Fola Ojo,
willieojo@yahoo.com
Who does he think he is? He is where he is through prayer and nothing else. He should be very careful. How can he tell us that prayer alone is not enough to sustain Nigeria? If you know him, please, counsel him. We pray for him every day in our parish, and you can see what’s happening to him now. It is because of our prayers”
This was a shocking lamentation of a pastor I stumbled on for the first time in Nigeria’s Federal Capital last week. This pastor was livid. It was his own human reaction to what Acting President Yemi Osinbajo said to a group of civil servants recently in Abuja; educating them about the place of hard work in nation building. “Every generation of people owes the next generation a debt…Great economies and great nations, prosperity and abundance of nations and communities are created by men and not spirits. No matter how much you pray and fast, our country cannot grow without some of us deciding to do the hard work that makes nations work”, said the Acting President. It is always an odyssey in futility debating practicality and religion with very many Nigerians. I had to leave the topic alone after expressing my candid opinion to this “anointed and holy” pastor.
Historically, nations across the globe have run into turbulences that rattled their people and threatened their peace and prosperity. At such challenging times, the nations’ elders are expected to stand up strong as a defence, exercising wisdom and tangible interventions to stave off the threat. During the Great Depression in America, churches and fathers of the faith stood strong and helped. Despite the sharp drop in the church’s income from $4m in 1927 to only $2.4m in 1933, J. Reuben Clark, Jr., who became a counsellor to President Grant in 1933, reached out meeting the needs of the hurting people through a welfare programme.
This treatise is not requesting that Houses of Faith should give out freebies to Nigerians. It is to challenge the church to challenge the people that although prayer works wonders, it doesn’t in sequestration of hard work in nation-building and commonsense in governance. Without hard work, fieriest and fiercest prayers rendered to God are nothing but simulated phantasm.
is endowed with dumbfounding riches. She is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, the sixth largest producer of petroleum in the world; the eighth largest exporter and the 10th largest proven reserves have such a heavy population of the poor. On the other hand, the people are beleaguered with stringent poverty. Some 71 per cent live on less than one dollar a day and 92 per cent on less than two dollars a day; and about 120 million human beings will go to bed hungry tonight. Poverty is the denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, only 15 per cent of Nigerians were considered poor after Independence in 1960. In 1980, the number shot up to 28 per cent, and by 1985, it rose to 46 per cent. By 1996, the poverty scale was driven up to 66 per cent before climbing to 92 per cent over. The inhumanity of poverty was shoved upon the people by more privileged Nigerians in power. And helpless Nigerians watch as families continue to squirm under the yoke of bondage, hunger, and squalour in their own country.
When men in cassocks with bible in one hand, and a microphone in the other are asking poor Nigerians to keep praying and fasting hunger away from the land without stressing the significance of work, then there is a concern. Nigerians have been praying and fasting; yet famished. But where are the men giving spiritual instructions? They have been sighted in romance with men in power. Vigil today, crusade tomorrow in the company with the same ogres who impoverished the land. Nigerian children are hungry; wives turning to prostitution to make ends meet. The country is haemorrhaging to death, and its people are dying daily of hunger. Didn’t the Master instruct us to “Watch, first, and then pray?” Those who are asking the people to keep praying and fasting are building mansions; buying yachts, and flying in private jets crisscrossing the globe. Egging the people on to keep praying and fasting without doing the practical needful is flat-out deceptive.
Moribund and demised industrial buildings have been bought over by churches. Mosques have also taken over centres from where businesses once flourished before taking their last flights out into neighbouring countries or shut-downs. But my people are made to believe that zippy birthing of houses of faith is an indication that Nigerians in their millions will have mansions named after them in heaven. I am not a registered broker in heaven’s real estate business; but I know that when churches and mosques replace once thriving industries and buoyant businesses that create jobs in an economy, citizens, including tongue-talking and Quran-reciting people of faith cannot enjoy heaven here on earth.
Answers to Nigeria’s problems are not in hourly and daily church programmes. They are not in “20 steps to prosperity” sing-along; “Ten steps to deliverance” workshops; gulping down of the anointing oil into an empty stomach under assault from hunger. Answers to human challenges are in hard work, dedication, focus, and commitment to God of Heaven who does as He pleases. Nothing else builds a strong economy more than thriving manufacturing bases and buoyant businesses.
In Nigeria, religion is now the coercing Nebuchadnezzar who wanted everyone to bow down to his doctrines of prevarication and deception. It is now a dragnet of fear; a flippant promissory note and a fluky answer to poverty and hunger. Recently, rice farmers in Kebbi State produced paddies up to about one million tons. What an impressive story. The government bought almost close to 200,000 of the paddy with a leftover of about 800,000 tons in the farmers’ market. The farmers did not have any special revival with the seven books of Moses to grow rice in Kebbi. Blisters on their hands are evidence of what brought out the paddy; not some prayers soaked in phantasm. Very soon, if this homegrown trend continues, trillions of naira Nigeria spends on importation of rice annually will be diverted to constructive things at home creating jobs for young people.
Prayer is spiritual wisdom; but it is not the requisite marketplace sagacity that will replace prudence and commonsense in governance and nation-building. Faith alone will not make the naira appreciate against the dollar. It will not till the ground to spring forth tubers of yams and grains of rice. Fishes and cows are not raised because you sleep and live in church and mosque for days unending praying and fasting. They come into existence because someone, somewhere with sense is able to differentiate between reality and fantasy. Religion did not save the children of Israel; because religion cannot save any nation. Obedience, commonsense, hard work, alongside fervency in communion with the Creator can. On this note, I stand with Yemi Osinbajo.
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