Nigeria: The need to arrest the spate of religious vampires

The gospel meeting needs

The airing on Channel 4 in the UK of Seyi Rhodes' Unreported World - The Making Of … Nigeria’s Millionaire Preachers [1] did not include other footage that would have been more representative of the gospel because it did not appear as spectacular and outlandish as the subjects in that show.

In an accompanying article [2] that should have had a modicum of proofreading [This is a blog, Channel 4 is a professional news channel, such must be better catered for.] the ministry of Rev. Mrs. Chika Oluchi is spoken of.

She is the overseer of The Mountain of the Lord Ministries International: Centre for Liberation which runs a widow’s fellowship catering to the needs of these women who apparently have no means of material or spiritual support.

Almost inexcusable gullibility

Most touching is the story of Therese who is mistakenly identified as a widower rather than a widow, just as the confusion of numbers is used to describe Rev. Oluchi as a remarkable women [sic].

Therese lost her husband some years ago and apparently fell into the hands of rotten preachers who convinced her that her husband was a member of a devil worshipping cult persuading her to dispose of all her late husband’s property and give the proceeds to the church leaving her and her children destitute.

To crown this wickedness they said God will kill her and her children if anyone found out. Those preachers have now been apprehended and Therese appears to be rebuilding her life untouched by the supposedly wrathful God ready to murder her and her children for being inadvertently married to a devil worshipping husband.

Held hostage to their ignorance

Herein is the deeper problem with religion in Nigeria, the ability for the unscrupulous, dishonest and Machiavellian to prey on the gullibility and apparently vague dread of the supernatural of people to exact them money, property, blind allegiance and followership.

People get held hostage to their fears perishing in their ignorance and inability to independently seek out the truth of their beliefs many of which have been foisted upon them by merchants of deception masquerading as religious leaders.

Sadly, there is no indication that many can emancipate themselves from this enslavement as these religious confidence tricksters trot out every kind of corporate or personal message along with false prophecies purporting to be of God to feed on the anxieties, fears, uncertainties and doubts of the sometimes vulnerable, sometimes stupid and usually both.

Taking advantage

Religious vampires with fangs long enough to sink deep into the heart to feast on the blood of those beholden to their whims, drawn away from the truth by the spectacular and paralysed by the fear of the retribution of blood thirsty animist gods in the misrepresentation of the Christian God.

It takes one back to those unsightly but horribly truthful paragraphs reproduced below from Lord Lugard’s book, The Dual Mandate that I covered in my Apes Obey Series [3].

Revisiting Apes Obey

In character and temperament, the typical African of this race-type is a happy, thriftless, excitable person; lacking in self-control, discipline, and foresight; naturally courageous, and naturally courteous and polite, full of personal vanity, with little sense of veracity, fond of music and loving weapons as an oriental loves jewellery.

His thoughts are concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment, and he suffers little from the apprehension for the future or grief for the past; his mind is far nearer to the animal world than that of the European or Asiatic, and exhibits something of the animals’ placidity and want of desire to rise beyond the State he has reached.

Through the ages the African appears to have evolved no organized religious creed, and though some tribes appear to believe in a deity, the religious sense seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more often to take the form of a vague dread of the supernatural.

He lacks the power of organization, and is conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of men or business; he loves the display of power, but fails to realize its responsibility; he will work hard with a less incentive than most races.

He has the courage of the fighting animal, an instinct rather than a moral virtue; in brief, the virtues and defects of this race-type are those of attractive children, whose confidence when it is won is given ungrudgingly as to an older and wiser superior and without envy.

Perhaps the two traits which have impressed me as those most characteristic of the African native are his lack of apprehension and his lack of ability to visualize the future.

Without doubt there is a need to review each of these traits as identified by Lord Lugard and see how certain who have acquired power by all sorts of means have been able to subjugate others so easily because therein lies the root of many of the problems Africans face today, a fifth of those Africans are apparently Nigerian.

[1] 4oD – Channel 4 – Unreported World - The Making Of … Nigeria’s Millionaire Preachers

[2] The Making Of … Nigeria’s Millionaire Preachers – The Widows’ Fellowship and Therese’s story.

[3] Introducing the Apes Obey! Series

Apes Obey! Vague dread of the supernatural

Rotten reporting

When I read the 2 versions of the stories in first in the online versions the Nigerian Tribune and then This Day, I knew there was much more to the story that the journalists had not bothered to investigate further.

Usually, when such sensationalist tripe is published there is someone from some foreign media ascertaining what I would call the Veracity Index of the story such that the objective might replace the incredible.

