On Friday, June 23, 2017, some youths within the All Progressive Congress in Akwa Ibom state organized a prayer session, which they said was for the speedy recovery of Nigeria’s ailing president, President Mohammadu Bihari, currently recuperating in a London hospital.

This simple act of supplication has been held all over the Country by concerned citizens, but as usual, the one on our own soil, had to become an object and subject of immense controversies and a platform for the exchange of insults and verbal violence.

As soon as the news of the prayer session filtered into the social media, Nsima Ekere automatically became the issue. Some said it was an arrangement meant to jump start his taunted governorship aspiration. They said it was arranged to set up committees for his campaigns. Some even queried the propriety of using the ailment of the president to kickstart one’s governorship ambition.

The day came and when they did not see anything close to political campaigns, and in order to justify their failed permutations, they alleged that as the prayers were going on at the open filed, inauguration of committees was going on in “one of the rooms”.

The funny aspect of the laughable controversy is the involvement of people who profess to being members of the same political party as Mr. Ekere. The twist of the facts from members of the other party may be overlooked as being a natural attempt to downplay whatever would have been any political mileage from the event.

It was funny reading nauseating hypocritical posturing by some commentators. It was funny that those who hail the yearly ritual of state sponsored prayer sessions would turn around and mock another sponsored prayer session. It was funny to read those who applauded the use of such prayer sessions to issue threats to fellow citizens, now turn around to make insidious insinuations.

It was funny to read from people, who just two weeks ago splashed the social media with photographs of a former minister of state, on blended knees with his wife at a church session, come on to lampoon and call prayer sessions all manner of names. It was funny to read insults hurled at senior citizens of the state for attempting to put the records straight that the event was organized by the youths and therefore was not compulsory for party elders to be in attendance.

The most funny of all the comments was the attempt to pitch Mr. Ekere again the federal government, by trying to insinuate that a prayer point where participants were asked to pray to loosen the nation from Bondage was an act of indictment of the federal government under President Bihari.

The truth, however, is that even a baby still breast feeding knows that Nigeria is under some spell, if you like, call it bondage. The country’s bondage has nothing to do with President Buhari. The bond had set its grips on the country long before PMB came to power.

Which country, except one under some bondage would experience the magnitude of the barefaced rape of her patrimony and her people still clap and celebrate those who gang-raped their country so remorselessly?

Which country, except one under some bondage, would citizens allow ultra-corrupt individuals become the permanent overlords of their country, dictating the pace and tempo of their daily lives, while they stand aside in hunger and clap?

Which country, except the one under some bondage would the people allow a few greedy individuals impoverish them so much, but still sing the praises of their tormentors and call them gods?

Which country, except the one under some bondage would spend the trillions spent on the power sector in the last 18 years and still live in darkness; with her people daily forced to pay for energy they do not enjoy, yet none would cough?

Which country, except the one under some bondage would allow her political elites get away with the magnitude of impunity that is seen as usual in Nigeria? Who would allow the jaw-dropping malfeasance like the one we saw in the festering cupboards of former NSA Dasuki except a country in bondage? Who would have thought that men would live in opulence on the corpses of our soldiers, who daily died at the war front while their commanders feasted on funds meant to procure arms and ammunitions for them to fight our battles?

Which country would have the bunch of citizens that do not care whether the country is progressing or not as far as their personal and sectional interests are served, except one under some bondage?

Which country would populate its legislatures with corrupt politicians, who give no thought except on how to protect their acquired wealth, and the populace would sit back and clap for them, if not one under some bondage?

Which country would remain abstract concept to her citizens that her people only think of their ethnic and regional origin than as citizens of the same country, except one under some bondage? A country thorn by sectarian violence, ethnic bickering; threatened by secession, hate and bitterness is ripe for prayers of deliverance from some satanic bondage.

A country where N1.27 trillion has so far been released to the 36 states of the federation; N714 billion given to the states by the federal government as special intervention funds, where N522 billion so far released as first tranche of refunds to the states by the federal government pending reconciliation, yet most of the states cannot still pay salaries and wages to workers; some cannot even account for the whereabouts of the Paris refunds, yet the citizens sit down and tepidly mourn their ill fortune, must be a country under some kind of evil bondage.

So the captive Nigeria did not originate with President Buhari. He merely inherited a thoroughly afflicted country reeling under the grip of some evil bondage. Praying for deliverance from such bondage cannot therefore amount to mocking the president or in any way targeted at the president.

Those trying so hard to detract from the essence of the prayers are the agents of the political undertakers of the Nigerian project; the wheeling dealing political contractors and their Hallelujah singers. We should rather join the bands of prayer warrior, wherever they may be found to pray for the exorcising of the evil spirit and their human agents holding Nigeria bondage.