By Oyewole O. Sarumi
In a profound interrogation of the Nigerian condition, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Hassan Kukah, recently delivered a lecture during Dr. Reuben Abati’s 60th birthday and book launch in Lagos a couple of months back, entitled ‘Nigeria: Time to Reload,’ which served not merely as a speech but as a surgical incision into the festering wound of a nation that has traded the rigors of scientific planning for the comfort of magical thinking.
Bishop Kukah’s thesis is striking in its clarity and terrifying in its implications: Nigeria’s underdevelopment is not solely a product of economic mismanagement or corruption in the secular sense, but a result of a deep, systemic entanglement with superstition, maraboutism, and the weaponization of religion.
We stand today at a precipice where the lines between the divine and the transactional have been erased, and the Nigerian state appears hijacked not just by kleptocrats, but by what we might term a “Theocracy of the Absurd”, a system where logic is subservient to the whims of self-styled prophets, and where the destiny of a nation is outsourced to conjurers.
The central argument that demands our attention is the displacement of intellect by fear. We have unwittingly created a portrait of the black man trapped in a “hole of nonsense,” outsourcing his agency to men who claim to hold the direct phone lines to Heaven.
This deep-seated psychological surrender reflects a dysfunctional national mindset where the value called excellence does not stay in the house of jitters. It is an urgent imperative that we deconstruct this phenomenon, analyzing the commercialization of prophecy, the historical cost of superstition, and the sociological necessity to “reload” our national consciousness.
A Legacy of Squandered Headstarts
To fully grasp the gravity of our current stagnation, we must look unflinchingly at the data of history, which dismantles the comforting lie that Nigeria was always “behind.” On the contrary, historical records paint a vivid picture of a nation that once held a significant developmental advantage over nations we now look up to with envy.
It is a sobering exercise to revisit the comparative timelines provided by Lasisi Olagunju (I am going to borrow a lot of ideas from his writeup in Tribune newspaper published on November 10, 2025) regarding the trajectory of Nigeria versus Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Olagunju opined that when one, “consider that Lagos introduced street lighting as early as 1898, a mere seventeen years after London itself adopted the technology. Kaduna established a power plant in 1929, signalling an early embrace of industrial modernity. In stark contrast, as late as 1955, during the first Hajj of the late Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi, the holy city of Mecca had no streetlights.
The streets were lit by oil lamps that were extinguished at dawn. Similarly, Dubai commissioned its first power generator only in 1952 and built its first skyscraper in 1979. Yet, today, the reversal of fortunes is absolute and humiliating.”
The International Institute for Management Development’s Smart Cities Index for 2025 ranks Dubai as the fourth smartest city in the world and Mecca as the thirty-ninth. meanwhile, Lagos languishes at the bottom of the pile, ranked by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the 168th out of 173 cities globally, the fifth most difficult city to live in.
The question that haunts us is clear: How did a nation that electrified its streets in the nineteenth century fall so far behind a city that was using oil lamps in the mid-twentieth century? The answer lies not in geography or resources, but in the “software” of the society. While the Asian Tigers and the Gulf States modernized by embracing scientific reasoning, moral philosophy, and urban planning, Nigeria retreated into the dark comfort of fatalism. We abandoned the laboratory for the shrine, replaced the engineer with the marabout, and allowed superstition to corrode our capacity for critical thought.
The Prophetic Marketplace and the Bourdieu Dynamics
The recent scandal involving the Minister of Power, Bayo Adelabu, and Primate Elijah Ayodele provides a perfect, if not depressing, case study of our current malaise.
The leaked exchange, detailing a 130 million naira request for “spiritual inputs”, including one thousand saxophones and party flags, is not merely a gossip column headline. It is an economic indicator of the “Prophetic Marketplace.”
To analyze this properly, I will take a cue from Akin Olaniyan’s analogy in his piece “The Prophetic Marketplace, Spiritual Capital and Political Transaction” published in the Churchtimes online magazine..
He wrote, “We must employ the framework of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who described society as a series of “fields” where actors compete for “capital.”
Olaniyan opined that, ‘ In Nigeria, religious leaders have accumulated vast amounts of Symbolic Capital, prestige, honor, and recognized authority. In a functioning society, religious leaders act as moral guardians who use this capital to check the excesses of power.”
In Nigeria, however, this Symbolic Capital has been weaponized and converted into Economic Capital. The Primate’s text messages were not prayers; they were invoices. The product on offer was political legitimacy and a guarantee of electoral victory, while the marketing strategy was fear, the implicit threat that a rejection of the prophet equals a rejection of one’s ambition.
This transactional spirituality reduces God to a vendor. It suggests that divine favor is not a matter of grace or justice, but a matter of procurement. When a Minister of Power, a man charged with solving the engineering complexities of the national grid, is engaged in a barter for “spiritual trumpets,” it reveals that the state itself has lost faith in its own capacity to solve problems through reason.
The Minister’s refusal was based on the exorbitant price, not necessarily on the absurdity of the premise. This is the danger: the marketplace remains open, even if one transaction fails. It signals to every aspiring power-broker that the path to influence runs as much through the prayer camps of entrepreneurial clerics as through party primaries or policy forums.
The Psychology of Fear and the Carpenter of Luanda
Bishop Kukah’s observation that the “black man outsources his life to men who claim to be God” is rooted in a primal emotion: Fear. This fear has tangible economic consequences that stifle national growth.
