The beginning of progress is when a person is true to himself. Being true to oneself also starts with asking the right and pertinent question: Who am I? That is self-knowledge. It is through probing that we recognise who we are, what our duties are and the obligations we bear. The process begins with grappling with matter, friction with the environment which we call struggle. Therefore, no attempt should be made to take away struggle from anyone. Are we not even told: ‘From the sweat of thy brow shall thou eat? It does not permit of indulgence or dependency. In the process we break from within and come to an awakening. In the words of Herbert Vollmann, in his work, ‘A Gate Opens’:
‘Self-knowledge was demanded even in the days of ancient Greece. The Temple of Apollo at Delphi bore the inscription: ‘Know thyself!’ That means strive to recognise your own nature, your origin, your abilities, but also your faults and weaknesses. Do not forget yourself amid all the wonderful things in Creation that draw attention to themselves, the wealth of events that crowd in on you daily, offering opportunities for the most diverse observations and experiences. Man certainly needs the courage to be prepared to make unpleasant discovery in the contemplation of himself, nor should he disregard his so-called ‘endearing’ weaknesses’.
We all as human beings have the same origin—from Spiritual Realm, as the church song of old used to go, ‘…our Father’s Home Above; the New Jerusalem! It was rendered joyfully and more beautifully well by the Cherubim and Seraphim (C&S) Church in Yoruba: ‘Jerusalem ilu Orun, Ilu Ogo. Inu mi dun lati wonu e lo. Jerusalem, Ilu Ogo julo’. The question that arises is, if we are from the same origin, why do we differ one from the other. The difference is borne out of the exercise of individual’s free will which is our inalienable property as human spirits endued us by the Creator, the Almighty Father of All. We are free in the choice of our decisions. We use our free will for thoughts, speeches and actions. In the process we ennoble our souls or individually pack them with dross. Whichever has consequences. Whichever path leads to a destination, sweet or sour.
Herbert Vollmann says of it: ‘The inequality is founded in the free will of man, by which each one himself determines the degree of maturity of his development, whereby an equal maturing of all human beings is impossible. As a consequence, unequal earthly conditions and lifelong habits also emerge. For this reason, any attempt at equalisation wherever it may be, is doomed to failure from the beginning.” We cultivate our culture which is an expression of spiritual maturity, a culmination of experiences from the free choices made. The Laws manifesting the Will of the All-Highest, the Creator, take it up from there. Thus, everything, including ideas and belief systems are subject to the Law of Movement, for example. Indeed, the operationalization of the Laws is never ceaseless. They are immutable, self-acting, non-discriminatory, uniform in the entire Creation. They are eternal. As I have said in these pages before, they are what the Creator uses to govern His Creation.
Last week, I drew attention to food for thought Mohammed Bello Doka gave to us in his writing earlier in the month. He listed the immeasurable resources with which the North is endowed and was very severe in his censure of the Northern Establishment. He was no less unsparing with hard knocks for those he called the ordinary citizens. The mind-blowing resources the cover of which he lifted are sold minerals: ‘gold in Zamfara, Bauchi, Taraba, limestone everywhere, barite for oil drilling, and countless other minerals untouched and unmapped. Rare earth elements: the hidden treasures that power every smartphone and every electric vehicle on the planet’.
Energy sources: Coal in Nasarawa and Kogi, hydro potential along the Niger and Kaduna rivers, solar radiation so intense that a single square kilometre could power a city. Human resources: a young energetic population that, if properly educated could become the engine of African innovation. ‘But what do we see? We see a lazy, docile, gullible region that cannot even harvest what grows naturally in its soil. Farmers are chased off their land by bandits while the government does nothing. Solid minerals are dug by illegal miners who sell to foreigners for peanuts while the environment is destroyed. Energy projects are abandoned mid-construction while the people live in darkness. And human resources? They are either fleeing South, fleeing to Europe or Arabia, or picking up AK-47s to become terrorists. Compare us to others: Botswana found diamonds and built one of Africa’s most stable and prosperous nations. Chile found copper and transformed itself into a South American tiger’. The North is richer than all the places put together, yet according to Mohammed Doka: ‘We are poorer, more violent and more ignorant than almost any comparable region upon the earth’.
The indictment of the elite is most sobering for anyone who can think a little and who has feelings. ‘A region where children beg for bread while their governors fly private jets to London. A region where life expectancy hovers below fifty while politicians build mansions in Abuja and Dubai. The Northern elite have turned the federal purse into a feeding bottle, and they have sucked it dry. They have neglected the welfare of their subjects, abandoned the protection of lives and property, and turned banditry and kidnapping into booming local industry. When villages are razed and mothers weep, where are the elites? They are in the Villa, begging for more money from the federal purse; more money always translates to more wives, more mansions, and private jets’.
What did he have to say about the educated class of the Northern extraction? ‘What a tragedy they are’. He listed them as products of some of Nigeria’s leading and renowned Ivory Towers; and even from foreign institutions. Armed with degrees, he said they have done absolutely nothing. They are contented sitting in air-conditioned offices, writing beautiful policy papers no one implements. They keep quiet when their own communities are burning. They understand the economics, but they have done absolutely nothing, except to decorate their mediocrity and pampered over-bloated pride’. The business community? ‘They prefer the quick returns of crisis commerce. They are not builders. They are vultures. They are fat and satisfied precisely because the region remains broken’.
Mohammed Bello Doka’s searing indictment should be seen as a wake-up call, not just for our Northern brethren but for all Nigerians. His shock therapy: unrelenting shock, baptism of fire. He suggests the division of the country so that the North would be forced to ‘finally stand on its own feet. No more federal purse to blame. No more southern revenue to fight over. No more excuse that Lagos and Port Harcourt took our money’.
