The slide picture of our world – a global aurora borealis -By Jimi Bickersteth

This wet and drizzling morning, I was watching the the flowery mint gloss of the Willow plants by my window; one, slender and upright, with a lofty bearing, the other slouches, with its head drooping. In spite of their contrasting postures, however, they are actually closely related. Willows, a truly versatile family of trees. This quiet thought brought me alive and portrayed in my faculty the picture of the world we presently live in.

The contrasting oceans, size, gaits, postures and mien in a equally contrasting world of humans, colours, shapes, patterns, and styles. A world where northern lights, often brightens the wintry darkness, yet, kept the magical and mechanical rituals of the rising and setting of the sun, the rains and droughts. The dense populace survive one way or the other and also struggle to keep their offspring abreast and alive.

The people, black or white live in permanent state of conflicting emotions – delight and satisfaction with what he is accomplishing along with despair and frustration because of the mounting problems with which he must deal at the moment, such critical times hard to deal with. Our own compatriots are weighed down by the anxieties in the present unpleasant state of things, and, of the burden of distressing personal circumstances. At this I have the killings and kidnappings in mind.

The Rukuba-Jos killings, the torching of people and turning them into human barbecues, murders on the expressway, the Katsina mayhem, the crude deaths of a mother witnessed by her dazed and subsequently traumatised children, the incessant kidnappings for ransom rampant across the federation, the uncommon effontery and daring escapade of hoodlums on the invisibility of the Nigerian Defence Academy in Kaduna the citadel of the nation’s infantry, intelligence, strength, courage and combats power in war and peace time.

The sheer rawness and daring reference of these assaults and tremendous slap and insults on the nation’s psyche was something else, and it doesn’t look like it will abate anytime soon, and curiously the leadership do not seem to be on top of the not only ridiculous but embarrassing and disrespectful situations, which could send a signal of a near-anarchy state to the outside world, while the ordeals will continue to traumatized and also remain indelibly etched in the memories of those who experienced such a loss in such horrendous manners.

A boy in the compound next to mine was watching TV when he heard the news about the killing of his darling mother, he nearly razed the whole Close down. He was only 19. He had just got admitted into the university after so many attempts and the mother’s promptings and encouragement. Desperately, he tried to contact her on her cellphone but there was no reply. His initial reaction was one of disbelief. He felt it was a bad dream. He collapsed on the floor and cried inconsolably. Who won’t!

Mere words cannot convey the overwhelming feelings of shock, heartache, disbelief, numbness, and despair that has resulted from such tragic, unexpected causes. Even when the death of a loved one is expected as might be the case after his or her long illness, natural accidents like in a plane crash or motor accident, grief can still be very intense.

No one is ever totally prepared for the death of a loved one from the pointed barrel of a rifle, arrow, knife or machete. This days, the nation is not sure of which death was Boko Haram’s, criminal syndicates, politically motivated, or which was banditry or terrorist attacks or which was premeditated assassination from paid assailants. In all sincerity, today, life seemed to have lost all meaning for the victims, their dependants and survivors.

People never get over a loss, they just get used to it. If you have lost a loved one in death, unexpectedly or not, you may wonder: Is it normal to grieve? Is it normal to expect a reprisal attack, since the law is not responding appropriately and adequately, and, in any case, quite a number of the law enforcers were losing some of their men too in supreme sacrifice. Well, as human with a little choice but to back our plans on assumptions about the future. You plan tomorrow’s activities assuming that the sun will rise and you will still be alive. The first assumption is well-founded; the second is less certain, more so for the now with the nation’s security concerns.

Whichever way one reasons it out, how distressing it is for young children to face the reality of death of someone with whom they have formed a close bond. Everyone of the family members trying to cope with their own individual emotions, anguished and preoccupied not so much with the high rates of deaths, emotional abuse and physical disfigurement, but at the nation that was looking lost, stupefied and unable to nip the maurading national problem in the bud or afraid of the assailants so much that it (the nation) could not give a fight.

At this period of their mourning, the children are looking up to who for direction, support, encouragements, succour, comfort and hope on important matters of life even as it provides definitive information on the deaths that killed their pillars of support. What a society, what a government! For how long will children and the nation be confronted by the tragedy of needless deaths, and how will the children be able to cope successfully with the loss of loved ones and mostly their breadwinners in such a divided nation in an enstranged world. Most horrifying and cruel you will say.

The Yoruba’s have a saying, (ẹní sìnkú ló seé lóore, ẹní sunkún ariwo lásán lónpaa)! It is those that had dug the grave that has done well for the deceased. But shall the nation in its completely hypnotised state stop there and the carnage continues unabated? If the nationals must run away from the land of their births, note that I did not say state of origin, should they not know what was pursuing them?

