By Sr. Teresa Okure, SHCJ
“Blessed are you who are considered poor, because the kingdom of God” and Nigeria, is yours, a gift from God which nobody can take away from you. Keep “hungering and thirsting for justice” (truth in relationship between you and the leaders, your employees), practice social justice and do all in your power with righteousness and integrity to reclaim your country “for you shall be satisfied” (cf. Matt 5:3, 6).
May these owners of the country have the faith in God to continue striving, believing that Nigeria shall surely be freed from the grip and grasp of evil. Amen.
The first group of really truly poor Nigerians are those who know or should know that the government and politicians have stolen wholesale their heritage, given to all free of charge by God with no strings attached. Yet they allow themselves to be bought and enslaved by a few ravenously greedy Nigerians. In the slave industry, the purchaser pays money to the seller/slave owner, while the slave has no say. Here, these Nigerians freely sell themselves to their slave masters. Then the ravenously greedy Nigerians, having hijacked the national wealth and amassed it to themselves, now dish out to these self-enslaved Nigerians tokens and crumbs from their stolen patrimony as palliatives to anaesthetise or benumb their minds. They happily receive it with gratitude. Next these politicians give them further palliatives as incentive to sing their praises; to some they give guns to attack those who stand up to them, regard them as thieves and reject their palliating and anaesthetising offers. They reduce them to serve as men and women in waiting for them. And they feel honoured to do so. What a real pity.
These Nigerians have allowed themselves to be dehumanised, and their God-given minds, brains, intelligence and common sense to be stolen and taken captive by the political robbers! Truly pitiable. These people are not only from the lower class of society whose impoverished condition the politicians use as weapon to further enslave them, such as the bandits, Boko Haram agents, kidnappers, herdsmen, etcetera. They include, sad to say, the professors who rigged the last presidential elections at the polling stations and INEC office, the judges of the appeal and supreme courts who sold out their professional worth, human dignity and integrity for paltry jagaban bags of money. They include ministers in church and state, officers, and government employees: all sycophants who sing the praises of the political robbers for paltry and passing gain. Those who stand at attention ready to carry out the whims and orders of the political bandits.
These people know themselves. More importantly, God knows them. Of them Scripture says, “To be a partner of a thief is to hate one’s own life; one hears the victim’s curse [justice betrayed?] but says nothing. The fear of others lays a snare [for oneself]” (Prov. 29:24-25).
And again, “What does it profit anyone to gain the whole world but suffer the loss of their own life?” (Matt 16:26).
Nonetheless there is still time and room for them to repent, to get out of the net into which they have put themselves. They can liberate themselves by coming out openly to confess what they did and be freed by truth, which “alone sets free”, as Jesus tells his people (John 8:31-32) and Pilate who knew the truth but ignored it for fear of losing his job and friendship with Caesar (John 19:17). They need the courage and will to be free, free from fear and from the grip of their political captors and slave masters. This group of poor Nigerians truly need our sincere prayers.
The second group of really truly poor Nigerians are the corrupt political thieves themselves. They think that their true worth and power lies in blatantly, recklessly stealing and appropriating for themselves, their families and their stooges the jackpot of the nation’s wealth. By so doing they allow themselves to be conscripted by the god Mammon into its destructive service. They think they are doing well for themselves by amassing enormous wealth at the expense of the masses of Nigerians, citizens of this beloved country. They rejoice that they have stolen and stored away enough wealth to last them and their descendants till the end of the world, and that nothing can be done about it by Nigerian citizens, their employers. But they do not know that they are of all peoples the poorest human being and the most to be pitied. Of them Scripture says as a warning:
You say to yourself: I am rich, I have made a fortune and I have everything I want, never realising that you are wretchedly and pitiably poor, and blind and naked too. I warn you, buy from me the gold that has been tested in the fire to make you truly rich, and white robes to cloth you and hide your shameful nakedness, and ointment to put on your eyes to enable you to see. I reprove and train those whom I love, so repent in real earnest. (Rev 2:17-19).
And again, by way of advice:
Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and woodworm destroy them and thieves can break in and steal. But store up treasure for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworms destroy them and thieves cannot break in and steal. For wherever your treasure is there your heart will be (Matt 6:19-21).
