Antics Of Devil’s Advocacy

It should be obvious to every average Nigerian that there is an on-going conflict between the good and the ugly, globally, largely for the purpose of forcing serious persons to develop deep, inner perceptive ability. There must always be some litmus test to separate the wheat from the chaff in every serious encounter in real survival. Neither must anybody think that life is such a cheap bargain, demanding the use of clever wit to get through.
Any Nigerian watching with keen interest and attention the events playing out in the country in recent past years, would recognise that trying times entail exposures and possible separation. It is true to say that storms can separate the strong from the weak, thus forcing the weak to go the wall, and the strong to rise as heroes. But what many people fail to recognise in the midst of trials and temptations, is that true strengths and weaknesses need severe tests to be able to emerge without cosmetic padding.
People who observe and recognise human predilections wisely, would know that the fashion of the world is to avoid cost, even if it means taking some undue advantage of other people when such opportunity arises. Thus, nothing can seem foul to those that win, even when courts of law can give some pyrrhic victory. Those who win through blackest sins may celebrate with heavenly shows, but such shows of pyrrhic victory are usually short-lived, not lasting. Keen listeners to radio phone-in programmes, where interactions with the public are provided for, would recognise the involvement of paid or partisan agents, playing advocacy roles. A fallen great man of ancient Athens once asked. “What a god is gold that he is worshipped in baser temple than where swine feed?” That ancient Athenian also said: “Greatness, once fallen out with fortune, must fall out with men too”. Thus, fair-weather friends of former pay-masters, sing praises to new heroes who can afford to pay the piper. Culture of hypocrisy!
It can hardly be said that Nigerians are not aware of the antics of devil’s advocacy. At least, there are some who know that money is a great soldier, and where it is deployed for services, victory can always be achieved, even if conscience would be mortgaged. Some Nigerians know that the world is still deceived with ornaments and flattering encomiums. They also know that of all base passions, fear is the most accursed; making it possible to deploy fear as a ready instrument in devil’s advocacy. Thus, use of money, intimidation and the exploitation of human weakness, are some of the antics of devil’s advocacy; vanity being one weakness. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a great General of the King of Scotland, succumbed to ambition, as another tool of devil’s advocacy, with witches playing the antics. Thus, “to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray us in deepest consequences”. There are religious organisations that place emphasis or prophesies or predictions, like the three witches that led General Macbeth to his harm.
Thus, the circle of devil’s advocates continues to widen, whereby unsuspecting persons are caught unaware. Currently in Nigeria, politics is a major theatre where the antics of devils advocacy is playing out with a deafening eloquence. Wherever things are done well and with care and integrity, fear or accusations rarely feature; but corruption includes a state of immorality, depravity, dishonesty and social decay, with hardly any integrity left. In such a state of anomaly people resort to the use of clever wit, weeds, bravado, bestiality and lechery to keep life going. Precepts and sermonisation multiply, under whose cover hypocrisy grows, as another tool of devil’s advocacy.
Surely the worsening state of anomaly is not peculiar to Nigeria alone, but a global malaise, whose root lies in a predicted global cleansing or purification. With different strokes for different folk, manifestations of the global purification process would meet different nations at their points of greatest weakness. In the case of Nigeria, opportunities are being given for us to see and recognise the worst excrescences of our wrong-doing and for them to be addressed with honesty and no pretenses.
But sadly, the purposes of the litmus tests are not being recognised or addressed, with honesty and seriousness. What is happening is that we play into the hands and clutches of dark forces that seek to sink us more and more. Rather than pretence and a change of attitude for the better, we allow ourselves to sink deeper and deeper into the mire as a nation. In that way, every opportunity is provided, through the antics of the devil’s advocacy, for Nigeria as a nation, to fail the litmus test necessary in the global purification process. Obviously, we are not passing the test of having to prune down our excesses, including profligacy.
Without mincing words or hiding the truth, a major obstacle holding Nigeria back is the unpatriotic attitude of a larger section of Nigeria’s political elite. One James Imagwe, writing in The Tide, Monday, November 27, 2023, would say: “Perhaps you do not know that the almajiris, area boys, MC Oluomo, and their likes are not the main threat to this be beautiful country. The elites are. The Directors, Permanent Secretaries, Vice Chancellors, CEO, Solicitor generals, Senators, Governors are the ones milking us dry, not bandits, Boko Haram, or IPOB”. Would anyone admit being a treasury looter?
Surely the Nigerian “elites are the ones bombing and destroying the social architecture of our nation with their unbridled hedonism”. Thus those who aid and abet the degeneration of Nigeria into a debt-ridden nation, are the elite, who should be builders and role models, rather than looters and caterpillars of the commonwealth. Sadly, same class of the nation’s destroyers form advisers to political leaders, whose advice tend towards hedonistic and class interests, rather than solid nation building. Antics of devil’s advocacy include exploiting the weakness, docility, ignorance and poverty of the masses as means of advancing social degeneration.
Leadership and elitism should advance the status of the masses rather than devalue them and erode human dignity and integrity. Leadership that gives excuses rather than address and solve challenges is a leadership or elitism that puts on heavenly shows in a process of playing the devils advocate; hiding cans of worms with meretricious flamboyance and profligacy.

Bright Amirize
Dr Amirize is a retired lecturer from Rivers State University.