BY:
HABIBU GENTE
DATE: Saturday, 06 May, 2017.
A continuation of last weekend column.
2. Separate religion from politics; the issue of relating politics with religion has been the cause of Nigerian political degeneration. Our Democracy suffered a great deal and society development and progress was hampered by this same hurdle in our inability of distinguishing between what is religion ,how and where it should be practice and placed in a a society in distinction with politics. Politics and religion are incompatible ideologies always in constant conflict with each other, they are sometime characterized as cold-battle between two powerful ideologies that seek to play vital and long-lasting effect on individual life in the society, while sometime they are characterized as tractable conflicts between two adamant ideologies in protracted struggle /competition to win the heart of society and its members. Thus win-loss resort to by either ideology can be resolved in either by violence, bloodshed or peaceful resolution by enactment of restrictive laws to establish boundary between them. That is, society of conservative or secularism.
Although some will argue that religion is essential part of every society progress based on morality, justice, fairness and love. Yes, they maybe right as they may be wrong. If only we observe objectively the happenings in world politics in recent years. How nations that seek not to distinguish politics from religion or vice versa, how such nations were devastated by war, religious crisis. Because of the inability of the government to constrain the extremist ideologies propagated by conservative- self-aclaimed religious scholars and leaders who even lack the basic knowledge of the religion they pretend to be fighting for and seek to protect with their lives. Thus these half-baked and little -learning that characterized such clerics make them responsible for the war- torn societies we are living and breathing in not yet -died gun powder, exploded bombs air smell.
Few examples on Nigeria recorded cases of religious crisis and conflicts will suffice for my argument. History have it that from pre-independent Nigerian societies the most frequent occurrence of conflicts are religion based crisis. Like Kano riot of 1952, with numerous occasions after independent to mention but few; Jos crisis, Southern Kaduna, Shagamu in Ogun state, and most recently in our nation history the bokoharam insurgency, few weeks ago in Ile ife where decades religion grievances between indigenous people and the settlers was let-loosed thank to some mindful and well-meaning traditional ruler and politicians who prevented its escalation.
Nigerian politics from infant is characterized by involving religion matters in to politics which is not have to be, let religion and its clerics be solely for preaching and educating people in moral values, justices and fair treatment of one another in the society based on the tenets of their religious beliefs. And politics should be left only to politicians, it is a game of neutrality in religion or ethnicity. And not sentimental or incompetence or bias in religion affliction or influence. It is right time Nigerians should learn lessons from their history and let us have in our national politics a clear secular -humanism spirit in our government and democratic process. Let stop fooling ourselves that we are religious country, Nigeria is one of the most complex society and most diverse nation on earth. Religionists ruling this country will not work for us, only leaders with secular -humanism ideology that will move this our sorry nation. Religion should be a business of private life and not public things especially for our politicians. Leaders pretense to be religious when serving the nation brought us to this mess and joke this country turned into by those so-called leaders who constantly mock their religion in celebration of their ineptitude, corruption, looting, gross mismanagement of public funds.
To be continued .
