This opium will destroy us

Karl Marx described religion as the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. Has anyone ever cared to understand the circumstance that was prevalent that stirred the author of the above quote to use it when he first did in his essays? There is no gainsaying the fact that the people of Karl Marx’s time were pretty much like we are in Nigeria.

This brings us to ask: who is the society and who are the religious? Are these not made up of you and me? At the point of not realizing that you and I formed the basic unit of that oppressive society that Karl deplored and those religions which he practically mocked; portrayed most people as existing in what Karl termed the realm of opium.

For it is only at the point when opium had taken control of the human mind that confusion, falsehood, lies and the unwillingness to face reality exist. Who would believe that in Nigeria, and despite the very obvious contention between the two major religions; corruption, uncleanliness, indiscipline still exist? With the level of our piety, Nigeria ought to be by far better than China.

Unfortunately, this is never the case. The delusion becomes very difficult to neutralize when you tried to make the average Nigerian to understand that nowhere in the world today has religion ever built a society let alone a national economy. In the evolutionary history of human life, it is never in doubt that man begot the society and the religious systems. And because of this, his level of discipline, fairness, equity and justice determines how his society and his religious systems are shaped. For instance, whoever thought corruption was just going to bow to the EFCC’s eagle eyes was only myopic.

Corruption can only be swallowed by our contentment in whatever we possess. As long as greed continues to drive the hearts of men; corruption, inequality and injustice will continue to thrive. This opium called religion has become so deceptive that God himself rejects it and instead seeks true worshippers.

Indeed, this opium is destroying us! Religious worship is false worship. It is a gathering of pretenders; people who briefly paused their greed for a few hours, and allow a comedian, an Ímam’ or a ‘pastor’ to entertain them. After those hours, they played their true selves again. And you wonder why lawlessness and pervasive corruption are not stamped out of society.

The fact that lawlessness seemed to have swallowed ‘religion’ instead of the other way round is great proof that religion can never change society unless it first succeeded to change the heart of man. For we all know that opium never really kills or even alleviate the pain. It only just beclouds our minds by sending our thoughts to esoteric terrains where it keeps us for a brief moment and freed us afterwards.

This is why we come back to our painful realities feeling depressed. Do we still have religion in Nigeria and insecurity is rife; hitting us this hard? But religion promised us el-dorado, promised us wealth and security? What has gone wrong with religion’s promises? Nothing really went wrong.

Comrade Ifeanyichukwu Mmoh,

Abuja