The Nigerian Paradox: A Country In Love With God But Practically Atheistic In Life-Style By Rev. Gerald Azike
Posted: November 20, 2013 - 20:37
Ordinarily, as a Catholic priest, the recent public pictures of President Goodluck Jonathan with many Nigerian state governors and ministers in Jerusalem each trying to pay their creaturely obeisance to God is supposed to elicit from me some joyful shouts of alleluia. Of course, their acts did gladden my heart especially when considered against the unfavorable environment of religious-faith in today’s secularized world held hostage by the dictatorship of atheism and religious indifferentism. One can even say that this last Nigerian officials’ visit to Israel is a culmination of other uncountable numerous visits made each year by ordinary Nigerians in both government-sponsored and private pilgrimages to Israel and to Mecca. Back home, this hyper-religious sensitivity among Nigerians is complemented by the weekly prayer crusades, daily visitations to official prayer houses and public prayers held even in markets places. All these are sure signs of a people whose religious gear is in the overdrive.
These daily outward expressions of religious sentiments among Nigerians, reinforces the result of the ICM religious poll conducted by the BBC in February, 2004, where Nigeria was listed as the most religious country in the world. This is because over 90% of Nigerians in their answer said they were ready to die for their faith. The frequent religious-related public holidays that have marked our national work-year calendar are to be equaled only by a few other nations. The ubiquitous presence of many Mega Churches dotting our highways all join in singing a unified chorus of affirmation to this continuous religious identity-tag. In fact, the religious fervor as exuded by Nigerians, both in private and public life, can compete comfortably with that of the Cherubic and Seraphic Angels of God. Our politicians even before the results of elections are out rush to the Churches for thanksgiving. Ex-convicts have even the Churches as their first port of call upon their release and the list is endless.
Naturally, the corollary result of the above religious-oriented life is that Nigeria should be a progressive and a prosperous country since the lives of her citizens are per-second under the shadow of the Almighty God whose laws are surest ways to progress and success. His laws stipulate honesty, integrity, hard work, humility, value for life, due process, relative value of wealth and so on as their only identification. But a critical assessment of the lives of Nigerians bearing the above in mind brings to the fore a yawning gap between their religious identity, on the one hand, and their lifestyle as its effect, on the other. In fact, the apparent contradiction between the two is to such degree that Aristotle may be forced to have a rethink over his logical theory of “Causality” where effects are natural consequences of their causes. The divide between them almost dwarfs the distance between heaven and earth. The reason for this obvious enigma is that in Nigeria, people have domesticated religion to suit their whims. They have ingeniously revised the role of the biblical-creative God while they have created Him in their own images and likenesses. And like Pratogoras, they have re-invented the theory that “Man is the measure of all things” since they now fashion their own god. Of course, as expected, not every Nigerian is guilty of this divide between religious identity and contradictory lifestyle on the other. There are deeply religious people in Nigeria whose lives testify to their faith and religious belief. The unfortunate thing is that they are in minority.
In Nigeria, we have bleached out from our collective consciousness the true picture of God, in our attempt to shape a god according to our standards, who for us has now been recreated with a new identity in the nature of “wealth and possession.” In other words, as religious people which we purport to be, we have a god; but it is no more the Judeo-Christian God of Abraham or Muslim Allah with his demanding ideals but the “hedonistic god” of the Epicureans. In this way, we have banished from our societal life the real God or Allah to an “eternal holidays” and divinized “wealth and riches” as our new god. This displacement of the true God with “wealth and riches” naturally goes with a new moral code supplanting God’s original laws of honesty, integrity, contentment and likes with our “nigerianized invented laws of possession” summarized in the generic cliché “the Nigerian way”.
While often, many pastors are today using their pulpits to possess this our “homemade-god”(alias wealth), their church members on the other hand are turning their prayer crusades into miracle bonanzas all in search of the same god. The rich and the powerful are hankering after the same god who expresses himself also in the nature of prestige and honor through different titles given to them via the hallowed altars of God. The “Jerusalem and Mecca been-tos" are after their own god with their unnecessary fixations with the titles of ‘JP’s’ and ‘El-hajj’s.’ Our government officials are after their own god with their heartless pilfering of collective patrimony and at best, they hoodwink the citizenry by siphoning billions of dollars in the name of sponsorship of people for pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Mecca in a country where lack of good roads, schools, hospitals, electricity, food and so on are crying out to heaven for vengeance. Even many of the pilgrims on their pilgrimage routes are known more for the amount of shopping they do in the high streets of Israel and perhaps Mecca than their religious decorum during the said pilgrimages.
