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As the country prepares for another milestone in its romance with sovereign organised crime in 2027, the authors of this script must pray that Nigeria\u2019s excluded and expended do not decide to ask for what is duly theirs. For if they could, they will present the country for the first time with a proposition for which there are not enough prayers or bullets.<\/p>\n
My ill-fated country, those you have affronted<\/p>\n
with them you must be equalized by sharing the same affront.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Those you have denied<\/p>\n
human rights,<\/p>\n
Allowed to stand before you but never invited in \u2013<\/p>\n with all of them you must be equalized by sharing the same affront<\/p>\n Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (Song Offerings) 108<\/a> (1910)<\/p>\n Nigeria is a country of pious people and sacred cows. On Fridays, its mosques are filled with prayer and Tafsir<\/a>. On Sundays, the churches take over with song offerings and evocative homilies<\/a>. The illegitimate child of the m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois<\/a> between George Taubman Goldie; his employee, Frederick Lugard; and their shared mistress, Flora Shaw, it was a matter of fate that the country would live in interminably fruitless search of prayer and miracle.<\/p>\n Written in 1959 by Lillian Jane Williams<\/a> and scored by Frances Benda<\/a>, Nigeria\u2019s first national anthem was ultimately a failed effort at inventing a civic prayer to expiate for the original sin that afflicted the country\u2019s birth. Its third stanza ended in an invocation to the \u201cGod of all creation\u201d to \u201cgrant this our one request\u201d and \u201chelp us to build a nation where no man is oppressed.\u201d It was as if this prayer forgot that the country had women too, not to mention children.<\/p>\n Under this prayerful invocation, Nigeria raced through a pogrom, a civil war, and four coups (including one unsuccessful one) in its first 20 years of Independence, accounting for the killing of three of its first four Heads of State and three of its first four heads of government. As a prayer, it did not seem to hold God\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n Rather than investigate or address why the prayer appeared to have suffered derailment on its way upstairs, the country sought replacement therapy. In 1978, it retired that anthem in favour of another one.<\/p>\n Invented by a committee, the fate of this second anthem<\/a> was sealed at birth when it was arranged by the Police Band. Like its predecessor, it prays to the \u201cGod of creation\u201d to help us \u201cto build a nation where peace and justice shall reign.\u201d Launched into a transition and bridled under austerity, this second anthem became a totem to treason; and a song offering for a succession of military usurpers whose primary vocation was to sow constitutional instability and sunder the nation.<\/p>\n Two decades into its life, it was evident that the second anthem did not cut much ice with the Heavens either, as the country\u2019s problems seemed to multiply in direct proportion to the frequency of its rendition. The response was a multiplicity of prayer projects to save Nigeria. Indeed, Nigeria\u2019s second military ruler and its first four-star army General, Yakubu Gowon, retired to a ministry known as \u201cNigeria Prays\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was, however, Nigeria\u2019s largest Christian denomination, the Catholic Church, which gave full vent to the enterprise of praying for Nigeria. Five days after the military annulled the outcome of the June 12, 1993 elections and as the country laboured under existential uncertainty, On 27 June 1993, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria launched the \u201cPrayer for Nigeria in Distress<\/a>\u201d as their unique contribution to Nigeria\u2019s search for sovereign safe harbour.<\/p>\n 33 years of this ritual have not made much dent on the natural logic of Nigeria\u2019s sovereign misadventure. During that period, lots of Catholic priests and bishops have \u2013 with full knowledge \u2013 blessed politicians who rigged elections and collected car gifts and cathedrals procured with stolen public funds. Nigeria\u2019s sacred cows continue to receive their benedictions from pious men who offer prayers to save the country from the doom to which their acts logically condemn it.<\/p>\n This \u201cprayer\u201d<\/a> confesses on behalf of Nigerians that \u201c[W]e are sorry for all the sins We have committed and for the good deeds We failed to do\u201d, but pleads with the Almighty to \u201ckeep us safe from the punishments we deserve\u201d, without giving any compelling reasons why He should. It admits that \u201cwe are weighed down not only by uncertainties, but also by moral, economic and political problems\u201d, begs Him to \u201cbe merciful to us your people\u201d, and, with shameless lack of self-awareness, asks Him to \u201cspare this Nation Nigeria from chaos, anarchy and doom.\u201d<\/p>\n This prayer is at once a summary of the Nigerian condition and a brutal piece of self-indictment. Its authors clearly understood that the natural logic of the Nigeria\u2019s trajectory is \u201cchaos, anarchy and doom.\u201d What is not clear is why they believed that the way to spare the country these consequences was through a ritual of gratuitous weekly prayer incantations.<\/p>\n 33 years of this ritual have not made much dent on the natural logic of Nigeria\u2019s sovereign misadventure. During that period, lots of Catholic priests and bishops have \u2013 with full knowledge \u2013 blessed politicians who rigged elections and collected car gifts and cathedrals procured with stolen public funds. Nigeria\u2019s sacred cows continue to receive their benedictions from pious men who offer prayers to save the country from the doom to which their acts logically condemn it.