Today, Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Benue, Taraba and Plateau states were fast becoming hotbeds of ethno-religious crises and its attendant premeditated killings. I make haste to state here that, the situation is escalating as we continue to make enemies out of neighbours, foes out of families, foreigners out of friends. Hatred has taken over the fibres of the nation’s unity, with it fellowship waned and malice became common place at its gateways; everything on ground seems designed and modelled to destroy the fate of the future generation. If the nation is not careful and its leaders pragmatic, it may be consumed by i.religious strife and b. its comatose economy more than by any external influence(s).

The mainstream and the New media covered all of these abominable and illegal killings extensively, and many people thus learned about the unjust treatment of a section of its divided and disunited country. The people and probably to some extent the government all felt cut to the heart, knew what to do, but couldn’t do a thing! The result of that lukewarmness or at best its tardiness was that families have come to inherit socio-economic hardships, lost jobs, long, futile battle against hunger, lack, deprivation, and avoidable deaths all of which had resulted in the people’s weakened faith and their dampened morale in their nation.

While all of the tragedies was going on, the churches and mosques present a confusing picture of drastic decline in the nation and apparent success in their own growths and warfaring combativeness. Their congregations are growing only because others are in decline. People due to economic hardships are said to be abandoning those religions “in droves,” as so many congregants were no longer interested in those houses of ‘worship’.

They are fragmenting, losing their congregations and retaining support by offering entertainment and excitement. It is a general trend and a general rule without any exceptions. The overall picture is one of churches and mosques struggling to retain popularity, any wonder at the low levels of their recruits. But as a Social phenomenon, will the nation be islamised, or will Christianity die out? As presently, Islam and Christianity are apparently subverting and perpetuating mistakes made in the past and the nation is reaping the ripples effects. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind is a common, global refrain.

But the nation seemingly could live and grow together, if religion was not infiltrated by oppressive wolves unable to treat the flock on either side of the divide with tenderness, drawing and muscling the teeming gullible but vulnerable adherents with twisted things on twisted tongues. Avaricious and ambitious leaders took control of the people, of the congregation and exploited them to further their own ends. Power hungry men formed alliances with rulers and foist “state” religions that amassed immense membership, power, fame and unprecedented wealth.

The leaders were teaching twisted things to an equally twisted and subsequently gullible membership making it difficult for them to understood MELON spelt backwards. For instance, on one hand, some were indoctrinated and were taught to slaughter people of other faith and to sacrifice their lives in warfare, daredevilry assaults as a condition-precedent to make heaven. On the other, so-called Christians participated in crusades and killed people whom they considered to be bigots and or unbelievers. Both faiths simulating wars and killing brothers and sisters, fathers, mothers in front of their children, with no respect for the eternal tenets, “love your neighbours.”

With all representing a façade of Christianity and Islam. That explains why, probably, there is a continuing trend of religion fragmenting into sects, meddling in local politics, but here, you wonder why the state intelligence find it difficult to identified the culprits or nip the acts in the bud before the very acts of complicity escalates to a destructive dimensions of immense magnitude. The leaders have come to wilfully disregard the Creator’s laws. Such bad fruitage is the product of counterfeit headship, and their growth has been so pervasive and extensive, even on a global scale with access to modern and sophisticated arms and munitions.

Today, true religion was been practically obscured since the days of Maitatsine, Zango-Kataf, Boko assaults, before it all ended in the present endless circuses of a religious cauldron with the numerous premeditated murders in the cathedrals, murders on the expressway, and so on. All are refusing to ‘Let go, let God’. Some of them when caught and exposed, blame the acts on the Satan, but modern scholars say that Satan who has chosen a life course and forever in opposition to the Godhead, is not a real person. They claim that he was merely created in the wild imagination of men. That controversy is nothing new. “The Devil’s deepest wile,” wrote 19th-century poet Charles Pierre Baudelaire, “is to persuade us that he does not exist.” Proposed and accused as the unseen power behind the problems plaguing the nation and the nation left in a lurch it cannot touch.

Today feelings of pride and authority grew within this religious and political leaders with some almost equating themselves with God in the presence of millions of ‘well’ pauperised, brainwashed ‘mannequins,’ as those millions of indoctrinated souls they wanted to worship them, what with private jets, a fleet of rolls Royce, waterfront mansions and they could no longer stand steadfast in truth and in faith.

The religious leaders in their ambivalent hypocrisy, self centeredness, and deceit in times of hardships and destructions in the land like Pharaohs, did not make the nation’s situation better. The religious leaders built schools from the sweat of the poor but the children of the poor could not attend. The political leaders fritters money money meant for the nation’s growth and development. The nation now have a large numbers of almajiris in the north and south, west and east.

