Worship of God by nuisance creation?

ACCORDING to the oldest universal culture known to man, the entire universe is created by God. That culture knows that life is made up of the physical and the metaphysical; as not all things that are real to the human experience are entirely physically verifiable. The essence of that metaphysical reality is God, no matter howsoever ANYBODY may decide to explain it. All things that exist were created by this said God (out of nothing) and the human being is the greatest of those created reality; and above all else, the only of these created things that was created in the very image and likeness of God; who is love and/or everything good, to the highest level of the human knowledge and imagination.

This knowledge, belief, social science and/or culture has therefore inspired man to live to the highest level of goodness possible for him in the reality, or at least belief, that God is interested in his doing so and will not be fooled by anybody trying to do otherwise; as there will eventually be for each individual person and for all persons all together, a day of reckoning in these regards. In the many sub-cultures of these virtually universal human realities around the word, this final day of reckoning or the states of life following it have been referred to with words like: the (final, personal, eternal) Judgment, Parousia, Armageddon, Nirvana, Kama, the Rapture, paradise, heaven, hell, etc.

It has also been realized that the knowledge of God and total submission to learning and living according to His laws, called spirituality, is or should be a universal good and worthy of all human embrace. However, the group organisation of these spiritualities, into what has generally become known as religions, has been more often greater sources of evil than of good – generally. These evils have included the most intractable wars and unending enmities. For these reasons, the world had tended to grow more secular and Godless in order to avoid these evils of organised spiritualities or religions. This would seem to be because, in these religions (with the exception of very few and only on limited periods thereof) the most fanatical and forceful of these adherents usually tend to take the greatest leadership of those religions.  In this wise, they use it to pursue their personal and very often ungodly ends and purposes. It is therefore in the interest of those who respect and value organised spiritualities or religions that they do not allow fanatics to take over these religions. Usually, the less educated or cultured these religionists get, the less Godly they are, the more they try to take over, to lead and so to make trouble with these religions. It therefore behooves all the so-called educated persons in ALL the religions of the world (and, of course, the rest of us peace-loving citizens also!) to stop these illiterate, less truly godly and fanatical war mongers from overtaking these our religions – with all the truly loving means available to us!

In this regard, anybody living in Nigeria as an adult in the last 30 years and perhaps more will obviously realize how this wrong use of religions is growing in Nigeria! This has become so especially since the second coming of our current president in the person of our most dear President Muhammadu Buhari; and particularly with Islam. It must be admitted that shortly before that, in the previous 15 years or more, some forms of Christianity, particularly the so-called Pentecostalism, had started doing this! They do so by blocking public roads – e.g., the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – in the name of religion and their worship of God; and the other forms of nuisance-creation, noise especially and at the most nuisance times in the day or night, in the name of worshipping God! However, the rate at which Islam has overtaken everybody in this regard and doing it with the utmost impunity, is now so very worrisome. In many of this latter case, the slaughter of anybody opposed to these virtually illiterate people, is entirely very mind-boggling.

This has raised many questions concerning the present Buhari administration. In spite of the few goods, like the fighting of corruption that would appear to be his all over-arching mantra, these evils are growing by leaps and bounds; and he is saying nothing about them! So, the question arises, shall we eat this fighting corruption thing? Will it take us to heaven? Is it after these rampaging Muslims have killed all of us off, that we will enjoy the curbed corruption in our graves? When will he begin to speak out against all these rampaging evils and take-over of the government of the country under his very clear but apparently dumb watch, by all these miscreants?

I have lived in Ibadan for over 45 years and inside Bodija for the last 29 years; and using the road that passes through the Bodija market as my routing passage way. But this very last Friday, the 8th of January 2017, was the first time that I was hurrying to the UCH for an important appointment, only to get to the market and while all the many large, medium and small mosques there were empty of anybody, a handful of these miscreants(no more than some 50 of them) blocked the open main street in the market in what they believe must be a worship of God – a clearly intended nuisance to anybody who would not approve of such nuisance! The answer given to me by the policemen on the road at the police station close by the scene of this criminality when asked while this was happening before their clear watch would be very dangerous to reproduce here and so I keep it!

Now, this is surely a most dangerous thing to be increasingly happening. Those who know Governor Abiola Ajimobi must surely bring the urgency of stopping this growing trend to his attention for a most immediate arrest. At a time when the Christian Association of Nigeria asked for the Sunday 8th January, 2017 to be used as a day of mourning, for the similar so-claimed Fulani-Islamic murderous rampaging of Southern Kaduna State for similar reasons, nobody worthy of being called a ruler or politician or community leader should be going about without serious attention to these growing evils. For the rest of us law-abiding and peace loving people, it will not be said, either in the here and now or in “the hereafter” that we did not advise them in this regard. Peace be upon every one of us. Amen!

• Asuzu, a clinical epidemiologist, is Professor of Public Health & Community Medicine at the University of Ibadan, Oyo State.