I do not doubt your exceptional knowledge of the bible and the Holy Spirit interpretation to you and neither do I want to argue any personal issues with you. We do not want to dwell on any self righteousness here. We do not want the senseless killing that has just happened anymore in our country and we are looking at how we can re-orientate our people not to be used by the perpetrators. Therefore, Personalising and justifying your own believe is not likely to help the situation.

Please let us look at the meaning of religion in the dictionary, it means, faith, believe, creed, or conviction. Unless you have another definition that state otherwise, then Christianity is a religion. When you ‘walk on faith and believe’ as you have said, you are religious. Making your faith and believe a way of life is also part of being religious and in the process you might start telling, advising or encouraging others to embrace it as a way of life. Religions like Judaism, Islam and Buddhism etc also have their faith or believe. It is left for them to make it a way of life and extend it to others also.

Before we make comment on Islam or Christianity, we should go back to history how Kings and religious warlords have used these two religions to achieve their objectives. Let us look at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd crusade (Christian holy war they say), how the Christian warlords almost wipe out Islam in the Roman Empire. Jihad (also Muslim holy war they called it) how the Muslim wage war against Christian, Can you believe how many Christian soldiers that follow king Richard (The Lion Heart) to Jerusalem from Europe to wage war against Saladin who as at that time have captured Jerusalem by killing the Christians in that area. They fought the stronghold of Saladin to secure Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem. These people in both sides are fighting because of their faith or believe, not because they love Saladin, King Richard or any of the warlords.
By Justifying your own religion over others is one of the reasons why we have this carnage. Do not underestimate the power of faith or believe. Every man with faith or believe will die for it cause and that is the power the politicians and rulers are using. It has worked before and it is still working now.

Then you said why do we trouble ourselves? Well, we trouble ourselves because our people are perishing because of lack of knowledge. Many of our people are still living in Stone Age; in the western world or developed countries they have grown to learn that no one can push them to go and die because of any selfish cause and yet they have all religions ( be it Islam, Christianity or Judaism) within their societies.

Religion is a menace to our society today especially Africa and Middle East because most of us lack of knowledge and the few knowledgeable among us are using it for their own gain and destruction of others. If only those involve can comprehend the secret behind what they were encouraged to do in the name of God.

Religion to my understanding is the Culture of people’s beliefs.
Culture is the general accepted Values and norms of group of people, society or country. The fundamental blocks of culture are values and norms.
Values are abstract ideas about what a society believes to be good, right and desirable. Values affect everything, political and economy systems as well as culture. Values include attitudes towards concepts like freedom, honesty, loyalty, justice, responsibility and personal relations including marriage. Values shape individual behaviour by identifying appropriate and inappropriate forms of human interactions.
While Norms are social rules and guidelines that prescribe appropriate behaviours in particular situations. Norm shapes the action of people towards one another.
Religion as per what I can deduce from above explanations is just like cultural value. The general accepted principle of people’s beliefs as per nature, existence of humans, divine and how to worship God is religion. For instance almost if not all religions teaches the rich to protect or help the poor and also for the strong to protect the weak and so also all other general accepted appropriate behaviours in every society. People’s beliefs renew their minds towards a particular direction and mostly to God and good behaviours in the society; it teaches them to conform to the rules, regulations and expectations of their faith. It give them hope, peace and expectation of eternal life or after life as a believer and eternal condemnation to hell as non believer.
The all of the above, are the reasons why we have religion. It has been hijacked though for selfish individual or group ambitions and goals. People are brainwashed and mislead by using the power of their beliefs to set them against each other. We cannot say one religion is guilty and the other is not. All religion is now keg of gunpowder or let me say nuclear bombs ready to be detonated.
The power of religion both in the olden days and even now has shown that people’s beliefs are their existence. Through religion believers seek answers to creation so also through science the scientist or mostly non believers seek answers to evolution. Some of us believe that evolution is just the scientific finding of God’s creation but in whatever form we may elucidate it, religion is a very volatile and delicate property of our world.

You are welcome pal.

