Nigeria and the Politics of Hijab

(By Abimbola Adelakun) - Hijab not about ‘religious discrimination’ 

        A bill to end “hijab discrimination” has reportedly passed second reading in the House of Representatives. Sponsored by Rep. Saidu Musa Abdullahi of Niger State, the bill, “Religious Discrimination (Prohibition, Prevention) Bill, 2021,” is supposed to protect hijab wearers from various forms of discrimination. Abdullahi was, of course, reacting to the ongoing hijab war in Kwara State that had degenerated into skirmishes. Just as it happened in Osun, Oyo, and Lagos states too, schools considered “Christian” are putting their feet down against their Muslim female students wearing hijab within their premises. Abdullahi managed to dredge up a few other instances of women who have been refrained from performing certain duties on account of their wearing hijab and added that the issue needs to be addressed once and for all. 

        Truly, Nigeria needs a definitive solution to this recurrent hijab issue but framing what is at stake as religious discrimination is a misdiagnosis. In countries where Muslims are a minority or migrants, religious discrimination might be a thing. In Nigeria, no honest person can allege that with a straight face. 

        In Nigeria, a Muslim can petition a whole Inspector-General of Police and threaten violence if an atheist whose opinions unsettle him is not dealt with, and the letter would be honoured in less than 24 hours. Even more shocking, the target of that attack has been indefinitely incarcerated without trial. In Nigeria, a Muslim would petition the Police IG saying that a woman who posted a photograph of herself on Instagram had blasphemed, and then threatened the issue could degenerate into violence. The woman in question almost went into exile even after she withdrew the photo, donned a hijab, and virtually begged for her life. In another country, those that threatened her would have at least been arrested, but not Nigeria. When a religion that can pull those kinds of stunts alleges discrimination, you want to take a closer look.

"I Represent Earth": Religion in Social Media Age

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - Angela Nwosu: Interview with an Ogbanje

In 2016, there was that trending video of a girl with scant hair and no makeup talking sex in vulgar Igbo. While some cheered her bravado, others were deeply offended, yet she released some more. Four years later, the lady, Angela Nwosu, has found some acceptance, pulling perhaps the largest following by any Nigerian using a private account on Facebook: 203,000. How did a random girl with a smartphone become a famous brand inspiring traditional worship in a digital generation?

Was the sex talk a way to get people to listen? I ask her, opening an interview this past Sunday.

“No. I just love talking about sex. I can’t have an adult conversation without talking sex. I had no friends and I needed to talk. When I started, there were so many trolls reporting me, so Facebook banned me.” 

Four times she created new accounts but all were banned, the last time permanently, she tells Nigeria Abroad. Angela moved to YouTube, where she met the same fate.

“I had to hire an IT guy to formally write letters and beg Facebook that I’d be of good behavior.”

Her spiritual nature has always been there since she was a child, Angela says, only she had to “use her available platform to provide solutions to people’s problems.” Today on social media, she sells spiritual items—amulets for luck, scrubs for spiritual cleansing, etc. She also provides free spiritual counseling on how people can use nature to better themselves.

Of Coronavirus and Africa: The Illusion of Disbelief

(By Reuben Abati) - Corona Chronicles

… Throughout known history, whenever man faces a crisis of such unknowable nature, his tendency is to resort to religion, faith, and ego. … Religion … is precisely what many fall back upon in a season of distress and so it has been. As Corona Virus arrived in Africa, and made its landing in a few countries, the people trooped to places of religious worship in typical default response. Africans, victims of Karl Marx’s often wrongly contextualized statement that “religion is the opium of the people” usually blame God for everything. They regard God as the ultimate solution, indeed as the know-it-all-Being, the invocation of whose name can provide all answers to everything on earth. Richard Swinburne, a theist argues in his book – Is There A God? (Oxford University Press, 2010), that whereas the existence of God is “the ultimate brute fact”, human beings also have “obligations” or what he calls “supererogatory good actions” or “moral truths” to which they must abide even as they profess their love for God.

Africans often mix this up. As the Corona Virus pestilence spreads in the continent from one or two cases to over 1, 500 cases and over 50 deaths, more of the people rely on the assurances of Pastors and Imams who promise a cure or advertise the possibility of it. In Ghana, one Prophet said he had found an anointing oil to cure Corona Virus, and the Chief Imam of the same country reportedly announced that all Muslims are now free to consume alcohol to combat Corona Virus. While Europeans and Asians are in quarantine, Africans rush for anointing oil, alcohol and herbal solutions. When Trump [erroneously and carelessly] proclaimed chloroquine as cure, they obeyed him robotically. In Nigeria, pastors and all sorts have come up with passages in the Bible to justify the pestilence and how the cure is spiritual.

Of Nigerians and the Lunacy of Money Rituals

(By Temidayo Ahanmisi) - Meanwhile we still do NOT have the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest that money rituals work.

Not one.

Every suspected money ritualist has a thriving business which they pursue.
The question is Why? What's the point of striving at a trade when said ritualist could just as well order money to pour from anywhere, and crisp notes would litter the place?

I think I'm moving far ahead of myself on this. In the first place, the said ritualist or the native doctors even needing to subjugate their supposed powers to currency bills is the first fail.

Why can't the ritualist be powerful enough to just get all his needs delivered willingly to his doorstep? 
Bankers would bring cash. Car dealers would drop cars and skip away. Food sellers would drop food items..

Why need money? Why "mint" money?

