When Your Community Church is the Largest

(Okenyi Kenechi)--Place the massive Nigerian churches and mosques on a side of a table, place the massive homes of our politicians on the other side of the same table. The similarities between the two sides of the table is that dilapidated school or hospital in your village.

Place the massive cars and private jets of your pastors on one side of a table, place the hotel bills, private jet bills and investments of your politicians on the other side of the same table. The similarities between the two sides of the table is that poor teacher owed tens of months of salary in your area.

You need more? OK, come with me..

I have never seen a dilapidated or abandoned church in this country since I was born.

I have seen hundreds of dilapidated and abandoned schools since I was born. I have visited more than 18 states in Nigeria.

I have never seen a church where members sit on the floor because they don't have seats but I have seen school children sit on the floor, under mango trees just to learn.

And while parents see it as a waste of time attending PTA meetings, they see sitting in a church for 7 hours as an obligation.

The church in my village is bigger than the schools there and so is yours because my father never donated a chair to our village schools but have bought tens of seats and hundreds of bags of cement and aluminum roofing sheets for our village church.

If building schools is for the government alone, why not building of churches? If a politician asks a community what they want him to do for them, they will likely request for a church to be built and not schools. The wise ones may request roads or borehole.

There are no functional boreholes in my community while the massive churches there have consumed not less than 100 million yet we are poor. How much does it cost to sink a borehole?

I have never seen or heard senators, governors, house of rep members, business owners and captains of industries make donations to community schools or hospitals but they donate millions of Naira to community churches to the cheering of the people.

Ike Ekweremadu built a massive church in his village while the schools in his community are nothing but a rat house. Vita Abba, the immediate past chairman of PDP in Enugu state built a massive church for his village people while the school close to his house is suffering untold hardship and decaying. These are the ones close to me. Do a mental picture of your village. Gitto construction company built a massive church in otuoke to thank the then president Jonathan instead of Science labs. The politicians and business men I know in my local government are all building churches in their communities while the school buildings are crumbling yet we want a crime free Nigeria, free and fair elections and freedom from other social ills.

I have been in a room where people argue about the sizes of the churches and how well furnished they are or how rich their Pastors are . I have never seen people compare schools in their communities or argue how well equipped the schools are. How rich is your principal or your chemistry teacher?

My church is bigger than yours but our schools are the same ; dilapidating. Here, lies the problem with this country.

While growing up in a Catholic family, school buildings were used by churches for mass and other activities. Today, the schools are dead while the churches are growing.

The problem with this country will never be solved until schools are 100 times bigger than the churches and the teachers start to earn a reasonably good income.