Nigeria: The Voice of the People and the Voice of God by Okezi Uwede-Meshack

We are a blessed people. Nigeria is one of those countries on the African Continent that has the rare blessing of having more indigenous leaders than any other. We lead on different fronts. Our economy, justice system, youth, intellectualism, infrastructure, and even civilization have very interesting outlooks but also questionable statistics. One would wonder how we are still where we are with the amount of resources we have and level of resource control that exist in theory. But two things that stand out undeniably from our bursting realities are: our people and our religion.

Nigerians are known all around the world. Our identity is illustrated with a beautifully simple flag. Our sovereignty is represented in the Coat of arms. Our harmony sonorously embedded in a two-stanza anthem and/or national prayer. Our pledge speaks of our obligations; and our Constitution, of our bond. We have outstanding men and women who have ruled the world of information technology, politics, literature, arts, entertainment and business. Our people have rich and deep cultural roots. And very linked to these roots is the deep attachment to religion, sometimes to fanatic extents with political undertones.

The National Bureau of Statistics’ National Population Estimates put our population at more than 190million as at 2016, with the larger percentage between the ages of 20 and 70. You can imagine what an active country we should have! And yes we are distinguished every year on every Continent based award: Forbes, Music Awards, Movie Awards, and even Literature prizes.

The religious facts in the country are also real and deep. We have a somewhat equal proportion of the population shared between the practiced religions. Another interesting percentage, and even among the elite intellectuals, belong to the African traditional worship systems. You can be sure that on a daily basis the Supreme Being is reached out to by most of this population concerning different personal and national matters.

What is most interesting is the fact that the national anthem has a call to divinity , the constitution declares no state religion and gives every citizen a right to practice whatever religion they desire. It would be an academic exercise to inquire into what religion with which the Anthem was written. The common denominator however is that we all believe that our problems are more than us, and “only God can save our country” from its current woes of corruption, bad leadership, deteriorating infrastructural systems, economic deficiencies, health collapse and educational quagmire.

What the above circumstances suggest is that if there is any State of the world that should have true democracy, then Nigeria should at least be a runner up. Unfortunately, we have come to see that democracy is still in its crude form, with only a few elite members of society having the power to wield political power and social decisions. Most interesting is that the internet penetration in the country is one of the highest in the region. With the global awareness towards going digital, the likely conclusion would be the ability to hear the voice of people from the pulse on the digital space. Another major clog is the level of literacy the country currently enjoys with this pumping and energetic population. An appropriate question therefore would be how literate should one be, to be aware of political, social and economic realities of the country and make conclusions out of them? Then further ask what the worth of these conclusions should be.

A proper answer to that question would explain the current realities we see. It’s quite confusing to know where exactly to stand without all the facts and statistics. All we know is that social media where a large part of us are readily available is one porous space that has democratized thoughts with large views and followership. It is agreed that these views are the views of the people in general. We see it happen with heavily contested media shows, where there is a full blown buzz for Mr. X and Miss Y wins. We have also seen it happen with politics too, we all claim to want a leader and on the day set aside for elections, we tweet funny pictures of long queues and allow the street choose our leaders.

I thought to play around this idea: can we say that the internet has changed this age long maxim of what the voice of God is? Would we say that our volksgeist has been maleficently cloned with the times leading us to be self-deceived in our self-determination quest? I would in reaction to my questions restate that we never changed as a people. The internet has only come to amplify our ignorance, evasiveness and mirror to us our true nature. We are vocal, vibrant and vehement complainants, lacking will power and grit to pursue causes that are for the greatest number.

The maxim is true, the voice of naivety we exude is only God telling us that we need to have a rethink of our values as individuals and collectively as a people. I am sure we are not as violent as people think, I am sure we are very tolerant and forgiving as a people, but we need to move past these stereotypes. We need to become more active and goal driven, purposeful and loving, gracious and persistent!

We will succeed!

Source: Lawyard