You have almost said it all bros, though I don’t want to comment on the profiteers because there will be none of them without the establishment of the ‘true militant’ as you have called them (profiteers are a Niche in the market).
Hand on heart I really sympathise with the ‘true militant’. I sympathise with them because I have witnessed the sorry state of Niger delta environment, we also know the root cause of all the injustices that have given rise to these militant’s aggressiveness. I am very sure Khadijat had never gone anywhere near Niger delta, so she cannot understand what we are saying here. Well my dear, the situation there is horrendous. You can never believe Niger delta is where all the money comes from, not only that they were denied the income and value of their resources, they were also denied the right to live in peace in their communities because they destroy and polluted their environment and left them with nothing to survive on. Therefore those people (the true militant) are fighting for all of the above. I believe these should give Khadijat an idea of the struggle.
I do not want to delve into who is at fault here but I will say all parties are involve, the government from federal, state to local, the multinationals oil companies, and to crown it all the community chiefs that has sold their souls and conscience to greed rather to good life for all.
Now, the fact remains that going militant can never solve this appalling situation, looking at the middle east for instance, what problem has the militant solved even though they have unleashed terror in various part of the world that has drawn attentions just like what the Niger delta militants are doing now?. In fact they have not been able to solve any problem but successfully becoming the enemies of the world and that is the end product of being militant.
This people must jettison the idea of destruction and embrace the power of diplomacy in this democratic arena. It might sound too subtle but that is what democracy is all about, it’s all about consultations of ideas between groups, communities and regions to unite and form a consensus until they can lead a high power delegate to make their voice heard diplomatically.
Please remember that the militant’s violent activities only give more rooms for the selfish among us to steal more and more. They are the one that would buy the guns for the militants to create unrest so that they can divert attention to execute their evil agenda. Therefore the more time the ‘true militants’ uses in their violent activities the more time those thieves among us will have to cart away more resources depriving all of us more and more valuable resources. Please let’s start thinking, many great people has died or killed for this cause and many more will follow without achieving anything concrete on the cause until wisdom is applied. The good book says ‘‘Wisdom is the principal thing, get wisdom but in all thy getting get understanding’’

That is fair enough, and believe me, I totally understand your position here and I think we've all been there.

It is not surprising to see that only few people are interested in contributing or admitting to their roles in the nation systemic failure. I am giving unbiased kudos to this lady (khadijat) and the gentle man (Cleverman) for seeing through themselves their little ways of negative contributions to the system no matter how minute or insignificant it is. These fellows I say will be exceptional leaders in as much as they keep seeing themselves before they see others.
Hypocrisy, the good book says that why do we complain of speck of wood in another man’s eye even though we have whole log of wood in ours. The problem of our nation’s failure is we. It is much reasonable to us to discuss other fellow citizens than our individual selves and in our own eyes we can never do anything wrong even when we were obviously caught red handed in our negativity, we simply overlook it and forgive ourselves as individual.
We should not underestimate the power of persuasion of individual that want to do good or bad, though in most cases and naturally, no matter how long it takes the good ones always prevail even if it takes generation upon generation.
These reminds me of the history of England in the sixteen century when the ultimate power of the King, King Henry Stuart who wanted absolute power as the supreme ruler was being challenged by an army general, general Oliver Cromwell who wanted power to belong to the people through the parliament.
Off course general Cromwell commands the army therefore at an advantage to take over the leadership of England but the general was only interested in justice for all therefore threw his weight behind the parliament and also sort the king to submit to the parliament. The king was not ready to give people any power thereby sorts the help of foreign power to combat his own people, the general and the parliament. The secret of his plan was let out by a King's confidant an individual who was only interested in the progress of England as priority even though he loved the King.
The general ordered the arrest of the king and brought him before the parliament. He was accused of treason against his own people. He was found guilty and was decapitated. His position was abolished though his son was made king soon afterward as demanded by the people. The general retired to his village leaving the nation in the hands of the parliament. Contrary to the general’s intentions corruption was the order of the day in the parliament, all the laws passed only favours the members and the lords, they even wanted to pass a decree that their position should be made permanent. The filth continued for six good agonising years for the people of England before
General Oliver Cromwell rose again to the challenge, he arrested the entire parliamentary body to give room for a true and just parliament that he has hoped for and saw to its leadership himself. These new parliament under the leadership of General Oliver Cromwell ruled England for five years before his death and brought law and order and good governor to the common people no matter where they were in their remote villages. England became more powerful, wealthy and never the same again.
People who would not look at themselves first are always consumed in greed selfishness and injustice. When you critically look at yourself, you will do to others what you want others to do to you. Charity begins at home.

