*Photo:Primate Elijah Ayodele*
In a nation perpetually suspended between potential and paralysis, the diagnosis of our condition requires more than economic analysis; it demands a profound spiritual and sociological interrogation. Such an examination was recently delivered by the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Hassan Kukah, in his lecture ‘Nigeria: Time to Reload’ to mark Dr. Reuben Abati’s 60th birthday and book launch in November 2025 in Lagos. With surgical precision, Bishop Kukah incised the festering wound of a national psyche that has abandoned the rigors of planning for the comfort of magical thinking. His thesis is as clear as it is devastating: Nigeria’s profound underdevelopment stems not merely from graft or poor governance, but from a deep, systemic entanglement with superstition and the weaponization of religion. We have constructed what can only be termed a Theocracy of the Absurd, a state where logic kneels before the pronouncements of conjurers, and the destiny of millions is outsourced to men who claim a direct line to the divine. This is the portrait of a people trapped in a hole of nonsense, and our only escape lies in a fundamental reclamation of reason.
To grasp the staggering scale of our decline, one must first confront the historical mirror. A common, comforting narrative suggests Nigeria was always destined to lag. The data of history refutes this. According Lasisi Olagunju in his piece in Tribune newspaper (Nov.10, 2025), he urged readers to “consider the trajectory of Nigeria versus the Gulf states we now view with envious resignation. Lagos introduced street lighting in 1898, a mere seventeen years after London. Kaduna established a power plant in 1929. Contrast this with Mecca, which as late as 1955, during the first Hajj of the late Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi, was illuminated only by oil lamps extinguished at dawn. Dubai commissioned its first power generator in 1952 and built its first skyscraper in 1979. Nigeria possessed not just a head start, but a commanding lead in tangible infrastructure.”
Today, that lead has evaporated into a chasm of regression. The IMD Smart Cities Index for 2025 ranks Dubai as the 4th smartest city globally, with Mecca at 39th. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2025 report places Lagos at 168th out of 173 cities, the fifth most difficult city on earth to inhabit. How does a nation that electrified its streets in the 19th century fall behind a city using oil lamps in the mid-20th? The answer lies not in hardware, but in software. While the Asian Tigers and Gulf States modernized by embracing scientific reasoning, disciplined planning, and moral philosophy, Nigeria retreated into the dark comfort of fatalism. We abandoned the laboratory for the shrine, supplanting the engineer with the marabout. Our progress was not merely stalled; it was spiritually sabotaged.
This sabotage operates today through a sophisticated, ruinous economy. The recent scandal involving the Minister of Power, Bayo Adelabu, and Primate Elijah Ayodele is not a mere gossip item but a stark economic indicator. The leaked request for ₦130 million for “spiritual inputs,” including one thousand saxophones and party flags, lays bare the mechanics of Nigeria’s Prophetic Marketplace. To analyze this, we employ the framework of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who saw society as a series of fields where actors compete for capital. In Nigeria, religious leaders have amassed immense Symbolic Capital, prestige, honor, and perceived authority. Yet, in a profound perversion, this capital is weaponized and converted directly into Economic Capital. The Primate’s texts were not prayers; they were invoices. The product sold is political legitimacy and divine electoral victory; the price is set in millions; the marketing strategy is pure fear, the implicit threat that rejecting the prophet means forfeiting one’s ambition.
This transactional spirituality reduces the divine to a vendor, suggesting favor is a matter of procurement, not grace or justice. When a Minister of Power, a role demanding mastery over engineering and grid logistics, engages in barter for spiritual trumpets, it reveals the state’s catastrophic loss of faith in its own capacity for rational problem-solving. Notably, the Minister’s reported refusal was based on price, not on the fundamental absurdity of the proposition. Herein lies the gravest danger: the marketplace remains open, its legitimacy unchallenged, awaiting the next, more pliable customer.
This marketplace thrives because it is built upon a foundation of primal fear. Bishop Kukah’s observation that the “black man outsources his life to men who claim to be God” finds vivid historical corroboration. Swiss linguist Heli Chatelain, in 1895 Angola, documented a brilliant, wealthy black carpenter who lived in deliberate squalor and rags. His reason? A terror that displaying success would invite witchcraft and the envy of his neighbors. His surplus income was funneled not into expansion or innovation, but into protective charms. This is the “Pounded Yam in the Dark” syndrome: consuming your prosperity in shadows lest the world see it and conspire against you. The economic consequence is a low-trust society where capital accumulation is stifled, assets are hidden, and innovation is paralyzed by dread of invisible forces. Global values surveys consistently correlate high levels of superstition with lower GDP per capita. When a populace believes success is bestowed by magic rather than cultivated by labor, productivity becomes a casualty.