Let whoever has ears to hear, hear God inviting them: “Free yourselves from willing enslavement to the god Mammon, from cultism and all the works and pomp of Satan. The choice is yours”. Truth is that they know who they are; they know what they have done to themselves and the nation. They have sold their lives to Satan. Ultimately, they cannot be happy in the grip of Satan and evil. Yet they prefer to adamantly, boastfully, arrogantly and heartlessly remain where they are. God knows what they have done brazenly in broad daylight and in secret, in the darkness of night, the realm of activities of “all who do evil” (John 3:19-20; 1 John 2:9-11). But darkness is not dark to God. With God “the night shines clear as the day” (Ps 139:10) and even brighter than day since God created light (Gen 1:3), and in God is Light (cf. John 1:4-5). The choice is theirs. Our duty is to pray, pray, pray for them, for truly they know not the damage they do to themselves and to the nation. They truly need deliverance from self-impoverishment, self-dehumanisation and willing enslavement by evil.
The fourth group of impoverished, deprived, dehumanised human beings are not Nigerians. These are foreign marauders, nations and multi-national corporations whose endless greed has deprived them of the sense of truth, integrity and justice, and makes them believe that their only hope of survival as a people or nation is to do all in their power to keep Africa impoverished by buying their leaders and continually looting its inexhaustible resources. They operate through such establishments as the IMF and the World Bank, and use all kinds of ruse to achieve their goal: illnesses to exterminate Africans (HIV/AIDS, Ebola, COVID19), GMO crops and products; genetically modified human beings (AI). They evolve policies and procedures that allow them to serve as advisers to African rulers, their poppets, whom they have succeeded in conscripting into the service of their destructive agenda for Africa with the collaboration of greedy Nigerians.
They instigate endless and sporadic conflicts and wars in Africa, load gullible Africans with sophisticated arms and ginger them to fight and kill one another, as a strategy to divert the attention of these Africans from their criminal activities in the continent. Thus while the intertribal, inter-political or whatever wars they instigate go on, they are free to loot the continent with impunity. Then they come in the guise of well-meaning advisers and mediators to the warring parties, while their real intention is to serve their benumbing palliatives to the warring nations and their rulers and continue to exploit them. The truth is that they know what they are doing. So does God.
How do we grade their level of self-dehumanisation and impoverishment? The worst is that they project themselves as the civilised people, whereas they are the most inhuman of human beings. Jesus calls them false prophets, “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (Matt 7:15); “hired shepherds”, “thieves and bandits” whose sole interest is “to steal, and kill, and destroy”; in contrast to him, the Good/Beautiful Shepherd, who comes to give “life in ever increasing abundance”. And lay down his life for his sheep (John 10:10-11, 15).
These foreign marauders also need our genuine prayers for their conversion. For they too are God’s children; created “in God’s image and likeness” (Gen 1:26-27; 5:2-3) like every human being. They too are offered the grace to free themselves from Satan, the originator of lies whose sole agenda is to engineer human beings to dehumanise themselves out of jealousy. For humans, created in “God’s own image and likeness”, are higher in nature and stature than Satan who is merely a spiritual being like the angels, but not divine. Human beings, created in God’s image and likeness, are destined to become flesh and blood children of God (John 1:12-13), in Christ “the new humanity” (Eph 2:15). They are divine. These people need our prayers so that they can be liberated, set free from the grip of Satan and all its cohorts and legions. Truth is that Satan can do absolutely nothing against human beings without the cooperation of humans themselves.
Satan cannot compete with God. In its pride it cannot tolerate that humans, mere creatures from “the dust of the ground” (Gen 2:7) are raised higher than it in glory and status (cf. Revelation 12). Satan therefore spends its entire energy trying to conscript humans into its service for their own self destruction and lowering of status. In the guise of the god Mammon, greed for power and wealth, it makes humans serve it instead of giving it the quit order from their lives as Jesus did when tempted to surrender himself to Satan in order to quickly become worldly rich: “Away with you, Satan” (Matt 4:10).
