the next if he’s a competent victim of exploitation. Worse is the fact that, a lot of these folks project and maintain a sanctimonious visage. Also, on Fridays and Sundays , there are adorned with the most flamboyant apparels and say a bunch of worded requests to their maker. But barely 18 hours later ,the following Monday morning, the adhesive hypocrisy is relaunched.
Why do you not own your inadequacies and strive to be a better person? Why do you point judgmental fingers at another human(women especially) because of how they choose to present, dress or accessories? If anyone errs ,let the law do its job. That is an indication of a civilised and free society.

Who made you a moral enforcer over anyone? What is your source of conviction that you are better person than the next man because you identify with one of thousands of human-invented religions and you believe or have been indoctrinated to bask in a delusion that you and your god are inseparable allies? What is your end goal to amass so much wealth enough to last ten generations at the expense of the citizenry that voted you? Congratulations! Here’s your plaque for your expertise in the zero-sum game.

Why do you sell hope and gaslight your churchgoers and exploit their gullibility? Must be fatiguing veiling who you are and projecting a sharp contrast to the foreground.

I will eternally never be able to discover answers to these questions. One thing is certain though, and this is directed to politicians and people who share their misguided self-important ideologies, you are inconsequential at the cosmic levels. You are narrow-minded and bereft of noble and liberal intellection. It probably does not make you a bad person, but it demonstratively makes you an encumbrance to the progress and advancement of humanity. It is easier, more noble and less repugnant to practice what you preach , treat every human with a sense of fairness and egalitarianism. That I believe is much easier.