<\/p>\n As if goaded by a clan of shamans, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu disinterred<\/a> the first anthem in 2024 \u2013 45 years after it was first retired. He has since then turned the country into a gaggle of \u201cprayer warriors<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Most recently, Kebbi State Governor, Nasir Idris, has called for \u201cdivine intervention<\/a>\u201d to save the country from insecurity. As the last Ramadan season entered its final furlong, Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum, \u201ccalled on Muslims and Christians in the state to intensify prayers against rising\u00a0 insecurity issues<\/a>.\u201d Not to be outdone, Benue State Governor \u2013 a Catholic Priest \u2013 preaches \u201csustained prayers<\/a>\u201d as the answer to insecurity in his state.<\/p>\n When he was Governor of Zamfara State in 2022, Bello Matawalle funded 97 clerics<\/a> to Saudi Arabia \u201cto go and pray for a stoppage of banditry\u201d in order to \u201cdiversify strategies to restore peace and security in the state.\u201d Today, as Nigeria\u2019s minister of state for Defence, his tried and tested playbook bears remarkable fruit for a country affronted!<\/p>\n But the real prayer for Nigeria was arguably written four years before the Amalgamation that begat it in 1914 and over ten thousands kilometres away, in a collection of chants by Bengali mystic, Rabindranath Tagore, published under the title \u201cGitanjali.\u201d<\/p>\n The tale of Tagore, India and Nigeria makes for a most unlikely coincidence. Tagore was born in 1861, the same year in which the British possessed Lagos. He died in 1941, just six years before the British project in India ended in that most bloody Partition<\/a>, the same year in which the Nigerian Regiment helped to restore the Emperor in Ethiopia. From Tagore\u2019s India, the British exported many things to Nigeria, including the Criminal Code<\/a>, the Verandah<\/a>, and Frederick Lugard<\/a>.<\/p>\n All this grasping for the Almighty reflects the reality that the Nigerian State has never cared nor existed for its underclass. It has only ever treated them as both sub-human and expendable.<\/p>\n It is, therefore, not at all un-natural that Tagore\u2019s prayer for Nigeria was also made in India. Among his collection in Gitanjali, Tagore pens a trilogy of patriotic songs: Gitanjali 106 calls attention to the perils of social exclusion; 107 acknowledges India\u2019s vast under-class of social exclusion in the caste system; and 108 predicts a terrible reckoning:<\/p>\n Day after day, you have avoided human touch<\/p>\n Showing your contempt for the deity that dwells in man.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One day, the Creator\u2019s ruthless fury<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 will make you sit by famine\u2019s doorway<\/p>\n and share with others what there is to eat and drink.<\/p>\n With all of them you\u2019ll have to be equalized by sharing the same affront.<\/p>\n These excluded were the people whom another of India\u2019s celebrated founders, Mohandas Gandhi, called the \u201cHarijans<\/a>\u201d or \u201cGod\u2019s people.\u201d It is no accident that Nigeria\u2019s encounter with its reckoning appears to be happening \u201cin God\u2019s name\u201d.<\/p>\n In the North-East, a Jihadist onslaught proclaims a Caliphate<\/a> in God\u2019s name.<\/p>\n In the North-West, the killers of Deborah<\/a> claimed they did it in God\u2019s name.<\/p>\n In the South-East, adherents of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPoB) claim to be the children of \u201cChukwu Okike Abiama\u201d,<\/a> which translates into \u201cGod of all Creation\u201d in Nigeria\u2019s relay of national anthems.<\/p>\n All this grasping for the Almighty reflects the reality that the Nigerian State has never cared nor existed for its underclass. It has only ever treated them as both sub-human and expendable.<\/p>\n As the country prepares for another milestone in its romance with sovereign organised crime in 2027, the authors of this script must pray that Nigeria\u2019s excluded and expended do not decide to ask for what is duly theirs. For if they could, they will present the country for the first time with a proposition for which there are not enough prayers or bullets.<\/p>\n For Nigeria, they are Tagore\u2019s prayer in the fourth stanza of Gitanjali 108 answered:<\/p>\n Whoever you fling to a lower level will bind you to that level.<\/p>\n Whoever you keep behind your back is only dragging you backwards.<\/p>\n Whoever you keep occluded,<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hidden in ignorance-darkness,<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 is shaping a chasm between you and your welfare.<\/p>\n You must be equalized with all of them by sharing the same affront.<\/p>\n Chidi Anselm Odinkalu<\/a>, a lawyer, teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and can be reached through [email\u00a0protected]<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the country prepares for another milestone in its romance with sovereign organised crime in 2027, the authors…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[105409,105410,122,78921,105411],"class_list":{"0":"post-206421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nigeria","8":"tag-chidi-anselm-odinkalu","9":"tag-national-anthem","10":"tag-nigeria","11":"tag-prayers","12":"tag-rabindranath-tagore"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@africa\/116473021249278209","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"PT](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777237166_158_PT-WHATSAPP-CHANNEL-copy.webp\")
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