Needed, a department of religious affairs

Nigeria is a secular country, where state and religion are separated. The state has failed the nation, and a vast number of the citizenry are flocking to religion as a panacea. But rather than find succour, most of them are fleeced and brainwashed. Only non-students of history would fail to acknowledge the role played by […]

Nigeria is a secular country, where state and religion are separated. The state has failed the nation, and a vast number of the citizenry are flocking to religion as a panacea. But rather than find succour, most of them are fleeced and brainwashed. Only non-students of history would fail to acknowledge the role played by religion in the advancement that society lays claim to today. Conversely, we can see the damage done to societies which have turned their backs on God. By elevating human wisdom over and above the divine they have a publicly attractive society that is internally decayed.

The clamour for equality of the sexes as if one gender is in prison and another lording it over it has eroded age-old values that keeps society together. As a result, we see the erosion of societal values and the destruction of marriage the nucleus of a good society. Taking discipline from parents has created an erosion of parental authority over children. By vesting unmitigated freedom on children to grow like animals, we have lost control of morality.

Without parental counsel, children are exposed to vices which, in traditional societies cannot even be fathomed. Unmitigated drug use and abuse, lack of respect for authority, truancy and unmitigated addiction to drugs, sex and crime resulted from taking control from parents. There is a coalition of a vocal but depraved minority with access to the mass media disseminating vice as culturally acceptable and bullying the rest of the human race into acceptance. Part of it is the elevation of promiscuity and homosexuality as natural and its imposition on the rest of Africa. What is development without morals?

Yet, it is possible to have a developed society without totally jettisoning the moral compass on which humanity was founded. It was the status quo in the West until capitalism elevated mammon above God and human wisdom above divine dictates. The consequences are evident – greed and avarice have bred wars and eroded values. The new thought is that man is equal to and a kinsman of the beast – people would rather have communion with their cats and dogs than raise children. Most Western households spend more on their pets than we can spend on one child a year. It is now gay not just to conduct same sex marriages but for people to publicly marry their pets.

For a society like ours in its state of incomplete metamorphosis, there is a compelling need to balance the quest for advancement with faith in the divine and belief in the moral compass. But we should not abandon progress and subject society to the whims of religious leaders with the capacity to twist the scriptures to suit their instinctive caprices. A balance is needed, required and can be forged.

To argue otherwise is to abandon society to its unfair share of global megalomanic cults as exemplified in Guyana’s Rev Jim Jones tragedy; Texas’ Wacko Tragedy, Aum Shimri Kyo in Japan; and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Nigeria has had its fair share with direct and indirect victims of Maitatsine, Rev King and our own version of the Taliban called Boko Haram. All these are evident of the damage that comes when secular government fails to keep a reign on the proliferation of religious dogma. With 80% of the people cut off from social cushion, we are flocking to religion and increasing our susceptibility and vulnerability to unmitigated manipulation. To fail to do something now would expose the corporate cohesion of the nation and its citizenry into jeopardy.

Nigeria needs a department of religious affairs. This society cannot continue to abandon its citizenry to schizophrenic individuals laying claim to divine mandate s and embarking on massive recruitment of adherents. Their very freedom poses a serious threat to the corporate existence of our nation. Especially as the indolent political class gradually resorts to these and primordial tendencies during periods of campaign and election. This results in the federal contraption we now have which fought its battle to hoodwink the electorate on ethno-religious battlegrounds. Since President Goodluck Jonathan has no clear-cut political programme capable of lifting Nigeria from the woods, he would do this country a world of good by reigning in the demented religious zealots who have constituted themselves into a parallel government.

A religious affairs department would help Nigeria audit the activities of religious houses; examine their doctrines in line with constitutional and other legal provisions; assess their wealth and taxation history and set up stringent criteria for the proliferation of religious sects and views. If we can register political parties, why not religious groups? This department should also be empowered to work with relevant committees in the legislature with a view to seeing how super-rich one-man-run religious sects end up being richer than their states, and in some instances even the federal government. They should turn their finance books to the Board of Internal Revenue for the purposes of taxation and to determine the source of such funds. This also serves the dual purpose of knowing if they get foreign sponsorship in ways that can compromise our national security.

This becomes necessary as religious groups have crossed the borderline of catering for the welfare of their members and with subterfuge entered into business. While the leaders of the world’s two most dominant religions, Islam and Christianity lived spartan lives and shared what they had with their communities. Today’s proselytes live in opulence while their members die of poverty-related ailments. They even prevent children from being immunised against childhood-killer diseases in instances. They invest in building architectural masterpieces while most of their members live in ghettoes; they build schools that charge fees that members cannot pay and use the cover of religion to establish businesses  in which they are CEOs and their children and wives board members and inheritors. Since they have transgressed the boundaries of religious duty into business, they should be made to choose one and be subjected to secular control and taxation. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel as there are models we can copy.