06 Aug 2004 |
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| The Holy Bible, that repository of eternal truths and wisdom couldn't have captured it more succinctly: says Paul the Apostle in Romans 3: 23: the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus. Sin depicts a state of alienation, a moral debasement of the body, mind, soul and spirit, the reason why the ‘reward' for it is death. We sin when we controvert and contravene the essence of the Eternal Being and His omniscience. The Bible says man was made straight, but has consciously made his ways crooked not just in the sight of God who created him in His own image but in the reckoning of his fellow man; hence the unavoidable separation which leads to death. In naija, we die every day. Death to us is no longer a realm of rest but a strenuous daily living and seeking of the inner self that unfortunately lies way out of our feeble grip, like a ripe apple fruit dangling from a high branch, two metres above our heads. Death is us; it lives with and in us; overwhelms our thought patterns and every other physical exertion we may contemplate. Put in other words: we live in death because we are strangers to life, the alienation total, complete and consummated. Hence we die not just when we stop breathing, but also as a result of this alienation We can identify with several levels of deaths: physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, mental (brain inactivity), biological and moral. But consider the following death patterns that are current in our midst today: · Mother/child death: when this bond is broken, the child cries helplessly, craving for that maternal warmth and soothe that its entire being has grown to know. And unknowingly to the estranged mother, the lifeline breast milk of the ‘baby friendly' era, suddenly becomes contaminated, tasting like gall. Maternal embrace and caress would become nothing more than the suffocating bear-grip of a frightened soul; in the face of such alienation, the hapless child becomes hypnotised, growing up in a trance state of mind into an adulthood of foolishness and reproach, a sore onto society and a source of parental frustration in old age. But the truth is that the child had been death long ago, its entire life but a disgraceful simulation of the real thing. · The second that readily comes to mind is the father/son and mother/daughter death pattern. When a son (and in the same vein a daughter) is brought up in the way he should go, he will not depart from that, so says the Holy Book. That is a self-evident truth. In the adult world of vain pursuits, where familial values are sacrificed on the spurious alter of over bloated egos, the father easily gets alienated to his son. Corrupted semantics replace the cultured learning of yesteryears, and by the innocent age of thirteen, Junior can look ‘pop' in the face and utter ‘f...k you!' Beckoned by irresistible peer pressure, he grows into a monster, a cultist in the university and an armed robber afterward. With the pretty little girl, mum can't stop her from wearing those dangerously revealing outfits, knowing fully well that they will attract ‘flies' sooner or later. Revealed to young boys and men as a willing companion at age fifteen, she embarks on a life of fleeting pleasures and unending pains. Marriage becomes but a mirage for they all know her, an idiotic carcass of a once refreshingly appealing beauty. Would you say she honestly lived? No! Because she was alienated, she could not withstand the devastating consequence of a living in the fast lane. They both lived in death, achieved nothing but reproach and self pity and expectedly paid the ultimate price: the wages of sinÂÂ… · Some of our ivy towers of learning today have become kingdoms of unimaginable corruption and licentiousness. The alienation is both mental and physical and consequently, they die in both directions. A morally bankrupt lecturer finds his pair in an unserious female student who thinks a pair of nice laps and a gifted chest is the key to ultimate success. Then with infinite liberality, she begins her journey of woe and shame. Bedroom character becomes the barometer to measure performance, while academic excellence is relegated to the backwaters of utopian self-actualisation. The lecturer, but for the ‘living' notes on his joter (that is if they are not rubbish) sins and ultimately dies unenvied and unsung. For come to think of it, how many necked women can he covert? Sexual pleasure, as fleeting as it is, resides in the mind (that is out of the control of the debased fool), not in the lower regions. Attired like a masquerade in an unfamiliar terrain, would you say she was alive? Well, yes, but in the sense that she lived in death. · Another terrible form of alienation is that of the leader and the led a la nigeriane. In this summation, the alienation is total and complete. Our leaders, through parochial and selfish ambitions, have unleashed unimaginable poverty in the land in the midst of plenty. The insensitivity is Olympian which has given rise to palpable mistrust in the land. Today, like decades ago, we find ourselves in the crushing squeeze of a ruthless cabal of power dazed grandpas who have appropriated Nigeria as a prize and greedily covert her wealth with ferocious brutality. $250 billion windfall revenue in the Consolidated Fund means nothing to the average Nigerian who has been forced to use firewood for cooking; a thousand handshake with the Queen of the ‘US' and the King of United Britain, hypocritical smiles with G8 leaders or having the entire African continent or the Club of Commonwealth losers feasting in Abuja and booing at our collective chagrin, does not make the average Nigerian the happiest being on planet Earth (a talk for another clime!) Innumerable trips abroad in search of foreign investment and debt forgiveness since May 1999 may still seem laudable to those in the corridors of power, but to us outside the gates of power, it is nothing but a boring, uncreative explanation that would immediately sound frivolous and unserious to a five year old. Because it is evident that our present crop of selfish ‘chop-chop' politicians has failed and consequently alienated from the rest of us, then they too are death like their forebears. Dramatically put for instance, the president of the FGN does not see and feel what the president of the NLC sees and feels. Two presidents, two parallel worlds. Where one feels the agonising pulse of the people and grieves with them, the other sees dizzying profits and fleeces the people the more. Nigerians are not alienated from their government simply because they wish to show that naija is special and peculiar. No! The leaders have sinned, and are thus death; death in all its ramifications because this is evident in all facets of the leader/led relationship. And because they are death, they have become unproductive, unreachable, odious, unalive and ultimately alienated. And like all human endeavour that attracts rewards, the alienated are no longer our own for they are death and nothing can make them undeath. The wages of sin is deathÂÂ… Awaiykaen@yahoo.fr 06.08.2004 |
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