Ever read Nkem Nwankwo’s My Mercedes is bigger than yours? O, that was the golden era of the Heinemann African Writers Series (AWS), where new literary voices from Africa were following the Chinua Achebe motif to register their names in the global literary mart.
Well, it is a not-so-golden era of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), fast becoming a hollow can of quixotic controversies, over alleged Islamization of Nigeria. Yet, the (il)logic is not so different from the cheeky Nwankwo and his fictive shade of Mercedes Benz cars.
One thing is common though, between that past golden season and the present not-so-golden one, trapped in a can of ludicrous claims: vanity and vacuity — then of the post-colonial African elite, now of CAN bristling with holy cant.
Because Vice President Yemi Osinbajo doesn’t share CAN’s fictive Islamization and lost little time to say so, CAN seems to question his commitment to the cause of Christendom Nigeria — in Nwankwo-speak, my Christianity is purer than yours!
Yet, if there is any individual that lives to the fullest the high tenets and ethos of the
Christian faith, it is Osinbajo, who lugs a near-excellent public service record, right from his days as Attorney-General and commissioner for Justice in Lagos State (1999-2007). That he has more or less carried to his current higher responsibility as Vice President of the Federal Republic.
Well, if a furious CAN de-Christians the vice-president, it is simply because of the dross of Christian politicking, vis-a-vis fast and furious competition with the Muslims, in the Nigerian public space.
After CAN and its Christian Elders affiliate have thrown around so much muck on allegations of how the Buhari “Hausa-Fulani” presidency was “Islamizing” Nigeria (a claim Osinbajo told them was pure fiction), CAN in its latest riposte has gone shopping in the past for “evidence”.
Such “evidence” include the Shehu Shagari presidency meeting with the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) in London in 1983; the Babangida military junta doing a follow-up meeting with OIC in 1989 and “had issued a communique to Islamize Africa with Nigeria capturing a great attention. This is a public knowledge while facts could be obtained from Wikipedia with links on OIC’s conference in London, 1983 and Abuja Declaration of 1989”. Seriously?
Indeed, it’s public knowledge past military governments had tried to railroad Nigeria into OIC. But it is also true that the move was strafed in the media, on the basis of Nigeria’s secular constitution.
But pray, how does that indict the Buhari government, in which Osinbajo serves as vice-president, which CAN has always pointedly accused; but when challenged to prove its fiction, bolted into the past to shop for “evidence”?
Even with this past “evidence”, CAN’s grand Islamization charge could not stop two “Christian” presidents, Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan, from ruling a “grandly Islamized” Nigeria.
Indeed, under Jonathan, CAN was in the vortex of the racket of un-Christian conduct, by a Christian president, that cleared the public till! All CAN did was to defend that un-Christian rebuke to the very end, even if it negates its very essence!
CAN should stop mocking the Christian essence. If they cannot approach God and repent for wrongly projecting their faith and embarrassing genuine Christians, they at least owe themselves some golden and dignifying quiet.
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