Why Do Nigerians Become Less Religious When They Travel Abroad?

One day, I decided to ask a friend abroad some pertinent questions. I said: “When last did you pray for journey mercies while travelling by rail? When last did you pray against power cuts? When last did you bind and cast the spirit of poverty? What about the prayers against your ‘village people’? I concluded and waited for a response. He struggled to give me a definite answer. He finally gave up with a smile.
Over time, I have concluded that most of us did things in Africa without any strong personal convictions about our actions. We are mere products of social conformity, groupthink and bandwagon effect.

Actions and inactions were regularly driven by the mentality of ‘Oh since people are doing it, then it should be right’. The challenge with this stance is that when the individual is taken out of the circle, they switch their colours to that of the new environment. This is what a chameleon does.

In my view, this is the major driving factor why Nigerians become less religious as soon as they leave the shores of Nigeria. In Nigeria, the efficacy of prayers (which is good) has been overemphasised. This has been done to the point that people even pray to occupy positions they are not academically qualified for. Someone might fail to prepare for a school examination and expect a miracle to happen. God frowns at magic and cheating.

For years, religious organisations have constantly raised prayer points for the advancement of Nigeria. But the country has been on a steady pattern of constant retrogression. This is what is easily obtainable when prayers go without work. Most Nigerians have grown to erroneously believe the key to personal and societal development is prayer and spiritual warfare. By the time they leave the shores of Nigeria and see their imagination of perfection in an advanced but starkly irreligious society, they let go of their core beliefs gradually and unconsciously. In psychology, it’s called Cognitive Restructuring. In the UK for example, I have seen former Nigerian pastors who pick extra shifts on Sundays due to the extra pay attached to it. Suddenly, the very religious ones no longer attend weekly church services. Evangelism is no longer on their To-Do list. The best they come up with is to repost or share religious messages on WhatsApp or other religious platforms. These people don’t pay tithes or give first fruits anymore. The growth of their finances, despite becoming less religious, has collapsed their belief system. They now believe somebody must have lied to them.
In terms of physical appearance, they are now open to funky hairstyles, earrings, and tattoos. Also, the so-called ‘worldly’ fashion sense has been attractive to them. A couple of them have changed their taste of music, stance on alcohol, smoking and the most controversial one – homosexuality.

The bottom line here is that whenever you find yourself in a working society, your prayer points will reduce. You tend to see life differently in a more realistic way. However, the level of societal advancement in the West is not an indictment on religion, spirituality or the existence of God. It only means we need formidable institutional structures in Africa. When viable structures, we can back up the process of growth and development with spirituality.

Prayers work and spiritual forces exist. This is known to the West knows but they will rather not build their lives around it. They only use these diabolical stories to sell books and movies. They tag them as ‘fiction’.

Osahon George Osayimwen is a UK-based journalist.