By Bamidele Johnson
*Photo: Bamidele Johnson*
I expect more than a few eyes to be zobo-red after reading this. That, however, is not my aim, which is to have us attempt an interrogation of one of our most cherished assumptions. It is that God, of whatever denominational flavour, is always ready, willing and able to intervene in our societal affairs. Or that heaven is studying our file with concern and that salvation is just a couple of prayer sessions away.
Why should God even want to intervene? He did not intervene until Hitler had rubbed out six million of His own people. Who the hell are we to think we have a claim to divine intervention? We are a society of deliberately, industriously and often enthusiastically wicked people. To say it another way, we are a people of deliberate, inventive and staggeringly accomplished evil. This, it is important to state, is not just in public office, where the performances are at least understandable as survival strategy, but also in our private corners.
The politician, we know, can steal a bridge. The contractor steals the cement. The teacher sells examination questions. The theocratic elites sell miracles or Du’ah. The motorist drives against traffic. The tenant bypasses the electricity meter. The trader rigs the scale. The student cheats. The citizen bribes.
If God were conducting a performance review, Nigeria would not be shortlisted for reprieve. As a matter of fact, considering the evidence, God would be more inclined towards strafing than saving us.
This brings me to prayer. A few days ago, a Facebook friend told me that prayer is the master key. I told him to go into a high-end auto shop with a master key and drive out a gleaming SUV. That was a joke, by the way. But at the risk of coming across as a person of berserk conviction, I state that I do not believe prayer fixes societal problems. I do not believe a nation can pray its way out of dysfunction any more than a man can pray himself into six-pack abs while daily polishing off pounded yam and egusi infested with beef at midnight. I do not think appeasing deities with goats, palm oil and potent liquor will improve governance.
If anything, exposing any deity to drinks with 60 per cent alcohol risks making the divinity go weapons-grade loco, if not shit-faced. The amusing thing is that adherents of the major religions routinely mock those of indigenous faiths. When they see their neighbours at the shrine, pouring palm oil and abrasive liquor onto wooden intermediaries, they permit themselves an expression of benevolent condescension.
But as an equal-opportunity sceptic, I am inclined not to permit them to enjoy their smirk. They have earned no such right. One group sacrifices goats at a shrine. Another organises vigil after vigil. A third embarks on marathon fasting while going around with beads on a string. All are essentially lodging the same complaint through different administrative channels.
The superiority complex is, therefore, difficult to justify. The desired outcome remains identical and they are cheaper food, uninterrupted electricity, safer roads, zero kidnappings and politicians who do not regard public funds as “serve yourself”.
The results have been similarly underwhelming.
As yet, the “praying mantises” have supplied no clasping evidence that their prayers have altered the society’s. The country remains stubbornly immune to supplication. A few months ago, I watched a video from one state in the far North. A commissioner led what appeared to be a commissioned consortium of clerics to pray against the vandalisation and theft of power infrastructure. There, they beseeched the Almighty to protect transformers, transmission lines and assorted assets from the entrepreneurial instincts of thieves.
I thought they were bonkers.
Cable thieves are no demons, but men with pliers and other things in their tool boxes. The power sector is not crippled by principalities and powers, but by criminals, negligence, weak enforcement and institutional decay.
A prayer can no more fix that than praise and worship can repair a turbine. I saw a similar spectacle in Lagos. Entire crowds stretching their hands toward a transformer, casting out whichever demon they believed had secured lodging and accommodation in the equipment. The transformer, meanwhile, sat there in obdurate silence, perhaps wishing to ask why nobody was discussing maintenance.
The tragedy is not that people pray. Human beings have always prayed. The tragedy is desire to make that prayer a substitute for action, accountability and reason. It has become a national outsourcing strategy that sees us outsource responsibility upwards.
A society cannot fast its way to stable electricity or worship its way to competent governance. It cannot anoint potholes into highways or rebuke inflation into submission or cast out corruption while continuing to elect, celebrate and defend visionless and bent people. If prayer alone worked, holiness would be accounting for 90 per cent of our GDP.
Instead, after decades of fervent supplication, we are still praying for the things that functioning societies simply organise, regulate, maintain and enforce.
Perhaps God is not ignoring us. He may just be waiting for us to stop treating Him like a municipal service provider. E yin ‘Loun logo o de mosalasi. Aluwala maza maza o de soosi. Prayer will fix none of our problems.