December 9, 2001
Nigeria is confronted with an urgent challenge: to put an end to ethnic and religious conflicts and needless bloodletting which are seriously undermining the very existence of the country. National unity and the concomitant peace and progress are not like manna dropping from heaven. They cannot be conjured or decreed into existence or achieved by mere exuberant presidential declarations.
To achieve national unity and cohesion, there are certain natural principles to which a people must adhere. Unity can only come about and be nurtured through higher values that are held in common. The importance of values in a heterogeneous country cannot be over-emphasized. As Barber Conable, a former President of the World Bank, wrote in the foreword to a book: "There is no strength in diversity without the cement of commonly-held values." Without the glue of shared noble values, a country of diverse peoples must fall apart sooner or later.
Recent events remind us again of the urgent necessity to address the national question; that is, determining and following through on the political structure appropriate for the realities of the country’s complex diversity. My fundamental position is that there are God-willed principles by which groups of human beings, including nation-states, should be organized to ensure harmony, progress, and prosperity.
The more closely a country adheres to these principles the greater will be the level of harmony and peace that it will enjoy and the faster will be the pace of its social, economic, and political progress. Strains and stresses, distrust and disharmony, and possibly violence and war are bound to arise if such principles are ignored willfully or out of ignorance.
In this connection it must be noted that the values that sustain a country have to do with justice, love, freedom, and the responsibility that is inextricably linked with the right to exercise Free Will. The highest values relate to learning and doing the true Will of God, which manifests on earth as natural laws.
All those who share such values and whose lives are governed by the desire to adhere to the true Will of God, at all times and in all matters, are spiritually homogeneous. And this is the most important form of homogeneity ¾ immeasurably more important than racial, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, or religious homogeneity. All such peoples can have no difficulty associating in any relationship, at the personal level, as citizens of the same country, or as members of the global community.
Obviously, these highest values do not imply acceptance of the literal interpretations of the Scriptures of any of the main world religions. An elementary understanding of two attributes of God -- Justice and Love -- would, for example, convince one of the sinfulness of the barbaric punishments and the intolerance that some people seek to promote in the name of their religion. We have to go beyond literal interpretations of existing Scriptures, if we wish to understand and do the true Will of God, and thereby cultivate the right spiritual values.
The causes of all the social and political tensions around the world have their root in the absence of shared spiritual values. Race, ethnicity, and religion have assumed such great importance as factors of heterogeneity and divisiveness in the contemporary world only because of the decline of spiritual values.
If we would all seek to learn and do the true Will of the Creator, our differences would not divide us but may even make us complementary partners, in the manner in which different organs of the physical body complement one another in their functioning. It is the spiritual weaknesses, which we share, that make us bitter enemies; it is these weaknesses that cause us to inflict violence on one another and to perpetrate various acts of injustice in the name of ethnic group, race, or religion.
In connection with advancing from religious dogmas to spiritual values, I must comment on the strong hold that existing religious organizations unfortunately have on their members. Religious leaders too often seek to limit the extent to which members may exercise their Free Will and make their own individual judgments. By their tendency to discourage individual seeking and reflection, they constitute an impediment to spiritual growth. I have come to believe that, in general, religious organizations, spiritual movements, and similar entities can be, and often are, serious obstacles to individual spiritual growth.
One problem is the spiritual indolence of individuals who do not take time to think deeply about the beliefs and teachings of their own and of other religions. They simply go along with traditions and myths, regardless of present realities and the current state of knowledge. And they accept unquestioningly whatever their leaders say.
A more general problem is that many people do not comprehend the idea that revelation is progressive. This is to say that spiritual truths are revealed to communities of human beings according to their state of spiritual maturity. Some truths might not have been given to humankind at some particular point in time because the people were not yet mature for such truths.
Even the way a particular truth was presented depended on how mature the people at the time were perceived to be. A given idea may not have been mentioned by a spiritual teacher only because it was not an issue at the time or because the idea was so well-known and accepted that it was not an issue for discussion. We find that this progressive or step-wise approach makes sense in our educational system; why should it not make sense in the school of spiritual life?
When a child has finished drinking his bottle of Coke, we may tell him that the bottle is empty. He will agree, and this is true for his age. But we may tell an older child that the bottle is not really empty, that nature does not permit a vacuum. The bottle is full of air. And again, this is true. And yet we can go on to tell an even more mature person, that the empty bottle contains more than one item; that it contains a mixture of many gases including nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide.
That among the mixture in the so-called empty Coke bottle is something that can ignite and burn (oxygen) and another that can be used to douse fire (carbon dioxide). A wise person would not refuse to advance from the idea of an empty bottle to that of one full of a mixture of gases. It is in a somewhat similar manner that spiritual truths have been revealed to communities of humankind over millennia.
John M. Templeton, who established the world’s largest annual prize for religion (larger than the Nobel Prize), makes a similar point in his book entitled The Humble Approach: Scientists Discover God (New York, Seabury Press, 1981). He wrote that scientists are ready to test new ideas even if such ideas seem to undermine the foundation of science. They throw away inadequate theories and ideas that more recent evidence tends to discredit and accept new paradigms.
In contrast, religious authorities resent their dogmas and pet ideas being challenged or criticized. "Why should men of God be less willing to listen sympathetically to new ideas than scientists?" asks Templeton. There has to be a shift from dogmatic religious ideas to spiritual knowledge, which not only permits but encourages careful weighing and examining.
The values that make for a united, happy, prosperous, and peaceful country are rooted in spirituality but are not to be found in dogmatic religion. In the absence of the desirable level of spiritual maturity, the political ties among heterogeneous peoples must be loosened.
In the case of Nigeria, this could take the form of a federation or confederation characterized by a high level of devolution of powers and functions to the constituent units (states or regions) which would be more homogeneous ethnically and/or religiously. This would mean that the Federal Government would cease to be the overbearing power and authority that it is at present. There would be much less "federal might" to wield and, therefore, the struggle to control power at the center would be considerably reduced.
The arrangement must also ensure that constituent units do not parasitize one another. One should reap what one sows and should give to others only voluntarily and out of love. In practice, this would mean a comprehensive revamping of the revenue allocation principles and formulae. The only civilized way to achieve these changes is for responsible and representative cross-sections of the various peoples of Nigeria to get together to discuss, negotiate, and reach binding agreements.
Guides
Building the Foundation for National Unity