To some, I may sound an atheist or a pagan while some, may have a better rating of my opinion from deep understanding of issues raised. Whichever way, I stand by the points painstakingly raised in this essay.
It was in 2004, a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) world report noted that Nigeria was the most religious country on planet earth. “Over 90% of Nigerians say to be believers in God (Allah), pray regularly more than any other venture and can even die for their beliefs justifiably or through ignorance”. A year earlier in 2003, a study carried out in more than 65 countries and published by a United Kingdom based New Scientist magazine reported that Nigerians were the happiest people in the world, even though the latest World’s Happiness Report indicated the drop of Nigeria’s rating.
For many years, Transparency International (TI) corruption perception index placed Nigeria on the list of the world’s most corrupt nations and one of the poorest. Forget about the gimmick of rebasing the economy hoax by successive and present governments.
A 2013 National Bureau of Statistics report observed that 120million Nigerians were living below the poverty line which qualified it as a recipe for disaster.
That reminds me of the verdict passed on the Nigerian economy in October 2015 by Walter Carrington (now late) onetime American Ambassador to Nigeria who said: “Nigeria was confronting one of the most confounding contradictions in development economics-growth with development”.
But more puzzling for me and others has been the barometric. How can a people be simultaneously poor, corrupt, religious and happy? Is there any pleasure or happiness associated with poverty? Contentment is a blessing that sustains the comfort of the mind but not poverty. One can be contended and happy with a situation but not at pleasure. I can be poor and contended but not pleased with the situation. And how can a nation be 90% recognized as religious and still be one of the most corrupt on planet earth? What do those religions that make the 90% religious preach? Do those religions dictate, agree and encourage corrupt practices and public treasury looting against deploying entrusted public resources to genuine developmental strides?
For the discerning, these contradictions defy any logic and rational explanation. With Churches and Mosques springing up by the day right across the nooks and crannies of this country some enveloped in private homes for show, poverty and corruption continue to walk freely with confidence on the streets unchallenged and even protected by those paid from public treasury to protect the citizenry. The sad and worrisome aspect is that religions, as presently practiced and preached in Nigeria have lost their capacity to generate a sense of moral revulsion and prophetic outrage against the ills bedeviling the society. Preachers have lost the direction for ostentatious living and accumulation of filthy wealth. They have hurriedly joined the rat race to opulence.
Rather than help to confront our myriad of national challenges, religions have in most cases taken the backseat, and at other times a willing collaborator to the collective oppression of the poor people. The gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, not just in the open society but also in places of worship, where the poor are made unconsciously to serve as defenders and puppets of rich patrons that fire the shots.
In the last few years, despite claims of being a growing economy, the standard of living in Nigeria has continued to fall dramatically. Interestingly, this fall in the human condition seems to have created a fertile environment for the emergence of the kind of deep religious spirituality that has ironically placed our country on top of both the most religious and corrupt nations of the world.
One would ordinarily expect that in this environment of widespread moral degeneracy, religious leaders would rise up to their prophetic responsibility of not only speaking truth to power and working for the enthronement of a just social order, but also of showing good example in their manner of personal conduct. But this is not the case. In a nation where millions of people go to bed on empty stomach every day, some of today’s acclaimed preachers and religious leaders have ridden on the crest of our collective social dysfunction to financial stardom.
Add to this phenomenon the rise of nouveau riche prosperity gospel preachers who continue to feast on the ignorance and gullibility of the people, capitalizing on their socio-economic condition to rob them of their faith and wealth. Through the prosperity gospel, the hawking of miracles, signs and wonders, the advertisement of God-induced financial breakthroughs, and the crave and craze for hedonistic materialism, the public face of religion in Nigeria has been so battered and badly disfigured, such that if the Prophets of God were to come back to mother earth today, they would be hard pressed and ashamed to recognize the versions of their bequeathed religions to us.
Just take a cursory look at the lifestyles of some of today’s acclaimed men of God. Their highly materialistic ways of life are a brutal affront to the gospels of Islam and Christianity that I know about. They lack every iota of modesty, frugality and simplicity so to say.
