When the Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, recently stated during an interview that the end of insecurity in Nigeria can only be determined by God, it was a telling statement. He had said, “It is only God that can bring an end to this insecurity, alongside our collective prayers and efforts. It should not be used as a tool to condemn others or score political points.” That statement has understandably triggered the nerves of Nigerians fed up with mediocrity and failure and have had it with leaders who evade responsibility by bamboozling us with what God. Matawalle is, of course, not the first—nor would be the last—of his kind who would defer the solution to problems caused by human agency to God’s sovereignty. It is one thing for a cleric—and many of them do—to say, “only God can end Nigeria’s problem” and another entirely for a serving politician to echo such talk.
The most notorious culprit in this matter of leaving a matter that requires administrative capacity to God is perhaps the late Muhammadu Buhari. No other leader has been a more fervent believer in the idea of Deux ex machina than Buhari, who was also one of the most mentally indolent and unmotivated leaders Nigeria has ever had. His belief that God would come down from heaven to solve the problems culminated by his uninspiring leadership (from his tenure as military leader to civilian president) was unwavering. In November 2016, not too long after he had won a highly divisive election, he evaded his responsibility to reconcile the country by saying, “Only God can unite Nigeria.” When Nigeria faced issues of cross-border smuggling, sometime around December 2020, his best thought on the subject was to conclude that “Only God can effectively supervise the Nigerian and Nigerien border.” Months before his death, he still reiterated his “Only God can fix Nigeria” mantra to excuse his failures after eight years in office. Even after he died, Katsina Governor Dikko Radda still testified to the persistence of this mindset in Buhari when the man told him not to bother much because “Only God can satisfy Nigerians”. When you put these instances together, you see why that old rogue did not even try. He had effectively ceded administrative responsibilities to God; all he did was enjoy the perks of office.
Because we are fed up with politicians manipulating us with the idea that our problems can only be solved by God, we do not stop to examine whether there is some truth to the statement. There is indeed a sense in which “only God” can solve the problem of a nation, but there is very little about Matawalle or Buhari or even Ifeanyi Okowa (he once said “only God” can solve the problem of rampaging herdsmen) to suggest that they think of God as anything more than a tool rather than as a higher mindset that can reorder our chaotic Nigerian universe. The mind that thinks of God as an old man in the sky who sits on a throne with a Santa Claus gift sack comfortably within his reach, from which he throws an occasional boon to his human adorers on the earth, is juvenile, primitive, and altogether deluded. That kind of God is a projection of a lazy mind, an imagination of carnal people who have castrated themselves mentally and even spiritually.
They are the ones who wait for God to do for them what they can do for themselves, and since there is no record of God overriding human agency in non-mythical histories, they are also the type of people who ultimately perish under the weight of their problems.
The people who, on the other hand, take God as an extension of their human capabilities do not think of God in lazy and limited ways. They consider “God” a higher order of thought that enables humans to stand above a problem and solve it. Human capability can be limited by being born and socialised into a problem, a lack of a frame of reference to think beyond a problem that colonises your being. That forces us to this inglorious corner where all we do is repeat the same set of habits that caused the problem in the first place. The issue becomes self-reproducing; no one has the mind or the vision to break free of their own limitations. In such a situation, to call upon God as the only supreme and sovereign power that can solve a problem is not to cede our abilities to a Superman who will swoop down and rescue us from a dangerous situation. No, God as a higher mind is connecting one’s limited abilities with the infinite abilities of God and becoming unlimited. What it will mean for a Nigerian leader who thinks of God as a source of supreme intelligence is to approach issues like insecurity with the clarity of mind, creative genius, eternal wisdom and intellect, and the sense of purpose, discipline, and determination that makes a decisive break with the mindset that got us into the mess.
There is little about Matawalle that suggests he thinks this when he joins the long line of Nigerian politicians who believe “only God” can solve our problems. How do I know? Well, first, he has been in public positions at various levels for a long time. For a man who has spent roughly 20 years going from one public position to another, he is hardly remarkable. Instead, his tenures in office are the usual Nigerian politician’s story of corruption, party hopping in search of refuge from sins, and trading clout for power. Since 2023, the EFCC has announced one probe after another against him. In 2023, they claim he was being investigated for diverting N70bn. The investigation, of course, did not stop him from becoming the defence minister because Bola Tinubu, the master headhunter, could not find an ethical Nigerian. In 2024, the EFCC reiterated its promise to investigate him, and up till last year, still “pledged” to probe him over an alleged N528bn graft.
In addition to these allegations, Matawalle left his governorship position under the cloud of allegations that he funds terrorists. This was no rumour; his successor boldly accused him of procuring vehicles for bandits (including the notorious Turji Bello), housing them at the government house, and paying them handsomely. One of them (another notorious one with a bounty on his head, Ado Aleru) was turbaned under his watch as governor. This same Matawalle recently wedded off nine (or 10) of his children in a spectacular ceremony that lasted almost a week. There is, of course, no harm in public officials wedding off their children, but what Matawalle did by putting on a lavish ceremony was to take advantage of his ministerial position to wed off many of his children at public expense. Of course, such a spectacular ceremony also has its political uses.
So, when a man like Matawalle says “only God can” do this or that for Nigeria, what should interest us is not whether God truly intervenes in human affairs. Instead, we should ask: if God is truly the one who can solve Nigeria’s insecurity problem, does a man like Matawalle, with so many allegations of ethical infractions and a reputation for profiteering, look like a vessel through which God’s supreme intelligence can shine? Because when a politician like Matawalle says “only God”, they are clearly not speaking about leaning on the creative ability of God to envision the alternative possibilities that will rebuild Nigeria; this is instead a man letting out a sigh of frustration that Nigeria’s complex problems will not fold themselves to the convenient size of his limited abilities.
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