I am totally with you Godsson, it is natural to be motivated in order to have the passion to do something, apart from those who benefited from the policies of Shagari, Azikiwe and Awolowo brief tenure up to 1983, nothing can be said that has been done for the masses since that period and it is shameful. we cannot remember anything the country has offered but pain and gnashing of teeth in anger and frustration for the masses. Even if we soak our heads from now till tomorrow  it may be difficult for it to swell to motivate or create any passion to want to die for the country unless God intervene.

My fear here is the fact that most of our present generation has learnt nothing from the outgoing leaders but their despicable acts. Most of our youth now thinks it is the normal way of doing things, the only hope for justice (the judiciary) is bastardise and therefore you can't run to the  police for help, Police station is the headquarters for corruption.
In order to put things right people or individuals must be ready to bear the consequence of their actions which brings us back to upholding the law. The Nigerian police does not even know the law, only one out of forty knows what they are doing. Please go to their stations and see how they are treating Nigerian citizens without anyone to question them, they only incline to where ever the cash is flowing, no one care about the law, as far as they are concern their gun is the law.
How is our present generation wants to go about it without any backing especially from the judiciary?
I like to be positive but how? in these case, Most of our right minded present generation would care much about getting jobs and eating three square meals with our families than chasing shadows that will get us killed leaving our families into further squalor that will make them regret ever having us.
How many Nigerians will refuse to sell their votes during election? How many Nigerians will contribute money monthly to sponsor a genuine political party without relying on the old or outgoing thieves? How many of us truly pay our taxes for basic amenities to justify good governance? These are the  things I believe we should start with in order to give ordinary Nigerians power to put good people into relevant position and gradually chase away the sharks.
How many of our present generation capable to list themselves up as One of the citizen to answer the questions and make happen the above? It's not going to be easy.

It would be out of ignorant for anyone to thinks that the north cannot survive without Niger delta oil, off course, they had survived and will continue to survive. All they have needed God has provided for them in terms of agricultural products, in facts they are the back bone of Nigeria food supplies and that is the first basic physiological factor for human needs. Do not forget that when Niger delta oil has not been discovered Nigeria as a whole is better rated and economically valued even just with the agricultural products internationally, Our exchange rate is even better than the Americans. It was a period when everyone had the sense of duty and remained focus to make Nigeria great.
It is true that lots of money is generated from oil and is driving most of us mad, I have being to Niger delta and have seen the sorry state of things but it still boil down to the stupidity of the Niger delta rulers both local chiefs and the political leaders. I have had the pleasure of seeing most of these people outside Nigeria shores living as if there would be no tomorrow, who is to blame? It is not shell or Exonmobil if that is what you are thinking, the multinational oil companies cannot do anything in Niger delta without the approval of these so call local chiefs and politicians but they'll rather serve their pocket than serving their community, therefore will get the money from the shell and mobil and stack it up in foreign account for themselves, the same set of people will return home and keep playing on the peoples ignorance.
We are ignorant of what we dont know therefore the reason for the youth unrest in that area, so please the insect that is eating the vegetable is on the vegetable itself. In whatever way we may look at it, each region as in North, South, East or west of Nigeria have its Opportunities and strengths so also has its treats and weaknesses, talking about one region cannot survive without the other without Critically looking at these factors does not portray a good sense of unity in a country as big and blessed like Nigeria.
Why is it that the foreign country still come to Africa for raw materials? why is it that the world is becoming a global village? and why is it that the developed countries of the world are still patronising developing and the underdeveloped countries? The benefit of coexisting is far greater than our imagination only if we can apply general economic sense and use it to our advantage. Sowing seeds of discord will never improve our nation.

Many of us like to describe or parody our country/leaders in one form or another but the fact still remain that we are Nigerians, Lets narrow it down to ourselves individually and honestly see if the names that you call others does not apply to you yourself. What makes you different from any other Nigerians, for instance, do you always waits on the queue for your turn, do you always refuses to give or take bribe or participates in any of the obvious corrupt practices, in your little corner what is it that you do that can make you raise your head as a true Nigerian that have not contributed to its systemic failure?