It started like a joke. We touched on it casually if it became a matter of public discourse. Soon it was beginning to look like a movie. What looked like mere hazard metamorphosed to imminent risk. Now, it is looking like ours is a country under siege. The days we dreaded are here with us like an unwanted visitor.

To say we did not know how we got here will amount to hiding the truth under our tongue. We muddled politics with governance and carried on as if we had the joker. There was so much we could do if we saw ourselves as a people, whose destinies are joined irrespective of our individual beliefs. Only that the vision is blinded when the love of power overpowers the power of love.

The journey to the brink was not an overnight journey. It was a systematic journey we nurtured thinking it would fizzle away the way it came. Now, road travel is dreaded and the rail lines are so endangered. Like play, like joke, the schools are beginning to close. How else to know that we are succumbing to the wish of these intruders? Who have always maintained that western education is evil.

We have prayed and fasted but could it be we are asking amiss? Not that we don’t know how to pray but the God we call is a God of precision. He hears our cries but leaves the solution in our hands. He enables us with grace but expects us to exercise our own dominion. How much of our part have we done even when God does his own?

A prayer for Nigeria is a prayer for the leaders. We don’t need to be told that a lot lie in their hands. The ones in position had hitherto thought their position shields them from the danger that loomed. Little did they know that an attack on one is an attack on all. Now the rich runs away from his shadow as the poor continues to groan in pains.

The crisis we face is not peculiar to us alone. The world suffers monumental economic crises but ours defy simple economic theories. Deposit rates are rising and lending rates are jumping. Food prices skyrocket as farmers abandon the farms for fear of insecurity. Inflation is galloping as purchasing power is reduced to near zero.

Exchange rate is rising and the appetite for import is not abating. We import education and we import health. We import goods we can produce but are not producing because the industries ail from high cost of operation and uncompetitiveness. Everyone is looking for dollar in a country where Naira is the legal tender.

To say Nigeria is on the brink is to say the least but it’s true. No need to scare but the signs are ominous and dangling. To think we are still immersed in the search for the right leaders is one other thing to pray for. But let us not also forget that God put the solution in our hands.

What more signs do we need to know that the ship of state needs an urgent rescue? This ship should not sink because the consequences will be grave. If you have a moment to spare, say a word of prayer for Nigeria.

©️Akin Oluwadare Jnr
01 August 2022