A People Beyond Redemption?

I have been moribund, as far as writing articles, for about three months. Honestly these days, I just don’t feel like writing, however, I comment on other peoples’ writings or on national issues on social media like Facebook and Twitter. And since I do not write for a living, in fact, I never get paid; I am never under any pressure or deadline. Maybe that will save my health from deteriorating further in despair, frustration, anger and desperation. Please I am not blaming it on anybody or on the country. It is self-afflicted. Nobody’s asking me to die for Nigeria. And I am not going to die for Nigeria. I will just do my little bit when I am called upon.

In Nigeria, corruption is something we all seem to have learned to live with, accepted as a way of life and look upon with tolerance, celebrate and regard even with some amusement and laxity. But wait! We need not be resigned to it or sceptical about it. Instead of breast-beating over the sorry state of affairs, let us explore the solutions (I have offered many in previous articles). Maybe there are no satisfactory answers to our questions. Let's ask them anyway.

Benjamin Franklin, statesman and a signatory of America’s Declaration of Independence, said: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”John Adams, another signatory, echoed a similar statement: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Are our laws, regulations and Constitution made for a moral and religious people? From the way we flout, ignore, and bastardise our laws and politicians cast aside or deliberately misinterpret and twist the Constitution every day to satisfy their selfish interests, on a daily basis in this country, I daresay, No!  Are today’s Nigerians virtuous and moral, or have we become corrupt and vicious? Let’s think it through with a few examples.

In the Nigerian Tribune of 2 July 2012, was a story “Traders recount gains after post-UTME in Lafia”.  It was the story of how traders, (Nigerians o) ripped off their young people who had come to take the post-UTME screening examinations of the Federal University, Lafia, Nasarawa State, by selling to them examination materials like pencils, pens, biros etc at grossly inflated prices, thus taking advantage of the poor young people. That’s Nigerians’ inhumanity to Nigerian.  And they were bold and happy to say this despicable act of theirs out. They never saw anything wrong in their cheating actions. Fair enough.

Assisting one's fellow man in need by reaching into one's own pockets is praiseworthy and laudable. Doing the same by reaching into another's pockets is despicable, dishonest and worthy of condemnation.

Our society, like any other society consists of psychopaths and criminal, the only difference is that with Nigerians, the criminals and psychopaths seem to have been having the upper hand since the inception of this country. And the inexplicably and ironically, it is the same people who are downtrodden, looted from, raped, abused and ignored by the rulers who invariably encourage, support and indeed, celebrate these criminals. It is hypocrisy of the highest order.

Ours is a corrupt, depraved society.  According to one writer I came across, “a depraved corrupt society is one in which the people en masse have lost their moral sense.  It is not one in which people sin.  It is one in which people have lost their bias against sin.  It is not one in which people commit adultery.  It is one in which people condone and accept adultery.  It is not one in which people commit corrupt acts.  It is one in which people accept and condone corruption.  It is a loss of moral values, moral knowledge, and moral sense.  How do you know such a society when you see it?  You listen to people's opinions on matters of morals.  You note their likes and dislikes, their tastes, their preferences, how they entertain themselves.  You note their humour, what they joke about, what they think is funny.  You note their fads as a people.  You note their references in entertainment”.  

Corruption equals power, greed and money. For some, there simply is not enough to satisfy them. These people are usually found in the political parties, civil service, banking and private sector, so actually, virtually every section of the society. Everything is a fight for power. Having more power means you can then get more powerful, and therefore more corrupt and richer. You need to be rich to be more powerful, therefore you must be corrupt. And in the end? The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. When both die, they get buried six feet under without taking any of the riches and power with them. But we never seem to think of that inescapable fact of life (and death).

A corrupt society is a society ruled by immoral, wicked men (and women); criminals elected by the populace, supported by the populace, and shielded from punishment by their political allies.