Of course, all these goes to confirm, without doubt, the fact that wealth has been today enthroned as almighty-god in Nigeria. Yet, even Karl Marx who declared himself an atheist was able to decipher the extraneous nature of wealth in his Das Kapital and the possibility of its pursuit for simple reason of fancy. Our everyday actions have made us “practical atheists” since we have absolutized wealth which is only a temporal creation with a relative value. As Henri de Lubac argues, “we have made material riches object of our love in themselves, whereas they are only summons to their maker who is God.” We have exchanged God their creator for them. And this life-style is atheistic no matter how we try to vaunt our religious pedigree. It is so because in principle, it is an affirmation of the eternity of temporality. It is a lifestyle that surreptitiously declares the earth as the end of all with its material riches as the ultimate goal. As Vatican II in Gaudium et Spes says, “the word atheism is applied to phenomena which are quite distinct from one another…. Moreover, atheism results …from the absolute character with which certain human values are unduly invested, and which thereby already accords them the stature of God”. A thorough examination of our lives as Nigerians will surely show to any discerning honest mind that wealth is our “human made god” and religion is the handmaid through which this god is delivered either directly or indirectly to us his worshipers.
One consequence of this lifestyle is that it replicates the Hobbesian state of nature where difference between human beings and material objects are blurred. Both are seen only as a means to an end since each one’s value is dependent upon the amount of economic benefit one delivers to the table. In other words, one’s neighbor is as good as his goat. The result of this is seen every day on our streets where human lives have been cheapened in so many ways for the sake of wealth and possession. This servitude to riches is a far cry from what God’s expects of us as the right attitude to wealth. As Robert Krieg argues, true freedom is not only negative absence of external constraint but positive recognition of hierarchy of objects and their values. And wealth and possession being a creation has a secondary value and cannot be absolute no matter how we think we need them. Thus Søren Kierkegaard argues that the crowd is untrue and there is a need for everyone as an individual to separate himself or herself from this mad rush for material possession to ask oneself the hard questions of life and its meaning. We cannot cower under the impulse of consumerism since we are not beasts. In nature, we are defined by our being rather than by our having and we can only worship the real God in truth when we give wealth and possession their relative value. God bless you.
Rev. Gerald Azike (Rome)
geraldazike@yahoo.com, twitter: @azike_gerald
In
my January 2011 article for the Molecular Biology Newsletter, titled
"Operating Far Behind the Frontiers of Science". I recounted my two
years of experience doing science in Ghana. The months and weeks following this
moment of deep soul searching brought me to the point where I had two clear
choices, to stay or to leave Ghana in pursuit of my scientific career. I
decided to make the most of my stay in Ghana and use my training in Göttingen
to prove to myself that I got something to contribute, something that is worth
going the long haul. 
Dr. Patrick Kobina Arthur of the Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology has received a research grant funded by Grand Challenges Canada for his project titled: “Proteomic Analysis of the Molecular Mechanisms Of Latency And Drug-Resistance In M. Africanum I and Screen for Novel Antimycobacterials from Fungal Sources”.
Life is precious and is about quality not quantity.
I hope you are not a doctor, Chris.
I am ready for the next adventure!
Your article moved me. It is a much more elegant explanation than I could have provided regarding my own beliefs about end-of-life and/or futile care. As a primary care physician who has witnesses the tragic loss of dignity in dying over and over again, we seem to be on the exact same wavelength on this issue. Thanks for sharing.
http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2011/12/hcr-how-doctors-die.html
Some religious faiths refuse to allow blood transfusions and (except for minors) that objection is honored without legal consequences.
What would be the consequences of a physician (or any other medical professional) allowing life to come to a natural end, without heroic interventions, citing personal religious beliefs? I’m thinking of your example above.
Passively allowing nature to take its course is surely not the same as assisted suicide or manslaughter. Or are doctors held to a different standard from other professionals?
All my life I was taught to respect doctors. But about seven years ago, while spending every day with my mother in the hospital, my eyes were opened. The system, the attitudes, the lack of awareness, the money, the pressures, etc., I believe, have made the health care system much less than it was intended to be.
