Nigeria: Congregation growth by maggot count

The stories baffle

What it takes to live in Nigeria can only have begun to be stranger than fiction in a recent conversation I had with a resident who can be identified as a true Nigerian.

Having lived in quite a number of places and with the ability to speak all the three major languages almost flawlessly, one cannot discount the insight this person brings to appreciating Nigeria, Nigerians and the different ways of engaging with people from all the different parts of the country.

Points were made that I could not discount outright but left one thinking about that we might consider logical explanations and the sinister workings of superstition and fetishism in a society where distrust and selfishness leaves everyone suspicious of everyone else regardless of their relationships.

My Western naivety towards the bizarre

It is quite easy for me to sit in my Western hemisphere comfort zone and scoff at happenings back there being exasperated by the happenings and news stories that boggle the mind, sometimes these things cannot be appropriately relayed because one has to draw on sophisticated powers of articulation and risk ridicule at expressing what can only be stranger than fiction.

The apparent religiosity of Nigeria is too obvious to be invisible to sight or not too distant to ones hearing, somebody is worshipping something but the question is changing about what is being worshipped.

Evidence in the bones

In what can only reflect an X-Files investigation I find myself wanting to dig up the grounds of the main buildings of places of worship that have their teachings outside the mainstream traditional religious doctrinal codes passed down by the missionaries of yore.

What I am supposed to or expected to find are bones of the bovine variety, however, that might not be strange until you appreciate the amazing liaison between animist fetishism and supposed religions of the book – apparently, the projected congregation growth which has both a financial and mesmerisation component is derived from the amount of maggots produced by a decaying bovine carcass.

Believing the unbelievable

Now, I have no reason to believe any of this and as an X-Files investigator I would probably have egg on my face if I ever mentioned this to anyone with any rational bearing.

But, something is self-evident in this matter; the medicine man has probably conjured up this superbly atrocious and incredible scam of indeterminate congregation growth by maggot count and enticed some nefarious but charismatic religious personality whose core business plan is of tithing the gullible looking for the spectacular and funny stories rather than saving souls.

Or there is a genuine interworking belief system that allows for this liaison of the macabre to thrive, but it is unlikely anyone would be counting maggots just as Abraham of old never went counting the sand of the sea to determine the projected growth and number of his descendants.

A shovel to the ground

If one were to expose this as a scam, do you get a shovel and dig or just allow a stratospheric rise in your sceptical quotient when a phenomenon is beyond rational insight?

More dangerously is the extent to which either the fetishist or charismatic religionist would go to fulfil their aims to get their hands on the money of the desperate seeking quick and spectacular solutions to problems that probably could be solved if the intellect is allowed basic stimulation and exercise.

Somehow, ones upbringing in these overtly superstitious societies militates against viewing this with an open mind, but make sure you have a good story if your religious leader finds you digging up the floors of the place of worship for the sacred cow bones to place in a reliquary, better still try ground penetrating radar and suggest you are on archaeological research.

Now your suspicions have been roused, it is not too strange that in Nigeria you are schooled to live with suspicious minds.

The Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF)

The worthy cause of air transport

At the news of the AF 447 air crash I was having a conversation with my good friend who had sojourned in Papua New Guinea for 2 years where he had at times had to travel to the most remote areas not reachable with regular means of transport.

He told me of MAF, the Mission Aviation Fellowship [1] which offers much needed transport to remote unprofitable areas in uncharted regions all around the world, in Papua New Guinea he found the lifeline of the services invaluable both to himself and the communities he liaised with.

I found their website and just from the first page was immediately inspired to instinctively support their efforts with a small donation.

Not trendy but essential

This afternoon, I received an acknowledgement of my small gift and more information about the work they are doing and how it is affecting people’s lives.

Now, the work of MAF is not pop star celebrity stuff, it would probably not attract the proponents or Live or Dead Aid but their selfless charitable service which is of the highest professional order with their scarce resources is more than commendable and should be supported by well-meaning people of the world.

That it is a Christian charity is beside the point though it presents a basis for the work they do in saving lives, bringing help, facilitating communication and engendering healthy existence with rural and sometime far-off communities, and obviously, there is a missionary component to these efforts.

I publish here, the thank you letter I received from them and urge you to consider the Mission Aviation Fellowship as part of your charitable giving portfolio.

Thanks.

The appreciation

Thank you indeed for your kind gift of £___ via our website. We receive so many calls to help make a significant difference to isolated men, women and children in all kinds of need, and we are so glad you are part of our team.

While the thought of catching any kind of ’flu worries people in our own country, imagine what it must be like to live with almost no healthcare. That’s why, at Madundas in Tanzania, 224 children were presented to doctors and nurses on a flying visit with our Mbeya Safari.

