William ABORISADE

The visit and participation of the Kaduna State governor, Uba Sani, at a Christian programme in Kaduna, speaks, positively, to events in our country today. There has been so much about religion, religious polarization and religious extremism. The exact cause and purpose of the polarization is hard to define, beyond being another of the many existing sentiments, which rule our public life. Religion and ethnicity are two major sentiments which have ruled and ruined our social life for decades. In workplace they largely define who to employ and who to promote, turning our society into one run by mere opportunists lacking in requisite skills or, even, anything to show for their lives. This, in turn, makes our country one of the world’s worst human habitats, on account of a dysfunctional infrastructure.

Religion is a platform to learn about a power, different and beyond all physical powers that we know in the physical realm. Invisible but all powerful, getting to understand God, surely requires learning from the experiences of those who encountered God, through miracles, notably those, in history, who observed the unexplainable and documented their experiences. Any life event which violates common sense or any existing human theory is, ordinarily, categorized as a miracle. Such events exist today but it takes the perception of God to categorize them. Rather, in ignorance, we see such events through the prism of luck, ingenuity, or some other events, which present to us as humans. To the extent than man, continuously, strives to understand his environment better, ingenuity isn’t irrelevant.

Every culture, in life, identifies strange and explanation-defying events, within its domain and ascribe to them, the acts of God, who is called by different names in the different cultures and dialects. It, therefore sounds ridiculous for one culture to expect other cultures to accept its, as a standard! This ridicule of an event is what religious intolerance all about and it’s distinct from sermonizing, a process of persuading others to believe in God, which is done in every religious culture. When people resort to the use of force, it is incivility, crudity and arrogance, all combined.  Such uncivilized acts are, rightly, dubbed terrorism in every modern culture and treated as such! There is no place for such acts in any civilization, nor does it represent any, that God, the Almighty, portends.

In Nigeria, religion has become a tool used for fakery, mischief and deceit, with ungodly intents. The second lesson of the Roman Catholic Catechism, a copy of which was given, as the first material, in any Roman Catholic primary school, was about the habitat of God. We are told:

God is everywhere, He knows everything, up to, and including the obscurity of our heart

This description says much about the uniqueness of God, notably that God is not just another man. Having witnessed several events of life-defying explanations, we can only take solace in this definition.

A recent lecture on the Gospel, delivered by the former Vice President, Professor Osinbajo, said it all. Few events, in recent times, spoke to reality more than that lecture, in which he emphasized that through the work we do, we serve our God! Everywhere you find yourself, everything you do, is a platform to serve God, so, you either do or you don’t, it’s a choice! The presence of Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna, in the Christian gathering, says much about his person, his intellect and education/upbringing. It is commendable.

Extremism, in any form, is a primitive act which is symptomatic of poor upbringing, poor intellect and underdevelopment. Unfortunately, the time and resources being wasted on extremism and efforts to tame it, everywhere, if diverted into welfare, would improve on the peoples’ lives, thus enabling a peaceful environment.