By Ituah Ighodalo
One
of the challenges of Nigeria is that there is too much evil. Too many wicked
people. We are always thinking of who to deal with and how to get back our own.
People are not bothered if other people’s lives are damaged as long as they
succeed. A lot of us have terrible hearts, deceitful hearts, untruthful,
extremely unforgiving. We wish evil on other people. We never forget what
others have done to us.
The
heart is desperately wicked; the Bible tells us that. You cannot tell what is
going on in a person's heart. Some people will eat and sleep with you, then
behind you will backstab you. Jesus himself said, ‘my friend, my very friend,
the one whom I eat with and I trust has lifted up his finger against me.’ There
was a man in Burkina Faso called Thomas Sankara. A brilliant dashing young
officer who did a coup and he had a good friend called Blaise Compaoré. He was
head of state and Compaoré was his vice. When Compaoré started plotting against
Sanakar and they Sankara that "Campari is looking for you, Campari is
going to kill you"; Sankara said it was not possible. He said “if Compaoré
is lifting up his hands against me, then I am dead" and within one month,
he was dead. Today, Compaoré is still the president of Burkina Faso and Sankara
is dead.
A
lot of people cannot be great not because they are not intelligent, not because
they are not strong and powerful, not because they are not wealthy, not because
they are not outstanding or blessed but simply because they do not have a clean
heart. Their hearts are not clean.
One
of the challenges of Nigeria today is that a lot of our leaders don't fear God.
The Bible says that because judgement is not quick to come does not mean that
God is asleep. A lot of our leaders don't fear God and therefore they think
that they can do anything they like and get away with it. God gives you a long
rope to do whatever you want and at the end of it, He will just cut that
rope and that will be the end of that. If people fear God, they would respect
man. If you don't fear God, if you are not afraid of this God, if the fear of
God does not constrain your behaviour and your attitude, you cannot think
right.
What
makes a man? A man is made up of what he thinks because what he thinks
determines what he does or what he says and what he says determines how he
behaves, and how he behaves determines who he is.
Also,
you must be fair to all. Think more of the common good and be ready to admit
your wrong. A lot of us find it difficult to admit when we are wrong. We find
it difficult to admit when we've done something bad. We find it difficult to
admit when we are at fault or when we have stumbled. We want to wish it away
and play as though it's not our fault. When something happens, we quickly rise
to our defence saying “it’s not my fault." You are very quick to blame
other people for things you know you didn't quite do right.
Another
major challenge of Nigeria is that we are selfish and self-centred. You must
have a feeling of fairness and a desire for the common good. Most of us, as
long as our interest is protected, it's alright but when it's in the interest
of the common good, we don't care. We are not interested because what we want
to do is in our own interest. That's why you are driving down the road, the
taxi driver will park in the middle of the road, be taking and offloading
passengers. That's why you are moving down the street, somebody else will stop
and disrupt the traffic. That's why somebody will say something this way and do
something the opposite way because it's all about self-interest, nobody is
ready to sacrifice for the common good. Nobody is ready to take the pain so
that everybody will gain. Nobody is ready to lose a little so that others can
benefit, all we want is what we want for ourselves.
If
we can all have pure, clean hearts, be fair to others, think more of the common
good and be less self-centred, God will begin to work wonders in our lives and
Nigeria will be the better for it.