Almost 200 of the children were given vaccinations against at least one of polio, diphtheria, tuberculosis and measles. Give thanks that doubtless that day means more young children will now go on to live healthier lives.

We have taken delivery of our first new Kodiak 100 aircraft in the USA. The Kodiak operates on jet fuel rather than Avgas which is more expensive and scarce. Please pray that God will provide the resources for us to be able to upgrade our fleet with more Kodiaks.

The first Kodiak is expected to enter service soon in mountainous Papua, Indonesia, where there is a tremendous need for aircraft. In the past few weeks, our current planes there have carried a patient with a broken back, an unconscious pregnant lady, a teenager with a broken arm and leg, a lady needing a Caesarean section, another pregnant lady with an enlarged spleen and liver, and a man whose hand had been cut in machinery.

Also, a load of Dani Bibles was delivered to Mulia. Pray that those who read these Bibles will have their eyes opened to spiritual truth.

Once again, thank you for your practical partnership.

Yours sincerely,

(Name Supplied, Supporter Relations)

Sources

[1] MAF-UK Flying for Life

[2] MAF to Dedicate First KODIAK 100 - Mission Aviation Fellowship

Home - Mission Aviation Fellowship – International web site

Gabon: Mr. Bongo, your time is up

Breaking News: 17:56 Monday, 8th of June - It has been confirmed that the longest serving ruler in Africa who ruled Gabon for 42 years has died in a foreign hospital in Spain. May the hopes and aspirations of the Gabonese arise.

Is he dead or not?

In what is turning out to be like the Soviet era long drawn out dying throes of leaders like Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, we are suffering the same uncertainties regarding the leader of Gabon.

Since yesterday, the French press opined in quotes and offered the news that the 73-year old eternal incumbent leader of Gabon, El Hadj Omar BONGO Ondimba [1] had passed on [2] from immortality of absolute power to the mortality of succumbing to cancer. []

With Gabon being a former French colony, one would expect that any serious events about that country would be truthfully and verifiably reported by the French press.

However, the rump of what is left of the government in Gabon suggests that false information is being peddled and that Mr. Bongo is “alive and well”. Maybe, Mr. Bongo is alive, the aspect of well is seriously debatable.

The rape of Gabon

The poor people of Gabon who unfortunately have not had the express freedom and right to choose who leads them for the 42 years of this atrocious regime have now been on tenterhooks as turmoil within the government is trying to resolve who steps into the dynasty shoes of the dying king before they probably announce that the President died tomorrow when probably maggots have borne generations of descendants already.

However, one has not begun to touch the travesty of this longest serving ruler in Africa until one explores the circumstances around his eventual demise.

Gabon [3], is an oil-rich country which with the resources it has and the finances that have come into the country could have been a different place, but a majority of its population remains poor.

If a person has been in power for 42 years and the life expectancy of his country is just 53.11 years, there should be a court of justice somewhere on earth to indict the person with a crime against humanity.

In power but not for the people

The President languishes in pain probably ameliorated with morphine in a Spanish hospital with the hope that the probability of his being “alive and well” is a miracle in the making – the Grand Despot of Africa in Zimbabwe is at least 10 years older and seemingly in rude health.

How, anyone could have been in power for 42 years and not been able to establish a first-class hospital along with necessary infrastructure of power, roads and transport as well as the resources of highly trained staff from first class educational institutions in his country escapes me.

This, in the end represents the failure and travesty of leadership in Africa, people who are in power but only for their own self-aggrandisement.

Rulers at home dying abroad

As these leaders have converted their leaderships into life monarchies the sadness of the story reads in a very unAfrican context. As I wrote in a comment I left on AfricanLoft when it was first announced that President Bongo had taken ill and was in hospital in Spain.

Kings in days of yore died in their own beds surrounded by their families and subjects outside the palace walls praying for the safe recovery of their monarchs.

The context being the best medical help was available to the monarch and at his beck and call in his own comfortable and familiar setting.

The irony for the African variation of kings who rule without the express and free consent of their people is that they do not have the best medical help available to them in their own countries all because they failed to serve the interest of their people due to the fact that they could use the resources of the country to jet out to any good hospital abroad at the slightest hint of discomfort.

In the end, they lay in exclusive wards with expensive beds surrounded by strange people and dying in foreign lands far away from where they have ruled with a rod of iron and had given their people no respite in freedom, justice, liberty or choice.

They may have ruled for an eternity, I was hardly 2 years old when Mr. Bongo assumed office, but all we would know of this leadership is squandered opportunities to make something great of what they had control of for all those decades.

Surely, there are others better

To suggest that there are not a thousand other Gabonese if given the opportunity who would not have made a better country of that place than Mr. Bongo is disingenuous at least and contemptible at worst.

