I know, I know, you wish me a happy Easter, right? Believe me, I would wish you a happier one but for these very unhappy times we are living in. Before you can recover from one piece of bad news, another one has taken its place, and before you can recover from even that, a worse one is already unfolding so much so people’s heads are turning of their own accord in every direction preening for where next the fly will enter the ointment from: north, south, east or west.
Seriously, what bothers me about these happenings is the fact that we Nigerians are getting more and more used to living with killings or kidnapping or embezzling or bad governance all around the place so much so that life is beginning not to mean anything again. That means we are getting desensitised to what exactly we call badness because we are not given enough time to recover from the last one and raise up our defences. Too many bad things are happening too rapidly, and nearly all are man-made. This is why a notion is going around that badness belongs to the black man. Now, where on earth could that idea have come have from?
The other day, someone was telling me how he longed to have a conversation with God. He said if he got the chance, he would ask the almighty only one question: what does He have against the black race? Why cannot a black nation, any at all, manage its own affairs successfully? When I asked why, he looked at me and answered me with another question, you know, the way you do when you are asking your brain to think, and all it is doing is jiggling around on a spot like a key hooked in its lock. It won’t unlock the door as you want it to, and it won’t come out of the blessed lock.
So, he asked me why I, of all people, was asking him that question. I asked him in return how many black nations he knew could not get their affairs right? I think the questions were going too frequently to and fro, so someone had to end it. None, he said. I informed him that there are many other nations in the world run by white people which had bad governments too. He challenged me to name one black country in the world running a good government right now, and don’t bother to name South Africa, he told me; we all know why there is some modicum of organisation there. Finally for answer, I did not answer.
Seriously, the question needs to be asked, is there something wrong with the brain of the black man that makes him so incapable of thinking things through? Why does it appear as if the black man has given over the efforts of thinking, and has thrown all his efforts behind taking as much money as possible out of any position he gets into, without bothering about the future of that place? Why, eh, why? Why can’t he, for instance, even think of may be getting someone to sweep the room or clean the chair he sits on for a change? Worse still, much of what is stolen from our impoverished black countries end up in the pockets of white people’s banks which use them to develop their own countries so that black people can continue to hanker after the comforts provided by those white people’s countries so that they (the blacks, not the whites) can steal more of their countries’ funds and continue to pour them down the pockets of those (the white people’s) banks so that … and on and on and on. Wow, that was quite tiring.
Listen, I am at my wit’s end trying to understand this problem. Whenever I have heard that someone had, well, helped himself to a lot more than his salary allowed from the funds entrusted into his/her care and stowed it away somewhere in the Cayman Islands or Swiss banks or American banks where the supposed investigative moths of the government cannot reach, I have often wondered what it is all about.
Soon, you see, that bad news would invariably be followed by another piece that says that the said stower or stowee has been struck down by one illness or gun or bomb or the other, which cannot be undone for all the money in the Cayman Islands. Worse, these monies have a nasty habit of never coming back home, meaning that those in the Cayman Islands and co. get to live the good life on our money while we the deprived get to bite our nails. Really! Can a people hate their own country so much?
This is where we can draw many lessons from this Easter celebration. First we should remember that our Lord Jesus Christ never ran any bank account, whether in Israel or in the Cayman Islands, and yet, he never lacked. Indeed, he is said to have lived the most fulfilled, successful and triumphant life known to man. His main focus was not acquiring wealth, but in living for others and doing the will of the one that sent him. Above all, rather than profit from the misfortunes of others, Christ is known to have sacrificed his life for mankind. In choosing to lose his life then, he gained much more. This is the person we are celebrating today.
We too can live very successful lives if we will just let our focus shift a little bit from contemplating ourselves in the mirror every morning and asking: mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest, greatest, sharpest highway man of all time, and concentrate rather on making the next person’s life a little bit more tolerable for him/her. Then we would have lifted our names from the Honour’s Roll of Common Brigands to the greater and more genuine roll: of those who have lived successfully, for others.
Right now, the guns and bombs and kidnappings and killings are going off every which way in the country, people are being killed or widowed, homes are being wrecked, children are being orphaned … its chaos all the way, and no one is sorry. Yet, someone or some ones are behind these killings: sponsoring, procuring, planning, urging, recruiting, training, etc., and all for money or politics, because I don’t believe for one moment that the boko haram or Fulani herdsmen for instance have any religious or altruistic reasons for their mayhem. I just keep wondering: what will these people do when they do get their wish? Help themselves to more money? Talk of blood money!
This Easter season, let us contemplate on our deeds and misdeeds and align them with the acceptable ideals that can help to lift not just the society but individuals around us to more altruistic heights of development. An individual who misuses the funds in his charge for his own personal use cannot be enriched but is really poor indeed. Someone once said that the man who seeks to make only him/herself rich cannot be, because the poor surrounding him or her will soon see to that wealth. A truly happy and successful person is the altruistic one. From this Easter, aim to be that person.