Actions deliberately contrary to the laws of nations and to its universal principles and constitutions are crimes, as are the orders that command such actions. Blind obedience does not suffice to excuse those who carry them out.

Look at our newspapers and other news media on a daily basis and there is always one or two or even more fraudulent or corruption scandal being exposed every time. This should not be. If we had a morally upright, or at least conscious, truly God-fearing society, (and we seem to think we do because of the fact that we have churches and mosques in every street in this country) those scandals should not have been allowed to happen in the first place. But in our country, they do, and we seem to thrive on it.

Politicians are the same all over the world, that is, someone who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making. This includes people who hold decision-making positions in government, and people who seek those positions, whether by means of election, inheritance, coup d'état, appointment, electoral fraud, conquest, divine right, or other means. Politics is not limited to governance through public office.

The Nigerian politician, or political leader, or political office holder is not an alien. He/she is just a Nigerian that went into politics. The reason why they went into politics should ideally be for service and for truly patriotic reasons of seeking betterment for the people they represent in government.  Alas, that is what differentiates the Nigerian politician from most of the rest of the world’s politicians. However, you don't change the Nigerian by changing the politicians; rather you change the politicians by changing the Nigerian.

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When a good leader is surrounded with corrupt people, he becomes corrupt too. When good people live in a corrupt system, they become corrupted too. To change a corrupt system, the people, the society need to be empowered to install public servants who are not tainted with traditional politics. Then there should be a constitutional change; review of the laws governing government employment and salaries, benefits, tenure of office and budgets and make them commensurate with performance. Review the judicial system and come down very heavily on graft, bribery and corruption. Put in place people who are dedicated and are not self-serving. Only the people can do these.

Everywhere I go, or rather every function that involves politicians and government officials are always chokingly full of flattery, insincerity and hypocrisy. The MCs and organisers outdo each other, piling praises upon their torturers and oppressors, never having the heart and the daring to tell them the truth that these officials are thieves; that we, the electorate, the public, the society, elected them to SERVE us, not for us to serve them.

Another philosophical analysis by another writer “Where does the personality trait of "being responsible" come from?  What is it due to?  Isn't it just a "sense of moral duty" (and doing what that sense dictates)?  Doesn't a "sense of responsibility" arise directly out of a good healthy sense of right and wrong, a good healthy conscience?  If so, what causes the personality trait of "irresponsibility"?  Is it due to the lack of a sense of right and wrong, lack of a conscience?  Or is it due to just refusing to live true to that sense (i.e. ignoring what is right, refusing to live up to it)?   Isn't the personality trait of "responsibility" then very closely related to the trait of conscientiousness and the trait of irresponsibility very closely related to lack of  conscientiousness?

Do we as a people, as a society, or as rulers and followers, have any sense of responsibility or morality or conscience to each other, to our country, to our fellow-man, to the poor, to our environment, to our young people, to our women, to our men, to the disabled in the society, to our born and unborn generation?

I look on every day as my people are always trying to cut corners on every thing; always trying to prove and demonstrate that they are smarter than the next man/woman; examples abound to prove my theory on this issue of the average Nigerian thinking he/she is smarter than the rest of the people.
The most common example is on the road, drivers, commercial or private cutting dangerously in front of you because they are the only ones in a hurry to get where they are going, and you are not smart enough to drive dangerously as themselves. Another example is jumping queues in banks, bus-stops, petrol stations, events or any other occasion where there needs to be order so that there will be a smooth attendance.

And what about examinations and admissions into colleges and tertiary institutions?  Parents are colluding with lecturers and teachers to smuggle their children into schools. Teachers and students collude to cheat to pass examinations and thereby have undue advantage over others. That is what corruption is all about.

Take our market-places, and the market women and other traders will never give you the real price of a commodity at first instance. You have to haggle and barter. It is a cultural thing, you will hear my dear people say and if you are not savvy, you will end up paying  five thousand Naira for a commodity that actually cost less than five hundred Naira, and the moment you turn your back on the trader, he/she will be murmuring to him/herself,  “mugu” (fool). Is that a good culture or tradition?

