In many parts of the country, one does not need the stirring of an alarm clock to be rescued from the arms of Morpheus when troubled sleep finally escapes Nigeria`s multifaceted and multifactorial challenges.
One only needs to wait for the loud calls to prayer blaring out of speakers in mosques around the country.
Similarly, on any Friday afternoon and night, one does not need an inclement weather to struggle to sleep. Out of the speakers of many mosques holding prayers in the afternoon, and many churches holding vigils at night, and neigbourhood dogs barking because they are skittish from all the noise, come insomnia.
Which God do Nigerians serve? Who or what do they really bend the knee to? Nigeria is a country of mosques and churches. It is a country where God features in every conversation. Yet, as an Igbo adage aptly puts it what has been crying continues to cry. If anything, it is crying even harder.
It is in the name of Islam, in the name of a God who is the very antithesis of all they pronounce and project, that Boko Haram and ISWAP hasten to cut down innocent villagers and sack entire communities in the Northeast.
In Nigerian markets, the cheating trader invokes God even as he abandons all injunctions to fairness in his dealings with patrons. In court, many swear with books sacred to the world`s biggest religions before they go on to tell lies that even the father of lies would be ashamed of.
At their swearing in, many public and judicial officers place their hands on the holy books while swearing oaths they have absolutely no intention of keeping.
People are targeted because of their religion.
In the volatile Northwest and Northeast, anonymously signed letters, promising death, rattle Christians from time to time. The many churches and mosques reduced to dust in Borno State were at the instance of those who claim the sonship of God.
In Nigeria`s cut-throat politics and economics, religion is a measuring rod, a ticket to the party. So, for decades, a devoutly religious country has remained steeped in deep rot. A devoutly religious country has remained stuck in a rut. But it would be lazy to entirely blame religion for the raft of problems here.
It would be too simplistic to cite religion as the chief reason for the number of scoundrels scurrying around here. Most times, the dictates of every religion are as clear as day. The problem is that many who subscribe to them prefer the nebulosity of night.
Where holiness should be transparent, hypocrisy is as thick as tar. Most religions prescribe conduct beyond which is any other action is unacceptable and reprehensible but in Nigeria many are as recalcitrant as they are stiff-necked.
So, in the name of God, charity and compassion are cast aside and the cudgels of corruption picked up with religious zeal. Where religion should be an equalizer, it is a profiler for discrimination.
The house of God has become a den of robbers and many men of cloth have become men of cash. So, on Fridays, mosques overflow with the malicious and on Sundays, churches overflow with the mendacious.
But those who preside do not care. They say what their congregants want to hear and nothing more. Because they have their own agenda, they are more than happy to be swept along by popular currents. So, in a deeply religious country, what do we have?
There are those who sponsor terror. There are those who loot public funds only to construct edifices as places of worship. There are those who without any compunction whatsoever kill others because they hold differing religious views.
There are those who reserve employment opportunities that should be open to everyone for only those who subscribe to their religion. It goes on and on, the list of the many atrocities committed in the name of God growing longer each day.
When religion becomes the basis for discrimination and the barometer for quality and equality, there is a problem. When religion becomes a measuring rod for inclusion and a lightning rod for exclusion, God turns away in horror.
But many Nigerians do not know that. Those who claim to know do so for only as long as it is convenient. When push comes to shove, they cast pearls before swine and cite the ancient instinct of self-preservation.
Every day, those who practice false religion which is in many ways worse than irreligion bring ridicule to God and scandal to their neighbours. They also cause people to stray.
In a world that has become one global village, it takes only a single look at the prosperity of western countries who have very little place for religion for questions about the utility of religion to rear their ugly heads.
In a world where practically every information is only a click of the mouse away, the relative rectitude of people, especially their compassion for one another, in developed countries where religion takes a back seat forges fiery questions – questions for religion that the supposedly devout answer loudly but negatively with their lifestyles.
The problem of false religion is a spectral feature of the developing world. Stunted by bad leadership, riven apart by poverty and convulsed by corruption, those on the margins look to religion for succor, to a God they cannot see. They cast death stares at the neighbours they can see while straining their eyes in search of a God they cannot see.
In many developing countries, people who cannot fight for themselves against an order that impoverishes and brainwashes them take up God`s battles. At the slightest provocation, they kill others.
So, religion which does not ordinarily contest the merits of science is – dressed in confrontational robes and forced to contest everything science and empiricism have confirmed.
The African leader who died of what was suspected to be corona virus after publicly mocking scientific evidence and asking people to fast and pray readily comes to mind.
As Nigeria continues to dangle on the edge of the precipice, it is no use counting religion as a problem. What remains a problem is the bottomless wickedness, hypocrisy and utter lack of compassion of many who supposedly practice religion.
Until they set their compasses right, they will continue to go astray, dragging the name of a good God in the mud as they take the much travelled road to perdition.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
