April 8, 2019

The Holy Scripture tells us: “Righteousness exalts a nation…” (Proverbs 14:34).  This statement from the Book of Proverbs is, indeed, a challenge to our country, Nigeria, and to all Nigerians. This is because, if truth be told, majority of Nigerians are not righteous.  John S. Mbiti was only stating the obvious when he said that “Africans are notoriously religious”.  Unfortunately, the more religious they are, the greater the atrocities some of them commit. Some adherents of both Islam and Christianity—the two great religions in Nigeria—are guilty of nefarious acts. In fact, they hide behind the façade of religion to commit heinous crimes. That is perhaps why Mahatma Gandhi once remarked, “I love Christ, but I hate Christians”.  This is certainly because many Christians are not doing what Christ did.

 

What does it mean to be righteous?  In ordinary parlance, to be righteous means being morally right and good.  It means doing what a person thinks is morally acceptable. Within the context of this write-up, to be righteous entails doing what is right, to be upright, lawful, just, holy or sanctified.  Within this religious parlance, righteousness without Christ cannot make the righteous merit heaven.  That is why scripture tells us, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33). The New Jerusalem Bible uses the following words to convey the same message, “Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on God’s justice, and all these other things will be given you as well”.  It is in this sense that Jesus also says, “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). From the above quotations, two other words can be used as synonyms of righteousness, namely, justice and perfection.  Like righteousness, justice means the fair treatment of people; giving somebody what is due to the person.  Whoever does that is a perfect person.

 

Some kinds of righteousness can be distinguished.  These include self-righteousness, religious righteousness, faith righteousness and justified righteousness. Self-righteousness is that type of righteousness which people practise by claiming to be right in whatever they do, even though they are wrong more often than not. Such people rarely accept their faults, and they are incorrigible. Cain was trying to justify himself when he made that anti-social statement to God, saying, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9). Scripture prohibits self-righteousness, because it is not of God. Religious righteousness is the type practised because of one’s religious demands, particularly when it comes to adhering strictly to the laws of such religion. Faith righteousness, as its name implies, is the kind of righteousness a person practises because of his faith in God. It implies the belief that God exists; it entails acknowledging Him as the Supreme Being, while we human beings are his children; totally depending on God, acknowledging that without Him, we are nothing. Justified righteousness is the type that speaks on our behalf.  In other words, it is the kind of righteousness that justifies itself.  Put differently, this type of righteousness is self-evident; it is obvious. When people see a justified righteous person, they will say, “yes, this is a good Christian; yes, this is a good Muslim; yes, this is a good teacher; yes, this is a good politician,” etc. If you like, a justified righteous person is “a living saint”.  Noah is a typical example of a justified righteous person. God justified Noah because he lived in fellowship with God.  No wonder God said to Noah, “I have found that you are the only one in the entire world who does what is right” (Gen. 6:9; 7:1).

 

It must be clear, at this juncture, that when the author of the Book of Proverbs says, “Righteousness exalts a nation… (Prov. 14:34), it is faith and justified kinds of righteousness that are referred to. It is faith righteousness, because without faith, no one can please God (Heb. 11:6).  It is also justified righteousness, because God Himself is the only One qualified to justify a righteous person, like He did to Noah, before that person can be truly righteous.

 

The full statement under investigation reads, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Prov. 14:34). Again, The New Jerusalem Bible puts it like this, “Uprightness makes a nation great, by sin whole races are disgraced”. This statement is truly a great challenge to Nigerians, because Nigeria, to a great degree, is an unrighteous nation.  Currently, Nigeria is rated the third most corrupt country in the world.  Corruption has since eaten deep into the very fabric of this country, because there is no justice.  Various acts of injustice are perpetrated on a daily basis, and the malefactors are left to go scot-free.  Where justice is administered, most of the times, it is jungle justice.

 

What are those crimes committed against justice? They include mismanagement and wastage of the rich human and natural resources with which this country is blessed; embezzlement, greed, avarice, man’s inhumanity to man, etc.  Fr. Chris Angelo Otuibe, O.P. affirms that Nigeria “…is a nation that is richly blessed with human and natural resources, as well as rich cultural heritage. The natural resources include a rich deposit of high quality petroleum and huge reservoir of natural gas discovered in the Niger Delta in 1959.  The country is blessed with vast arable land that stretches between the tropical rain forest of the South to the Savannah regions of the North.  The climate is mild, favourable to all year round production of food and cash crops.  Major cash crops for export are cocoa, oil palm products and rubber.  Forest resources are abundant especially in the South.  Fruits and vegetables are produced in abundance.  Nigeria makes a substantial contribution to world trade in some of these products” (culled from Amos: A Challenge to Nigerian Church and Society, 2003, p. 69).

 

Despite this blessing, most Nigerians are living in poverty because of the greed of a few privileged people.  Conspicuous wealth exists alongside with abject poverty.  Fr. George Ehusani’s words vividly describe the situation: “…the majority of Nigerians are today living in abject poverty.  Though their land is rich and their people are intelligent, they are living in misery. The majority of Nigerians have been stripped naked by a corrupt, selfish, greedy and callous elite.  For thirty five years the majority of Nigerians have suffered untold hardship at the hands of a succession of despotic rulers, decadent administrators, vision-less leaders and reckless managers.  They have been humiliated, pauperized and reduced to a state of destitution by the combined forces of military dictatorship, political subterfuge and economic profligacy (G. O. Ehusani, A Prophetic Church, 1996, p. 7).