And to cap it all, politicians and civil servants shut themselves in their little cubicles called offices, and all they plot and enter into their brains all day, is how much money they can pilfer,  misappropriate, mismanage, defraud the government and the public, or demand and receive as bribes and kickback in highly inflated contracts.

And the contractors and banking officers are not left out. They too must play the game of being smarter than the civil servants and politicians from whom they are getting juicy contracts and deposits, and to whom they must pay bribes – examples are our fuel subsidy scammers – so that they can also perpetrate their fraud on the Nigerian public.

We even try to get one over our fellow man in sports, thinking we are smarter than our opponents by fielding overage athletes and footballers (and we rarely succeed even at that)

And these are people who eventually get national merit awards, Politician or Governor of the Decade, Best Senator of the Planet, Best Local Government Chairman in the World, Banker of the Universe, Industrialist of the Cosmos; Best Governor since Lord Lugard, etc. We celebrate and reward mediocrity, indiscipline, greed, corruption, hooliganism, thuggery, deception, deceit, adultery, selfishness and lawlessness and criminality. Because a thief and corrupt politician is from my family or ethnic group or same religious faith with me, I see nothing wrong in his crimes, and I fail to condemn him. There is absolutely no altruism in all areas of our existence and governance – executive, legislative, judiciary, police, military, industry, banking, insurance, education, etc.

And we, hypocrites and sycophants that we have become because of lucre, clap and kow-tow to them on the street. The rulers are untouchable, because we make them feel untouchable; we make them feel like they are mini-Gods to be cared for, wined and dined, praised and thanked for doing the work we employ them to do; worshiped and adored for electing them to do things that will make our lives better, and which they are definitely not doing.

That is why I ask, perhaps, that are we, as a people irredeemable, and are we beyond redemption because our culture and hang-ups and complexes cannot let us? We can’t seem to grow out of the confines of those bad portions of our culture that are holding us back from progress, development and betterment. We cannot escape the primeval and primordial in us. No matter how educated or seemingly sophisticated we think we are, we fall back into that mire of cultural and religious conservatism, forgetting that we, even as a people, are not an island in this planet, and we have to adapt and evolve. It is a sad reflection of our cultural consciousness.

The peoples who made up the country called Nigeria have consistently and expectedly shown that learning from other peoples is not something they can apply to solve their own particular difficulties and unique problems. Instead they exacerbate their own problems.

When corrupt people and officials are caught, their excuses are: “I am not the only one doing it, everybody else is doing it” or “If you can’t beat them, join them” or “If I don’t do it, other people will do it” or “If I don’t do it, how will I feed my family?”. Some even say, “There is a lot to steal by everybody, go and steal yours”.

That is our people’s way of thinking. We have become moral perverts. A moral pervert is a person who is a slave to patterns of thought and behaviour that are morally wrong (in violation of God's law) Examples: liar, cheat, fraudster, thief, profligate, etc. Aristotle said that people acquire a particular character, he says, through repeatedly performing an act.  In the case of moral perversion this translates into, "people become perverts through repeatedly performing some wrong act".  Liars become liars, for example, through repeated acts of lying. Embezzlers will continue to repeat embezzling. Thieves become thieves through repeated stealing, and find it difficult, nay, impossible, to stop.

Am I being too hard on my own people? 

Soldiers Brutalised African Examiner's Contributor, Adejumo

Soldiers Brutalised African Examiner's Contributor, Adejumo

The Dana Airline Crash: Another Tragedy of Corruption

”After three days of mourning. What's next?
After three minutes of crying. What's next?
After three hours of begging and pleading. What's next?
After three months of investigation. What's next?
The self generated disaster continues and those that are affected remains hopeless and helpless. The fear of the unknown!”  - Olatokunbo Akinsanya, Atlanta, GA on Facebook

Greek mythology tells the story of Icarus, the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, his attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. He ignored instructions not to fly too close to the sun, and the melting wax caused him to fall into the sea where he drowned. The myth shares thematic similarities with that of Phaëton — both are usually taken as tragic examples of hubris or failed ambition and seen as the mythical pioneer in Man's attempt to conquer the skies.

