BY REV FR GERALD NWAFOR
The word retreat means different things to different people. Simply put, the word retreat comes from the Latin word retrahere, which means “To draw back or withdraw.”
As Christians, we go on retreat to withdraw from the busy world and draw spiritual strength to move on in our journey of salvation. The military may shout retreat if they appear to be losing a battle, or a war. They want to go back and re-strategize and come forward again. Even the Nigerian Senate goes to retreat from time to time but I do not see the positive effect of their retreat because anytime they go for retreat the outcome has never been positive.
A look at the economic, political, spiritual, and social climate of the nation called Nigeria suggests that a true retreat is required in all spheres of life in Nigeria. Only yesterday I heard that a spiritual father of one of the churches was suspended by the headquarters because of an investigation going on, and the spiritual father called the suspension a bluff and went on to hold service and created a lot of drama and melodrama. I could not believe my eyes and my ears. After Catholics in Nigeria, the next denomination with a good Christian population is the Anglican Communion, but the show of shame going on with the spiritual father and the Nigerian community is unwarranted.
There should be a spiritual retreat to discuss whatever the issue may be and proffer a solution amicably. It was a Muslim friend who called my attention to it and asked me what the problem is. Where would I start, because since I met him in 1999 as a journalist, I have not succeeded in telling him that all Christian churches are not the same. His regular answer has been that they all profess Christ. During the Ahiara crisis, I was trying very hard to tell him what the problem was, but I did not succeed either. If you look at the number of churches springing up and the amount of fake miracles going around, you will agree with me that we need spiritual retreat in our country today. Sometimes, when I listen to the self-acclaimed pastors speaking, I wonder where they get what they are preaching to the congregation. I do not see a pathway to salvation listening to some certain men of God.
There was a time the Buhari government wrote to FIFA saying that Nigeria is withdrawing from FIFA to look into their house. Then it was two years retreat but we all cried foul. A look at the situation of soccer in Nigeria today would tell you that we need a retreat to organize our sports, not only soccer. How can you explain to an ordinary man on the street that Nigeria did not qualify for the World Cup in a game against DRC? It has been a long time since Nigeria celebrated the Gold Cup in both male and female competitions in the global sports world. (FIFA U-17 Youth World Cup in 1985, 1993, 2007, 2103, and 2015; Olympic Gold in Football 1996 – the men’s Dream Team; and AFCON champion in 1980, 1994, 2013.) We are declining on all fronts. A total overhaul is very important in the country called Nigeria now.
There is no way to go forward if we do not conscientiously make positive steps towards success and sustaining democracy. The people organizing our sports department have been giving us excuses about why they will fail, why they failed, and why they are failing. We need to take a step backward and recalculate our behaviors and actions. We have a lot of bad attitudes and behavior. Even on social media skits and videos: I saw Daniel Omokachi (The Bull) trying to explain himself out of a situation because a pharmaceutical company uses his face and voice with the help of AI to sell a medicine that has not been approved by the drug agency of Nigeria (NAFDAC). Can you imagine how far people would like to go in search of money? When the Buhari government said that social media should be controlled, I did not see the reason why, but at the time, AI had not been blown up like it is today. My advice would be to prosecute the abusers to the full extent of the law. Why should you clone a person’s image and voice and put words he never said into his mouth? That is a criminal mindset. Government should have a little bit of control when abuse happens. There is no absolute freedom under the sun. I suggest that we should have a retreat on our social life in order to choose between what should be published and what should not. Freedom of speech does not allow you to shout ‘fire’ in a hall filled with thousands of people when there is no fire.
There should be a step back to value and revalue our social behavior in the name of freedom.The military retreat should be reconsidered because, since 2009, the Nigerian government has been fighting Boko Haram and terrorist insurgency to no end. Nobody knows the amount the government is spending on the terrorists, bandits, and Boko Haram aggression.
There has been no retreat to reconsider our plans and strategy. All governments have been pouring billions of dollars into that war without any positive effect; rather, the war gets worse every year. The military is trying to say that they are winning the war against terror, but if you look at the number of people still in captivity and the number of attacks in one year, the statistics tell a different story.
How can you say that you are winning a war when more people are killed, and more soldiers are displaced from their camps? The number of people in IDP camps is growing day by day. There is no winning formula, as we can see today. And because the army cannot secure the farmland, there is a shortage of food, which has messed up the economic situation. The economy of Nigeria is in a coma, to say the least. All these words about boosting the economy in 2030 are a joke. How can you boost an economy that has no physical and financial security? The economy has key performance indicators.
We do not produce anything except crude oil that has been mortgaged by the government, and in the next 30 years, the oil money will be collected by the present government and squandered. We need a retreat on the economy before the country becomes a failed state. The key to success is retreat on all fronts to know where we are going in the first instance, so we can get a good driver who knows the road to our destination as a nation.
