HOW COVENANTS AND CONTRACTS BUILDS US

HEAL A FRACTURED WORLD COLUMN

     By  CHIBU NDUBUISI 23/01/2017

How Covenants and Contracts Builds Us

Peace be to you.

Covenants and contracts help in definition of roles based on the

pedestal we stand. Covenant is seen as an agreement between God

and a person or a group of people. Contract is a legally binding

or valid agreement between two parties(offer and acceptance) and

there must be an intention between the parties to create a binding

relationship.

A covenent or contract cannot be fully functional when it is built on

faulty, false and pretentious foundation like Nigeria. Even in our

relationships, if built on quicksand as we normally see or

experience in day to day living,  always and inevitably does not give us the best outcome.

In Nigeria for example, covenant cannot be when Boko Haram

murder people in the name of God and try to impose their ways

of life on others forgetting that God created differences.  A contract cannot be when it is defined by

the views of the ruling elite  and not factoring other segments of society.

David Brooks writes that  strong identities can only come when

people are embedded in rich social fabrics, take away these social fabrics

and covenent and contracts collapses. That is why Achebe hypothesised

that ' There was a country', when all social fabrics collapses.

In Nigeria all attempts to redifine our polity to be covenantal has

failed and better still attempts towards  having good contractual terms  of cohabiting have all come to nullity.

However only two nations on earth play covenantal politics, they are America and Israel.

President Buhari at his inaugural address said and I quote that ' he belongs to everyone

and belongs to nobody', but from his actions so far, we have seen that,

it is not so.

If our covenant and contract is right as a nations there will be no

need of MASSOB,IPOB,MEND ,AVENGERS , senseless religious  wars , ethnic cleansing or

group of people trying very hard to maintain a faulty foundation built

on false cenus figures or failing to correct a lopsided state creation and other issues generating

noise in the political space.  people tend to forget that no matter how fast you move on a wrong direction it is still a wrong direction. 

People say that the unity of Nigeria is non negotiable, it's not true. The unity can be negotiated.

what is unifying about Nigeria in this present form that is not worth negotiating? We just witnessed  Scotland referendum and BREXIT as a lesson from people who are well versed in contratual politics as

laid down by social contract theorists.

To heal a fractured world, we must not fail to  keep negotiating rather than running away as we do

currently in this country in order to keep maintaining parasitic relationships.

Marcia Pally writes that 'contracts protects interest, while covenant protects relationships.

People in a contract provides one another services but people in a covenant delight in offering

gifts.'.

For Nigerians, are we protected by any contracts or covenants?  Is our marriage of convenience making us grow? 

For you, what impact can you bring to bear to heal a fractured world?

Peace be with you.