‘Preaching For The Fee’: The State Of Nigeria’s Religious Politics
The Oasis Reporters
March 6, 2023
Would you continually believe a pastor or an imam who gets paid to continuously preach a well packaged message to slant the reality or the truth ?
That would only be for a season. One day, disbelief would begin to set in. And that would be the beginning of loss of faith in religion.
A prominent Islamic Cleric In Kaduna revealed in a video that all the Imams of the mosques in the state,including himself have been given N10million each to propagate same faith ticket for the forthcoming election.This is the dangerous path our society is threading.
— Senator Shehu Sani (@ShehuSani) March 5, 2023
“A prominent Islamic Cleric In Kaduna has revealed in a video that all the Imams of the mosques in the state, including himself have been given N10 Million each to propagate the same faith ticket for the forthcoming election. This is the dangerous path our society is threading”.
Would the politicians that gave out the humongous amount of N10 million not find a way to recoup his money with interest for use in another season?
So why should the citizenry complain if in future they have no electricity, water and other social services?
The direct impact of this is that in the final analysis when genuine worshippers of God, either as Christians or Muslims realize that their religious leaders are preaching, not from their heart but from the greed and hunger in their stomach, disillusionment would set in.
Another aspect of this is that once it is established that religious leaders are for sale to the highest bidder, loss of faith would set in. Many people may drift from organized religion.
It is the moral fabric of faith that is being battered.
The impact can be seen in the West. Churches are becoming empty. Many of the Church buildings all over Europe are begging to be hired for next to nothing. Hired for nothing even for doing whatever else apart from religion.
In the UK today, one would find that Churches are being filled up mainly by immigrants who have newly arrived. The English who originally own the land have long since abandoned religion.
The script is being borrowed by some of the greedy religious leaders in Nigeria.
This was the script that played itself out about four years ago to vote for reinforced failure. The final notice is when the bribing ticket is sworn in to office and they perform woefully again, the rate of citizens voting with their feet to exit the nation and move to developed nations abroad to be treated like second class citizens would continue.
When leaders fail abysmally, they would resort to massive borrowing. It certainly would lead the nation into bankruptcy. The mockery from citizens of nations abroad would soon hit home leading to depression.
Religion would not be the cause. But the greed of religious leaders.
It was seen even in the South South that money politics played a huge role in the voting pattern. Some compensatory votes went to certain parties to fulfill all righteousness in order to satisfy the money induced vote. But not enough to give victory.
Many voters in Nigeria’s South West confessed that a lot of money came to them a few days before the voting began. Millions were shared out to induce votes. And this was despite the cash crunch. Receiving that money was the small respite they got.
In the South South, the money they received to induce voting was ingeniously shared. Thus making some of the money to be wasted effort.
