By Mike Adeyemi
Every honest person in this world knows that Nigeria is a country with serious society, economic and political problems caused essentially by corruption, ethnic prejudice and bad government. What is also known is that Nigeria is also a very religious country and that the people are almost evenly divided into two Abrahamic religions. It is this paradox of evil being endemic in a people that profess to be religions that has become of interest to many lately.
When you discuss the problems of Nigeria which require some very simple solution, the people who are most placed to lead in finding the right solution often respond with, “we have to pray to God for solution”. I have heard this so much that I am beginning to think that maybe religion is one of Nigeria’s main problems.
Imagine, some time ago, there was severe flooding in some section of Nigeria – I mean an avoidable environmental degradation that does not even require a technocrat to proffer solutions. The climax in the air was that we should pray to God to please help us avert this problem. Even the supposed learned Pastors are at the vanguard of this irrational act.
My question is, “should we ask God to come and channel our drainages for us”? Don’t we have our own role to play? Why is it God, all the time? What happens to the ecological fund apportion to each constituency?
Prayer is not what you do when you have not found the solution. No, prayer is what you do when you have used all the knowledge and means God has already made available and done all in your power or favour of God. It is an exercise to submit to the outcome after we have done all in our power. Prayer is an attempt to prepare to accept reality even when it is what we do not want.
Having faith in God is a great gift and the easiest way to become wise. It is also one of the surest ways to remain ignorant, become foolish, gullible and blind. Believers are destroyed by lack of knowledge. I have a religious faith. I was born into the Christian faith and have studied the Christian religion, practiced it and exploited it. I have sought God and found him.
Unfortunately, I did not find him in Rome, Jerusalem or Mecca. I found God in my heart. God told me that the kingdom of heaven and hell both exist in my heart and that I reveal whose servant I am by what I do and not what I claim to believe.
It is becoming apparent that in deed, religion is the opium which anesthetizes Nigerians to the reality of our problems and render us unable to see what they must do. This effect of faith or insight was noticed by Jesus and he did lament that the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
When Jesus started his ministry, he noted that his people (Jews) even though many Christian believe it to mean Christians, had become blinded and prejudiced by religion that they had forgotten the essence of faith. To the Jews, faith was a system of beliefs and ritual which one must comply with if one wanted to go into the kingdom of God.
The desire to get a place in the kingdom of God had become the only motivation for doing good. This desire had become the only restraint to evil and the people had failed to understand why God made the law in the first place. Because they have kept the law for selfish reasons, they could not understand the spirit of the law and what it was meant to do in their lives.
This was probably why the rich young ruler had the audacity to ask Jesus what else he needed to do to enter the kingdom of God as he reckoned he had met all the stipulated requirements. The rich young ruler was very sad and disappointed, and left sorrowfully; when Jesus told him that he still lacked the most essential ingredient which those who would enter in the kingdom of heaven need.
It would seem to me that religion has done to Nigeria what it did to the Jews before the coming of Jesus. It has convinced the people that abstract ideals held in their minds have power to alter reality because they ask an unseen deity to intervene.
Today in Nigeria, religion is a great problem. It is being used to exploit the people in ways that would make Jesus take the cane again were he to be here today. In the name of God, many self – proclaimed men and women of God are doing things that would have made Jesus to call them sons and daughters of Vipers who make long prayers but hide hatred, deceit, greed and unfaithfulness in their hearts.
He would probably say to people, if I was here today, when you go to Church, when the preachers read from the Bible or Quran listen to what they read to them, but do not do as they do for they speak, but do not do.
Nowhere is this deception of people more obvious and serious than in the understanding and use of prayer. Prayer is used as the remedy for everything. You often hear, let us pray to God. Now that we have prayed, we should leave everything to God. This is where religions in Nigeria are wrong.
For many years I have observed and listened to the prayers of black people especially Nigerians and compared it to the prayers of white people. The difference could not be starker. When Black people want to pray, they begin by flattering God as if God can be swayed by flattery. They idealize God and address Him with all sorts of names and then, bring out their shopping list. After reciting the shopping list, they begin their incantation which they call binding the evil spirit and then end by commanding God to do as they want.
It is an interesting application of primitive defense mechanisms, infantile omnipotence and pure magical thinking to hold people captive in ignorance. It would seem from the evidence that Nigerians almost always pray for what money, science, good and honest leadership or technology solve in developed countries. It is either that Nigerians are praying for safe travel in a road where 99% of the drivers did not learn to drive properly and passed the driving test, or for God’s mercies in a roads which contract had been awarded but not executed because the man who donated the largest amount during the launching of the church or mosque building fund embezzled the money earmarked for the road.
Nigerians pray for good health for people who cannot afford good health care because of poverty or bad government or for work in an economy cripple by corruption, dishonesty and greed. Nigerians also pray for quick recovery for people too poor to afford the medications that would enable them recover from their illness and for God to provide school fees for children whose parents cannot afford school fees because they have no jobs.
All these problems do not need prayers of the type Nigerians pray, but a good and honest government which is committed to doing its best to solving the many problems of the country and then praying for God to continue to enable them to do the right thing. I had on many occasions argued that “we don’t need prayer if we do the right thing at the right time”. The bible says, “righteousness exalts a nation”, not prayer exalts a nation.
I often wonder how God would feel when a Nigerian prays to him to solve a problem which He knows the Nigerian government is already earning enough money from oil to solve. What would God be thinking when children die from preventable disease in a country where senators go home with bogus amounts every day.
What Nigeria needs is not more prayers. Leaders who continue to point to prayer as a solution to Nigeria’s problem or deceiving the people or at best are ignorant, and unenlightened. What Nigeria needs is to get its leadership right by stopping the trend whereby the worst of Nigerians gain power.
Nigeria has to figure out how to get its best minds to take over power and use it for the best interest of the people. The solution to the Nigerian problem is not mere prayers but good leadership, good economic policies and management and accountability. Yes we need to pray but after we have done what we must do. Nigeria should pray less and do more. The Bible did not recommend prayer as a solution if teachers work and pray. Prayer without work is perceived as noise in heaven. To get it right, we must begin to do it right!
Mike Adeyemi, a journalist writes via mikeadeyemi2001@gmail.com
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