Personally I'm of the belief that Karl Marx was slightly off the mark when he made his most famous statement of them all. Religion is not the opium of the masses, it is more like the crack of the masses. But then again, to be fair to that great sage from another, bygone era, opium was to the Victorian age, as crack is to our age, so he is forgiven.
I am of the belief that a lot of the crap that happens in Nigeria happens because of the ease with which people justify what they have done under the guise of religious teaching. Witness the mass illiteracy and ignorance that occurs in northern Nigeria, entrenched by the Almajiri system, which frankly is very un-Islamic. There are many more examples of how religious belief, or superstition is used by very ambitious, and dare-I-say, suave young men to climb the social ladder and soon begin to hobnob with the high and mighty of society.
At the moment, Nigeria's most infamous fugitive, Erastus Akingbola, erstwhile Managing Director of Intercontinental Bank (I should go remove my cash from there), is a pastor in one of Nigeria's most famous churches, The Redeemed Christian Church and as yet there has been no statement from daddy et al condemning his flight. Personally, I would not want to think the man is guilty of anything until a court of law pronounces his guilt, but it must be made note of that his apparent flight from justice says a lot...
What has informed this particular rant is a story that was reported in 234NEXT a few days ago about some 'man of God' who took it upon himself to go and destroy a shrine in Orile. The shrine had been left by the bulldozers who are doing the work of demolishing structures that stand in the way of the proposed new highway, a highway which when completed would ease the lives of a good number of Lagosians trapped beyond the Mile 2 zone.
The reason this shrine was left by the bulldozers was that the adherents had insisted that certain sacrifices had to be performed before the tree around which the shrine was built could be cut down. Rumour had it that they asked for human sacrifices, and same rumours insist that a corpse found in the vicinity about a fortnight back is a part of the human sacrifices required.
My own view of this is very simple. I will not subscribe to human sacrifice, but I understand the need for a certain sacrifice to be made before a place of worship can be moved. Think of it as a sort of decommissioning of a church as practised in Christianity before said church can move. For whatever reasons, the bulldozers left the tree (and shrine) untouched. Whether their reasons were fear of the unknown, or respect for another person's faith is not the issue here.
For me the issue is the overzealousness of Samuel Nwafor who took it upon himself to go and set fire to the place of worship of someone else. That for me, displays all that is wrong in evangelical Christianity. Even Jesus accommodated people of other beliefs. Hell, Jesus himself was not a Christian. This kind of religious intolerance is what a lot of southern Nigerian Christians bring to the fore when they are making charges against Muslims from northern Nigeria. Remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:5?
In any event, I have a more sinister view of Mr. Nwafor's actions. The elders to whom the shrine belonged have said that for desecrating their shrine that he would be dead in seven days. Seven days from the moment the event occurred would be Sunday, 6 September. If he does die, it would mean that their God can fight his own battles (does anyone remember Enoch in Things Fall Apart?), and they would have won a great victory.
If however, he does not die, then he would be hailed in all of Nigeria's evangelical/pentecostal Christendom as a true warrior of the lord, a spirit filled person who's actions have further cast anarchy in the kingdom of darkness. Then he would open his own church to large crowds and praise singing, constituting a great nuisance to another neighbourhood. Then in a few years he would have his own private jet, and more members of his flock would have failed to climb out of the poverty trap.
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