By Frank Tietie
In 2020, the Nigerian Army held a Spiritual Warfare Seminar to tackle Boko Haram and other associated insecurity issues in Nigeria.
While some attempted to scoff and laugh at the army, I was very fascinated by the acknowledgement of the then General Burutai led army that there is a spiritual side to armed conflicts. I noticed an army leadership that didn’t care about the source of any solution to our security problems but just wanted results. Isn’t that commendable?
Though I was also tempted to laugh the army to scorn at that time, I just couldn’t, having myself read every material I came across on spiritual warfare during my sojourn and Christian theological quest to understand the meaning of life and the purpose of why some things happened.
So I have read and imbibed scores of books and materials on spiritual warfare by authors like Derek Prince, Rebecca Brown, Frank Perretti and many others like DK Olukoya whose I find very dramatic and pragmatic owing to his scientific approach yet very mysterious, terrific and alluring.
Nothing draws me to the mysteries of life like the prevalence of evil and the wickedness of man. I secretly find solace in mystery because it helps to explain to my simple mind the reason why the specie called man can be so wicked and why Nigeria is such a hard place to make better. Mystery helps me to sleep at night because it is easier to believe in God than to figure out why? Yet I dare not to ignore the bold assertions of Yuval Noah Harari, the new kid on the atheist block.
While I have refused to comment on MohBad’s death and the demonization of Naira Marley and Sam Larry, I cannot be quiet about the recent news of a young woman who has just died in an Abuja hospital because she was refused treatment owing to the absence of a police report. That is how low Nigeria has been and we know it.
_For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
– Chapter 6, verse 12 of Apostle Paul’s Letter to Christians in Ephesus
While the above script is no longer fashionable among modern day Christians, it holds the theological key to understanding the manipulative interactions between the socio-political and economic forces that shape a society.
Based on the above position by Apostle Paul, nothing just happens. In fact, not everything is ordinary!
Have you noticed that there is more wickedness among the poor and those in the lower strata of the society? Yes spiritual wickedness in high places may be evil but nothing may be more evil than physical wickedness in low places.
Just check the attitude of ordinary Nigerians, many of whom have made money their god. They are so religious just to get God to give them money but they are extremely selfish and full of hate and envy toward others. They care less about others. That’s why they may never be able to create a loving and compassionate society that values life above all else and to prevent suffering, pain and death. This has moved beyond an individual problem to an institutional crisis. Nigeria hates its humanity!
So Nigeria has again happened to that young woman that was robbed, stabbed and pushed from a moving vehicle. But worse still, Nigeria happened to her when she was brought to a public hospital still alive but was refused medical treatment and left to die right inside an hospital because there was no police report. Have you tried to get a police report even as a policeman or lawyer for you to know how hard it can be? What a wicked country!
A country that will never celebrate compassion with a Good Samaritan’s Award but will readily debauch its youth with Big Brother Nigeria (BBN). It is crazy!
Young people would protest the suspicious death of MohBad but fail to see an institutional wickedness of the country that has just claimed a young woman’s life because she may have been so ordinary like one of themselves. Why shouldn’t the Medical Director of the hospital be arrested and put in prison by now?
Nigeria! Who is going to save this country from this curse of wickedness among themselves?
Frank Tietie,
Lawyer & Social Commentator, writes from Osogbo, Nigeria.