So beloved sisters and brothers, God’s dearly beloved children, if you are a human being, wherever you are located, if you truly believe that you were created, given life by God, not by Satan; and for Christians, if you truly believe that God out of pure and unmerited love and mercy has made you God’s substantial child in Christ and his sibling (John 20:17; 1 John 3:1-2), then rise up, wake up from your slumber. Reject the appeals of the god Mammon in all its shapes, forms and guises offered through dehumanised and impoverished political leaders powered by cultism and corruption. Reject the apparently lucrative offers of the god Mammon that makes you sell your divine heritage, dignity and worth for a pot of pottage as Esau did (Gen 25:29-34). Say “No” to the paltry offers of Satan offered through captive and self-enslaved politicians who not only deprive you of your material goods, but buy and imprison your humanity and conscience thus doubly and triply exploiting you.
You, exploitative politicians, whom Satan has conscripted fully into its deadly service to serve as its chief agents and executive officers to impoverish your fellow citizens: wake up, rise up, shake off your insatiable greed for wealth and power that has turned you into a money monger and deprived you of your humanity when in reality you are created a human being in “God’s own image and likeness”. If you want to, you can do it with God’s ever ready grace, mercy and compassion waiting for you. Have in you, revive in you the desire and will to be truly free. And take concrete actions to free yourselves from the lust for power, wealth and false self-worth.
You, foreign exploiters, whatever your methods of exploiting Nigeria and Africa, remember that you too are created in God’s own image and likeness; know that by your nefarious activities in Africa, you have allowed yourself to be imprisoned by greed and the pride that dares you to think and make yourself equal to God. Know that in doing so you have allowed yourself to be used as instrument by the Satan to administer its deadly poison to yourself in the first instance and then to your fellow human beings in Nigeria, Africa and elsewhere. Muster in you the God-given will to be free. You were made for life, not for self-destruction. Remember that you did not give yourself life; that the mind you are using to play God was given to you by the Creator God. So be humble, realise who you are and truly desire to be saved, liberated from the grip of Satan,
You the truly wealthy Nigerians, who are regarded as the poor: Rejoice that you have not accepted the bait and palliatives offered by politicians to dehumanise yourselves and become enslaved by them. You are rightly resolutely protesting against the theft of the nation by mindless politicians. Know that you are the richest citizens in this country, because the country belongs to you. Rejoice that you have not allowed yourselves to be captured and imprisoned by the agents of Satan. Pray, pray, pray for the liberation of your fellow brothers and sisters who have allowed themselves to be kidnapped, bought wholesale by Satan and conscripted into its deadly service powered by cultism and corruption, dehumanised and deprived of the sense of right and wrong, deprived of the sense of true self-worth, the self that God created in God’s own image and likeness. May your genuine prayers for them set them free for good to the glory of God. Amen.
We need a human revolution. We have had industrial revolution, technological revolution, scientific revolution, now AI revolution. Today we need a human revolution in which, whoever thinks they are human beings, will join forces to reject, not fight against, but simply reject the deadly offers of Satan that look tempting and lucrative, but are deadly poisons to all who receive and embrace its offers. We need a revolution in which all human beings will assume personal responsibility to be truly human in God’s own image and likeness and abhor all the works, deceptive pomp and allurements of Satan.
If you are a human being, know that you are destined to be a new creation in Christ, “the new humanity” (Eph 2:15). He brings this new humanity to all humans: “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14) so that all flesh, all humans, in receiving him might become God’s flesh and blood children (John 1:12-13). God did this by God’s pure, deliberate, deliberative and unsolicited love and grace. Let whoever loves self, loves life, reject wholesale the empty allurements of Satan and rise to the greatness God destines for them; be they Nigerians, Africans or other human beings globally.
For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, he is God; who formed the earth and made it, who set it firm. He did not create in to be a chaos. He formed it to be lived in. I am the Lord, and there is no other (Isa 45:18).
Let each reader examine themselves to know into which of the categories listed in this submission they belong; and take appropriate action to realise God’s will for them personally, for Nigerians and for humanity at large.
May God give us all humans the grace to wake up, rise up and work concertedly together to become in solidarity truly rich in God whose wealth and wisdom have no measure or limit (Rom 11:33-15). May we muster the will to work together to make Nigeria, Africa and the world at large a happy place to be lived in, as God intended it for us. Amen.
Sr. Teresa Okure, is a Professor of Scripture and member of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus (SHCJ)
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