The leaders because of their love for and imitating Satan’s devilish ways, the nation became filled with violence whose roots the equally religious political leaders could not traced. A situation thus ensued, where a criminal wipe his fingerprints from the crime scene in an attempt to leave no trace of his identity. However, when the police arrive, they realise that if a crime has been committed, there must be a criminal. Satan, too, tries to leave no trace of his identity. When speaking with Eve, he hid his identity behind a serpent. He is still trying to hide today as the mastermind behind the corrupt nation.

He has blinded the minds of the people so as to conceal the extent of his powerful influence. If you were or watched last weekend’s PMB’s family extravagant display of affluence and wealth as Africa’s richest family at their son’s wedding and the luncheon that followed, you will not fail to notice how effectively satan uses the desire of the flesh and the desires of the heart and the eyes and the shadowy display of one’s means of life in misleading. It is sobering, however, it is vital that the nation while accepting the reality of Satan’s existence in the nation’s political and religious life and allow itself to make a firm decision that would make it stand must keep its sense, keep on the watch so as not to be overreached by the devourer(s).

II.
With the recent events in Afghanistan, I heard a dream after POTUS speech on the US withdrawal penultimate week. In my dream, the world appeared to be flying in the midst of a thick cloud layer, seeing nothing. Suddenly its plane and plans were emerging from the clouds and white to the Arctic scenery below. The view is magnificent, it gaze in fascination at glaciers, light blue fjords. The wasteland of snow and ice stretches out as far as the eyes can see. The bottom of the valley is still snowless, but the ground is frozen solid. The picture of the world and an epoch of bustling activity and its threatened sovereignty. Only the surface soil thaws for a short period.

Still, because of favourable winds and ocean currents, the climate where I was at this latitude was sunny on the mountains while the valley is in a bluish shade. Further up the snowy mountainside a sharp wind is blowing but the sky is clear. Is the world ready for the excursion? The dream is about our world, our planet.

After Afghanistan, if the grandest things that the creator made ‘ pretty in its time bringing into existence a perfect human and world and its marvellous prospect, but only if the human elements could make the right choice and remained in harmony with creation purposes, they could live in perfect peace and happiness.

But presently, the world is been subjectively suppressed by the intense competition between two strong religions running a close race, with each trying to dominate and in the process constituting a beautiful nuisance to world peace and deep-seated conflict between the desire to know and the inability to find answers that has tormented thinkers and philosophers throughout the ages.

The leaders kept wandering and wondering about the meaning and got glutted with agitation. But the simple answers to the questions that have bedevilled the world can only be found in, liberty, equality and total freedom. The world has found it difficult to accept that life consists solely of toiling at the occupations at hand, only to have death end it all.

The political and religious leaders often forget that they derived their power from the people’s exercised franchises, and have come to be like the “sons of Zeus” skilled mariners with powers over the wind and waves. Thus, they came to be venerated as patron deities of sailors that manifested themselves and their protective powers in the form of the St.Elmo’s fire, an electric glow that sometimes appears on the masts of ships during a storm.

The covid19 scourge really exposed the powerlessness of these lesser god in a
world which has developed a cosmopolitanism tinged with vices, and, subject to a constant flow of ideas and technology-inspired living. The world became more broadminded. Our political and religious leaders in their narrow-mindedness and greed have consistently find it difficult to follow suit.

The foibles and vices of Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas have met and mingled in the melting pot the world is today. All were amplified in our country. Moral decadence, wantonly luxurious – the most immoral and licentious era. A debauched and immoral life. Such a climate of materialism and immorality has come to threatened the spiritual well-being of all. Greediness, extortion and moral uncleanness. With all these, you cannot help but sense the debasing influence that every living being had to face.

Humans, the crowning achievement of creation, are not governed primarily by instinct. Instead, we are free moral agents with a conscience nurtured by truth and capacity for love. As a result of all these gifts, we can make just and moral decisions that sometimes reflect extraordinary love and self sacrifice, largely a product of the moral precepts and spiritual tenets that he was taught or not taught, from infancy. As a result, people may differ in what they consider to be right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable.

Like these differences in turn can lead to misunderstanding, intolerance and even hatred, especially, when such factors as culture, nationalism and religion exert a strong influence. How much better the world would be if the entire human family adhered to one set of standards that reflect moral and spiritual truth, just as we obey the one set of physical laws that govern the universe.

#JimiBickersteth

Jimi Bickersteth is a writer, blogger and public affairs analyst.
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