Now this is just a question, it does not neccessarily reflect my views. In Nigeria, we have the lowest people to church ratio in the world. Even the Vatican City cannot boast of such a feat. It appears on every street corner there is a church. I live in the southern part of the country and majority of the people there are christians so I'll focus on The Christian Church in Nigeria.
There seems to be three types of people who go to church in Nigeria. There are the poor people who go there because they believe if the pastor prays for them they will get out of their current condition without ever having a plan to succeed or working towards a goal and then the rich use Sundays as an opportunity to show off their expensive lace and their new jeeps and then of course there are those who genuinely believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
A lot of the pastors are in it for the money, for them it is a very lucrative business. For example, my good friend attended the funeral of the Late Mrs Bimbo Odukoya (who I believe was one of the true believers) and many well known pastors from all over the country flocked into the place with limousines, luxury vehicles and even a private jet, while the vast majority their congregation suffered in poverty.
Another example I have is from my aunty's former church in Virginia, USA. It is a very famous ministry with branches all over the world. Anyway, the pastor had been collecting donations from the congregation for at least five years claiming that it was going towards building a proper location for the church rather than them having to rent a kindergatten classroom on Sundays. Eventually one of the members of the congregation went to Nigeria for a holiday only to find that the pastor had been using the money to build a mansion for himself in VGC.
The point I'm trying to make is this: Do you feel we in Nigeria have developed a culture of giving what little we have to the so called Men of God to solve our problems with their special prayers? Is it time more of us start applying the principle of heaven helps those who help themselves?

If the country has not gone forward with all the religions practiced over there. . .what do you think?

Of course it can only keep taking Nigeria backwards because the people are practicing inherited religions of which they know nothing about.

Just a bunch of hypocrites!

I do not think that what is practiced in most nigerian churches is actually religion. So I don't think religion is holding nigeria back. Extortion and Brain washing. That is holding nigeria back.

People go to church in nigeria and come out hungry. CAn you imagine that? EVen if you had breakfast before you went, by the time you've endured the entire length of the service you will come out hungry. What kind of service is that? What are they serving that it leaves you drained not replenished. Is that religion?

People who pour their energies into futile endeavours will reap the futility.

of all the developed contries in the world the united states is the only country where a greater percantage of its population believe in god , the number of those that believe in god or gods is shrinking daily in the usa, religion is the bane of nigerian problems, nigeria is dying because of religion .anything that man wants to do must be done by man himself. i keep saying it why should god bless countries that don't believe in him(sweden,finland,japan,south korea,england,germany,austria,iceland, estonia,holland, switzerland, belgium,latvia,cyprus,etc) and refuse to bless the countries that believe so much in him and call unto his name day and night(nigeria,morroco,ghana,kenya,sudan,iran,iraq,somalia,zimbabwe,afganistan,pakistan,bangladesh etc). white people know that religion is a farce and they have put that behind them and moved forward, the black man is lost and will never understand what is going on.

If you visit Dubai and SAUDI Arabia, YOU WILL PITY THE FOLKS IN THE NORTHERN PART OF THIS COUNTRY who the leaders have effectively blinded with religion especially the Sharia practice.
Rome and London are the religious capitals of Christianity in the world and ironically. Nigerians are the most religious people in the world. God, Allah, Chukwu, Oluwa , Oghene etc will really be disappointed with the types of religion we have in this country.

I also think that an inherent stupidity that afflicts black people contributes to Holding Nigeria backwards.

Pastor AIO:

I also think that an inherent stupidity that afflicts black people contributes to Holding Nigeria backwards.

You have to ask; What are the cultural factors that impede development, or create the environment conducive underdevelopment? Where are the African Newton, Rutherford, Darwin, Einstein, Wagner, Dawkins, Hawkins, Smith etc. Why is it that our cultural millieu does not produce the likes of these eminent thinkers?

huxley:


You have to ask; What are the cultural factors that impede development, or create the environment conducive underdevelopment? Where are the African Newton, Rutherford, Darwin, Einstein, Wagner, Dawkins, Hawkins, Smith etc. Why is it that our cultural millieu does not produce the likes of these eminent thinkers?

I myself have pondered upon this for a very long time. As a fellow black man it is hard for me to bring myself to say we are of inferior minds. This is simply not true. I had 60 classmates in my secondary school in Nigeria and about 10 of us are in ivy league schools in the US, a few of us are in cambridge, imperial, london school of economics and other very good universities such as loughborough, birmingham, manchester etc studying challenging degrees and in a lot of cases outperforming most if not all the other students in our various institutions. I also happen to know many other Africans who didn't go to my secondary school and yet are graduating with 1st class degrees and 2:1 degrees and getting GPA's of 4.0 (my sister for example) all over the world.

Now that I have ruled out intelligence, the other things that may be holding Africans back (besides religion) are selfishness, the desire for material wealth and a lot of our skilled and talented workforce choosing not to return home.  What I think is most responsible for our relative lack of progress is love of material wealth: it is what drives a lot of people to church on sunday, what makes our politicians so corrupt, what encourages the culture of bribe and so on and so forth.

If we ever had anyone with the capabilities of Einstein on the continent, he/she would have probably missed his/her calling instead opting to use his/her intelligence to try and con others out of their wealth in order to buy a lexus jeep and lace for Sunday service.

I don't think africans are more materialistic than Indians. In fact I think they absolutely surpass us on that point.

Even the english are not as unmaterialistic as they like to present themselves. They pretend a lot, I know, but as you get to know them you come to realise that they are probably worse than us. Read any classic English novel to get a good idea of their mind set. Their main concern before associating with anyone (not to talk of marrying) is their class and how much the person is worth.

religion is not he bane of nigeria because we r not practicing it the way its meant to be,i dont want to criticise any church but ill say if all churches were like the synagogue with their social responsibilities side by side with its spiritual teachings ,then im sure things wud have been better

Read this report to see one view of what confronts Nigeria and Africa as a whole:

http://www.uneca.org/eca_programmes/sdd/documents/Knowledge%20policies%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20in%20Africa.pdf

[Necromancer]

This is completely true.
Nigeria: everyone has faith, no-one has education. Not a coincidence.