Man is not designed to fly like birds and a few flying mammals. But God has given Man the power, the intellect to conquer or at least adapt his environment to suit himself. So Man invented the wheel, and thus started the age of communication, transportation, etc from Point A to B and since then, Man has never looked back in his desire to make himself comfortable in his environment. The wheel is the basis for almost all other inventions.

To ensure that he gets from one point to the other as quickly as he can, Man continued to experiment and finally aligned the wheel with animal transportation, and every means of transportation we now know. Of course, there are some costs to pay – loss of lives. But trust Man, to always be inventive and adaptive. The losses of lives are inevitable and will not deter Man in his quest to better his life.

I have always been fascinated with the aeroplane. I always go to the airports and go to the viewing areas just to see planes land and take off. It is exhilarating for me and makes me appreciate technology. Unfortunately, it is not an invention of the black man. I have always wondered at the brains that came up with the idea of throwing such a huge metallic weight into the air, with people and goods inside, and staying afloat in the air, travelling at great speed and defying the laws of gravity. It is one of the greatest feats of Man, or perhaps, the white man.

But such complicated, sophisticated and dangerous way of commuting needs to be diligently monitored, regulated, maintained and serviced. In the Western World, we have these checks in place, as a result of the combination of more responsible people in government, little or no corruption, a definite duty of care and responsibility for their people (and in fact any people), concern for the health and safety of humanity and a respect for human life in general. These are generally and undoubtedly alien virtues in our country, and of course, our notorious and abject maintenance culture, or its lack thereof.

Let’s be realistic here; forget about air travel for now. The fact is we in Africa do not have respect for both human lives and the environment. That is why you see dead bodies on our streets and nobody cares to move them or find out how they got there. That is why you see destitute people and mentally-ill people parading the streets and we just pass by them and governments do not care either.

So here we go again, in Nigeria, at least. Another airplane disaster, two, actually, including the Nigerian cargo plane that killed 10 people in Ghana, the same weekend, which many, including this writer, thought are avoidable, or at least, preventable. The unfortunate (but avoidable) Dana Airline plane crash will continue to expose many 'hidden facts' in the Aviation industry in Nigeria, but then haven’t we been here before? Sosoliso, Bellview, ADC air crashes all within the space of 6 months or so in 2005/2006. Then, as now, there were lots of anguish, finger-pointing, investigations, censures, and most importantly, government promises, which were never kept.

In fairness to us – I mean Nigerians as a whole – Nigeria has managed to avoid fatal air crashes since the ADC crash in October 2006, but this is not as a result of diligent and sincere regulations and enforcement by the authorities or the government, just mere luck. (Nigerians will always ascribe that to the love of God for the country, as if they are the only people in the world that God created and loves). Ironically, it is this seeming lull in fatalities that led to complacency, and trust us, complacency is ours anytime, especially when things seem to be going on smoothly, everybody relaxes, and it is business (of corruption) as usual.

Personally, I had given up travelling by air within Nigeria, albeit not because of the dangers or lack of confidence in the air-worthiness of the planes, but due to cost. I simply cannot afford to travel by air in Nigeria due to the high fares, especially following the increase in the petroleum products in January 2012.  Underpinning that reason is the fact that ever since 2006; I had a morbid fear of flying in Nigerian-operated aircrafts.

