16th September, 2013
By Adeleke Adeeko
No observer of contemporary Nigerian Christianity can be unaffected by the church songs. I refer to the lyrics alone here because the music, the wordless part of the performances, is uniformly atrocious; the praise indistinguishable from the worship. Commentary on church music is for another day. For the matter at hand, it is enough to note that anyone who hears Nigerians sing “I have a beautiful Goodu o/ He’s always by my side/A beautiful Goodu o/ By my side, by my side” cannot but be moved to imagine the deity as an amiable, neighborly dinner guest deserving of amorous attention! (The whole world knows that Nigerians add a final “o” to an utterance when they seek to establish intimate understanding.) It is impossible to experience the body swaying chorus of “Igwe, Igwe o, Igwe,” which can be repeated for as long as the spirit permits, and fail to imagine that the almighty favors the Nigerian tongue especially. This unabashed expression of intimacy is surprising because Nigerians, perhaps for unstated religious reasons, do not show affection publicly–as late as mid-August 2013 even the young, dashing, and clearly love hungry boys and girls who fill Ikeja City Mall every day neither hold hands nor kiss each other!
Please pardon my digression. This piece is not about sacred airs in Nigerian religion but about the pain imposed on us all by the ungodly contemporary Lagos/Ibadan Expressway Christianity. The sects on that deathtrap share the same attitude towards life and death, despite their outward differences. Like our governments, they scourge our bodies and minds brutally, but we bear the afflictions with calm rage, perhaps because we have accepted their deceitful reading of the part of the Holy Book that instructs believers not to touch the anointed. Our intestines are knotted up against the churches, yet we smile at them with our teeth because we are afraid of incurring divine wrath. We hold back the bloody bile we have stored for them in our stomach when we kiss them lovingly. Well, we need to change. The eye that produces pustular discharge must be made to confront its ugliness directly.
It so happened a few months back that I was driving from Lagos to Ijebu on a Sunday evening when I ran into a sudden, massive traffic build up on the alleged express road. I survived the holdup unscathed, happy that I have not incurred an unplanned repair expense for my brother and his wife who always refused to let me pay for any damage done to their cars whenever I borrow them. My relief was cut short as I saw a column of cars, all with headlights turned on in daylight, fully barreling down the northbound side of the divided road. I was scared witless and almost veered into the bush as I tried to avoid the onslaught. I soon discovered that those drivers have abandoned their own side to commandeer the north-bound section of the alleged expressway as their solution to the blockage of south-bound traffic. Huh, I sighed; maybe this spontaneous and brief flight from reason is what Rem Kool means when he theorizes that Lagos works?
Like the lost, I called home to my brother, the owner of the car I was driving. He spoke to me calmly, almost apologizing for not remembering to tell me that Deeper Lifers were ending an event that weekend. That was not his fault, I reassured him. Just as I concluded the short conversation with my brother, a very caring friend, who thought I must have reached my destination, called to ask about me. He had no consoling words for me other than accounts of his having been held hostage on that same stretch of the alleged expressway by outfits larger that the Deeper Lifers. That is when I started singing: “ni won lara o/ awon to nni mi lara baba/ ni won lara o.” (Pardon me, this is Lagos, I need not translate. Song lyrics is about the only cultural space in which Yorùbá language still thrives.) My friend paused. You could tell that he is afraid for me. But he kept his usual cool and merely asked, “Are you all right?” I said, “I am. I will call you back”. I then recalled a popular recorded song that essentially summoned God to show mercy to those who are merciful to the singer and, by implication, the listener who repeats the personal pronoun of the chant. The song also beseeched the almighty to hold back his grace from the unforgiving: “yo’nú sí won, aláùrabí/ eni rí mi tó ńyonú;/ dá won láre, aláùrabí,/ eni rí mi tó ńyonú;/ rán ‘bi sí won, aláùrabí/ eni rí mi tó ńbínú.”
