Opinion: Nigeria and us, its 170 million gullible people

by Bamidele Ademola-Olateju

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With Nigerians you just never know, they never stop doing stupid things. Nigeria is a nation of incredulous ignorants whose primitive acquiescence to gods and the supernatural has not given way to superior modern thought processes and scientific facts despite their ubiquitous and gluttonous consumption of modern products.

It is what it is; with its population approaching 170million, Nigeria has become 170million stupid! It is quite hard to admit and it is patently invidious stereotyping to label a whole nation stupid, but anything else is blithe liberal optimism.

 

Our problems are many, serious and grave; yet we refuse to learn, change or improve. We have elected to remain profoundly stupid.

 

We became pew hugging, minaret clinging religionists who stands for nothing except invoking God at intervals to project unavailable righteousness.

 

Our country’s political discourse rests on the pedestal of misgovernance without commensurate and sufficient appreciation from materially inebriated, docile and apathetic citizenry. Why are we content at setting new stupid standards every day?

 

Bad roads? Take it to The Lord in prayer

 

Comatose Healthcare System? Bad diseases will not be our portion in Jesus name.

 

Collapsed Educational System? What will be will be, our children are overcomers.

 

Epileptic Power Supply? May the good Lord bind all the principalities, demonic spirits and the powers of darkness preventing Nigeria from enjoying stable electricity supply.

 

Nigerians sit on their hands praying for celestial edict beamed down to them from God’s majestic throne.

 

Will it be right for an All Loving God to bypass all other nations to grant good roads, drinkable water, electricity to the exclusion of other nations? It is only in a country of the stupid that people will pray to God for what humans must do for themselves; good roads, affordable and accessible healthcare, electricity, clean water, basic education etc.

 

With Nigerians you just never know, they never stop doing stupid things. Nigeria is a nation of incredulous ignorants whose primitive acquiescence to gods and the supernatural has not given way to superior modern thought processes and scientific facts despite their ubiquitous and gluttonous consumption of modern products.

 

I wouldn’t have been surprised nor distressed if Nigeria did not have its more than fair share of embarrassment of riches; oil, population, size, land, renewable and non-renewable resources. Alas! We have it in us to say enough is enough.

 

What more do we need? How much more can a country be blessed? When are we going to stop being stupid and stop doing stupid things? When are we going to watch and pray? When are we going to start doing things right and doing right things? When are we going to stop abdicating our responsibilities? When are we going to demand accountability from those who leads us?

 

That we have abdicated every rational human thought, responsibility and accountability to God adds an important perspective to our national comedy of errors.

 

We worship our traducers, we jostle to attend their parties instead of stoning them, we hail them when we are supposed to heckle them.

 

We embrace them when we are supposed to shun them. We covet their ill gotten wealth when we are supposed to ostracize them.

 

It is our rolling shame that we have vacated our seat in an informed and rational universe.

 

We routinely undercut our own insights if any, with clear and increasing preference for unfounded beliefs and superstition.

 

We grew accustomed to substituting inane stupidity for sophisticated religiosity.

 

Generally we condone moral aberrations and our culture stifle individual creativity while championing oppression.

 

Only limited sense can be made of our stupidity and moral abdication.

 

It is so bad a great big chunk of the country is tuned out, zonked out or ensconced in Churches and Mosques urging God to take up human duties.

 

Underlying the Nigerian stupidity is our unique ability to gloss over our ignorance, deny it or hide under the cloak of religion.

 

Shouldn’t we be worried by how uneducated and stupid we have become? Our abandonment of rational thought and right reason has generated a uniquely Nigerian religious “Wisdom of Crowds”.

 

We are a crowd bumbling in concert, hoping to land on the island on tranquility designed, worked and delivered from heaven without human sweat.

 

Sorry! God did not set things up that way. God has done his bit and retreated, we ought to leave him out of our mess, do things right and do right things.

 

Amidst escalating stupidity, one does feel tempted to entertain economic and political optimism in our quasi democratic space, given the impressive statistics generated from the economy.

 

Oasis of optimism exists in the youth bulge, our diversity, the human capital and a certain hidden goodness in Nigeria.

 

I have imagined the dividends that can accrue to Nigeria if the profusion of faith by Christians and Muslims can translate into political engagement.

 

I have imagined the castration of the political and parasitic elite if only the fanatical religious tourists of the Lagos/Ibadan religious highway can devote the same hours spent in ruinous traffic, in crowded fields, make shift halls and under a punishing sun to demanding what is due them.

 

They didn’t have to choose God as Nigeria’s problem solver in chief, they just need to do things right.

 

Abject ignorance about the nature of things and how the world works is projecting us into extreme stupidity where nothing exists except enemies, demons and Holyghost Fire.

 

The country’s deliberate escape into the willing arms of stupidity is priming us as the sick giant of subsaharan Africa because Ghana is improving, Rwanda is setting new gold standards using various developmental indices.

 

No one is waiting for us to tide things over, they are moving along, well, fast and furious. We have forgotten that we have no consoling arc over time and no definite trajectory of progress. While other countries march on, we are holding the bags of frauds and unctuous hucksters praying to God to deliver us from them.

 

The creeping theme in my consciousness is that Nigerians have validated Frank Bruni time and time again – ” A clueless electorate is a corruptible one.” The time is here now; we must not stop doing stupid things. Ask questions, demand that good must be done and associate only with the best.

 

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Read this article in the Premium Times Newspapers

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

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