by Nnaoke Ufere, PhD
Horrendous suffering, despair and death have prompted many Nigerians to ask: “Oh, God, where are you when we need you? Why is it that we, poor Nigerians, who live morally as best we can, are allowed to suffer inescapably by a perfectly just and morally good God? And why is it that the evildoers who abuse power, loot the nation’s treasury, murder the innocents and commit other atrocious crimes live lavishly, enjoying their ill-gotten wealth?”
I posed the same questions to Nigerian clerics who claim to be God’s messengers. In wrestling with mass suffering, the clerics appealed to the Scriptures for explanation.
In this essay, I present the common explanations proffered by Nigerian clerics and expose the corrupt, unholy alliance between clerics and politicians. I reveal how Scripture is used and abused to silence and muzzle long-suffering Nigerians to accept their condition as ordained by the will of God.
I’ll let you be the judge. So read on.
Clerics’ Explanations of Why There’s Horrendous Suffering In Nigeria
First, and the most common explanation, is that poor Nigerians suffer because God sanctioned their suffering in return for divine peace and joy in heaven. In this interpretation, the poor suffer by the will of God. By suffering in this life, they earn God’s credit for a better afterlife.
Second, some clerics make central the connection between suffering in Nigeria and the biblical idea that the reason for suffering goes back to the disobedience by Adam and Eve when they broke the good and moral order God created (Genesis 3) — unleashing evil, suffering, and injustice upon humanity.
Third, others suggest that those who suffer do so because they personally sinned and separated themselves from the love of God. You reap what you sow (Galatians 6:7). That is, sin begets suffering.
Finally, some argue that it is through the exercise of human free will that evil and suffering coexist in Nigeria. That is, suffering is the outcome of personal choices — individual decisions and preferences bring about individual suffering. Therefore, those who suffer only have themselves to blame, thus God or other humans cannot be held to blame for their suffering.
Why I Disagree With The Clerics
Do you find these explanations persuasive?
I argue that the explanations offered by the clerics are at once disingenuous, unconvincing and dangerous. Notice that in expressing these positions, none of these men of God explained why the corrupt, powerful and rich evildoers go unpunished in Nigeria! The implication of their theological explanations is clear. To them, there is no suffering for which the poor are not guilty or eligible.
Of course, there are several compelling reasons why you must resist the above explanations for why only the poor suffer in Nigeria.
Here are Counterarguments to Consider.
For the claim that poor Nigerians suffer because God sanctioned their suffering, one can argue that God, being just, should have made an equal opportunity of suffering for all, including the corrupt, powerful looters who have robbed the nation of its oil wealth, thus siphoning away monies meant to improve the lives of poor citizens.
What further confounds the “God sanctioned suffering” claim is that the horrendous suffering that people undergo evidently has no relationship to the moral quality of their lives, rather, it bears a very clear inverse relation to their wealth, power, and position in our Nigerian society. Observable evidence in the country shows clearly that suffering is disproportionately meted on the poorest of the poor — “the least of these” among us.
It is also self-evident that the amount of evil perpetrated on the powerless poor is logically incompatible with a merciful and morally just God.
Why do the poor have to suffer here and now so that the corrupt, rich and powerful Nigerians can enjoy the products of their sinfulness? Why do the poor have to wait for salvation on judgement day while the rich enjoy their ill-gotten wealth and power until judgement day?
I find the “God sanctioned suffering” justification particularly dangerous. This acceptance of suffering as willed by God may motivate the oppressed poor in Nigeria to accept their condition as ordained by the will of God, trapping them in an unbreakable cycle of abuse, neglect and poverty perpetrated by the powerful elites and justified with scripture by some venal religious leaders.
Surely, God being the omnipotent and omniscient creator could have found a more just principle for guiding and nurturing His creation rather than the “God sanctioned suffering” option. We must therefore reject the “God sanctioned suffering” justification in the context of Nigeria.
With regards to the justification of suffering on the basis of so-called original sin by Adam and Eve, there is a serious problem making sense of it.
One must ask the question as to why there is an imbalance in the experience of suffering between the powerful and the powerless in Nigeria if everyone sinned right from the time of Adam and Eve. Alternatively, is it possible that in Nigeria, only the best interests of the powerful rich are served and protected at the expense of the powerless poor? I believe so.
The “original sin” explanation for why only the poor suffer in Nigeria lacks adequate support, and is therefore, uncompelling.
The claim that suffering is the result of personal sin, that is, the poor sinned and God finally decided to punish them, raises a salient question. What sin could the poor be guilty of when compared to the corrupt politicians who steal and kill every day, to warrant such horrendous suffering?
Who should be punished by a just God if not the person who commits atrocities every day? That the rich evildoers in Nigeria are spared of God’s wrath is reason to reject the personal “sin begets suffering” claim.
As for the argument that suffering is because of exercise of free will to do evil, that is, poor Nigerians are to blame for their suffering since they brought it upon themselves, one may ask why the exercise of free will and God’s sovereign power to control all things is incompatible?
One could argue that God doesn’t override our free will because that will counter His plan for us to learn by experience. But why can’t an all-powerful God override our free will to do evil? Is it only the poor who exercise evil free will? What about the corrupt politicians who engage in all manners of sexual immoralities and criminality? Again, one can find this biased line of justification of little explanatory value, thus unpersuasive.
My Opinion: Why The Poor Suffer
In my view, lost in all the explanations and justifications proffered by the clerics for why poor Nigerians suffer is the possibility that as a society we abandoned God and became a nation of Godlessness, despite nine in ten Nigerians claiming to be either a faithful Christian or Muslim.
We are today, a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah on steroids.
In this perceived Godlessness (note: attending church every Sunday or worshiping in the mosque every day doesn’t make you a virtuous person), evildoers have seized power and taken over the nation and ruined it, causing incalculable harm to millions of Nigerians every day.
I do not believe that God is involved in our suffering in Nigeria. Our suffering is man-made. God is good, just and merciful. Further, we corrupt, we steal, we kill, we covet our neighbor’s wife, we’ve made ourselves demigods. And our places of worship have become marketplaces where we traffic in false witnesses, status and avarice – all against God’s commands.
As a nation, we must acknowledge that the evil deeds of members of our communities have damaged others and caused mass suffering. For instance, the state governor who embezzled money earmarked for the construction of a local hospital is responsible for the suffering and death of the sick who can’t afford expensive healthcare in a private hospital.
The same can be said of state governors who have not paid their state employees for months and left their families to die of hunger and disease. The same can be said of the wicked religious leaders who incite their worshipers to murder fellow citizens (often the poor) while invoking the Holy name of God. The same could be said of corrupt politicians and government officials who empty the state coffers to enrich themselves while citizens suffer endlessly.
The same can be said of get-rich-quick businesspeople who kill innocent citizens and harvest their body parts for money rituals. And the same could be said of doctors and pharmacists who steal drugs and medical devices from public hospitals thus causing the untimely deaths of their patients.
We Can Stop Mass Suffering
Until we truly become authentic Christians and Muslims, not just by proclaiming faith and quoting the Bible and reciting the Quran, but by our daily good thoughts and deeds in the interest of the common good, we as a nation will remain Sodom and Gomorrah and the “least of these” among us will continue to suffer the horrendous atrocities inflicted by the minority evildoers.
We can begin anew by electing a moral and competent president in 2023. The choice is clear. The legacy parties and their leaders ruined Nigeria. It’s time we swept them out of office.