But you see our individualist and selfish attitude and approach to most of our problem is eventually haunting us and are mainly responsible for our failure to progress as a nation or people.  In other word, Nigerians are prone to solving collective problems individually and selfishly; for example, take the epileptic electricity nationwide; those who can afford it simply buy generators, and even some who are richer and more influential simply bribe PHCN officials and have personal transformers dedicated to them only installed near their grand mansions.

Another example: our various governments have failed to ensure supply of potable water to their citizens. What do Nigerians do? The rich ones simply construct boreholes to supply their personal water needs. The whole country is littered with millions of boreholes. But we will not collectively call on the governments to do something they are supposed to do; things we elect them and pay them to do.

The same streak of selfishness goes for security, transportation, education, etc. What our bad leaders and governments have failed to provide for their people, their people simply ignore them (and we mostly curse them too)  and try and solve their problems individually and not collectively, like calling for the heads of these corrupt government officials, or rejecting them at the ballot. We, the downtrodden masses of Nigeria, even, often, deliberately and despicably, aid and abet these crimes against ourselves.

How many lives have we lost due to plane crashes over the last 20 years? And add those thousands of lives lost on our bad roads, compounded by dangerous, illiterate, untrained and often drug-crazed drivers. The railway system was deliberately made moribund by haulage cabals whose trailers cause havoc and deaths on the roads, not to talk of the economic and social losses suffered as a result.

In the past 10 years of plane crashes in Nigeria, investigations were conducted (or at least the authorities say they will conduct investigations) but how many people know the result of the investigations? What information or learning were gleaned from the investigations into these crashes?

The depressing truth is that nobody does anything; the responsible airspace authority, e.g. Nigerian Airspace Management Authority, NAMA, is a corruption and nepotism-ridden agency, like most government arms anyway. There are also several other agencies responsible for ensuring planes being flown in this country are regularly and consistently serviced and maintained to be safe.

The fact is air travel in Nigeria is unsafe. The roads are even worse and unsafe, and maritime travel is almost non-existent. And rail transport has been deliberately made inadequate and ineffective. Water or marine transportation is largely ignored.  The safest means of transport seems to be by walking from Lagos to Kano.

But what do our leaders do? They spend their time chasing shadows, busy with their perfected art of corruption and mismanagement; politicking instead of governing; instead of taking decisive action about a probe that shows the intensity of oil corruption that places a nation of over 150 million in stagnant poverty; waking up one morning and unnecessarily renaming universities without consulting the legislators or referring to history (University of Lagos was established by an Act of Parliament); the Presidency taking his time to reinstate a judicial officer who has been exonerated and which he only took hours to suspend after recommendation from the same body that has now recommended his recall.

But unfortunately, we all have to share the blame, not only the inaptly named Mr Goodluck and his cohorts of mediocre and political jobbers. We are allowing a lot of things to be brushed under the carpet. Our greatest sins are allowing such brutish, corrupt, selfish, invidious, insidious, sinister charlatan, mediocre and murderous opportunists to rule us and then when they are exposed for what they are, we still celebrate them.

How long can a people continue to allow ineptness, inefficiency, mediocrity and corruption to rule and control their future? It is time for a stronger show from the people of this confounding country to their pseudo-leaders that their misdemeanour and folly will no longer be tolerated. All of us are accountable for the bloodbath Nigeria has become because some of us stay silent, some of us benefit directly and indirectly (I laugh when these people call themselves “stakeholders”) from the corruption, and some of us are just no longer interested.

So the government will conduct a probe or two; suspend a few people on full pay; or maybe even fire a few idiots; suspend an airline licence or two; and perhaps even offer a few meagre sums to the families of the victims?

Already some fallout is happening: The government has already ordered the indefinite withdrawal of Dana Airline’s Operating Licence; also a Mr John I. Nnorom, former Executive Director for Finance at Air Nigeria, has warned Nigerians to stop flying the airline until they are sure that its planes are being properly maintained. In a blistering public petition, Mr. Nnorom, who resigned his appointment with the airline recently, blamed the situation on Jimoh Ibrahim, the chairman of Air Nigeria, whom he accused of being uninterested in the maintenance of company aircraft.

