By Abdu Labaran Malumfashi.
The political, business and the economic classes seem to loose sight of the fact that a land without a people is in another word known as a wasteland.
And what is a wasteland, if one may ask?
A wasteland is a society uninhabited by a people, and therefore the exploiters, manipulators and abusers of the Commonwealth will have nobody and nowhere to ply their trade, whatever that may be.
This is a fact that most of them seem to have so missed in their blind rush to rob the common people of everything, including their sanity.
The religious leaders are part of this ruthless group, but decided not to mention their insidious role in the exploitation of the commoner because we have spoken about them in an earlier article on the subject of corruption.
The word ‘corruption’ is not supposed to be spoken in the same breath with the two words ‘religious leaders’, but what is abnormal elsewhere is very normal in Nigeria, especially when it comes down to the exploitation of the common people.
It is a known fact that despite its abundant resources and potential for extreme wealth, Nigeria is one of the backward nations in which only an insignificant number of people benefit from the Commonwealth to their satisfaction and, above all, wish.
This is the way they want it, because theirs is a group, regardless of members’ religion and race, that does not welcome gate crushers, until it is absolutely necessary to do so. And so is mostly done by way of marriages.
It is like a secret society, the Free Masons for example, the secret of which it does not want outsiders to know and share with others outside the clique. It is a clique that non members are fiercely not allowed to know what goes on in it. Along the way, a non member may even loose a life in the members fierce protection of their exclusive conclave.
As stated earlier, when marriage calls with a ‘commoner’, members try all they can to disallow it, but when that is not achieved, it is reluctantly agreed upon until the ‘common’ party is fully integrated into the conclave. And so, a new member is the reluctantly born into the otherwise exclusive group.
And all of the members of the group belong to one religion or the other, with, maybe, some holding firm to the traditional beliefs. Still, they feast on the Commonwealth as if it was their own to do as they please.
It would seem that we believe in a different God. Muslims among us believe that our God is a just God, Who does not condone injustice on one over another, and that everyone must account for their actions in what we generally call ‘the hear after’ before God (SWT).
It is my belief that some members of this group do not believe in accounting for what they did while they were on this earth, even though those who believe in Christianity believe that Prophet Isa (AS), or the one they call Jesus Christ ‘died for their sins’, and can therefore do as they please without the fear of punishment in the hear after.
This much is evident in their blind quest to exploit the common person, and they keep on ‘acquiring’ from the Commonwealth that which they, their children and grandchildren can not spend in a sensible manner in their lifetime, try as they may.
Some of them are even in their late eighties and nineties, with many of them $ billionaires, but they keep on accumulating money as if it going out of fashion. Their greed knows no bounds as their actions seem to suggest that they can not have enough of it.
Yet, the common person celebrate these people as heroes, which gives them the licence to continue their exploitation (of the Common person) of what by the laws of the land belongs to all.
Celebrated on these shores, these people steal the Commonwealth blind and bring out a pittance by way of supposed charity or ‘assistance’ to the poor in the name of help.
How is it possible to help a person from the proceeds of what you ingeniously or forcefully stole from him? This only happens in the land of the Mafia or in Nigeria, which is controlled by its own mafia.
The earlier the Nigerian mafia is done away with, the better for the common person, now in the pole position to utilise, defend and enjoy the Commonwealth, as the laws of the land meant it to be.
Malam Malumfashi wrote from Abuja.