When people describe Nigeria as the giant of Africa, they speak more to its potential than to its reality. And the potential is enormous by most standards. A land mass that is the envy of most, a land that is rich in mineral resources of all kinds, an access to the sea that is denied many countries, a climate that is varied but mostly accommodating leading to an ecology and wild life that very few countries possess. To cap it all, Nigeria is endowed with a population that is large enough to be self-sufficient but not too large to be unwieldy. And more importantly, a people that is intelligent, industrious, resilient and warm. In other words, whatever the ingredients that have made America great, Nigeria has them in its own proportions.

So why would a country with so much potential end up being the poverty capital of the world? And why should Nigeria even be in the conversation when failed States are mentioned? Several books can be written on this. Several seminars will raise up different explanations. My own explanation is simple. We lacked visionary leadership at the critical period of our history. Leaders who couldn’t see beyond the present. And the present for them showed a country with enormous resources. Some of the resources were so obvious that Nigeria didn’t have to work hard to discover them. A few of them became manifest so early that the leadership rested on its oars and stopped providing leadership. It is the reason people with enormous talents hardly amount to much in life because everything comes easy to them making them to lack discipline and staying power. Besides, when bounties come ‘too much, too soon’ there is the tendency not to appreciate them and to fritter them away. The examples of young, successful athletes and entertainers who become bankrupt in later years after making tons of money are all over the place.

This ‘Giant of Africa’ had so much going for it that it made a few nations uncomfortable. Unfortunately, Nigeria didn’t try to earn the sobriquet let alone protect it. The hubris and grandstanding of the 70s became the face of the country. We were the ‘Big Brother’ to poor African nations and we played that role to the hilt dispensing funds and dispersing skirmishes in small, neighboring countries. The Western world tolerated our growing influence as long as it didn’t get out of hand. After all, a benign regional power is supposed to make their world safer. Then our frontline role in apartheid made the West to sit up. Our belligerent and confrontational posture towards apartheid sympathizers, made them realise that a stronger Nigeria was not in their best interest. Nigeria had to be cut to size. Our gradual, economic leaning towards the East didn’t help matters.

It is standard in warfare that enemies attack through the weakest flank. For most developing countries, this is through the greed of their leaders. In addition to greed, Nigeria has religion as its weak flank. For years, the northern elite had used religion to achieve its goals. It had been a tool to control peasant minds. And an arsenal to fight the enemy, real or perceived. The less educated the people, the more potent the weapon. Unfortunately, it is a two-edged sword. Political and religious infiltrators have found these same illiterate but fertile minds as tools for destabilizing the country. There are enough articles and conspiracy theories online which suggest that there is more to the current carnage in the country. And that foreign countries, some of them friends by day and enemies by night, are behind the happenings in the country. They have used religion, poor infrastructure, poverty and general discontentment as tools in achieving their nefarious goals. And we are playing into their hands. Our religious leaders, those to whom we entrusted the moral compass of the people, are not only rich, they are very powerful. And insensitive. They have become mini-gods manipulating the minds and controlling the purses of their worshipers. Rather than tone down on religious rhetoric during these delicate times, they have instead, increased the decibel. So they do the talking and religious/political infiltrators do the killing. The people do the moaning while those in Aso Rock do the wringing of hands. On and on, it goes. The country is in tumult because leaders have not learnt to give unto Caesar – education, good infrastructure, religious freedom – what is Caesar’s. A secular country has become a multi-religious country where brothers are being made to kill brothers ostensibly in the name of God.

The Yoruba nation has always been very accommodating. Of religions and of strangers. However, religious intolerance which has always been alien to these people, raised its ugly head some two years ago in Kwara State when religions that had been co-existing peacefully over the years, suddenly became hostile to each other. I knew then that the State was playing with fire. Neither the Governor nor the Emir did anything decisive to douse the flame at the time. Part of the results of that neglect is what we are witnessing in the State today. It is said that if there are no cracks in the wall, reptiles would not enter. They, by their actions, allowed religious/political infiltrators into their territory. Recently in Osun State, a State I knew in my growing up years to be religiously blind, a ‘white garment’ church decided to stir the hornet’s nest when some of its members ‘visited’ the shrines and groves of traditional worshipers in order to exorcise perceived ‘demons’. That was religious intolerance at its height. And if unchecked, it is opening cracks for religious/political infiltrators.

State and Federal authorities have to do something urgently about this growing religious activism. Many think they can do or say anything in the name of God and get away with it. In fact, many think they are the State itself. They have to be told in no uncertain terms that they are not. Except that of a failed State. Indeed, there seems to be a nexus between religious activism and State chaos.

Religious activists - these include fiery, self-righteous preachers and enforcers of religious laws and doctrines through violence – should be described and treated as purveyors of violence. And an excuse – or smokescreen - for those who want to destabilize the country. That someone as high in the hierarchy as the Vice President of the country had to come out recently to state publicly that Nigeria is not on the verge of collapsing says a lot about the state we are in. And that something has to be done urgently to save the country.

•Muyiwa Adetiba is a veteran journalist and publisher. He can be reached via titbits2012@yahoo.com

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