The reversible Polaris Bank

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A letter was found in 2006 in the room of a Nigerian drug leader after his apprehension in Thailand. The note had read: “Almighty God in Heaven, I have the right to be rich. I have the right to be a millionaire and no country has the right to pass laws that interfere with my reaching my goal of being rich. Any laws that are designed to keep me from this goal are illegitimate.”

Prof Stephen Elis, the late British historian and author of an expose on the history of Nigerian corruption roulette, This Present Darkness: A history of Nigerian organized crime, used the above story to illustrate the chivalrous romance given by religion to crime in Nigeria.

On September 17, 2022, three lead discussants of the topic, Issues in Nigeria from a Christian perspective, literally blew the roof off the Anglican Church of the Messiah located in Bodija, Ibadan, the Oyo State capital. They were professor of Religious Ethics, Religion and Society, Religion, Peace and Conflict Studies, Jacob Kehinde Ayantayo, of the Department of Religious Studies, University of Ibadan; an outspoken architect, Sunkanmi Onadeko. And myself. Mrs. Modupe Olubanjo brilliantly compered the event. If the church expected a cavalier treatment of the humongous crises in Christendom’s interface with society, it got much more than it bargained for. In unpretentious analyses of how Christianity was richly implicated in the current phenomenal tragedy of the Nigerian socio-political crises, the three of us drilled down into how charlatans, masquerading as religionists, have contributed immensely to the problems that bedevil us as a people. We brought out the log hidden in the eyes of the laity, clergy and barons of Christianity.

Last week, Polaris Bank, one of Nigeria’s commercial banks, provoked a hoopla which brought to the front burner some of the issues that engaged the Bodija troika. Apparently bothered by the persistent absence of its Muslim staff on Fridays, under the pretext of going for the religious ritual of Jumu’at prayer, one of the bank’s supervising staff, Damilola Adebara, issued an internal memo banning such magisterial, self-granted absence from work and threatened sanctions on whoever flouted the ban.

No sooner had this memo surfaced, aware that when it comes to the issue of religion, Nigerians lose their sense of reasoning, than some of the mischievous staff escalated it on the social media. Thereafter, bigotry, naivety, ancient but inexplicable groveling before religion, and the traditional indolent culture of the average Nigerian worker, gained traction.

Ostensibly bothered by the commercial losses staring it in the face, rather than an institutional resolution of this patently nonsensical spiritual preferencing over human existence, Polaris Bank management disowned Adebara.

There are two theologies that have contributed to the social menace of crime and indolence in Nigeria today. The first is the menace provoked by the theology of abundance and the second, the theology of “God will supply my needs.” The first is given credence by the unexplained and inexplicable avalanche of wealth that cannot be logically explained which flood Nigeria today. It is explained by that letter written by the arrested Nigerian drug baron earlier quoted above.

The second theology of God-will-supply-my-needs-according-to-his-riches-in glory, or the I-will-have-mercy-on-whom-I-will syndrome – an obvious literal reading of the holy writ – is responsible for the high rate of indolence in Nigeria. It is why there is a phenomenal increase in the rate of Nigerians who privilege miraculous, illogical and inexplicable rag-to-riches more than believing in the supremacy of the work of their hands.

In both instances, this new wave of theologies gained ascendancy in the late 1970s in the western part of Nigeria through the incursion of Pentecostal churches. Incidentally, that was about the time when the economy of Nigeria began to suffer its fall and the excitement of the petro-dollars wave began to give way. The Shehu Shagari austerity measure policy of the early 1980s, the profligacy of the Ibrahim Babangida era and the government’s legitimizing of corruption as government policy pushed Nigeria to the cusp of economic crises, gradually stultifying the hopes of the people.

As the economy began to kiss the canvas, vultures called Pentecostal churches increased in number, preying on the hopelessness of the people, with their blood-soaked talons. The teachings of Ise ni ogun ise (work is the antidote to poverty) a famous poem written by J.F. Odunjo, were easily swapped with the religious phenomenon of God-will-supply-my-needs-according-to-his-riches-in-glory and I-will-have-mercy-on-whom-I-will, which are counterpoise of the former. Nigerians began to rely on God, rather than the products of the works of their hands and before we knew it, we arrived at this frightening intersection which my friend, Ebenezer Obadare, calls a Pentecostal Republic. In this republic, we are lawful captives and our human reasons are imprisoned, making us robots in the hands of religious charlatans.

