As I settled into my flight between Leeds Bradford Airport and Amsterdam Schiphol, I started to examine everything. I looked out through the window and saw something outside that fascinated me - the clouds. Somehow, I started trying to find answers in AYT's questions in the fascination I am seeing through the windows of my seat. Compelling and alluring. The flashing, snowy smiles of her beckons as the arms of a long lost love. Exposing the peace resident in her domain, unmoved by the streaming lines tailing each passing craft, she exudes a beauty unrivalled. Even at the edge of the flying machine where I sat, I can feel the inviting peace and serenity of her world. I can sense the carefree mien of her. I can hear her say to me that she cares less of man's invasion of her territory for she has so much more than we can take away from her. She has so much peace the sound of jet engines cannot overwhelm. Outstretched beyond my sighting, undulating yet symmetrical, flashing and colourful, wondrous and yet fearful. The prominence of the clouds are simply amorphous and absorbing. The freeways are so enchanting it takes more than eyes to navigate. You need a mind; tuned and focussed. In this absorbing encounter lies my answer: gods must live there. The clouds is, simply, the abode of gods.
And my mind began to wander to more questions: which gods? And more answers: the gods we create. Neither religious nor atheistic, the fullness of my probing mind encountered answers in the clouds. We create our gods. Part of being human is the ability to create gods. We create gods because we are simply overwhelmed by things we cannot control or confine. The paradox is that in doing that we confine those gods. Writing from the worldview of my Yoruba upbringing, we create gods either on the basis of where we want to touch but cannot; places we want to reach but unable to; things we would like to uncover but lack capacity to; or the ideal we desire/detest but can't/wouldn't fulfil. The latter would explain how we create different kinds of gods on the opposite ends of the good-evil continuum. If we desire riches but cannot attain it, we treat the wealthy as gods or superhuman (at the very least). We detest poverty and believe those who are poor have offended some kind of gods. The Yoruba Olorun is not necessarily God but a god - meaning the owner of the clouds - the god of the sky. The Yoruba "orun" is the sky that he can see and not the things beyond that. There is a bigger God in the Yoruba pantheon - Olodumare, the creator. Though a god is some kind of deity, the Yorubas confine their gods which explains why there are many such gods: for iron, for trees, for thunder, for rains and all. Each operate within their precinct and do not influence things outside. Only the Olodumare is the God that remains unconfined and therefore supreme since He is the creator of all things and all beings so He lives beyond the confines of His creation. Olorun owns "orun" and he is the lord there just as Olu-aiye owns the world and he is the lord there. The god of the oceans is Olokun and Osun is one of the goddesses of the rivers and depending on what river there is perhaps another god or goddess.
Man is so occupied with life that he believes there is something living everywhere and anywhere. And that creates another little problem. He cannot prove what and which life. He therefore resorts to what he knows best to do - he creates a god who lives in that "world" or who owns the world. From ancient Greece, medieval Egypt, Roman civilization, Biblical era, Mayan times, pre and post modern Africa we are all obsessed with the art of creating god for everything we cannot explain to everywhere we cannot inhabit. No one can live inside the fury of molten rock, lava and erupting volcano, so there is the god, Vulcan, who possesses the ability to reside inside its fiery streams and abode in the bosom of its blazing magma. Lightening is not a phenomenon we are familiar with and when its flares lit the skies and its trails leave destructions, we are awed. So, we have a god that rules that - Zeus in Greek mythology and Sango in Yoruba mythology. Man cannot rule the seas and is often found at odds in its perilous waves. The mind of man simply doesn't know how to calm the fury of the surface of the oceans or comprehend the mysteries trapped beneath its depth - here comes Poseidon in Greece or Olokun in Yoruba ably assisted with Yemoja. The winds can be furious and tempestous, in ancient Greece Aeolus is the god and Aja (the small god with fury as wings, mercy in his heart and knowledge in its pouch) is the ruler of the whirlwind and tornadoes. As far as man is concerned, something else must live where we cannot or exercise dominion where we are unable - and the nature and kind of that life must be a god. In our subconscious, only another kind of life, that of a god, is capable of doing things we cannot do. I can go on and on (and will still do as I expand this thesis in future). But in the meantime, this will do. Now to my drift...
