Nigerians! Aren't we a special breed. Our sense of self-righteousness is Annoying

 

I have read with utter consternation the comments from some of my country men and women justifying the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida because it occured in a gay club. 
One baffling thing here to start with is that the killer had sworn allegiance to ISIS before going on his killing spree and whenever these terrorist atrocities have been committed in any part of the world by these ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Shabab or Boko Haram extremists, our Christian brothers and sisters in particular have often mocked and ridiculed them for fighting for a God who cannot fight for himself.  Now the victims are a bunch of gay clubbers and all of a sudden it is the wrath of God coming down hard on America for her sinful ways.  I read through a few comments on the various Nigerian news websites and I could only marvel at the double standards of our people.  According to one person, it was a sign from the almighty, while another one said gay people do not deserve to live.  One other commentator even went as far as to describe the shooter as a hero.  Funny enough, majority of these comments were coming from supposed Christians.

It is so typically part of us to know what God is thinking or what he is going to do.  I was forced to wonder at this point.  What kind of sin does not exist in our country?  Corruption, rape, rituals, murder,  electoral fraud, perversion, forgery, theft - which of God's laws have we not broken?  We egg our politicians on when they loot their state treasuries and applaud them for it, we look the other way when a family member brings home huge sums of money from his place of work far more than his regular earnings but when it comes to the issue of homosexuality, we are the most righteous, most godly most sinless people on earth. This becomes an avenue for us to show how high we stand on the pedestal of morality.  Now an ISIS sympathizer takes up a gun and murders 49 people in cold blood and he is applauded.  Hang on but I thought murder too was a sin?

At one stage I was unable to control myself anymore reading through these comments, I just had to come in and I asked if being gay was enough to justify murder or if homosexuality was a bigger sin than the others mentioned above.  I knew what was to come afterwards.  If you express disgust at the murder of a group of gay people then it means you are one yourself.  That's the way our people see it and it was only a matter of time before I got something like that thrown at me and sure enough one came.  ''I'm sorry your colleagues got killed. Take heart okay?'' came the response from somebody.  I should not have reacted angrily to that comment but I obeyed my first instinct and did just that telling him what a pathetic pig I thought he was.  I waited for his response but it never came. Now, if I saw two men kissing each other on the streets - and I've done quite a few times - I would probably turn my nose up, but that's not enough for me to wish them dead and certainly not from the hands of an ISIS member or sympathizer.

Credit: Peter Jite Asagba and Sam Dä-Teflön Efé (for the photo)