Today, the gospels have been so reduced to financial inducements and promises of wealth and power. In today’s religious geography, the Almighty Creator is more or less a first-aid box, a quick fixer and a money doubler. Because today’s version of religions have made it look as if life is all about material accumulation and financial prosperity, people are willing to cut corners, cheat, and exploit others just to make it. And then they bring fat pay cheques to their religious leaders and places of worship as donations claiming to have made it through divine intervention or God has bettered their bread. Which God bettered the bread through corrupt practice, treasury looting, hard drugs peddling, prostitution, cultism etc?
We hardly hear religious preaching that focuses on emphasizing the virtues of honesty, integrity, truth, sacrifice, frugality, selfless service, and righteousness. These are few symptoms of the collapse of societal values and how religions have fast-track the descent of our nation into the abyss of moral and spiritual chaos.
For instance, in October 2014 from my records, a New York based online media survey revealed that five (5) of the topmost richest pastors in the world were Nigerians while some sincere and committed religious leaders are over there serving humanity by providing spiritual and moral guidance to people across religious and social divides, others are becoming extremely wealthy through their places of worship turned as their personal investments. In other climes, the places of worship are wealthy while the leaders are poor but in our own case, the reverse is the case.
In October 2014, Vanguard newspaper also published the report of a study titled “Rich Churches, Poor Members”. In that revealing report, the authors drew serious attention to the money making venture that religion has become in Nigeria and how more preachers are becoming multi-millionaires at the expense of their flock. They questioned the propriety of making and hording such stupendous wealth in a vast ocean of misery. The report mentioned one particular pastor who is running the Church as a business empire, and owns four private luxury jets with a combined net worth of $98.3million that calls himself a man of God. Which of the Gods? One is not talking of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, a self-confessed former armed robber, cultist, drunkard, drugs addict etc who played more of partisan politics as President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) than preaching the gospel truth from Jesus Christ. Definitely filthy wealth can only be claimed to be from a different god but, not from the living God we worship.
Yet only a few critical observers are questioning this trend. The vast majority are quick to canonize such wealth as God’s ‘special blessings’, arguing that the God of their pastor, their Imam, permanent secretary, minister and other criminally-minded is not a ‘poor and mean God’. No wonder that in order to protect themselves against the wrath of their most ‘senior comrade in syndicate’, the Devil and his Agents, these super wealthy men and women of ‘God’ ride in expensive bullet-proof SUVs and engage the services of heavily-armed wielding mobile policemen and bodyguards to escort them wherever they go for fear of referral action from the extorted and shortchanged.
One is tempted to ask that which God are these multi-million dollar crooks worshipping when they are getting richer and members of their Churches and Mosques are getting poorer, malnourished and dying steadily and buried unceremoniously? Is it the same God of Yissa (Jesus Christ), Muhammad (SAW), Noah, David, Solomon, Jacob and other Prophets in the scriptures? I have every reason to doubt. How come we found ourselves in this compromised mess of ridiculing religions for worldly wealth and fictitious fame? Are Nigerians truly religious or pretenders hiding under the canopy of religions? How can you be corrupt and be religious? How can you loot the public commonwealth, and still claim to be a believer and support genuine religions with filthy looted money? How can you steal, dupe or extort and channel the filthy wealth to propagate a religion? Is our God, Allah (SWT) not the righteous one? Religion has truly lost its core values in Nigeria. What we have are pretenders and hypocrites as believers and worshippers of God! It is the living God that can, Save Nigeria!
Finally, while wandering within the unfortunate and dangerous situation we found ourselves, still if the likes of Aliko Dangote, Funsho Alakija, Mike Adenuga, Bola Shagayya, AbdulSamad Ishaku Rabi’u, Femi Otedola, Tony Elumelu and few other wealthy individuals can claim to be God-sent prophets with messages of hope and salvation, be rest assured there are those that can believe in their claims just for the wealth they possess. What a mess and a pity!
Muhammad is a commentator on national affairs