At that Anglican Church conference, Prof Ayantayo’s singe was the most audacious. While prefixing his intervention on the church and the Nigerian problems, Ayantayo located the current disposition of the church in its role centuries ago when it had the power to tax people and its law a must to be obeyed. Onadeko addressed the destruction that Nigerian politics has wrecked on Nigerian life and how the church has been helpless in intervening on behalf of its people.

Politicians in government and religious charlatans have pauperized the thinking faculty of the Nigerian people, so much that they hardly can think straight. It does not matter the level of education they have or their exposure. Because existential threats to life are more predominant here in Africa, vultures easily use religious preachments of succor as manacles to enchain the people. It was exactly what that jobless graduate of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) in Ogbomoso, Oyo State did about a couple of months ago. Ostensibly neglected by government, society and even the church he attended, immediately the alumni of his ex-school donated N500,000 as seed money for him to embark on a vocation, the first thing he remembered was to pay 10 per cent of the amount to his church as tithe. This was a church that ostensibly didn’t remember him in his years of travails. But because his brain had been imprisoned to reason this way, he had become captive to the church tithe payment orthodoxy.

While both Islam and Christianity have enslaved the brains of their adherents to think of religion at the expense of existence, Christianity is the major culprit in disciplining a beehive of adherents whose brains are configured to think that God will bless them in spite of their joblessness. Women are the worst hit by this bullet of rag-to-riches crave. They besiege churches in their hundreds early in the morning for answers to existential challenges of bad health, joblessness, and crave for good life which a welfarist state should have provided. Churches then capitalize on the failure of the state to act as answers to those existential problems.

The Polaris bank memo to its staff by Adebara is the way to go in any sensible society. Only that there is a dosage of hypocrisy in it. While that same management wouldn’t see anything wrong in gathering staff to speak in tongues at congregational early morning prayer in the office, it sees everything wrong in observance of the Jum’nat prayer. Some Muslimpreneurs justify allowing staff to go pray during office hours, citing US & Europe where they claim employees have the right to pray at work. They claim that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Equality Act 2010 in the UK justify this.

The danger in this kind of forced indulgence is that employers may now be wary of recruiting persons who would be leaving work for prayer at peak periods. I have threatened to sack an employee who escaped from office to pray in church. It is sheer deification of indolence. Religious programmes during work hour kill personal and public economies by stealth. The holy writ which counsels working and then praying didn’t privilege the latter over the former.

Of course, religion barons who profit from this slavish disposition of religion like Ishaq Akintola are quick to seize on this to canvass their wonky and illogical mindset. Akintola’s Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has been notorious in this regard, using religion as a divisive weapon to hoodwink Nigerians. Like Bob Marley said, all that Akintola seems to want the religions to do is “keep on fussing and fighting.” He did this immediately the Polaris Bank issue came up by asking the bank to apologize to Muslims or risk boycott of its bank which the bank tremulously obeyed.

Couching his threat in his usual divisive mantra, MURIC said it condemned the “strong-arm tactic aimed at Christianising the bank’s policies and de-Islamising Muslim staff of Polaris Bank.” What nonsense! MURIC should pray to Allah to provide jobs for the millions of unemployed Muslims who would gladly swap position with the ones who are asked to observe the simple courtesy of not denying customers’ attention during office hours. We are not in an Islamic or Christian republic. If the Nigerian constitution states that the country is secular, it holds that Nigeria neither holds a belief nor a disbelief in religion. It is not the other way round.

Prof Ayantayo’s submission is my way forward for this country that needs a religious mind reset. First, the proliferation of churches and mosques today is a sign of national indiscipline and apocalypse. Prosperity and materialism gospelling have overwhelmed the economic capacity of the church and theology contentment has been replaced with theology of lust, avarice and godlessness in the name of prosperity. Hard work performed within the boundary of righteousness is the only thing that produces wealth as, according to the holy writ, the blessing of God added no sorrow. Spending stupendously alarming time in churches for religious programme rather than in productive ventures kill our economy. Adebara is a hero for upsetting religious orthodoxy.

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