21 Oct
It is true that when you travel abroad, you tend to pray less as a Nigerian. Well, the reason for this is not farfetched as the chief cause of our lengthy prayer points and aggressive rendition of holy Quran and Bible verses, reminding God of the “promise He made to the Arabs and the Isrealites” is infrastructural decay caused also by stark inefficiencies of our leaders. Nigeria as a country is obviously besetted by demons of irreversible backwardness, though the Nigerian demons are not spirits; they are corrupt men and women at the helms who keep mismanaging and looting our commonwealth to satisfy their inordinate desires for personal wealth.
Yesterday, I left Ibadan at 9am, driving through Ibadan-Lagos expressway to Lekki Phase 1 (a distance of 100km) and I didn’t arrive at my destination until 2pm. That’s a whole 5hours wasted on a journey that should have lasted an hour or thereabouts! I kept praying and giving alms (money) to the beggars so that my prayers could be answered quickly. What a way to survive iniquity in my country!
I left Lekki at 5pm to go catch my evening flight to US and I arrived at the airport at 8:26pm. A journey of a distance of about 30km that shouldn’t have taken more than 40 minutes, I ended up spending 3:28 hours! It’s pointless to recount here the energy-sapping stress occasioned by avoidable artificial traffic jams I underwent. I arrived at the airport when the airline check-in-counter was almost closing. Again, I was praying the whole time to the airport because I could not afford to miss my flight because my ticket class is ‘no show, no refund’; 😜 you would have to buy a new ticket, kind of. It was the cheapest I could afford. Lol! I nearly missed my flight.
Arriving at Houston, I drove about 78 miles home without any traffic hold-up or snail’s speed movement. It would blow your minds to learn that there are four different routes to take home and each of the roads has a minimum of four lanes unlike the only one route I took from Ibadan to Lekki and Lekki to the airport!
After arriving home safely, I drove another 1 hour on the road, with no potholes, to get to this beautiful beach to chill out with my family. It’s not an exaggeration to say that living in advanced countries is tantamount to living in mini-paradise. You will discover the true meaning of living and quality of life there!
It is good to take all of your issues to God in prayers. However, it is also good that we question structural and infrastructural inadequacies that continue to hinder the manifestations of our testimonies. We bother God too much in Africa over conditions that we have been mentally empowered by the same God to be able to take care of. Many of the circumstances we pray over can be helped by our sincerity of purpose backed by intellectual and creative abilities to do things right.
May Nigeria succeed!
