/RELIGIOUS BULLETIN 2/ NIGERIA: God Provides, But His Ways Are Mysterious

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Apr 14 1996 (IPS) - “Do you desire a wife, a husband, wealth, success and promotion at work? Meet Reverend… at Success ’96 and your desires will be met.”

So goes one of the many jingles on television and radio stations nationwide as Pentecostal churches, scrambling for new converts, turn Nigeria’s airwaves into a market place of competing promises for success in this life and salvation in the next.

More than 30 million estimated television viewers and twice that number of radio listeners are daily bombarded with claims of miracle healings and all-singing, all-preaching gospel shows.

“It costs a lot to be on television for thirty minutes and most of the weekends they are on different channels, it is big business for the preachers and the television stations,” says social scientist Peter Tafa.

“They are all commercial ventures so they have to advertise by going on air to attract more innocent followers. With more converts they make more money,” he told IPS.

A 30-minute sponsored programme on the public Nigeria Television Authority’s Channel 7, for example, costs between 290 dollars and 685 dollars at prime time. On the state-government- owned Lagos Television (LTV), a half-hour religious show attracts a fixed rate of about 730 dollars.

According to an advertising executive at LTV, who asked for anonymity, about 14 Evangelical programmes are aired weekly on his station.

“We are a money-making venture and it has been big business for us in the last ten years when these new charismatic churches and preachers began springing up in Nigeria. It has boosted our revenue,” he explained.

On virtually every street in this city there are at least two churches. They hold their services in rented halls and classrooms filled with joyful worshipers who, at the weekend, can go the entire day clapping and singing to a fevered religious high.

But behind the upsurge in born-again spirituality in Nigeria’s Christian south-west seems the temporal concerns of survival, in a country where a university lecturer earns just 50 dollars a month, and for many people life comes close to hell on earth.

“When a man is full and has money he tends to forget God, but let him have problems, he will run to the church. So it is with many Nigerian youths who besiege various religious homes today,” Tafa says.

And as downtrodden Nigerians move closer to God for salvation in this time of economic and social crises, the hard-earned money they offer the preachers has turned charismatic churches into a booming business.

“I was born a Catholic but when my husband had problems in his office we started going to a Pentecostal church, but one day the pastor asked people who want God’s answers to their prayers to donate 1,000 naira (12 dollars) in a sealed white envelope,” says Owi ya Alabi.

“Since we did not have that kind of money it means God can not answer us there, so we left the church for good. The man (referring to the pastor) is a fake who makes money from innocent followers,” the disappointed housewife told IPS.

“The craze for materialism has invariably blinded the Pentecostal movement. This obsession with wealth has become so pervasive that titles, honours and knighthoods for instance, have become matters open to the highest bidder,” says Peter Anozie, a former Catholic priest who now leads one of the new churches.

“The Pentecostal movement, originally meant to renew the orthodox churches, is now in dire need of renewal itself, flashy cars, expensive clothes among others are evidence of the derailment of the Pentecostal movement,” Anozie declares.

Some former devotees argue that the relief the born-again churches offer is more psychological and communal than of a spiritual nature.

“I do not discriminate against any sect but when these so- called prophets started advertising their spiritual powers on television, I began to wonder the genuineness of their powers.

“Must they advertise to get more converts if really they have the Holy Ghost?” asks Ifeyinwa Ogbonna, a former sect follower, now a member of an orthodox church.

Paul Olorunsaiye, a born-again Christian, however sees the upsurge in the new generation churches as fulfillment of God’s word.

“It is a healthy development for the Christain faith and a fulfilment of God’s promise that the world shall not pass away until his words have reached every corner of the Earth,” Olorunsaiye believes.

That mission has involved substantial sponsorship from abroad for some of the more established charismatic churches, many of which fly the national flags of their benefactors.

“Ask an organisation in the United States or Europe for a computer chip which can help develop our technology and you won’t get a reply, but ask for a thousand Bibles and they will be sent on the next available plane,” Tafa scoffs.

“The developed countries do not want developing ones to catch up with them technologically and economically and the only way is to re-colonise them through religion. It is a shame,” he adds.

The commercialisation of religion has led to calls even by orthodox church leaders for the taxation of church donations.

“A situation where a church leader distributed exotic cars to his followers as gifts while another church leader bought land and property for over 23 million naira (about one million dollars) should attract the revenue department of the Treasury,” says Sunday Mbang, chair of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

“Fake prophets must desist from using the name of God to make quick money, because a day is coming when Jesus, the Christ will come and wipe out those trees that bear no fruit,” the Methodist prelate thundered.