Praying for economic recovery

Tayo Oke

Religion, says the great Jewish philosopher, Karl Marx (1818-1883), is the “opium of the people”.  Opium is a form of narcotic, which contains morphine and other alkaloids harmful to the brain if taken in large doses outside medical supervision. The Standard English Dictionary also tells us that the word is used to denote “anything that causes dullness or inaction or that soothes the mind or emotions”.

This is precisely what is alluded to in Marx’s writing. He beliefs the logic of capitalism requires two classes of people to ensure its success and survival: owners of capital on the one hand, and givers of labour on the other. It is an exploitative relationship that requires the subjugation of labour to the whims and caprices of capital. Religion, not force, is the most potent form of keeping labour at bay to make way for capital accumulation. The Western world, according to this logic, has been most successful at employing the dose of religion to control their citizens. It is what has prevented the inevitable revolution of the oppressed against the capitalist ruling class.

Thus, religion has to be actively discouraged, if not expunged, from the daily lives of the masses in order to awaken their revolutionary impulse.  Less than a century after Marx, a revolutionary protégé of his, Josef Stalin (1878-1953), having apparently expunged religion from the daily lives of the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, was miffed by the continued influence of the Pope and his billion-strong followers especially, in Eastern Europe (considered a sphere of influence by the USSR), after World War II. When Britain’s war hero, Winston Churchill (1874-1965), tried to alert Stalin to this tricky development in a private conversation between the two War Allies, Stalin retorted with a biting sarcasm: “How many divisions does the Pope have”?  He meant, by this, that the great catastrophic events of the world would not be solved at the Altar of Catholicism, but by blood and sweat on the ground. Force, after all, still has the pride of place in resolving human conflict and in nation-building. These two strands of thought from Marx to Stalin have permeated world politics to this day, as exemplified first, by the pervasive influence of religion in Saudi Arabia, and second, by the war of attrition in the Middle East in particular. The Balkans, Chechnya, and Afghanistan are lesser examples.

By all accounts, Nigeria is a multi-faith, multidenominational country. Religion not only plays a fundamental role in the daily lives of individuals; it plays a critical role in their public lives as well. Even though according to Section 10 of the 1999 Constitution, “the government of the federation or of a state shall not adopt any religion as state religion”, there is not a single governor of a state who does not openly ingratiate himself with religious authorities within their domain. The situation is even more glaringly so in the north, where one governor once brazenly proclaimed his state as a “religious state”. Celebration of religious festivities at the federal level is taken almost as a constitutional obligation. Pilgrimage to the holy lands of Mecca and Jerusalem is actively encouraged, promoted and supported by the Federal Government. Our Presidents never fail to hold audiences with religious groups and leaders of all sorts at the Presidential Villa all year round. Strikingly, the growth of churches and mosques has increased with the level of poverty across the country.

A church building or a mosque is the only guaranteed structure one will find in every village, town and city up and down the country, even where there are no factories, schools and hospitals. It is in fact reasonable to assume that if there was any correlation between praying and development, Nigeria would be the most advanced country in the world. The former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, now Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, reflects a similar sentiment when he recently felt obliged to denounce the penchant for building mosques in the north at the expense of schools and urged the Imams there to convert some of the mosques into schools to educate their children.

Within this background, therefore, prayers appear to have become not only the gateway to heaven, but also the magic wand capable of solving all our problems; be it economic or political. We do, quite literally, apply this logic in almost all our deliberations to the point where we have abdicated our responsibility as citizens.  Political leaders wielding powers over us are quick to claim that they are fulfilling God’s wish, they often claim it is God that made their election into office possible. Responsibility for their failures in office is therefore laid at the feet of God rather than their own person. Whatever happened to the electoral mandate given to them by the people? At elections, it is commonplace to find people coalescing around what they perceive as “God fearing” candidates as opposed to candidates with a workable programme for government. And, when after an election, the hospitals, schools and bridges have not materialised, you hear people sigh and mutter the indolent phrase: “Oh, God help our leaders in this country o”. To add insult to injury, when those leaders fall ill and the hospitals they have neglected to put public funds into are unable to attend to their ailment, they are flown in air ambulances to foreign lands for treatment. Thereafter, people are whipped into a frenzy of prayers for their safe return to resume their duties. Civic duty of participatory democracy has given way to religious contortions and false devotion of all sorts.

The dire our economic situation in this country remains, the more devotion we have to religion and faith in the Almighty to change the hearts of our leaders to do good, instead of seeking to hold them to account by holding their feet to the fire. The belief that prayer, and even more vigorous prayer is the solution to our woes was what made the Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, himself a Pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, to emphasise to his brethren recently to imbibe the culture of hard work as a panacea to economic hardship. His enlightened leadership in this domain is to be commended. He may not necessarily agree that religion has become the “opium of the people” in this country, but he clearly sees the looming danger.

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