Sir: The reason for the proliferation of worship centers in Nigeria especially in the Christian faith is the general doctrine spread by religious leaders about spiritual elements controlling the physical and the need for everyone to take the spiritual angle to life very seriously. Based on this unsubstantiated religious claims, most Christians especially fall into different traps of false so-called men of God who capitalize on their ignorance to milk them continually.

To debunk such theory however, what one needs to do is to probe what happens elsewhere and then do an obvious comparison. In the advanced world, most of the successes recorded are based purely on scientific researches and technological innovations. Human efforts have led to so many inventions aimed at tackling human problems. The apron strings of developing nations are tied inextricably to the domination of the advanced ones due mainly to the acceptance of false doctrine of spiritual elements directing the physical which has been forced on the psyche of those who ought to emancipate themselves and join the rest of the world in moving the planet Earth forward. Those who hammer on spiritual elements would never explain why years of continuous prayers have never translated to any solution to common problems or why all the prayer warriors still have to depend on those who hardly pray to enjoy the good products of science and technology.

Most of the problems faced by Africans can be traced to poor and rapacious leadership. Corruption in high places infiltrate every other part of the society and accountability, integrity and transparency are compromised and totally sacrificed. This leads to extreme backwardness and poverty of those who refuse to join the madding crowd. The smart religious leaders then interpret their worsening conditions as spiritual challenges and brainwash them into spending all their time at worship centers and waging war on the millions of unseen spiritual enemies retarding their progress! However, immediately most Africans relocate abroad, all thinking about spiritual elements affecting one’s lives stops abruptly and even going to worship centers becomes a rarity. Africans need to wake up in order to be able to see quite clearly where their problem lies which is none other than poor govenance.
• Oyewusi is coordinator of Ethics Watch International, Lagos