By Fr. Ali Nnaemeka, OMI
Nigerian Missionary Oblate Fr.
Nnaemeka offers insights about the Nigeria presidential elections which has
been postponed to March 28, 2015.
One of the problems of our
generation is the failure to understand what counts; failure to focus on the
essentials. For a long time now, Nigerians seem to have focused their attention
on less important things, forgetting the essentials. Everybody has been tamed
and forced to fight a war that does not exist. Politics has become the order of
the day. In every platform people are obliged to politicize issues, whether
they want it or not. In fact, we have all become actively partisan- supporting a candidate that may not even know
that we exist.
Even the unemployed youths
have all been lured into advertising, a mediatized non-existing massive job
creation, which cannot benefit them in anyway. They all speak of a President to
be, whose credibility has no bound, even if they do not know how he is going to
carry out all his political propaganda. Even the so-called religious leaders
have all been conditioned to see nothing except who becomes the next President
of Nigeria. God has even revealed to somewhat He has planned to do to whoever
votes a particular candidate. All we are yet to see so far, is when a Church
choir will sing Vote Buhari! or Vote Jonathan!, even when it is not
clear if they really have a plan for a united and better Nigeria.
Our Nigerian Catholic Bishops
make a right timely appeal as expressed in the newly released Communiqué:GOOD FAMILIES MAKE GOOD NATIONS at the
End of the First Plenary Meeting of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria
(CBCN) at the Daughters of Divine Love Retreat and Conference Centre, Lugbe,
Abuja (February 20 – 26, 2015)
“The time has come to realize that Nigeria is bigger
than any individual, bigger than any of her ethnic, religious or political
groupings. Our diversity is a beauty to celebrate in gratitude to God.
Every Nigerian has a right to be different in so far as such difference is not
inimical to the common good and the ideals we share in common. This is
the time to reflect and to identify those ideals summed up in the words of our
old national anthem: “Though tribe and tongue [and creed] may differ, in brotherhood
we stand.” Faced with the challenge of nationhood, let us enlarge our
traditional African concept of family. Let us liberate ourselves from the
shackles of ethnocentrism, of malicious ethnic and religious solidarity. Let
us, in our diversity, recognize our common humanity. For the sake of our
children, and for the sake of generations yet unborn, let us see one another,
irrespective of the families to which we belong, as members of the same
family—the family of Nigeria”. See more at: http://www.cnsng.org/viewnews.php?
We have been staged one
against the other in a country that should have been one.. No one asks the prospective contestants which
Nigeria they are campaigning to govern? A country divided between North and
South? A country divided between Christians and Muslims? A country where
political party members have no plan or intention, than to fight each other?
Who speaks now of our dear
Chibok girls who have now spent ten months in captivity? Who talks about the
deceased people of Baga? Who cares about the Nigerian refugees in the Chad,
Cameroun and Niger?
Our concern now is how to get our Permanent Voters Card –
which is very good – but then, what about our fellow Nigerians who have been
forced to quit their territories without burying their loved ones? Nigerians have lost contact with reality. I
am afraid we have already forgotten what really matters.
Ali C.
Nnaemeka, omi
