Media mogul, Joy Isi Bewaji, has written a piece on Nathaniel Bassey’s trending #hallelujahchallenge a.k.a Olowogbogboro.
According
to Joy, It won’t change anything, you can’t pray Nigeria to greatness,
as she further disclosed that Religion succeeds in Nigeria and is the
bedrock of our confidence and convictions.
Here’s her rant;
“#Rant881
#HallelujahChallenge will succeed bigly in Nigeria. That’s a given. Not a miracle.
Religion is the bedrock of our confidences and convictions.
Reinhard Bonnke succeeded in the 90s with his exaggerated revivals in Nigeria.
Adeboye
succeeds every first Friday of the month, leaving travelers along
Ibadan-expressway pulling out their hair (the irony of that situation: a
god worshiping mission that makes people swear and curse in god’s name
for hours of traffic they have to suffer just so a few can practice a
religion).
Christ Embassy succeeded on Television. No ministry is yet to beat the hours dedicated to Oyakhilome’s theatrics.
Religion succeeds in Nigeria.
If I start a church today, it will succeed. Calling or no calling.
Because
we are not people given to anything apart from an obsession with things
we cannot see or have any control over, whilst all that we see rot away
and are destroyed by our innate corruption.
This cute
online revival will change nothing; even if we gather half the numbers
in Nigeria to spread their faith on third mainland bridge and cry out to
God (apart from that good feeling that plasters your heart after
belting out and sweating on a few hallelujah songs).
This
is the era of knowledge. We are not Israelites under Moses. Salvation
has come. Jesus has come and died. What else do you want?
We have had too many spiritual revolutions. What we need is a mental one.
You
cannot pray Nigeria to greatness. It is impossible for God to move in a
country where we allow our police to discard rape cases with the wave
of a hand, and our politicians rob us blindly. It is not up to God to
save the rot in our educational institutions or fix the drainage on our
roads. It’s up to us. And we can’t do any of that on our knees. We get
shit done in 2017 by cerebral drudgery.
Religion is like
soda. It’s Coca-cola. That drink isn’t going to save anything. It’s
feel-good… and like Coke, we are addicted to this feel good process.
Every Sunday we go to church to get our feel-good tablet. Then we have
to come out of that fix after a few hours and face the issues that have
been haunting us for decades, still unsolved. Still in need of a
different approach.
Religion makes us vulnerable, self-centred and clearly delusional. It attacks our rational and coherent capacity.
Things
are moving well in your life and a miracle occurred in your life and
you finally got an answer to something that had been bugging you in your
life because you prayed. But your prayer doesn’t have the depth or
promise to change the problem called Nigeria. Your little success is
beautiful. But what does it matter when every part of the country you
call home is a wreck.
If you have beautiful lips but your body is ravaged by cancer, what then does it count for – those beautiful lips?
#HallelujahChallenge will succeed bigly. That’s a given. Not a miracle.
Why
then are y’all so surprised that you can gather 50,000 people online?
Revivals are our biggest achievements. The most educated will bow to a
man of God who couldn’t pass his WASSCE exams. It is why we are what we
are.
Stop being so shocked that people want to serve God.
It is what we do. It is the only thing we do well. When we are done, we
go back home and justify a paedophile, or delay the transaction of a
debt, or bear false witness. Or choose any of the 100,000 ways to live
sinfully. Then the process continues the next Sunday. Like a dark cycle,
like playing russian roulette, until your own dark faith and
spinelessness kill you.
God, however, wants you to get
your knees up and go challenge your Local government for a start. He
wants you to write a petition and follow through in regard to Queens’
College. Or choose any 100,000 ways to fix your country.
Try
#ScienceChallenge, a hashtag that hopes to promote facts through
experiment and observation, and see how far that will go. It definitely
will not get 50,000 people questioning why we, a people of over
170million, cannot produce our own malaria drugs.
Do you know if they close the borders of Nigeria we will all die? Over 90% of our daily needs are imported. Even toothpick.
But prayer is the key. Smh.”