The Senate also has passed a resolution on the issue called for officials of the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority led by its Director- General, Harold Demuren to step aside and allow for investigations into the incident.

As such, while I hope to be surprised with a positive outcome from this gloom, I hesitate to hold my breath. Confounding Nigeria, will likely brush this incident under the carpet, say it’s God’s doing and you cant fight God, and continue to live their lives, until the next major disaster - Boko Haram massacre, collapsed building, horrific road accident,  a severe ethnic clash, etc.

And our politicians continue to dine, wine and laugh, oblivious of the effect of their corruption and ineptitude, and in the words of Stevie Wonder (Village Ghetto Land) “Politicians laugh and drink – drunk to all demands ……Now some folks say that we should be, Glad for what we have, Tell me would you be happy in Village Ghetto Land.”

When shall our so-called leaders wake up to the fact that corruption is killing Nigerians by the thousands everyday, in every sphere of our lives; that the comfort of the tree branch translates to comfort for the chicken that perches on it; that if you throw stones in the market, the person it will hit will be a family member?

Corruption does not really pay anybody; the victim or the perpetrator. We are all suffering the effects.

Much Ado About A Village Church

You will probably be wondering why I am writing so late after the news of this issue, but you see, I don’t move with the herd sometimes. It is, in most cases, with my experience, very prudent to back off and watch and be far from the madding crowd, to paraphrase Thomas Hardy. I am not accusing everybody who has written on the issue of the church built at Etuoke (?), the President’s village by an Italian construction firm, with an unpronounceable name, but it’s just that when the news broke – and you can trust our Press and Media to make mountains out of mole hills, and for opposition parties to be hypocritical – I just felt Mr Goodluck Jonathan (certainly not my favourite President of Nigeria) was hardly getting a fair shake here.

It is quite possible that my star, Libra, has something to do with being fair on and with other people, but there we have it.

I am not a member of the ruling PDP (God forbid bad thing) and incidentally, I only recently decided to be sympathetic towards the main opposition political party, ACN, and to be frank, it is really because they seem to offer an alternative, and of course, there are certain of my respected friends and family who are members. Up till now, I am yet to see or fathom out their ideology as a political party (but we will get there sometime, I hope)

So what is this thing about a church in the little hamlet of Etuoke, which just happens to be the President’s hamlet in the creeks of Bayelsa State?

To underline the hypocrisy of the media and the opposition, I have seen several different spellings of the name of the village in the newspapers. Nobody even seems to know how to spell the name of this Nigerian hamlet – Otuoke, Etuoke, Utuoke, Otukpe, etc. I will confess I don’t know how the name of the village is spelt, probably because I have not been able to locate the name or the village itself on any Nigerian map, at least for now, until the hullaballoo has put the name on the lips of many Nigerians, if at all, who were until the furore, quite blissfully oblivious of such a hamlet in the creeks.

Well, that is the least of my problems for now. The hypocrisy and one-sidedness of the whole affair is further highlighted by the detail that we totally ignored the fact that the dubious culture, and corrupt too, of contractors building edifices and giving various gifts (for now, don’t let’s call them bribes) to government officials and politicians took root a very long time ago in this country. In fact, the whole landscape is littered with such dubious gifts to presidents, heads of states, governors and even their lowly deputies and local government chairpersons, as well as military governors in their heydays, not to talk of influential federal and state legislators who head committees. And you want to see such gifts for senior civil servants?

So what are we talking about here? During a recent former president’s eight year tenure, the issue of free gifts from government contractors, individuals and political job seekers was quite rife and common.  And nobody ever exposed it in the press, not to talk of castigating him. It is said that if the former president wants to approve a contract, for example, he will subtly tell the contractors, in front of everybody, that he likes the product or service and he surely won’t mind one on his farm. His farm, not even his town!