This horrible hubris of eternal incumbency [4] unfortunately inflicts Africa badly like a plague as you have Santos in Angola for 30 years, Biya in Cameroon for 27 years, Nguesso in the Congo for 30 years, Mubarak in Egypt for 28 years, Bongo in Gabon for 42 years, Gaddafi in Libya for 40 years, Mswati III in Swaziland for 22 years, al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia for 22 years, Museveni in Uganda for 23 years and Mugabe in Zimbabwe for 29 years.

The unasked question is, which of these countries have been made better by any of these leaders? I would hate to read the CIA – The World Factbook [5] assessments of each country, but I provide the links for your perusal and judge for yourselves.

Their demise brings no respite

But as long regimes do, it would have bred a corrupt class of self-serving snouts in the trough, it is unlikely that the Gabonese would at the eventual demise of Mr. Bongo find true representative leadership that serves their interests.

However, this is an opportunity that should be seized upon by the good minds of Africa to sue for a clear free democratic representation of the Gabonese where the policies of those who seek office would clearly begin to reverse the entrenched patronage and corrupt establishment to deploy Gabonese resources to the general welfare and emancipation of the people.

The last thing Gabon needs is the son of this dying despot who happens to be the defence minister assuming power, unchallenged and without his father’s tenure having been scrutinised for its successes and failings.

Meanwhile, if Mr. Omar Bongo is dead, it is time to bury him and everything he represented that kept the people of Gabon from fully pursuing their happiness and freedom, if he is still being propped up, somebody should pull the plug and well, if he is still “alive and well”, he should return to the country and start to make amends for the failures highlighted.

But the most important message in all this stretched out dying throes is Mr. Bongo, your time is up, if not on earth, at least as the President of Gabon.

Sources

[1] BBC NEWS | Africa | Profile: Omar Bongo

[2] BBC NEWS | Africa | Gabon leader Bongo's death denied

[3] CIA - The World Factbook - Gabon

[4] FACTBOX: Africa's longest-serving leaders | Reuters

[5] CIA - The World Factbook – The links on the countries mentioned are to the CIA – The World Factbook and acknowledged as such.

My message to Michael

Cretins have opinions too

And so, an unrelated comment gets left on my blog on the Nigerian census by someone seeking some information about certain views people have of Nigerians.

A Michael with the nick name micky_metal left a comment and an email on my blog, this is my message to Michael.

His comment went thus:

Hi, I’m from Britain and I would like to get opinions from Nigerians on various aspects of racism prevalent in my country. I recently confronted a fellow Brit on a blog who was making offensive generalisations about Nigerians and Africans in general.

When I told him his comments are offensive, he said that if Nigerians were honest, they would agree with his assertions.

So I’d appreciate your feedback on the comments he made and tell me if you find his comments offensive. This is what he wrote:

“Nigerians are keen on fraud”

“Nigerians will continue begging for charity money whilst doing nothing to earn it. The amazing thing is that these people are actually proud of their inability to work, to think, or to get things to function properly”

“Nigerian cultural values make Nigerians likely to be homophobic”

Thanks, Michael.

Am I bothered?

Well, Michael, I would not waste my time responding to that kind of stuff; cretins, nonentities, idiots and ignorant people write blogs too.

However, just because people can publish outrageous, unfounded and stupid views does not mean they can suddenly be taken seriously and given the oxygen of polite debate.

In the email sent to my blog profile this was the introduction:

I'm a Brit who has grown up with Nigerians in school and at work - I chanced upon your blog after searching for Nigerian food recipes that I used to eat with at my friends.

And your views?

You probably have the opinions and research done already by yourself, not necessarily on opposing the supposedly offensive content of the assumedly racist blog but in your experiences with Nigerians, in school, at work and the social rapport that allows you to eat their in homes.

If at any time you noticed any of those traits, that is unfortunate; if however, you have been opportuned to meet Nigerians and they are generally good-natured, good humoured, considerate and understanding and there are many out of that 140 million population and many more wonderful Africans in the world, you have been blessed.

To debunk the last comment, homophobia in Africa really stems from fanatically adopting foreign religions rather than from our traditional cultural values, we have lived in peace with ourselves in many ways before funny ideas introduced the prejudices that seem to polarise our societies.

I’m a Brit too

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, your fellow Brit is probably beyond the realms of redeeming knowledge to change his interesting views and in closing, I happen to be both a Brit and a Nigerian, I have no problems with either of those people, or rather, my people.

I think we are equally nice and interesting people who are open to new experiences when we allow circumstances fostering new outlooks to thrive.

Sometimes, generalisations like that are the refuge of the unfulfilled and the bitter, they should not find succour in unnecessary propagation giving seriously undeserved importance to those with diminishing expectations for their lives who think castigating others gives them some superiority, frankly, you should be concerned if you were ever impressed.