The Faith Industry

In a keynote speech covered earlier Dele Olojede stated "...The fastest growing industry in Nigeria today—faster growing than even the telecom sector, and perhaps just as profitable—is the faith industry, which feeds off the misery of the people and appeals to their worst instincts and propensity to superstition, illogic and unreason...This unquestioning faith has adopted and perverted one of the tools of modern management, which is the concept of outsourcing non-core competencies to others. In this case, our prophets simply ask us to outsource everything to God...I do not by this mean to single out Christians at all; I think the same is largely true,perhaps even more so, in the other major religions. But our country right now is in a desperate state, a time that calls for clear thinking and rationality, not magical solutions and a reliance on divine intervention. Life is grim and hard, and it should not be obscured by the sentimental philosophy of the pulpit, where everything is outsourced to God and people are encouraged to believe that the just and the good will somehow result from some deity reaching down through the clouds to sweep all our sorrows away..."
covered also on NaijaBlog