By Josef Omorotionmwan

ADMITTEDLY, our relationship with the West has been defined by undue duplicity. Close to 54 years of our so-called independence, we are still largely in chains. Nigeria’s annual Balance Sheet is perhaps still prepared in Washington, DC. Even in the area of our much touted oil wealth, when the multi-nationals sneeze, Nigeria catches cold because they hold the key to the industry.

Who is still asking questions about the $10.8 billion hitherto unexplained oil money, which came down from Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s original claim of $49.8 billion? Such probably did not listen to the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Engr. Andrew Yakubu, when he was writing his own testimonial and rendering the account of his self-audit. For those who were lucky not to have listened to him, he said that a bulk of the money went into subsidy for kerosene — even when the pomp price of the product has remained around N200 per litre as against the N50 that we have always been told is the official pomp price.

Once upon a time, we thought there was a Minister in-charge of the Petroleum Ministry. We also erroneously assumed that the stock of professional audit firms and good chartered accountants was not in short supply in this country. That explains why Sanusi’s $49.8 billion has now been explained away with a wave of the hand, without a word from those authorised to speak on such an issue.

At the threshold of his departure from the Central Bank, Sanusi has just been reduced to an alarmist overnight. What an inglorious way to end a career that once looked quite alluring! Just imagine how $49.8 billion has simply evaporated into thin air! But for how long will this financial rascality continue? Why has the audit of the NNPC accounts suddenly become a mirage? This is perhaps the relics from the West – just do it and don’t explain! It’s a height of impunity.

Even granting that the whopping sum of $49.8 billion (close to N1 trillion) has been spent on the best of motives, where can it be located in the 2013 appropriations? The National Assembly should be ashamed of itself for not living up to its responsibilities. Under its very nose, CBN and NNPC, among others, have transformed themselves into bigger Republics within the smaller republic of Nigeria. They have no spending limits and they require no legislative authorisation and approval! But whatever happened to the provisions of Section 80 of the 1999 Constitution?

The overbearing attitude of the West is carried through all aspects of our lives. At the social spectrum, for instance, they insist on determining everything: We must eat what they eat and forbid what they forbid. We must worship God the way they do or face the harsh punishment prescribed by them for non-adherence. We may lose the right to pick the crumbs that fall from their breakfast tables.

When they suddenly turn homosexual, we must quickly bury our heterosexual instincts or risk loss of funding for those diseases, a bulk of which had been exported to us by them. That’s where we are now.

Since the enactment of the Prohibition of Gay Marriages Act, the penultimate week, a storm of indignation has burst forth in the West. They have been crying blood and threatening all types of reprisal against us.

For us, though, the need for efficiency and order remains a powerful weapon against an obstreperous nation’s conscience to maintain her ethical autonomy. By ethical autonomy, we mean the willingness to assert one’s own principled judgment, even when that entails violating rules, values and perceptions of others.

A nation is ethically autonomous to the extent that it sticks to its guns about what it believes, even where doing so might put her in conflict with other nations. That’s why Nigeria has acted forcefully to prevent the further embezzlement of public trust.

The West introduced Christianity to us and did not hide the fact that homosexuality is an aberration. In the book of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 the Bible describes homosexuality as an abomination. In his own teaching, Jesus Christ made it clear that the reference to marriage is a reference to male and female (Mark 10: 5-9; Matthew 19:4-6).

The Apostle Paul was most emphatic in his reproach of homosexuals, when in the book of Romans 1:26-27, he admonished, “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature; and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of women, burned in their lust towards another; men with men working that which is unseemly; and receiving in themselves that recompense of the error….”

To our greatest consternation, the Western leaders are now asking us to swallow the bitter pill of sodomy and attract the wrath of God. Their next move might be to begin to coerce us into sleeping with our cats and dogs!

Meanwhile, they are preaching one thing and practising another. Otherwise, by now, one would have heard that they have dissolved their existing marriages and replaced their former spouses with gays.

Certainly, these Western leaders have a lot of explaining to do. If in this their new religion, they have stumbled into the fact that gay relationships lead to salvation; or that they are a panacea to corruption; or that therein lies the much needed cure for AIDS, then, one can understand the reason for the arm-twisting.

Whichever way they go, this new religion of hypocrisy for which they offer no explanation certainly portends multiple tragedies: for contradicting God’s commands, they risk eternal condemnation; for turning people away from the ways of God, they risk more condemnation; and for cutting down on foreign assistance on HIV-AIDS of which they are the originators (with the direct correlation between homosexuality and AIDS), they could stand most condemned.

All the same, God remains the final Judge but by all means, we deserve to be left alone!