While the observations that brought about the severe criticisms may be true, they touch only on the externals. The foundational crisis lies far deeper. This is what Nigerians have to identify and grapple with. The error starts with the generalization that all human beings are the same. Yes, the origin is the same; but while we are endowed with equal opportunities, maximizing them to advantage is conditioned by applying them to developing spiritual maturity. Culture is a measure of the degree of spiritual maturity which undergirds conduct, the radiance of which dictates how far-seeing we are, as well as the measure of our horizon. For one who has cultivated the nobility of the spirit, the aura is violet while that of the evil man is dull yellow, and something warns one not to get close. Spiritual maturity is cultivated by adherence to the Will of God to which the Laws of Nature give expression, that is, the Laws of Creation or the Primordial Laws of Creation. They are one and the same. It was to mediate the knowledge of and enlightenment on these Laws and the necessity to abide by them that the Lord Jesus Christ came. They had earlier been encoded in the Ten Commandments of God Moses received from Mount Sinai and proclaimed to the chosen people to be spread around the whole world. The decision to heed the Laws is a choice through the exercise of free will. Whatever choice is made has consequences, consequences through the Law of Reciprocal Action which is more referred to as the Law of Sowing and Reaping.
There are other Laws to which this column has referred time and again. These are the Law of Movement which ensures there is no standstill; the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species that ensures the same kind congregates- men, animals, fishes in the bed of the sea or birds in the air. Vegetation or rocks bow to the same Law—sedimentary rock or metamorphic rock. People of the same tendencies must pull together, forming associations, communities, villages and towns. In towns, there are also sub-divisions into wards. Representatives of wards who are chiefs form what is called Oba-in-Council in the South-West. This is to show that the laws work to the minutest. The Law of Spiritual Gravitation which shows what happens to different weights—the lighter floating and the heavier sinking. Ball will float; balloons will float until they find their level, but stone must sink. Because sin constitutes dross on the soul, it should then follow that the sinner will carry weight as baggage and therefore cannot ascend, embarking on the flight to Paradise, the longed-for Home after the sojourn on earth. There is also the Law of Balance. Where it is all work and no rest, ill health beckons. We exhale to inhale. The one that should form the foundation for building a society or nation is the Law of Like Attracting Like, the Law of Homogeneity more correctly called in spiritual term, Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species. In the wisdom of the Creator, people of the same nature are put together, and placed where and in circumstances they need to facilitate their development.
When this is tampered with, grave problems ensue. It was the sensing of this that the then Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello described the amalgamation of Nigeria as ‘the mistake of 1914’. Mohammed Bello Doka, too, would seem to be sensing that the amalgamation has done a great damage to all the peoples forced into an unnatural union with the attendant fostering of indolence, greed, dependency and more, most of the ills rocking Nigeria today. He says buried in the soil of the North, untapped, is enormous wealth to take adequate care of its citizens and even neighbours. His drastic prescrition is what he has called the division of the North for it to stand on its own feet.
Sensing the unnatural union seemingly more powerfully from his accustomed reflection, Chief Obafemi Awolowo ventilated what he was convinced was the way out to which Mr. Tayo Lawal drew attention of Nigerians two weeks ago. Awolowo had argued in his book, Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution, that the problems of Nigeria are foundational. He wrote on how nations are meant to be put together and the relationships among diverse people. He foresaw that the structure of Nigeria inherent in the Amalgamation of 1914 without conscious consideration for the diversity of the peoples would create insurmountable problems.
His thoughts are that if a country is unilingual and uni-national the constitution likely to be ideal for them is unitary system. However, ‘If a country is unilingual and also consists of communities which have developed divergent nationalities, the constitution must be federal, and the constituent states must be organized on a linguistic basis. Any experiment with a unitary constitution in a bilingual or multilingual country must fail in the long-run’. Awolowo continues: ‘In any country where there are divergences of language and of nationality, a unitary constitution is always a source of bitterness and hostility on the part of linguistic or national minority groups. If the linguistic or national groups concerned are backward or too weak vis-à-vis the majority group, their bitterness may be dormant. But as soon as they become enlightened and politically conscious, the bitterness comes into the open, and remains sustained with all possible venom and rancour until home rule is achieved’.
Mr. Tayo Lawal then states: ‘that is the actual description of Nigeria in 2026’.
It was in the same atmosphere of uneasiness that Gorbachev sensing the unnatural coupling together of the Soviet Union, emerged in 1989 and set forth the revolution which not only triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 but also swept through Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. East and Western Germany comprising the same people and language merged. In other words, the Law of Attraction of Homogenous Species must govern the putting together of peoples and in forming countries.
The great Work, ‘In the Light of Truth’, The Grail Message by Abd-ru-shin, gives enlightenment on this as in all things about life and existence. It says: ‘It is not arbitrary or accidental that earthmen are of different form and colour. The Primordial Laws of Creation place them in the exact region which alone serves for their maturing on earth, and also equip them accordingly’.
We can see how far the reordering by modern man of the blueprint handed down by the Creator has done damage to a majority of nations of our world. In the circumstances of the world today, and widespread lack of knowledge, the prescription of dismantling Nigeria by Mohammed Bello Doka is inappropriate. It will create more problems than it is out to solve. It would lead to chaos and confusion, indeed to bloodshed. Restructuring for which there has been vigorous and insistent clamouring, especially since the collapse of the First Republic, and intensified since 1999 would do. True federalism which permits the federating units to move at their own light and pace and only common services are administered from the centre is the answer. There is already enough literature on this.
Nigeria is indeed an unnatural and unhealthy union that will be subjected to the correcting blows of the Natural Laws if we dither. Consider, purification gale is sweeping through the whole world in these times!
