Letter to the clergy

First of all, let me state here that I am not a big fan of your clan; I mean the clan of clerics and priests of various religious groups. My primary grouse is that your lot have made Africans strangers in their land by convincing them to run away from everything that makes them African. Other grouses border on the way many of your clan take advantage of these simple folk who are content to be your sheep. Many of them show unalloyed loyalty, swallowing huge chunks of inedible stuff at your instance, growing poorer that you may be richer. Yet, these men and women shepherds do not hesitate to suck all the milk, use up all the wool and leave these poor creatures out in the cold panting for breath.

Well, these and a few more are my personal grouses but this letter is not about me. It is a passionate appeal about the precarious situation of our society emanating from the behaviours of the sheep of your pasture. Yes, virtually every Nigerian is a member of one congregation or the other, so they answer to you. Only a fool will overlook your clan when looking for a solution to social problems in this land.

I am sure you know that you are the real custodians of power in this country. The politician does a lot of ‘gara gara’ to grab power which he wields for a few short years. He goes back to a private life to be remembered by his deeds (usually evil) in office. The cleric, on the other hand, holds the people’s hearts and souls in his hands. It is he whom the people willingly surrender their souls to, allowing him to gently mould them to his taste. The cleric governs the souls and bodies of thousands and millions of followers. He presides over countless meetings and fellowships. He is often the only counsellor the followers will ever meet in their lifetime. So the political counsellor is inconsequential. That is why the clergy is a major influence in the social, spiritual and religious life of the people. In fact, he is a major significant other, in the parlance of sociology. I am sure you can now understand why this letter has to be addressed to you.

Dear man of God, I wish to use this medium to beg you to tone down the level of religious heat that has engulfed our society. I am sure you feel the heat. You must have lent your voice to the condemnation of such wanton destruction of life and property. However, it is possible that you have never really imagined that you had a hand in creating the dastardly acts that cry out to the heavens for redress. When you preach and convince your followers that God has no regard for those outside your fold or that hellfire is reserved for them, you are sowing a potent seed of hatred. When you encourage them to love people of their fold more than they love non-believers, it is an invitation to chaos. When you tell adherents that there is only one way to God and that way is the one you have chosen, some understand it to mean that the world will be a better place without these other people who do not know God and are not willing to convert to your preferred religion or sect. When these provocative seeds mature, they give rise to violence. The violence will manifest physically if something in the same creed you preach allows or encourages physical violence. If it does not, they will express non-physical aggression which will include isolation, verbal abuses, segregation, bitter slander, stigmatization and so on against the non-believer. When you use derogatory words to describe non-believers, it sticks in the psyche of your followers.

In the spirit of oneness of humanity which all religions uphold, at least in principle, I wish to appeal to you to search out those portions of your holy book which talk about true love for all mankind. Use such portions of scripture to admonish, teach and train your flock so that only the milk of human kindness will flow from them in due time.

It is important to state that it takes fanatical preachers to produce fanatical followers. Since you are the one they trust and listen to, it is only right that you take responsibility for their actions, especially when such actions stem from what they learnt from you. I don’t think the instigator of hate will go scot-free if God comes to judge. It is time to build bridges across religions and sects for a more peaceful society.

As for the follower, the sheep that leaves his senses outside as he goes into the worship arena, all I can say is that it is time to put on your thinking cap. God did not create you to be or act like a zombie. You even have a responsibility to help your clergy out when he is getting it wrong. That is why God gave you a complex brain. There is no reward for being a willing fool and a ready tool for causing mayhem. It takes only a few minutes of independent thought (not influenced by anybody or any book) for you to realize that you should not hate anybody simply because he has chosen to believe something different from what you believe. After all, none of you knows for sure that what he believes is the right one. That is why it is called belief, not knowledge. Let common sense prevail and save this society from imminent cataclysm that threatens to swallow us.

NNENNA Ihebom