Usman Bugaje: Truth As Collateral Political Damage

AKIN OSUNTOKUN

Jacob and Esau

At the genesis of Judeo-Christianity is an explicit instance of premeditated fraud where naked truth was held as collateral damage of a sordid conspiracy to rig and pervert the cause of Justice. The audacity of it all never ceases to amaze me and has fomented my skepticism towards Christianity. It is the story of Jacob and Esau who were born twin brothers to Isaac and Rebekah. Esau was born first and thereby became legal heir to the family birthright.  Let us hear it so to say from the horse’s mouth in the book of Genesis 27:1-30.

‘And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I

‘And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death: Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison;

And make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die’.

‘And Rebekah heard when Isaac spake to Esau his son. And Esau went to the field to hunt for venison, and to bring it.

And Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying, bring me venison, and make me savoury meat, that I may eat, and bless thee before the Lord before my death’.

‘Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make them savoury meat for thy father, such as he loveth. And thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat, and that he may bless thee before his death’.

‘And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing. His mother answered, “Let any curse against you fall on me, my son; just do as I say, and go and get the goats for me.”

‘And he went, and fetched, and brought them to his mother: and his mother made savoury meat, such as his father loved. And Rebekah took goodly raiment of her eldest son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them upon Jacob her younger son. And she put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth of his neck”

‘And she gave the savoury meat and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob. And he came unto his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I; who art thou, my son? And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau thy first born; I have done according as thou badest me: arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my venison, that thy soul may bless me’.

‘And Isaac said unto his son, How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son? And he said, Because the Lord thy God brought it to me. And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not’.

‘And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau’s hands: so he blessed him’

‘And he said, Art thou my very son Esau? And he said, I am. And he said, Bring it near to me, and I will eat of my son’s venison, that my soul may bless thee. And he brought it near to him, and he did eat: and he brought him wine and he drank’.

‘And his father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son.

And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed’

‘Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine. Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee’.

‘And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce, gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting’. What a scam!

If there was ever a case of brazen conspiracy to defraud, this was it. So it raises the question, how can a religion of the moral order of Judeo-Christianity be spawned by this instance of fundamental immorality? At the very minimum, this has fostered a healthy skepticism to the received wisdom of religion and the inherent dubiety it intermittently propagates.

This was a carefully premeditated and orchestrated case of deception; a machiavellian conscription of religion as the end that justifies and rationalises a unique instance of impiety. The common saying among Christians is that God requires no one’s help and cannot be helped in the implementation of his will. If God cannot thereby be helped then why conceive an elaborate scheme to rig Jacob into power?

Yet the writer of Romans would proudly have us believe that ‘The Bible uses the account of Jacob and Esau to represent God’s calling and election. God chose the younger Jacob to carry on the Abrahamic Covenant, while Esau was providentially excluded from the Messianic lineage (Romans 9:11-14)’

Did I just read that “Esau was providentially excluded”? No, Esau was not providentially excluded, he was blatantly schemed out by a peerless act of deception and extortion. I ever came across in the scriptures.

Taqiyyah

Long after the precedent of the Jacob and Esau archetype came the practice of Taqiyyah in which deception is deemed permissible in extenuating circumstances. According to an Islamic religious text, the practice of taqiyyah is a subterfuge that allows a person to conceal their faith or beliefs in situations where they may face persecution, danger, or threat to their life.

Relative to the real time carnal machinations and abuse to which the doctrine has been subordinated, this is nothing but an idyllic misrepresentation. Typical of such reality is the sham political fundamentalist posturing of a figure like MuhammaduBuhari. With the subversion of President OlusegunObasanjo in mind, Buhari once went to town in the disguise of a puritanical religious leader. He said “I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement that is sweeping all over Nigeria”, he then added that; “God willing, we will not stop the agitation for the total implementation of the Sharia in the country”.

UsmanBugaje

Straight from the Buhari playbook, Bugaje launches his chauvinistic Northernist agenda “There are no oil producing states…. the only oil producing state is the Nigerian state itself…  “Whatever mileage you get in the sea, according to the United Nations Law of the sea, is a measure of the land mass that you have; that is what gives you the mileage into the sea…and the land mass of this country, that gives that long 200 nautical miles or more into the ocean, is because of that 72 per cent of the land mass of this country, which is the North. The investment came from the Nigerian state and the territory belongs to the Nigerian state. What they claim is the off shore oil is actually the oil of the North.”

Subsequently and in an act that does not fall short of political schizophrenia, he evangelised “Ordinarily, honestly I don’t want to get dragged into this North and South nonsense. Look this conversation about North and South is coming from the emptiness of our politics. The politicians have nothing to offer. I’m going to go for a president wherever he comes (beware of Greek bearing gifts) once he’s a Nigerian, he has the ideas to fix this country in the 21st century, we are still talking about North and South”

“Political parties in Nigeria are utterly devoid of substance; they lack content, conscience, and courage. They do not represent anything meaningful. When one thinks of the PDP, nothing springs to mind except for politicians uniting to seize power for their own self-interest. Similarly, the APC exhibits a troubling lack of policy direction. I am not impressed by the coalition either, which seems focused solely on displacing the ruling government without any underlying ideology”.

Federalism to the rescue

I feel quite gratified at what has become of Nigeria’s status quo where the bitter taste of overcentralisation is choking the forces behind the sustenance of quasi-unitarist Nigeria. The understanding of Bugaje, is that the lack of good leadership is the bane of Nigeria not the prevailing quasi unitarist state. If for the moment we pretend not to remember his chauvinistic Northernist posture and take him on the face value of being a Nigerian patriot, there is still the outstanding issue of the false formulation of Nigeria’s problem.

I can put the argument no better than the submission of a most improbable latter day convert to the cause, the hawkish leader of the Northern Youths Congress, MalamShettimaYerima “When we restructure the country, everybody will take responsibility. But if you make it over attractive and leave everything in Abuja, the centre cannot hold because there is a limit to what Abuja can do. It is obvious and clear that security-wise, economically and politically, it cannot hold. But if you decentralise and everybody is working at his pace, it will encourage competition because everybody will want to live fine. This agitation of who will be president will not be there because the centre will be less attractive; until we decentralize, we won’t get it right.”