As Nigeria marks its Independence anniversary today, Charles Onyeabor; an Italy based Nigerian born singer and son of Legendary musician William Onyeabor, has shared an interesting piece on things the country can do to move forward.
Taking to his Instagram page, he highlighted how religion is setting the country back and wrote on lessons Nigeria can learn from Italy, a country despite being the seat of the Vatican doesn’t rely too much on religion to get basic things done.
Read his full post below….
“It’s time we call a spade a spade, our dear country is 61-years old but sadly religion is killing Nigeria. In act it is one of the main things drawing us back as a nation. I used to believe that since the Vatican is in Rome, Italy, it was going to be a ‘holy’ country where everybody would be praying on the streets, but when I got here over 20-years ago, It opened my eyes. Majority of them don’t even go to a church or mosque, they just work towards whatever their goal is with a plan and they get it done.
Their roads weren’t constructed with a Bible or Koran. Great minds came together with ideas, had a plan and implemented it. However, Nigeria is the only country where you see a Christain begging God to help him win a lottery whereas he hasn’t even played the lottery. We have to be realistic because most things aren’t spiritual, but everything is spiritual for us in Nigeria
Its so bad that in Nigeria, religion is even a competition. Christians think their religion is superior to Muslims or any other religion while Muslims think theirs is way superior than the others. But in Italy, your religion doesn’t even matter. I’ve seen Muslims go to churches with their Christain friends and Christians to Muslim events. It’s all about love and together they’re able to achieve a lot together.
It’s however not all the fault of religion, the government starting with the presidency needs to wake up to its basic duties and responsibilities. Like during this Covid-19 pandemic, the Italian government made sure that all its citizens got money for groceries and they even went as far as helping several people to pay their rents and supported business owners with money to get back on their feet. Immigrants weren’t also left out, they all got some sort of support from the government.
Human rights is a fundamental thing. Italians have the right to express themselves the way they want without being attacked by the government or anybody. Unlike in Nigeria, it isn’t practical or obtainable. You can’t express yourself freely without getting into trouble.
I hope we can use this day and moment to reflect on basic issues that affect us as humans and see how best we move forward without deceiving ourselves.
God Bless Nigeria. ”