Of course the contractors will take the hint and next thing you know, a sample, if I may refer to it that way, will soon be replicated on the man’s various farms. Of course, he has not even demanded a bribe.

I hate pettiness and hypocrisy in the same vein and intensity. How many structures – libraries, mosques, churches, villas and house - have been built for Nigerian leaders by construction firms and contractors over the decades? I have been all over the places in Abuja and Lagos and other cities, where the residents point out to me that Julius Berger (or any other construction company with contracts from the various governments) built this for so so and so. From Minna, to Abuja, to Lagos, to Ibadan, to Benin, to Port Harcourt, to Ilorin, to Yola, to Makurdi, the Nigerian landscape is littered with such dubious donations, mostly testaments to corrupt (sometimes they call it gratifications) or underhand practices by our so-called leaders.

Yet for all these mansions and other structures built and donated to individuals, I have never read in the dailies, for the past 40 years of any exposure of such donations or the individuals donated to. And now, even a supposed national political party, regarded as the main opposition, feels very robustly that a donation of a Church building to a hamlet should constitute enough ground to impeach the President! It just smacks of hypocrisy and I feel very much let down that I support this same party. Such frivolity!

Mind you, I am not saying the practice of donating mansions and what not to serving politicians and other government officials is not corruption (it is corruption as we know it), my beef is that the media was used to hype it up (in their very own short sighted and lopsided manner), maybe innocuously just to sell their papers, or most probably, being spurred and eventually succumbing to mischief brought about by brown envelopes stuffed with high denomination Naira notes, or better still, in Ghana-Must-Go bags.

Whatever it is, it is poor, lazy and partisan journalism on their part. So I went to my parish church, and it was there I learnt that everybody got it wrong.

Even the people defending the President failed to point out – and probably they did not know – the crucial fact of the issue, thereby not justifying whatever they are being paid, to defend the president from slander and ridicule.

If the Nigerian Press had just put in some extra investigative efforts, and the opposition party had also done the same, and apply a little caution in their haste to impeach Mr Goodluck Jonathan, or at best, to embarrass him, they would have found out that under the Anglican Communion of Nigeria (and in fact, most of the other Christian denominations like the Catholics, Baptist Convention, the Methodists, etc) an individual cannot own a church. All churches built, whether by the community or a rich individual in the community or, as in this case, by a construction company, belong to the Anglican Diocese  in that part of the country, and by association, to the Anglican Communion of the country. No person can own a church under the Anglican and Catholic Dioceses in any part of the world. A church may be built and named after the donor, and that is by very rare approval by the Bishop, but that church reverts to the Communion or Diocese.

In the case of the beleaguered Mr Jonathan and the church built in his hamlet in the creeks of the Niger Delta, neither he nor the people of his hamlet own the church. (Sorry Sir, until you become St Goodluck of Etuoke, you probably cannot own a church, and this has saved your bacon). Even the massive church built by an ex-Governor of Ogun State in Sagamu, in memory of his father, belongs to the Communion. If he insists it belongs to him, he will have to start his own Christian ministry, which is of course easy to do these days.

Having said this, I will not say that the intent of the Italian construction company is not suspect even in its attempt to satisfy some vague corporate social responsibility. It could be, as they claim, but if this is so, the building of a church for a poor community is hardly what the people of that community need. If they had built or renovated a maternity centre or a block of classrooms in Etuoke (I still don’t know the correct spelling) I suppose the furore would never have reared its hypocritical head, and of course, they would have gained more positive publicity mileage than what they have got now.

Even the president would have been basking in some sort of glory and can even come out and thump his chest and shout from the rooftops of Aso Rock that he facilitated the building of a hospital or school for his community, and on the way, scoring political, social and civil points and shutting up the mouths of both his detractors in his own party and the opposition.

Oh, for us to have wise leaders, a responsible and non-partisan press and ideologically-focused political parties!