Religious piety vs. secular insularity

– Why should anyone wonder what people are up to these days? There are enough blogs out there sniffing the behinds of those that matter; from pastors with human skulls to those divorcing their wives and those advocating for tax moratorium.
– The last one interests me, a pastor asking people not to pay tax?
– Yes, Bishop Oyedepo justified church exemption from taxation arguing that they tar the roads to their empires, provide their own electricity and water supply.
– Most of us do?
– Well, that’s why I said he is calling for civil disobedience against tax authorities – most of us do.
– Good luck to him, I’m talking of those who seem to have receded into the umbra of public discourse.
– Well, people retire, they go into politics, and farm, consult or they die on the queue waiting for their pension and gratuity – the Naija price for retirement. That is why; people spend getting younger instead of retiring.
– You mean they subscribe to those untested forever-young products with sometimes-irreversible side effects?
– No.
– They think that miracle workers can rejuvenate their aging vital organs?
– Not quite. Some people I understand use court affidavits to reduce their age; then they return to the Evil Service Commission for adjustment.
– Really?
– Come on; stop pretending as if you don’t know these things. Do you think the ‘no vacancy’ in the service is due to the presidential exception to some super evil servants who have reached the mandatory or statutory retirement age to keep their seats?
– Chiaie!
– Encouraging early retirement is as simple as pension reform to guarantee access to what people saved for the rainy day; trial of pension thieves and individuals or companies that collected pension from their workers but failed to remit them. People who destroy other people’s retirement dreams should never be allowed to return home to enjoy their loot.
– But where are those whose stories hit our consciences but somehow manage to slip back into obscurity?
– Like who?
– Ahmed Sani – Yeriman Bakura.
– You are wicked, allow the man enjoy his child bride in peace? Why drag him back to the circus so that people can call him paedophile and insult his religion too?
– No, frankly, I am just wondering if he has any relationship with his worst victim – Baba Bello Jangedi whose arm was chopped off for stealing a goat. Where are Lawal Isah, Safiya Husaini Tudun, and what are has befallen Amina Lawal?
– Chiaie, I’ve almost forgotten those ones. Why bring back such sad memories?
– Because of what politics is doing to the world’s most famous religions.
Pastors are caught with human heads, some have infected members with HIV, and others are accused of rape. One is being tainted as a gunrunner and some have problems keeping their wives. Politics has entered religion muddling the usually clear waters between religious piety and secular insularity.
– Well…
– I mean, Sani left Zamfara and returned to Abuja to hobnob with people whose ways he would have considered haram worthy of being stoned in his Zamfara. He does this without guilt or scruples.
– Y-e-s. The only permanent thing in life is change! When in Abuja, behave like a federalist, when in Zamfara, wear the pious toga of a mullah. I see no confusion.
– Oh, is that the theory?
– Well, recently, I saw a picture go viral on social media.
– A viral picture on social media? Social media is a narcissist’s playpen.
– In the picture, Ibrahim Shekarau is sandwiched between two non-hijab wearing ladies whose company he seemingly found nothing wrong with and whose dressing might have been interpreted in Kano as capable of causing fitna?
– Exposure doesn’t cause fitna for those with control of their eyes. At any rate never believe everything you see on social media because anyone who says photos don’t lie has never been cloned by a Photoshop expert.
– This one is real.
–    So what? People exhibit their pictures everyday on social media that is why photography studios are so last year.
– I thought that it was haram for Mullahs to pose with half-clad bachelorettes?
– You are really looking for trouble. In London the man explained that when he was in Kano he gave the Kanawa what they wanted – political sharia. Now that he has been invited to come and chop in Abuja, he has hung his toga of sharia for the babbanriga of the secularist Abuja politician.
– I mean this man burnt books.
– Y-e-s.
– He sent artists out of his domain?
– Y-e-s.
– He burnt CDs.
– Pornographic ones, y-e-s.
–    He broke tons of beer bottles.
– So what? Get a life; start blogging.