We must revisit the account of the Swiss linguist Heli Chatelain, who arrived in Angola in 1885. He described a brilliant, wealthy black carpenter who lived in squalor and rags despite his success. When asked why, the carpenter explained that he feared displaying his success would invite witchcraft and the envy of his neighbors. Consequently, he spent his surplus income not on reinvestment or capital expansion, but on “protective charms.”
This historical anecdote perfectly mirrors what we might call the “Pounded Yam in the Dark” syndrome. The metaphor suggests that eating one’s pounded yam in the dark prevents the world from seeing one’s prosperity. In economic reality, when fear of “spiritual attack” dictates behavior, capital accumulation becomes impossible. You cannot build a skyscraper if you are afraid the “village people” will see it. The result is a low-trust society where assets are hidden, innovation is stifled, and the best minds are paralyzed by the fear of invisible forces.
Statistics on global competitiveness often correlate with secular-rational values versus traditional-survival values. Nations high in superstition and fear of the metaphysical tend to have lower GDP per capita because when a population believes that success is a product of magic rather than labor, productivity plummets.
The black man, as painted by Kukah, is trapped in a cycle where he refuses to eat his pounded yam in the light, masquerading moderation when in fact he is crippled by the terror of the evil eye.
The Maraboutocracy and the Banquo Paradox
We have transitioned from a democracy to a “Maraboutocracy.” In this system, the electorate is not the supreme arbiter of power; the “seer” is.
As we approach the election cycles of 2027, and reflect on recent off-cycle elections, we see a disturbing trend where politicians are no longer strategizing based on polling data, demographic shifts, or economic policy. Instead, they are strategizing based on the visions of clerics in Niger, Senegal, and prayer mountains within Nigeria.
This creates what can be termed the Banquo Paradox. In Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, the witches tell Macbeth he will be King. He believes them, and in his desperation to fulfill the prophecy, he destroys the kingdom and himself.
The delusion in our political landscape is that every aspirant is told by their respective marabout that they are the anointed one.
However, since there is only one seat and twenty aspirants have been “anointed,” conflict is inevitable. The cost of this delusion is that governance stops. Why build roads or improve schools if your ascension to power is guaranteed by the blood of a camel or a midnight sacrifice?
Robert J. Sternberg, in his work “Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid”, notes that intelligence often fails when magical thinking overrides critical faculties.
We have leaders with advanced degrees from prestigious global universities who, upon returning to Nigeria, discard their education to sit at the feet of illiterate conjurers.
This is not piety; it is a mental health crisis disguised as spirituality. It is the reason why smart persons appear stupid as politicians, they believe what the seers serially tell them, creating a cycle of stupidity that keeps the nation running backward.
The God of Justice Versus the God of Transaction
As we navigate this crisis, it is imperative to state that this current practice is a bastardization of Christianity. The God of the Bible is a God of Order, Logic, and Justice, not a God of chaotic transaction.
The scriptures warn against prophets who speak visions from their own minds and indict leaders who judge for a bribe. The moment a price tag is attached to a prophecy, whether it is 130 million naira or a “seed offering” for a specific outcome, it ceases to be prophecy and becomes Simony.
True religion acts as a moral compass that guides the conscience of the leader toward justice, equity, and service. It does not offer shortcuts to power.
The “God” that requires the slaughter of a three-legged cat or a cross-bred cow to grant political office is not the Creator of the Universe; it is a projection of the politician’s own greed and insecurity.
The Imperative to Reload
Bishop Kukah’s call to “Reload” is a call to systemic reboot. We cannot pray our way out of a lack of planning. God does not do for man what He has given man the brain to do for himself. To retrieve our country from the “merchants of spirits,” we must implement a comprehensive approach.
First, we must prioritize an intellectual reformation. We must radically overhaul our educational curriculum to emphasize critical thinking and scientific inquiry over rote learning.
We need a generation that asks “How does this work?” rather than “Who sent this evil spirit?” Logic and philosophy must be reintroduced as compulsory foundations of learning to demystify natural phenomena that are currently attributed to the supernatural.
Second, there must be regulatory oversight of the “religious field.” While freedom of worship is sacrosanct, the commercialization of fraud is not. The government must strengthen consumer protection laws. If a “pastor” or “marabout” charges money for a service that is empirically false, this should be treated as fraud, not faith. The Financial Reporting Council must enforce transparency in the finances of religious bodies that operate as commercial entities.
Third, we require a cultural renaissance of excellence. We must destroy the “Carpenter of Luanda” complex. We need to build a culture where wealth is celebrated as a result of industry, not mystery. Public transparency in government procurement and private sector success stories are vital. When the path to wealth is opaque, people attribute it to magic; when the path is transparent, people emulate the process.
Eating the Pounded Yam in the Light
The choice before Nigeria is binary: Reason or Ruin. We can continue to be a nation where Ministers of Power negotiate with prophets for trumpets while the national grid collapses. We can continue to be a people who fear the “village people” more than we fear poverty. If we do, we will remain in the “hole of nonsense,” watching as nations that were once behind us, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, UAE, colonize the future.
Or, we can “Reload.” Reloading means understanding that the value called excellence does not stay in the house of jitters. It means realizing that God has given us the raw materials—lithium, oil, arable land, and brilliant minds—and He expects us to process them with science, not superstition.
It is time to stop eating our pounded yam in the dark. It is time to turn on the lights—not just the electric lights of the grid, but the lights of the mind. Only then can we forge a unifying national spirit rooted in justice, integrity, and shared purpose, retrieving our destiny from the conjurers and placing it firmly in the hands of a rational, faithful, and hardworking people.