Few days back, videos of a certain woman with deformed arm, said to have been healed by four different pastors after performing same kind of miracle on her, trended on the social media platforms.
The videos showed four Nigerian pastors at different events perform a healing miracle on the same woman, whose name was given as Bose Ola. Her deformed and stunted arm grew to its normal size each time the pastors prayed for her.
One of the pastors, identified as Chris Okafor, who was said to be the founder of Mountain of Liberation and Miracle Ministry, attributed the woman’s stunted arm to spiritual attack from her husband’s house.
Several social media reports described the said miracles as fake, and it was alleged that the woman collected N1million from each of the pastors that used her as object of miracle.
In what seems to be a contradiction, Bose Ola, who was said to have come from Ibarakpa in Oyo State, claimed in an interview with CKN News that she had a domestic accident two years ago that resulted in fractured arm.
Confirming that she had attended several and uncountable churches for healing, Ola said that she gets healing after attending those churches but the ailment relapses two days after the healing.
According to her, when healed, the pains on her arm disappears but that after two days, it returns, and this informs why she kept attending various churches seeking for permanent healing.
She was however, quoted as saying that after her encounter with Pastor Chris Okafor, the pains on her arms were not returned. The healing was permanent. “I am permanently healed now,” she claimed, although the CKN News noticed that the hand was still dangling from the upper joint.
The story of Bose Ola is one out of so many fake miracles happening in Nigeria today. This has strong link with the physical, spiritual, economic, and psychological problems faced by many citizens.
In Nigeria, as in many parts of Africa, for instance, people believe that misfortune comes from magical attacks, witches, wizards, or other demonic powers in their environments. The rising socio-economic problems manifested in unemployment, poverty, among others may have encouraged the desperation to seek solution from any source whatsoever.
Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa with a population of over 190 million, is richly endowed with mineral resources, and is presently the ninth largest oil exporting country in the world.
Despite these huge resources, Nigeria is engulfed with socio-economic problems which have caused poverty and conflict in the country, thereby pushing the citizens into desperate situations.
Globally, Nigeria has remained one of the 10 poorest countries in the world. The country is still considered to be a poor country with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of about $374.3 billion.
This is the main reason for the rising economic hardship in Nigeria, which has been taking tolls on families since Nigerian economy slipped into recession in 2016 after recording 2.06 percent contraction in growth.
A school of thought has argued that the failure of governance has pushed the masses into resorting to alternatives they think capable of giving them succour from their excruciating pain.
Investigation by BDSUNDAY shows that unemployment is a big problem in Nigeria, and many people are frustrated with the widespread joblessness in the country.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the calculated unemployment rate in Nigeria was 23.1 percent, the underemployment rate was 20.1 percent, and the combined unemployment and underemployment rate was 43.3 percent as at the third quarter of 2018.
From 2016 till date, there has been serious negative economic impact on both businesses and the economy in general to the extent that many companies have repeatedly reduced staff strength and cut down salaries to manage raising cost of production.
Consequently, family responsibilities such as feeding, house rent, school fees and others have continued to pile up for bread winners amid shrinking income. This has been taking place in the face of salary cut, high inflation rates, and low purchasing power as well as other macroeconomic indices that impact negatively on peoples’ standard of living in Nigeria today.
With scarcity of resources and need to surmount pilling economic pressure on people, many Nigerians are forced to seek miracles to get rich quick, cure diseases and resolve other distressing situations. They have been pushed to embrace the Karl Marx theory on Religion, when he stated that “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Today, many Nigerians have resorted to religion as the only avenue to derive succour as successive governments have made life unbearable for them.
On daily basis, many seek solutions in wrong places- religious centres, native doctors, marabouts, looking for miracles and relief from their socio-economic pains, even when it becomes clear that some of such places are managed by fake clerics and dupes, whose intentions are to rip the people off.
Today, many Nigerians patronise such bizarre places looking for husbands, wives, solution to their poverty such that they spend days in prayer houses seeking miracles and visions for their insurmountable problems.
Fred Ani, a social media writer, said: “Nigeria is a country where motivational speakers disguise as ‘men of God’ to milk gullible miracle-seekers and to enrich themselves.”
Adelowo Felix Adetunji, a senior lecturer in Comparative Religion and Mission, Babcock University, in his article on ‘Miracles in Nigeria: An evaluation of Unusual Occurrences,’ stated that West Africa has the highest concentration of spiritual churches focusing on miraculous manifestations.
According to him, “People can spend a whole day in churches seeking for miracles and visions for their insurmountable problems. However, most miracles can just be a street-side entertainment scene, drawing the unemployed, busybodies or the plain curious as well as the ignorant that are too weak to think and explain their daily problems in clear terms.”
“As West Africa shows the boom in spiritual churches and the juju-marabou mediums have seen the commercialisation of miracles, making it unsacred and undermining its divine nature,” Adetunji said.
“People appear in their thousands in churches and crusade grounds (both Christians and non-Christians), not seriously seeking after Christ or spiritual food, but for miracles. Healing miracles have actually become the ‘real thing’ or the most current issue in African Christianity today,” he observed.
To address this, Okwuagbala Uzochukwu Mike, a writer, who said that people engage in illegal and bad activities when they are frustrated with legitimate options, said instead of allowing persistent unemployment to continue, government should increase security in the country and hire youths as security agents.
According to him, lack of opportunity makes them indulge in criminal and desperate acts, and their actions make the whole nation look bad.
Kidnapping activity in Nigeria, he said, is growing fast like grasses on the river side that have water in abundance and that it has become business for many criminals in Nigeria. “This has come to the extent of kidnapping travellers on highways for ransom,” he noted.
Today, graduates often times stay in their parents’ homes for long time, with mounting frustration and pessimism. This pushes such persons into becoming prey and eligible clients for the so-called fake pastors and other criminal gangs.
There is an urgent need for government and private individuals to work hand-in-hand to reduce unemployment rate in Nigeria. Encouraging acquisition of skills will go a long way in solving Nigeria’s unemployment challenge.
It has also become very imperative for government to tackle the infrastructure problems by providing proper funding and cracking down on the embezzlement of public funds earmarked for infrastructure.
Also, Nigeria needs stable power supply and better roads. Workers need to earn better wages, and those with good skills and strong ethics should be positively rewarded.
