Have you seen my childhood? (Pt 4): How I became irreligious

By Chris Ihidero

Two of my closest friends in secondary school, Ganiyu and Fatai, were Muslims, as was Alhaji A.O Sanni, our proprietor. We had a Mosque for Muslim students and a hall that was converted to an inter-denominational church for Christian students. On many Fridays I escorted my friends to the mosque for the Jumat prayers. I didn’t say the prayers, because I couldn’t but I would do the ablution as others did and enter the mosque with my friends. When they bent down, I bent down. When they squatted, I squatted. When they touched the floor with their foreheads, I did the same. It was never an issue that I was a Christian praying in a mosque. On some days we said The Lord’s Prayer during assembly in the morning; on other days we recited Sura Al Fatiha. I can still recite Sura Al Fatiha to this day. The basic tenets of Islam were not too different from those of Christianity in those days and religious intolerance hadn’t reared its ugly head with the intensity of today.

I was born into an Anglican (or is it Methodist?) church but we soon became members of the Cherubim and Seraphim Church Movement, Ayo Ni O on the Apapa-Oshodi expressway. We wore white garments and took off our shoes before entering the church hall. Incense was burnt and candles lit during services. We sang from hymn books in Yoruba, clapping and dancing fervently and the church’s choir released some of the most soul-stirring gospel albums I have ever heard. The leader of the church, Apostle E.O Fakeye was a strange Christian. He was the first person I heard say a good Muslim will make it into heaven before a bad Christian. He never taught that Christianity was a superior religion. The church was guarded by a Muslim family, led by Mallam Musa. He had a kiosk where he sold biscuits, sweets and other such items during the day. His wife and children were also very well known to church members and they could often be seen praying. I was present at Mallam Musa’s kiosk every Sunday as this was where I, naturally, spent the money my father gave us for offering. I didn’t realise it then but later in life, the fact that Mallam Musa and his family lived inside my church compound and lived as Muslims, without either the church or its members trying to convert them to Christianity, would make a big impression on how I saw religion. Years later when my Pentecostal friends talked about the need to avoid being ‘unevenly yoked’, I thought they were crazy.

Sometime in the 90s as I left secondary school, Pentecostalism began to gain grounds in Nigeria. Bishop Benson Idahosa had brought the church to our television screens like we had never seen before. My father’s car broke down at that time and we could no longer make the journey from our home in Ogba to where our church was on Apapa-Oshodi expressway, a journey of about an hour and a half. One after the other, my brothers and only sister turned towards Pentecostal Christianity, attending churches close to our house. The pattern of prayers started changing during morning devotion; less hymns and more contemporary Pentecostal songs, English also became the language of prayers, no longer Yoruba. I tried to follow suit but something in my unconscious mind would not allow me.

I started with Assemblies of God Church and then moved to The Redeemed Christian Church of God. The more I listened to the preachers talk about how special Christians were, the more my mind told me something was wrong. The more I heard white garment churches referred to as ‘non Bible-believing’ churches, the more I longed for the church of my childhood. The more they preached difference and exclusivity, the more I saw sameness and sought inclusiveness. I wanted to be a Christian, but I also wanted the Muslim to remain a Muslim, same for the Hare Krishna people we often saw around Oshodi on the way to church. Why were they not children of God just like us? Why were we Christians special? What the hell does ‘unevenly yoked’ mean? Why would Fatai and Ganiyu not make heaven, just because they were Muslims? What happened to the content of their characters and why wasn’t that used to determine who got into heaven and who didn’t, just as Apostle G.O Fakeye had said? The more questions I asked, the more I was told to believe and be born again and seek my own salvation and leave the rest. I couldn’t handle it so in 1995 I stopped going to church altogether. It’s been 18 years and I haven’t gone back since.

Since then I have read the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita and some Buddhist texts and bits of the Ifa corpus. The words of the incomparable Mahatma Gandhi best explain my conclusions on religion and why I now prefer to say I’m irreligious: ‘I believe that there is no such thing as conversion from one faith to another…It is a highly personal matter for the individual and his God…Having reverently studied the scriptures of the world I could no more think of asking a Christian or a Musalman, or a Parsi or a Jew to change his faith than I would think of changing my own…our innermost prayer should be a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, a Christian a better Christian.’

I have found my faith in the God of my heart and understanding. You may not recognise Him as He may be different from the God you know, but that’s okay. It’s in Him I have found Peace Profound and I am content.