Nigeria has suddenly become a place where ordinary humans cannot live and we must begin to recognize those who live there as some kind of gods. Every god in man's creation are only expressions of the things he cannot comprehend, the forces he cannot control or the places he cannot live in. Nigeria has become a place we do not understand and processes we cannot comprehend, she is ruled by forces that are beyond control and whose deeds and misdeeds transcend our perception. And when it comes to living in her, rational, straight thinking people do not make her a place of choice. What goes on daily in every facet of life is clearly beyond the limit of normal humans. It is simply a place where the paradox of living is beyond comprehension: neither peaceful nor at war, rich yet in abject poverty, growing yet under-developed, expanding yet with severely limited opportunities. A nation that is simply bipolar, paradoxical and perplexing. Whatever is simple and straightforward elsewhere is labyrinthine in Nigeria. Whatever is impossible elsewhere is the easily achievable in Nigeria. In Nigeria, God is worshipped with the same fervency and enthusiasm as money; and all at the same time, the same place and by the same entities. The number of places of worship outstrips businesses and services. The same people who stream into churches and mosques every Sunday and every Friday are the first to kill, steal and disobey every verse of the ten commandments.
Unlike the cloud that is plainly absorbing, Nigeria is filled with gullies and troughs. Daily life is resonate with disasters lurking in corners. Challenges are always before you. We must, therefore, only see those who live there as gods because how they traverse each day is either mysterious or miraculous depending on where you stand on the Euro-Christian divide. The ability to pass through each day cannot just be human, it must be of the gods. In all the years I have been on planet earth, every new day, every new week, every new month and every new year in Nigeria has always been worse than the one before it. Every president in Nigeria has been worse than the one before him and every governor has been worse than his predecessor. Even when a president or governor is re-elected, he still manages to perform worse than himself. The only fat people in Nigeria today are those in power - fat in their bank accounts and fat in their physique. Because they feed fat on the people they are to govern. The unthinkable is a daily occurrence in Nigeria. There are little wars being fought everywhere by everyone and every time. You fight wars at home, on the road, at work and even in places of worship. Churches are bombed, mosques are attacked, kidnappers prowl, aircraft drops from the sky, politics is war, campaigns grounds are for battle. The mega party, APC, is not different from the omega party, PDP. Look closely well, they all want masses they can dominate and oppress further while they are building their own fiefdom, amassing wealth and killing the future. And is anyone thinking about tomorrow. Maybe the only thought of that in Nigeria as of today is of war. A looming war of attrition and unspeakable violence that is soon to commence. The generalissimos of that war are already sounding the gongs of war - Diepreye Alamieyeisegha, Shekau, MASSOB, OPC, and all.
But to redeem Nigeria, she needs another god to rise from among them: a god so unlike them. A god who can redeem not just Nigerians but redeem himself as well. They need a god that can redefine what the confines of gods is and confine himself to a lesser space on the good-evil continuum: a god that will move more to the side of good and close the space that points towards the evil. A god that can resist adulation and yet reinvent what it is to be a god of the Nigerian space and the Nigerian environment. A god that seeks something eternal beyond wealth and beyond power. A god that can look at the unborn children in the wombs of those living in the poverty space that is Nigerian and say my mission is to create a new country for these. A god that understands the futility of ambitions and the limitation of all earthlings. A god that can somehow manage the transition from being an incapacitated god to a redeemable essence. A god that can find a better legacy in sacrifice than in history making. A god that knows that the gods of equity and the gods of law are not equal. Will that god be Jonathan Goodluck? Or will he still be a god that is purely and always in the colours and airs of Nigeria - odious and offensive?
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