Rationalism trumps this base superstition at any time, but the politics of religious people in need of validation of their myths and faith would not let reason have sway and take the day over ignorance, fear and Incredulity. It is imperative to the religious to have a phantom devil so intractably powerful that they would fight tooth and nail to maintain the contrivance of an omnipotent Evil, capable of the most insane feats.

How Religion Undermines Nigeria's Development

(By Okenyi Kenechi) – I have never seen a dilapidated church. I have seen hundreds of dilapidated schools.

In my home town, the schools are rotting away while church buildings are growing bigger. No industries, just churches.

I once told someone that if the churches in Port Harcourt were to be transformed into industries, unemployment will vanish within one year and crime will be brought to a screeching halt. He agreed. 

Truth is, if a politician asks a certain village what they will prefer to be built for them, chances that they will chose a church will be higher.

Doubt me? Gitto in a bid to show appreciation to former president Goodluck Jonathan, asked him to chose one thing they will build for his village people and he chose a church. I don't know if there are world class hospitals in Otuoke or standard schools but he chose a church.

The Rascality and Naiveté of Nigerian Christians

(By Temidayo Ahanmisi) - A woman, dedicated member of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, (RCCG) went out on "Morning Cry" on the streets of Abuja about 2 years ago.

She was slaughtered like a stray pig by yet unknown assailants who will forever be at large.

"Morning Cry", which if we would be sincere, should be called "Moron Cry" is that urban delinquency Pentecostal Christians and their fellow Christian renegades engage in to hawk the Christian gospel in seeming hopes of cornering new members to the fold. 

Seeming, because the rascality is borne from deep psychological issues from unresolved personality drawbacks which give birth to a stock guilt complex, ignorance and extreme judgmentalism. 

Economic poverty, a constricted socialisation and stunted formal education combine to exacerbate the aforementioned psychological problems, and what we have is the urge by the religious to "win souls for Christ" in the most crass, tasteless and rascally manners by disturbing the peace of other residents in their areas of operation.

Church Business: Tax-free Easy Money

(By Ireh Noh Sehn) - Looking for a tax-free, full profit business venture? Start a church! 
*******
No, this is not an attempt to be sarcastic or blasphemous, church business is good business, it is a lucrative business, can I get an amen?

Anything that sells hope and miracles and the possibility of the unattainable is good business. 

The world is a dreary desolate place, we are fighting each other, living off each other and forever trying to edge out each other. It is hard , very hard to survive in the world, we all need some hope, something extraordinary, some miracle , we all need something to hold on to, to believe in , to help us get through every day, and that is what pastorpreneurs tap into and take advantage of. 

Don't get me wrong , there is actually the possibility of some few genuine ones out there who believe in something and whose sole aim is to touch lives and impact the world. Unfortunately my main focus is on so-called men of God who open churches for the money, for the business, for the offerings, tithes and seed sowing. For them it is not about winning souls or worshipping God, it is about making bank.

Nigerian Christian: "You Are A Scam"

(By Temi Dayo) - My 80+ year old mother on poor advice by her doctor, took a dose of the drug, Salbutamol. A few hours later, my mother began to hallucinate. She thought it was raining heavily and that she saw a cat. She was light-headed and ranted incoherently for the most.
And this is where I will forever raise a fist in worship to my ancestor, my father, F.I. Ahanmisi, who sadly is beyond hearing, beyond earshot of all the affectionate adulations I pour on the memory he has become.

You see, my father was way above the league of others when it came to raising us. My mother, our children, my siblings... All still drink of the benefits of having a father who was too good to be a religious Nigerian. My father considered the superstition which is now transmuted into something called "Pentecostal Christianity" as beneath contempt. Even with the limitations of his environment, he yet held out and stayed above the fray of gross ignorance and general stupidity which passes for Spirituality and Religion in the society he lived in, and which he birthed his children into.

Religion, Politics, and Cycle of Poverty

(By Okenye Kenechi) - Irony of life 

Rich man marries and has four children. Poor man marries and starts mass production of children that he can't afford to train because the only thing that gives poor man joy is the body of his wife. 
The country [Nigeria] has beaten him to the level that sex is his only idea of enjoyment. 

Politicians steal your money, sleep with your wife and girlfriends and sister, make sure you don't go to school, even when you struggle to, he makes sure you don't finish on time let alone getting a job. 

He sends his children to the best schools abroad so they will take over from him when he is done playing with your future. 

He initiates a poverty alleviation program, videos himself cutting tapes during the mounting of an electric pole. He gives you 4000, bags of rice at rallies and arms to fight his opponents.

He paints the roads and puts Street lights when there is no light in your home. You hail him! 

He spends millions on billboards of his fake projects, hires the best PR experts to keep you drooling with hunger and uninformed and keep on doing damages to your common sense. You defend him. 

Second tenure, no jobs, no food, the 4000 has finished and the bag of rice wasting in the pit of your toilet. He must recover the billions he spent buying your votes. For he is not qualified to lead but you qualified him. 

Nigerian Politicians, Here They Come Again

As a member of the Niger State Chapter of the Christian Corpers Fellowship in 1989/90, I was close to one particular sister who happened to be the prettiest in our set. My closeness to her put me in a position to know that in the course of our service year, no fewer than five brothers "received" for this sister (a Pentecostal euphemism which means God had directed them to seek her hand in marriage). Curiously, every of these brothers had an interesting account of the way God 'spoke' to him about the sister. But this, as I would find out later, did not also prevent 'God' from speaking to these brothers about other sisters. The truth, however, is that the brothers were not led by God; they admired the sister, evidently for her beauty, and lacking the courage of their conviction, they had to come in spiritual garb.