Religions like Christianity and Islam (save paganism), were imported into this country by foreigners. Their main objective was to inculcate into us the virtues of godliness and love. Those who shipped in Christianity educated us that its Founder is the Prince of Peace. Purveyors of Islam have also been drumming it into the ears of those who care to listen that it is also a religion of peace.
However, it is an irony that in many parts of this country, peace has eluded us. Mutual suspicion has been the strategic fulcrum for religious disharmony in Nigeria.
It is one of the fault lines that are exploited by zealots, politicians and even clerics to advance their causes.
It was the Baba Kekere of Plateau state, Da Jonah Jang, who declared when he was the governor, that the number of churches (and mosques?) when put together outflanked that of beer parlours in his domain. Yet, they were not making any impact on the society… ironically. The same applies to most parts of the country. The ratio should be widened now given the biting effects of recession. While beer halls and pepper soup joints are rapidly shutting down because of low patronage, worship centres, the churches in particular, are bursting at the seams with congregants seeking solutions to their cashlessness or near koboless situations precipitated by the economic meltdown.
Religion is a potent weapon in the hands of those who have chosen to be more Catholic than the Pope because we did not originate the two dominant religions.
The importers of the two religions should be turning in their graves, seeing how we have turned the beliefs to slabs to commit murders.
It was for this reason that Prof. Wole Soyinka recently classified religion as a monster to be tamed fast before it kills Nigeria. The Nobel Laureate is neither a Christian nor a Muslim. He is not even a pagan; he does not believe in any deity. His well known fellow atheist was Tai Solarin.
I have written countless essays as a columnist preaching religious tolerance for yonk now because I was a witness to the unprecedented bloodletting, maiming and destruction of property that occurred during the 2001 upheaval in Jos, Plateau state which was triggered off on the whimsical grounds that a non-indigene from the neighbouring Bauchi state was appointed by the state government as the state coordinator of the Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP). The folks of the soil would not have a stranger dispensing PAP to them. A violent protest soon erupted when the state dithered over the change of the PAP headship. To make the killings total, so to speak, the protesters harped on the Christian-Muslim schism.
As the catastrophe escalated, Christians scampered from Jerusalem to Jericho, Muslims fled from Mecca to Medina, while atheists and pagans ran from pillar to post.
Decades before the first major crisis erupted in the Home of Peace (and Tourism), and as if I saw into the future, I made an infantile attempt to fuse Islam into Christianity. I had accompanied my elder sister and her husband to worship at the First Baptist Church located along the popular Adebayo Street, Jos.
Dressed in a kaftan, I bounced along the aisle with my head appearing and disappearing into the oversized cap my brother-in-law “dashed” me. Then all of a sudden, my head became empty. I swung round only to see the cap retreating at the tip of the janitor’s stick. I was abashed as all eyes were on me. Even the pastor took time off his homily to giggle at the drama.
My offence was that I entered the auditorium with my cap in place as it is the practice with the Muslims while praying but shoeless. Conversely, Christians have their caps removed but not their shoes while worshipping. What I expected the janitor to do was to call out to me politely and say: “Hey you boy, where do you think you are going with that cap on the head?”
So by entering the auditorium with my cap and shoes in place, I was wittingly and unwittingly propagating a unification of the two major religions to be known as Chrislam! Had the amalgamation taken place, I had reasoned at the height of the hostilities of 2001, the bloodletting would not have taken place. But all I got as a reward for my (infantile) merger effort was disgrace and dishonour.
We should listen to Soyinka carefully. Karl Marx must have had Nigerians in mind when he spewed out his often quoted line… religion is the opium of the people. And how do people who consume opium behave? Instances abound all over the country. All the bloodletting in the name of God or Allah is an antithesis of the religion of peace or the one founded by the Prince of Peace.
I recall the appearance of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari at a gathering of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in Lagos in the build-up to the 2015 presidential election. His cap firmly on his head, he sat close to Pastor Adeboye of the “Let somebody shout Hallelujah” fame. His vice presidential candidate, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, himself an RCCG cleric, was also present.
And on the Christmas Day of 2016, a huge number of the beleaguered Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) members, fitted with caps, stormed a church in Kaduna not to trigger off mayhem but to rejoice with their Christian compatriots. That Yuletide Day camaraderie reminded me of my abortive unification agenda in Jos.
That is how we should relate to one another… first as Nigerians devoid of opium consumption. I am sure those who see religion as the fuel for tribal, ethnic, communal or even family feud won’t be too pleased with such a strange bed-fellowship in Kaduna. But it is one sure way of taming the two-headed monster that is now giving even atheist Soyinka sleepless nights.
Fanning the ember of religion is like starting fire to the bush. The pyromaniac can only know the starting point. He cannot predict the direction the flames will burn. The fire starter may end up being consumed in the ensuing conflagration.