It took a review by Ijebuman, a fellow blogger to see the real truth behind the whole story with a perspective from Reuters/Yahoo. But it highlights how even professional journalists in Nigeria can get carried away with outrageous rumours and print those as truth, but also a reflection on society that accepts such sloppiness without protest – really appalling.

The haunted house

This however is my first instalment in the Apes Obey! Series; dealing with the vague dread of the supernatural.

A man had apparently built himself a haunted house [Source: Nigerian Tribune], read into that what you may, for all sorts of reasons, after completion of the building he refused to move his family into the house because he believed it was haunted [Source: ThisDay Online].

A night vigil was organised, comprised of members of one of those ever pervasive gatherings of people calling themselves a church, with a Pentecostal persuasion to conduct an exorcism to make the house habitable.

Smoke, wind and dwarves

The story then grows legs, they prayed into the night and when it ended one witness went to the toilet and lost consciousness after first seeing a lot of smoke and mysterious dwarf figure in human form.

Another source said after the prayers, a mighty wind blew through the house and sent people crashing on the floor with many losing their lives.

Somehow, some of the bodies ended up badly burnt and in the space of 2 days the bodies were already infested with maggots – there was a time lapse between the event and the discovery.

Perceptions of great evil

However, this is where the story would have taken off – the vague dread of the supernatural had compelled people to gather to deal with a situation through fervent prayer. It would appear they were up against something they had no clue of and it overpowered them.

Meanwhile, observers would consider the house was evil, the builder was probably a crook and that the church might have been involved in other activities rather than pure Christianly service.

17 lives were lost in this incident and though there might be clear indications as to why this happened, any natural or logical explanation would be ditched for some sign, miracle, paranormal or supernatural context making the whole event more mysterious than it should ever be.

Unfounded attributions

It is interesting that the phrase “mighty wind” was used in the context of this story because it could well refer to an event in the Bible where the Apostles were gathered on the day of Pentecost – a number of versions of the Bible use rushing mighty wind [Source: Biblos.com Parallel Bible] in the Book of Act Chapter 2 verse 2 – allowing for another vague dread of the supernatural.

People might question how within two days bodies were infested with maggots but further on in the Book of Acts someone died and was immediately infested with maggots [Source: Biblos.com Parallel Bible] – supernatural or natural?

A more plausible explanation

The Reuters news agency picks up the story [Source: Generator fumes kill 17 at Nigeria prayer meeting - Yahoo! News] and highlights the fact that we have a power crisis in Nigeria that forces people to install portable generators.

The security situation in Nigeria also means that people would sometimes fail to follow a basic safety rule; such generators should not be used indoors.

As it happens, this group of people ran the generator indoors where the likelihood is that they were overcome by exhaust fumes and consequently died.

Considering they closed themselves up in the house, the meeting place was probably not properly ventilated and having been through an exhausting session of fervent prayer they would have been very vulnerable.

Fervently religious but stupid people

An apparently stupid human act that cost lives has however been attributed to forces of darkness.

As for the man who went to the toilet – some of the signs of carbon monoxide poisoning [Source: Canada Safety Council] would be vision impairment, mental confusion and collapse on exertion – the kind of exertion which might have allowed for the seeming high concentrations of carbon monoxide to overwhelm a group of people almost at the same time as to have looked like a being hit by a mighty wind to a confused mind.

Probably, someone fell on the generator and got burnt as the generator ran till it was out of fuel.

When people die, they begin to rot and attract flies, those flies lay eggs which hatch in maggots [Source: WikiAnswers - How do maggots get into a dead body] between 2-5 days of being laid – there might be extenuating circumstances for humid and tropical regions.

I can only thank Ijebuman again for this information about Carbon Monoxide Poisoning and Haunted Houses - Case Closed! [Source - Wikipedia]

Despite all this

Despite this clear explanation of events, it is amazing how the vague dread of the supernatural holds sway over people that they fail to realise the obvious.

Could the haunting have been a badly placed roof tile allowing for wind instrument dynamics; a creaking door or something really benign?

This is not to discount the possibility of haunted house, but in a new house? Except if it was built over an old disused cemetery, but then?

I would wager that a good number of Nigerians would take convincing of the fact that the large loss of life was due more to crass stupidity than some vague supernatural activity – Lord Lugard must have been a rather keen observer and somehow you have to agree he was right there.

And back to that quote corroborated from another source too “through the ages the African appears to have evolved no organized religious creed, and though some tribes appear to believe in a deity, the religious sense seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more often to take the form of a vague dread of the supernatural” [Source: Google Book Search - Nigerian History, Politics and Affairs: The Collected Essays of Adiele Afigbo (Classic Authors and Texts on Africa) (Paperback) Page 456 – ISBN-13 978-1592213245 (Amazon.com)].