There are so many traditional beliefs that have refused to disappear amongst our people that even a webinar session may not be enough to discuss them in details.
If these were peculiar to our culture I would not know because I do not hold a dual citizenship along with Nigeria to feel how others are doing in that regard.
Although from what I read here and there, our people are very tough in sticking like glue to old practices that others elsewhere treat with carefreeness.
In all spheres of human dwellings do we see all these things frequently and we seem to just go on with our lives unbothered. It is difficult to isolate what we do with religions here from the influences our habits impact.
Quite apparently, there is more trading in religious centers, than the SMSEs contribute to the nation’s GDP. Perhaps we need to promote what could be equivalent to world stock exchanges ranking for religion and at least get Nigeria to top a chart.
There is no doubt that talking religion is a very sensitive subject in this country because of the misconceptions that are associated with who is speaking or who is writing about a religious discourse, and our people don’t have the patience to care about what the subject matter was and how intelligent was the flow of discussion.
It is a big challenge indeed, even when our religiosity has not in anyway made us better as a people or individually within our ecosystem.
We still suffer fools when the chips are down, as our people get taken advantage of and their wealth stolen through smoothly talking them into believing they are trading with God, thus making them to willingly surrender to the slavery of others who practically lead them by their noses in the name of God. Many times I wonder who made us to be like that.
It took so many centuries of infanticide and wickedness against women until Mary Slessor came to change the horrible notion that twins were evil. The hardest of our beliefs that has endured forever is in superstition, that are coated with fears to contaminate our mindset into believing them wholesale.
They fuel the markets for Jazz and Juju, not as the definition used in music but as it concerns voodoo practices. So many that we respect and who go to mosques and churches in the day, have been exposed via social media to sneaking into “rabbit holes”, in the dirty horrible huts for shrines at night to seek for demonic powers from the voodoo priests.
We have seen marabouts honoured with prime time on popular television stations walking on red carpets into state houses as consultants to our highly revered rulers. The higher their status, the more they harbour marabouts paid from public coffers.
We need to jettison these old beliefs that have not paid us fruitfully and liberate ourselves from a mental slavery that only exist in the history books of other sophisticated nations. Agriculture is my major interest as it concerns how to depart from the old ways of doing things.
For some of us who are advocates in our writings, we are not winning at all. The necessary support from government policies have not been good enough and the allocation of funds through budgeting has not matched the hype coming from government sources that agriculture will restore employment hopes to the youth.
There is still bush burning by deliberate intentions and no more extension services from the Ministries of Agriculture that we grew up to know against such practices, and no one is punished for hurting others deliberately in that manner.
Bush burning by the unknown, but most likely the chasers after rats and rabbits is another common and silly practice by those who just by a strike of the matchstick take delight in watching infernos go wild beyond their controls and they walk away into the thin air after catching a few games.
The unquantifiable environmental degradation doesn’t seem to bother them as they choose other locations next in other to carry out their acts in successions. At times they have brought tears into many eyes from huge personal losses.
The evils that they create are better imagined, and I have my direct personal misfortune just smarting from their handiworks, losing my country home, an otherwise functional 4-bedroom bungalow that I laboured for years to put together ten years ago, as it was totally burned down a week ago by the raging fires traced to no one in particular amongst the bush burners.
It just happened to be my turn and sadly confirmed that others could have suffered similar fate in varying degrees in the past and licked their wounds quietly like I have chosen to do, and it is one negative to the old practices, that an adult that is seen to be capable must own a house back in the village as a fall back position in case they are challenged by the worries of their states of origin.
The cost of building, where readily available, at some points pale into insignificance when compared to the difficult maintenance for a house that is not fully or regularly lived in and that’s a general problem. It becomes too bad when the itinerant hunters choose to do their thing in living neighbourhoods and set bushes on fire, and they vamoose into thin air when the worse happens.
The pain is more when justice cannot be obtained for what the law would not accept to be a malicious destruction.
Should anyone be comfortable amongst his people to ask for his or her pound of flesh? If I have enough networks to engage the police to investigate the cause of fire, would the collateral damage not result in the mass arrest of those who could be my near or distant relatives?
How would I still live and enjoy protection amongst such people when the dust settles? At the end I could be paying for police bails to secure freedom for those whom the security investigation would have indicted, I would likely not be a friend again with those that have been fingered for arrest, no matter what. The story will linger and even the culprits would find supporters sympathizing with their “innocent” plights.
Modern agriculture has always frowned against the old practices of bush burning as a style in preparing land for farming in the succeeding seasons, with the consequences of mineral depletions and destructions of other living things like arthropods, the earthworms that nature has assigned specific roles to fertilize and aerate our soils such that what is planted would yield the organic products that will be healthy for us when we eat them.
This should be the message to our farming communities and there have been many alternative ways to reduce or remove bushes when we need to cultivate our lands and farm normally. Government must do everything possible by creating the sustainable environment for investing in practical agriculture for the educated youth with all its attendant farm mechanization, and responsible use of chemicals to wipe away the several old practices that have been useful in the past but no longer the way to go forward.
It therefore means that the condemnation of open grazing as it concerns livestock agriculture should be matched by strict enforcement by farmers to also stick to modern practices of farming our crops.