Dear Nigerians, if prayers fixes countries, your country will be a world power.
I don't know where to start from because there are a lot of things to talk about.
These few weeks, I sat down and questioned myself about my relationship with this country. Apart from being an abusive relationship, it drains you and leaves you without any strength.
Talking about abusive relationships on a generic sense; Many people are happy in abusive relationships because there are perks. Like the man that lives next to me who beats his wife but she drives the latest cars and wears designer clothes.
But the abusive relationship with Nigeria leaves you insane. Like, you legit walk around the streets of this country mad looking for who to transfer your aggression on!!
With all that has happened throughout this regime, I don't think anybody in his clear senses will chose Nigeria as a country if he or she had the opportunity to choose.
The day Nigeria got eliminated from the World Cup, I wasn't exactly pained. My friend called me and asked why I wasn't showing pain or anger. He called me a hypocrite for crying when Liverpool lost to Real Madrid but being indifferent when "My" country lost. I laughed and told him that I didn't make the choice to be a Nigerian. I made the choice to be a Liverpool fan. That's the difference.
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This month alone, we have seen it all. We have looked terror in the face. we have never had this record of back-to-back pain. When you think you're healing from the pain of yesterday, today a fresh pain begins. The map of this country is covered with sores. Deep smelly sores with pus.
I am trying too hard not to profile the happenings of this few weeks because profiling the death of people doesn't resurrect them but we all know what we have gone through from the killings in the north, to the ojuelgba bridge accident, to yesterday's inferno. We know this.
I want we Nigerians to know and understand that prayer is a beautiful thing but praying for Nigeria to get better without working towards it is like praying for snow during summer. You see how silly that is? Yes. That's what we're doing. Filling square holes with circle and triangular pegs.
Prayer doesn't and won't fix a country. Even in the Christian religion, it is often said that heaven helps those that help themselves. But here we don't do Jack! We sit and pray from pain to pain disturbing God anyhow.
We prayed during the massacre in jos. Please tell me if God will leave everything he's doing in heaven to come down to Nigeria just to help us do the right thing which is protest and demand answers from the government.
During the avoidable accident in Ojuelgba when a container fell down from a bridge and killed dozens of people. We prayed. For what?? For God to come down and inspect containers to see if they're tied or if they are lose? For God to tell all the heavy duty trucks "I am God. Do not ply the road until it's midnight"
During yesterday's inferno a hashtag was trending #PrayforNigeria. I saw it and laughed. A country of prayer warriors with no result to show for it. The people who died yesterday, they prayed when the Jos massacre happened but guess what? They can't pray again. We the living ones are making more mistakes by doing the prayer thing.
We want God to fight for us when all we do is stay behind our keypads and form pained with our big big English when we know that deep down it doesn't mean anything!
Imagine living in a country where people lose their lives in numbers and all the flags aren't flying half mast. Imagine living here and knowing that honestly your leaders don't care about your existence!
If you die you die after all we are the most populous black nation.
Let us continue praying okay?
When we know that we have the power to walk to all the government houses and demand accountability. We can do this.
We can shut down all sectors until we see a change that appeals to us.
We can do a lot of fruitful things that will yield results but instead we chose praying.
Continue praying for Nigeria but I bet you. God doesn't answer prayers of lazy people who think prayers are magic.
Written by Mark Anthony osuchukwu.
He is a social critic and writer. He can be reached via [email protected]
He is on instagram as Onye_mark
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