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It is sad when private organizations take on governmental tasks like infrastructural development because federal and state governance is lacking. It is even mor

It is sad when private organizations take on governmental tasks like infrastructural development because federal and state governance is lacking. It is even more alarming when religious bodies do it and to such a mega scale because their agendas and spheres of influence far exceed that of a business. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride and religion would be severely rationed locally and definitely banned from import in places like Nigeria (and everywhere else, ideally; the post cited has parallels in several places including N. America). People should be free to be choose their spiritual paths (or not at all) but there's such a thing as too much religion.

narrator 9y ago
For all their faults, religious institutions do tend to care sincerely for the poor and there are a lot of them in Nigeria.
- damnfine 9y ago
  To some. There are also quite a few traveling americian yuppies that trade aid for 'souls', for the sole purpose of bragging about it back home. Its an unfortunate mix.
candiodari 9y ago
> It is even more alarming when religious bodies do it and to such a mega scale because ... That describes somewhere between 50% and 95% of all muslim countries, depending on your threshold for calling something religious (and likely to be on the higher end of that scale), including muslim schools in Europe I might add. Add to that at least half of India (and I mean greater India, up to and maybe including PNG), and a decent chunk of Africa. I just mean to say, even looking at our own history, religious institutions are the early stages of states, not the other way around. The Church had a working bureaucracy (and educational system) more than a millennium before European states even realized they wanted one. Plus, I must say it depends on the religion. I do not feel especially worried in this case.
vfclists 9y ago
It isn't sad. Historically that has been the condition in most parts of the world. African governments are constituted of people who for the most part have no legitimacy rooted in historical relationships with their people and no sense of ownership of their environment. For them their roles are franchises to be exploited. Europe developed because the land owners themselves had a vested interest in the towns they were building. They actually owned the towns. What is happening there is that it is profitable for the church leaders to build the towns and develop it themselves for themselves, as has been the case in Europe where towns guilds and traders had incentives to develop the towns themselves. There is a question which perhaps you should ask yourself. How did the Church in Europe get to own so much land between the decline of Rome and the middle ages? God most certainly didn't hand it to them for free. The Bishops where just as corrupt and venal as any Nigerian megachurch leader, even more so, and they also hard armies and allied with the nobility to acquire even more from the hapless natives, in the case when they didn't swindle the natives out of the land.

narrator 9y ago

For all their faults, religious institutions do tend to care sincerely for the poor and there are a lot of them in Nigeria.

damnfine 9y ago
To some. There are also quite a few traveling americian yuppies that trade aid for 'souls', for the sole purpose of bragging about it back home. Its an unfortunate mix.

candiodari 9y ago

> It is even more alarming when religious bodies do it and to such a mega scale because ... That describes somewhere between 50% and 95% of all muslim countries, depending on your threshold for calling something religious (and likely to be on the higher end of that scale), including muslim schools in Europe I might add. Add to that at least half of India (and I mean greater India, up to and maybe including PNG), and a decent chunk of Africa. I just mean to say, even looking at our own history, religious institutions are the early stages of states, not the other way around. The Church had a working bureaucracy (and educational system) more than a millennium before European states even realized they wanted one. Plus, I must say it depends on the religion. I do not feel especially worried in this case.

vfclists 9y ago

It isn't sad. Historically that has been the condition in most parts of the world. African governments are constituted of people who for the most part have no legitimacy rooted in historical relationships with their people and no sense of ownership of their environment. For them their roles are franchises to be exploited. Europe developed because the land owners themselves had a vested interest in the towns they were building. They actually owned the towns. What is happening there is that it is profitable for the church leaders to build the towns and develop it themselves for themselves, as has been the case in Europe where towns guilds and traders had incentives to develop the towns themselves. There is a question which perhaps you should ask yourself. How did the Church in Europe get to own so much land between the decline of Rome and the middle ages? God most certainly didn't hand it to them for free. The Bishops where just as corrupt and venal as any Nigerian megachurch leader, even more so, and they also hard armies and allied with the nobility to acquire even more from the hapless natives, in the case when they didn't swindle the natives out of the land.