Now, how can sects that routinely ask God to torture those who bring them the slightest discomfort not know that they are the sources of such a grievous inconvenience for others? What species of unGodly self-centeredness will authorize that shallow spirituality? What scriptures instructed these fellows to be so uncaring about others? Must one have Dan Izevbaye’s close reading credentials, or Biodun Jeyifo’s wide reading skills, or Imodoye’s other-wordly capacity for discernment to note the disconnect between the teachings of Expressway Christianity and its deeds? After answering NO to my own questions, I concluded that cognitive dissonance can help to relieve the pain that the religious warriors inflict on others. The words of the two songs reveal to me that those who urge the almighty to deny mercy and grace to their existential opponents remain totally unaware and, even worse, uncaring about the unprovoked distress they impose on the rest of us. I am convinced that these folks cannot really believe that God does not care about the rest of us. No religious sentiment, it is clear, can truly forgive the inability of a Christian sect praying fervently that God should punish those who make life difficult for its members to note that they too might be inviting the wrath of that same God in the way they treat the rest of the society. How can they forget the morality of treating others as one would like to be treated?
My friend and I agreed later in our conversation that we must, in the intonation peculiar to Lagos, keep “trying.” Well, what about trying this. The next time we are held hostage by the Lagos/Ibadan evangelists, let us collectively sing, “Ni won lara o,/ Awon to nni wa lara baba/ Ni won lara o.” “Distress them, Father, distress them/ Distress all those who inflict pains on us”. We should sing loudly and joyously, in spite of our inconvenience. The trick is cognitive dissonance. It is worth trying. Let us all get down from our cars, buses, trailers, and motorcycles, and sing in the loudest possible way, “Ni won lara o/ Awon to nni wa lara baba/ Ni won lara o.” We might even go further and be more proactive. Let us choose one weekend, preferably a Friday afternoon when the largest of those uncaring sects is preparing to assemble, block the two sides of the alleged expressway, and chant “Ni won lara o/ Awon to nni wa lara, baba/ Ni won lara o.” Let us invite the prayerful Lágbájá and the not-so-prayerful Femi Kuti. (Wished Fela were alive!) Let this prayer/song be translated into Edo, Ijo, Esan, Igbo, Efik, Idoma, Tiv, Hausa, Fulfulde, etc., etc., so that each can call on the almighty in the language closest to his or her heart. These fellows have been teaching us, even when we do not solicit their wisdom, that the almighty listens to the supplications of the distressed. We are the distressed now. Let us therefore assemble on one Friday evening and delay them from getting to their various campgrounds. We should, as we gather, chant unto the Lord, “Ni won lara o/ Awon to nni wa lara, baba/ Ni won lara o.” God does not lie. He promised us all in the Holy Book that “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Psalm 35 authorized us to invite the heavenly hosts against those who cause us distress. We owe it to our collective selves and sensibilities to raise a song of divine confidence in the almighty’s favor: “Ni won lara o/ Awon to nni wa lara, baba/ Ni won lara o.”
Why do such a thing? We need such action not to disparage faith but to instigate critical self-awareness. If you are asked as to why the state of self-awareness of other people should concern you, I recommend that you ask them in return–I am a Nigerian and, as a Sierra Leonean friend once told me, only Nigerians answer questions with questions–who does not know that if you do not dissuade your neighbor from eating worm infested kolanuts after dinner you will be kept awake in the middle of the night by the belly ache that will ensue? For too long we the not-quite-innocent bystanders have been suffering the belly-ache of the Expressway eternity retailers and peddlers who act consistently like heartless relatives who are determined to keep the rest of the household awake while they go to sleep. That is why I recommend that we gather and sing, “Ni won lara o/ Awon to nni wa lara baba/ Ni won lara o.” Amen.
—Adeeko is a Professor at the Ohio State University, Columbus, USA. He is the author of The Slave’s Rebellion: Literature, History, Orature, and other books.