 

Injustice or unrighteousness in Nigeria has given birth to various crimes like man’s inhumanity to man, dishonesty, lack of transparency and accountability, bribery and corruption, prostitution, even at international level, child trafficking, women trafficking, armed robbery, assassination and kidnapping, to mention but few.  Kidnapping, which in the past, was more pronounced in the South Eastern part of Nigeria, has become widespread recently.  In fact, kidnapping is one of the most thriving businesses in our country today.  Indeed, it is the quickest way of making money.  This is because kidnappers usually demand a ransom from their victims; and if the latter should refuse to pay the ransom, they will be killed.  Thus, the kidnappers would prefer to kidnap those who are rich, so that they can claim heavy ransom from the latter. That is why a ‘lucky kidnapper’ can be a millionaire overnight. Holy Scripture strongly condemns kidnapping. The Good News Bible puts it in the following words, “Whoever kidnaps a fellow-Israelite and takes him or her as a slave or sells  them into slavery is to be put to death.  In this way you will get rid of this evil” (Deuteronomy 24:7).

 

Another very lucrative business in Nigeria today is what I refer to as “Church business”.  Thus, Christian denominations proliferate or multiply almost at geometric progression, because of the pecuniary benefits the ‘so-called ministers of God’ derive from their adherents. Indeed, religion has since been commercialized in Nigeria. That is why evils increase almost at par with the proliferation of churches.  The statement that “religion is the opium of the masses” is so glaring in our country, Nigeria.  Some religious analysts have remarked that, the mad rush for religious matters in the present time is never an increasing disposition among Nigerians.  Rather, the opposite is the case as the average Nigerian continues to show signs of being hardened, and religion itself showing little or no positive effects on the peoples’ general behavior and attitude.  What a contradiction in terms.  Corrupt men and women flood our churches and mosques.  They donate large amounts of money, ill-gotten money, bloody money, for that matter.  They might have thought that by so doing, they could bribe God like early Israel who copied this negative attitude from pagan religion, oblivious of the fact that God could not be bribed, but that He is “…the great God…who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes (Deut. 10:17).  Unlike Amos of old, many of the so-called men of God have failed woefully in their prophetic mission to speak against social injustice and corruption.  Instead, they praise and worship the “money bags”.

 

            Furthermore, ritual killing and human sacrifice for money is very rampant in the Nigerian society.  Amos was vehemently against this dastardly act among the Israelites of old. Ritual killing has come to stay in the society as a way of making fast and bloody money. It is the topic sentence or subject-matter in most of our home videos in contemporary Nigeria. This shows that this negative phenomenon has come to be embraced as a normal practice, especially among the adherents of the traditional religions. Unfortunately some who engage in this practice bear Christian names.

 

In addition, social injustice rears its ugly head at every level of the Nigerian society.  Our churches are even involved. While some pastors and other ministers of God swim in opulence, their workers or employees are very poorly remunerated. Social injustice actually began from the secular society, but has since crept into the church. The nation is sufficiently rich to enable her pay meaningful and just wages to her workers, but the legislators allot huge salaries to themselves to the detriment of the poor masses.

 

There is no respect for the rule of law.  People commit myriads of unlawful acts with impunity.  In fact, there is a situation of lawlessness and anarchy in the nation.

 

Then, the high rate of unemployment, especially among able-bodied youth, has given rise to frustration, despair, armed banditry and kidnapping, etc. The youth themselves have imbibed a culture of violence, drug addiction and sexual immorality. It is said that “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop”.  This is exactly the situation of most Nigerian youth.

 

Unfortunately, the judiciary that is supposed to be responsible for dispensing justice is in shambles.  Most of our judges receive bribes and pervert justice.  To such corrupt judges, Amos speaks, “Woe to those who turn judgment to wormwood, and cast justice to the ground.  They hate him who reproves…and abhors him who speaks the truth, oppressing the just, accepting bribes…you have built houses of hewn stones but you shall not dwell in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their vine (Amos 5:7-11).  Indeed, the list of such unrighteous acts is endless!

 

What can be done to arrest this ugly situation?  In the first place, there must be good governance—the kind of political dispensation that has the welfare of the people at heart.  Once there is justice, so many crimes will be curtailed, if not obliterated. If the government is ready and willing to make real and sincere sacrifice on behalf of the governed, several ills will be corrected.  Indeed, if there is justice and fair-play, other solutions will naturally follow.

 

It is certainly the bounden duty of any government to create employment opportunities for her subjects, majority of who are the youth.  Regrettably, Nigerian government does not perform well in this direction.  At present, there are millions of youth roaming the streets of the federation having no jobs.  To reduce the spate of armed robbery, assassination, kidnapping, child trafficking, women trafficking, prostitution and similar crimes, the government should create job opportunities for the teeming population of Nigerian youth.

 

Protection of life and property is another mandatory function of the government.  The government should ensure this by providing the army, police and other security agencies with the wherewithal to discharge their duties in this direction.

 

Finally, for our country Nigeria to be exalted, to be a great nation, to be truly the “Giant of Africa” that it claims to be, its inhabitants must be truly righteous, by avoiding all acts of injustice, bribery and corruption; the rule of law must be obeyed; all involved in corrupt practices, whether they are politicians or ministers of God, whoever they may be, and whatever their status, must be brought to book.  There should be no “sacred cows”.  There can be no peace in Nigeria, and this country cannot be exalted, unless its inhabitants begin to do things in the right way as explained above. Nigerians must change their attitude positively for the better; they must avoid all acts that can tarnish the image of this nation, if the nation is to prosper.

 

REV. FR. MARK AJIGA