This fear has now metastasized to hollow out our very democracy, birthing a “Maraboutocracy.” In this system, the ultimate arbiter of power is not the electorate but the seer. As we approach the 2027 election cycle and reflect on recent off-cycle polls, a disturbing pattern emerges. Political strategy is increasingly unmoored from polling, demographics, or policy, and is instead dictated by the visions of clerics in Niger, Senegal, and local prayer mountains. This generates a toxic Banquo Paradox, drawn from Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’. If twenty aspirants are each told by their respective marabout that they are the anointed one, yet only one seat exists, conflict is inevitable. Governance ceases; why build roads or schools if power is guaranteed by the blood of a camel? As psychologist Robert J. Sternberg noted in “Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid”, intelligence fails when magical thinking overrides critical faculties. We thus witness the tragic spectacle of leaders with Ivy League credentials discarding their education to seek counsel from illiterate conjurers. This is not piety; it is a collective psychological crisis masquerading as spirituality.
From a theological standpoint, this entire edifice is a profound heresy, a bastardization of both Christianity and Islam. The Biblical God is one of order, logic, and justice. Jeremiah 23:16 warns against prophets who “fill you with false hopes” speaking “visions from their own minds.” Micah 3:11 indicts leaders who judge for a bribe and prophets who divine for money. The Christian protocol is clear: “Freely you have received; freely give” (Matthew 10:8). The moment a price tag is attached to a prophecy, it ceases to be divine communication and becomes simony, the sinful sale of spiritual privilege. Similarly, the Golden Age of Islam was propelled by an embrace of ‘Ilm’ (knowledge), science, and mathematics, from Ibn Sina to Al-Khwarizmi. The regression whereby the intellectual legacy that illuminated the world is traded for the oil lamps of superstition represents a stark deviation from foundational Islamic principles. True faith should serve as a moral compass guiding leaders toward justice and service, not as a cosmic vending machine for political power.
Therefore, Bishop Kukah’s call to “Reload” is a demand for a systemic reboot. We cannot pray our way out of a problem created by a lack of planning. God does not do for man what He has equipped man to do for himself. To retrieve our nation from the merchants of spirits, a tripartite reformation is non-negotiable.
First, we must undertake an Intellectual Reformation. Our educational curriculum requires radical overhaul to prioritize critical thinking and scientific inquiry over rote memorization. We must cultivate a generation that asks “how does this work?” rather than “who sent this?” Logic and philosophy should be compulsory secondary school subjects, demystifying natural phenomena currently attributed to sinister forces.
Second, we must institute Regulatory Oversight of the religious field. Freedom of worship is sacred, but the commercialization of fraud is not. Consumer protection laws must be strengthened. When a cleric charges for a miracle or healing that is empirically false, it should be prosecuted as fraud, not protected as faith. Religious organizations operating as commercial entities must be subject to financial transparency enforced by bodies like the Financial Reporting Council.
Third, we must ignite a Cultural Renaissance of Excellence. We must dismantle the “Carpenter of Luanda” complex by building a society where wealth is celebrated as the fruit of industry, not occult mystery. This requires relentless transparency in government procurement and the amplification of legitimate private-sector success stories. When paths to prosperity are opaque and rooted in corruption, people attribute success to magic. When they are clear and rooted in innovation, they become blueprints for emulation.
The choice before Nigeria is binary: reason or ruin. We can remain a nation where ministers barter for trumpets while the grid fails, a people who fear village spirits more than poverty. If so, we will languish in our hole of nonsense, watching as nations we once led colonize the future. Or, we can reload. Reloading means understanding that excellence flees the house of jitters. It means recognizing that God has endowed us with resources: lithium, oil, arable land, brilliant minds, and expects us to process them with science, not superstition. It is time to stop eating our pounded yam in the dark. It is time to turn on the lights, not only the faltering lights of our national grid, but the enduring lights of the mind. Only then can we forge a unifying national spirit rooted in justice, integrity, and shared purpose, retrieving our stolen destiny from the conjurers and placing it firmly in the hands of a rational, faithful, and hardworking people.
* Prof. Sarumi, a digital transformation enthusiast, writes from Lagos