At the same time I learned about the value of Nutritional Supplements, diet, and exercise as a way to turn things around in my own case, and take control of my own health. I also learned of the risks in blindly following what doctors and hospitals tell us. I will listen, but I will question every little thing. I will read every label and decide for myself. My medical care is 100% my responsibility. Its my body. If I can learn I will. But I am very sensitive to anything a doctor or nurse tells me.
I believe it is time for a major revolution in the way we train doctors and educate people about how to take care of themselves. The Doctor patient relationship should be more like a partnership, that a parent-child, or master-servant relationship. Patients have every right to question doctors. They should never be forced to stay in a hospital. When the risks of negligence and adverse drug side effects are worse than the symptoms…. beware. Patients must become more proactive, and doctors need to be models of good health. Doctors should not be allowed to become obese or smoke. If they do, they should be put on suspension or retrained. And the medical training itself should change. It makes a ridiculous statement about their ability to care for another, if doctors abuse their own bodies. Doctors should spend 80% of their time on prevention and educating their patient. They should be paid more to keep the patient healthy, than to try and cure him when he becomes ill. The whole system should be turned around. Maybe then doctors will be healthier and live longer and they can be models for us all to live healthier lives. That’s the ideal mission for a doctor…. a role model and a health counselor.
Thanks for your contribution and I will use it for my school research that I am doing for this website.
If there are clear directives then it becomes easy to counsel. But if it is vague..few people have the courage to firmly say that futile care should not be provided or continued. Everyone should clearly state their wishes for end of life care as they age. No one needs to die in misery if they don’t have to.
respectingchoices.org
http://www.eperc.mcw.edu/EPERC
I also wonder, if so many doctors feel this way, why are things as they are? Doctors may hope for themselves to go gently into that good night, but I’m skeptical that it is always what they want for their patients. It would be very difficult for an oncologist, I would think, to go to work each day with the mindset that they were going to just diagnose and send most of their patients home to die. They want to treat their patients. They want to find cures. We all want to hope that people will recover even when the odds are not great. And if patients die, does that not on at least some level feel like a personal failure? I think most physicians are motivated to try their hardest to cure their patients rather than just let them die. Nurses have always had a focus on quality of life and death issues, so it seems inappropriate to leave them out of the discussion entirely.
Great article!
We are Canadian and were completely overcome at the high quality of care he received in the US. Thank goodness for insurance.
Wonderful article.
just
a
high school teacher
Adrien Melikian, MD
Thank you for putting on paper what most Long term Care Nurses want to say to family members. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have witnessed residents being kept alive by family members, only to watch the resident suffer. I really wish there was a way to explain to family members what exactly they are putting their loved one through. Sometimes I find the family members are not ready to let go of their loved one and that they are keeping their loved one alive for themself. As an RN with almost 20 years experience in Long Term Care (LTC) I feel as though, since I cannot educate a Alzheimer/Dementia/ MR or unconscious resident; our society leave these decision up to the resident’s family members that determine when to say enough is enough. Unfortunately even when LTC residents have advanced directives and Living wills; many times facilities and MD’s will err on the side of the families’ wishes; especially with a confused resident; as the world ever so progresses into a sue happy society, MD’s, medical practioners and nurses are forced to err on the side of caution. Great article, now if only we could get long term care (TLC) residents and family members to read it and get them some education perhaps the Medicare System would not be in the dire straights it is now. I know that sounds harsh, but I am a firm believer in advocating for my residents and following their advanced directives/ living wills and honoring their wishes. It is So, So hard to sit back and watch as some families make poor choices for their loved ones and feel helpless (Nurses get sued too) because we have to be very cautious on how much and what we say. CPR is another story, as one gentleman stated above, it does save a few lives, this is why medical professionals are trained and perform it. However, a 63 year old man verses a 95 year old with co-morbidities and no quality of life is another story. I see it daily, it is heart breaking. I learned early on in my profession, especially working with the elderly, that these LTC residents know when they are tired of living and know when they are ready to reconnect with their loved ones in Heaven. They have told me, many times: “Deb I’ve lived my life, I am tired, I am tired of not feeling well and I am tired of living”, and these are not Depression patients). I only wish they would tell their families this, they WON’T. Why:. because they fight to stay alive, not for themself,but for ther iloved ones…..
Thank you once again for this article, unfortunately I don’t believe the information will get to the people that really need this education; the patients (residents) and the family members.
Sincerely, D. Mesick, RN, BSN