Azubuike Ihemeje
Kwara State of Nigeria has been in the news this week, not for any worthwhile activities, but all for the wrong reasons – religious crisis.
Church members and mosque members are at war with each other, pelting stones and physically destroying one another in the name of their strongly held religious beliefs.
The crisis is just beginning, not full blown yet. Nobody has been arrested yet. Nobody is answering for any crime, for now.
Does it mean no crime has been committed so far? No!
A lot of lawlessness has already been perpetrated by both sides of the conflict, but we’re too lousy and lazy to take preventative care at this point.
No solution seems to be in sight yet.
Like many places in Nigeria plagued by security turmoil and unrest, it usually begins with seemingly negligible issues that were simply ignored, or treated with kid gloves, with the expectation that the problems will solve themselves.
Nobody is responsible for anything.
Everyone simply moves through with the motion of nibbling, pampering and/or condoning little evils until they fester, get out of control, and degenerate into full blown war.
I’ve said it for the umpteen time that these three demons of Religion, Ethnicity and Politics, are often always the greatest nemesis of Nigeria’s problems.
And unfortunately, coming from our virtually primitive state, these three issues are usually intertwined with our economic life in many ways than few. This makes them even more sensitive and volatile areas, as we pretend to liberate ourselves into civilization. Most of us often assume that these issues don’t also happen in the western civilized countries. Lies!
They are there. Heavily. However, the difference is that the civilized worlds have involved the instrumentality of laws and strong institutions to fight, suppress and virtually eliminate all those negative tendencies; which make local people like us to feel that religious, ethnic and political crisis really do not exist there.
In most civilized countries, all these rights are guaranteed for the benefit of their citizens.
But, with a caveat; Thou shall not commit crime.
You can do virtually everything and anything, provided you’re within the ambits of the law. The moment you deviate into crime, in pursuit or in advancement of your beliefs, leaning or tribe, voom!, the law immediately prevails over and above you without discrimination, or sentiments.
Here, however, we often want to pander to emotions, rather than confront crime headlong before they escalate out of control.
Perhaps we’re just interested in solving crisis rather than preventing them.
We have this collective penchant to hail and celebrate combative, attention making actions, while those who proactively worked real hard on preventing crisis usually go unnoticed, unrecognized and unsung.
