Nigeria and the Trouble with its Church

(Ijabla Raymond)--“There is a lot wrong with the church in Nigeria today - Pentecostal pastors are in competition with themselves to accumulate wealth from the tithes and offering of their members; some will stop at nothing to exploit the desperate situations of our people to enrich themselves including making bogus claims about faith healing, paying dodgy characters to fake miracles on stage, making fuzzy pronouncements which they call prophecies, giving patients false reassurances and encouraging them to stop taking their medications with devastating consequences; some pastors own private jets bought with the tithes of their members some of whom cannot even feed their families; many of them sleep with their vulnerable female members who come to them for help.

“A medical doctor would lose their licence to practise or could even get jailed if they did that to their patient, but somehow our society has different standards for religious institutions and their leaders. Pastors have god-like statures and a cult-like following, which can overwhelm their naive members; and this often stops members from speaking out against sexual or psychological abuse. One thing we can learn from history is that when accountability is lacking, then a culture of abuse, corruption and exploitation becomes entrenched in a society and its institutions e.g. the sexual abuse of teenage boys by Catholic priests.

“… Personally, I am not convinced that religion makes people good; indeed, believers are guilty of every sin that their holy books accuse unbelievers of. This is about accountability, a quality that is grossly lacking in Nigerian society. It is the reason there is a church on practically every street but our country consistently tops the list of the most corrupt nations of the world….”