The Federal government of Nigeria has announced that the sum of 90 billion naira has been allocated to subsidize the cost of the Hajj exercise to Mecca for her Muslim pilgrims for the current year 2024. This announcement was made by the vice president, Alhaji Shettima, who spoke on behalf of President Bola Tinubu, himself a Muslim too. To show the importance attached to this pilgrimage question by the Nigerian government, it’s enough to know the amount of money allocated by the same government for renovations in 12 institutions of higher learning in the country. A mere one billion naira. In a country bedeviled by poverty and a failing economy, this Hajj subsidy is nothing short of a gross mismanagement of public funds. A waste of money, if you ask me.
I am a Christian but this is not a spite against another religious group. Not at all. Religion is and should remain a private concern. Using public funds to encourage religious practices, is nothing but a step in the wrong direction. When many people spoke out against having a Muslim/ Muslim ticket in the last presidential election in Nigeria, the risk of such a zealous endeavor by a same religion set of candidates, was one of the reasons put forth by such political thinkers. Now come to think of it, who are those Muslims who can afford to go on pilgrimage to Mecca? The rich Muslims, of course. I don’t think you will see any of the downtrodden Muslims on any of those flights to Saudi Arabia. And in any case, those 90 billion naira will end up getting spent on flight tickets and in Saudi Arabia, not in Nigeria. How thoughtless can anyone be?
This subsidy for religious endeavors issue has got many Nigerians blaming religion itself for what is clearly an economic blunder on the part of the leaders of Nigeria. I have however stopped short of blaming it on the religious madness that has been ravaging the Nigerian populace. God does not expect you to worship Him stupidly. At least, not so stupidly. Spending such a staggering amount on religion in a country facing a very hard economic turbulence is nothing but a senseless exercise. I don’t know if the Nigerian government has an economic team. My humble advice is that they all send in their resignation papers to the president. That is, assuming they had advised the president not to throw away all of that money.
This is the reason why we should be careful who we elect to lead us. If the blind leads the blind, they will both end up in a pit. Worse still, if the blind man leads a man who can see very well but is prevented from expressing himself by the leading blind man. Not even at the point where falling into a ditch is imminent for both of them. And you would expect a chain of protests from the citizens. But it will never be, because in Nigeria, the Christians who do have their own pilgrimages to Israel and to Rome, will be waiting for their turn to come, so they too can demand to get their fair share of the national cake, to the further detriment of the national economy. Makes you wonder if one needs to travel to Saudi Arabia, Israel or Italy in order to experience God. Meanwhile, nobody will give anything to the practitioners of African religion, because they never go on pilgrimage.
Foreigners are laughing at our stupid moves. Some of them have even called us ‘stupid’. They may not be very wrong, after all. A man will eventually be called stupid, if he continues acting stupidly. We ought to know better.
Ristusblog 