By Iliyasu Gadu
Let me begin this article with a reference to the scriptures.
There is a passage in the scriptures where the almighty God decided to test the faith of Pharoah the King of Egypt. Pharoah was at the height of his untrammeled power such that his rule over his subjects was absolute and unchallenged. He literarily had the power of life and death over them and they in turn surrendered to him without question.
To test the extent of Pharoah’s power and belief in whether there is another power above him, God decided to send an angel in human form.
The angel in human form proceeded to ask Pharoah whether he believed he truly was the most powerful ruler in the universe. Answering in the affirmative, the angel then asked the Pharoah, what in his view would constitute the greatest crime or challenge to his rule over his subjects. In reply, the Pharoah stated emphatically that any attempt not to recognise his absolute supremacy and to recognise others powers in his place would attract the greatest and harshest punishment. And that punishment Pharoah said, would be to drown that person or persons alive.
If we are conversant with the scriptures, we would know what became the end of Pharaoh in the depths of the Red Sea. The encounter with the angel was God’s way of judging the faith and belief of Pharoah in the divine omnipotence of God. Just as Pharoah brooked no challenge to his power for which he reserved the harshest of punishments, so also the almighty God admonishes us to recognise and to submit unquestionably to his absolute power over us and not to associate him with any other powers. In the end God applied on the Pharoah the same punishment he reserved for those that would have challenged his (Pharaoh’s rule) by drowning him alive in the Red Sea.
Nigeria may not be Pharoah’s Egypt, and many would dismiss this scriptural account of God and the Pharoah as unreal, but the lessons are historically and universally true.
Presently nobody would deny that Nigeria is in a state of dystopia with mounting insecurity, hunger, poverty, corruption among others ravaging the land. Amidst this pestilence is also a disconnect between the masses of people and those that rule over them. Not only are those entrusted to rule over the people engaging in denial over the state of things that they are responsible for bringing about, they are proceeding to exacerbate the situation by the policies and measures they apply. And to add salt to injury the rulers of the land have turned to mocking the people over the suffering and misery the subject the people.
It is no doubt by God’s design that President Bola Tinubu is ruling Nigeria under the present circumstances. While President Tinubu basks in this state of power, it is a huge question as to whether he recognises that this position carries with it a heavy test of faith and belief in the power of God who placed him on the throne he now sits.
On the strengths of his policies and utterances majority of Nigerians would doubt very much that President Tinubu deeply cares about the plight of the people he rules over. Many Nigerians would point to the statements of the President as evidence that he is in denial, disconnect and even in disdain of the people of Nigeria.
But rather than bask in opulent exercise of the power that God has bestowed on him, President Tinubu should also consider the responsibility he owes to God and not forget that the power he currently wields is not ad infinitum. And most significantly, President Tinubu should consider that the power he currently exercises by the divine hand also carries with it circumstances and consequences that will not just test him, but also judge his actions and statements surely and inevitably as happened with rulers before him. And in this divine judgment, no human Judge or security apparati, indeed no human contrivance can intervene to ward off God’s course of action. We witnessed it with Generals Ibrahim Babangida and late Sani Abacha and with President Olusegun Obasanjo all of whom contrived to ”outwit” God.
President Tinubu, like Pharoah in the scriptures, may have unwittingly pronounced his own divine fate and judgment when he stated that Nigerians should not vote for him when he comes for reelection if within the four years of his first term he did not provide full electricity to Nigeria. If he meant this do garner votes from the people, his wish was granted by God who installed him in power. But since he had not made good on his promise and he is now seeking to come for reelection President Tinubu should bear in mind that just as God granted the first part of his request, he probably would also grant him the second part which is to deny him his wish for reelection.
Again it is also probable too that God has hearkened to his statement made years ago that he never believed in the unity of Nigeria. So under the present circumstances that he is president of Nigeria with full executive powers, God is also daring him to implement the breakup of Nigeria as he once uttered. It is as they say, from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. God cannot be mocked.
But history has recorded that rulers who forgot to imbibe its enduring lessons end up becoming its victims. It has been the way of rulers in history in exercise of the powers given to them by God to forget him. In a way it is God’s way of setting them for eventual judgment by denying them the necessity of introspection and recognizing that not only the power they exercise comes from God but also of making them to get lost in their covenant with God. We remember the Roman Emperor Nero who was fiddling while his empire burned fiercely from within figuratively and literarily. There was also the case of Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian King who at the height of his grandeur was brought crashing down. Then of course there was the French Queen who dismissed the suffering of her French subjects when brought to her attention with a derisory ”Let them eat bread”!
All the signals are clear in the horizon of a looming rupture in Nigeria under President Tinubu. For sure he cannot be blamed entirely on how we got to this pass. But by the same token President Tinubu cannot deny knowledge of the dire conditions precedent in the country before he came to power and the fact that God had given him the powers to change things for the better as a test of his faith and belief.
President Tinubu cannot deny seeing and reading the clear signals of the consequences of his rule in Nigeria. And surely like rulers of the country before him he will not escape the divine judgment that follows from his rule.
Iliyasu Gadu, a former Foreign Service Officer who served at the Nigerian Missions in Germany and the United Kingdom (UK), is also a columnist with Daily Trust
