Fela, Suffering & Smiling (1978)
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y–5IlljO78
Suffer, suffer for world (amen!)
Enjoy for Heaven (amen!)
Christians go dey yab (amen!)
“In Spiritum Heavinus” (amen!)
Muslims go dey call (amen!)
“Allahu Akbar” (amen!)
Open your eyes everywhere
Archbishop na miliki
Pope na enjoyment
Imam na gbaladun…
Usually, there comes a time in the life of every enslaved people when even the blind among them begin to question the direction of the caravan. But sadly, this is not the case in Africa. Unfortunately, we in Africa have perfected the art of kneeling while being whipped, singing hymns while we are being robbed, and shouting Hallelujah! as our presidents fly off in their expensive Gulfstreams to receive treatment for headaches in Europe while our hospitals run out of gauze.
And when we dare to ask why? They and their rented mouths respond, with pious solemnity: “It is the will of God.”
God’s will? We didn’t queue for hours under the blazing sun, risk ballot snatchers and AK-47-toting party thugs, just to vote for god.
We voted for governance. But what we got instead was a pantheon of petty, power-drunk demigods dressed in Armani agbadas, reciting Bible verses as excuses for policy failures and using Qur’anic quotations to justify the economic disasters they have visited on their people.
Look at Ghana – the land of Nkrumah’s Black Stars dimmed by presidential mediocrity—which has decided to become an outpost of the German labor ministry instead of a sovereign republic.
Skilled Ghanaian nurses, doctors, and engineers—trained with taxpayer money—are being shipped off to rebuild a rapidly aging Europe, while Ghanaian hospitals resemble 19th-century leper colonies. And what do His Excellency and his Ministers say when asked about this brain hemorrhage? “It is a divine opportunity.” We get this after seventy years of ostensible independence.
These misrulers tell us this absurd, divine nonsense as though god is now running job fairs in Hamburg.
Nigeria, not to be outdone in the circus of the absurd, now boasts of a High Priest in Aso Rock. Alhaji Pastor President Tinubu, sermonizer-in-chief of petrol poverty, recently donated ₦90 billion—yes, billion—to sponsor pilgrimages. This is a country where schools operate without roofs, where people have been under austerity measures for forty-plus years, doctors are constantly on strike, and the national grid collapses more often than a Pentecostal at a crusade.
And when asked about the collapsing economy? The same refrain:
“Nyame woha or God is in control.” “Let us pray for divine direction.” We didn’t elect a bishop or Imam; we elected a leader – or so we thought.
Fela warned us back in the 1970s when having a functioning brain in public was still legal in Africa. He sang, “Dem go for Rome, dem go for Mecca, dem go carry all the money.” And behold, his prophecy has come to pass. Our presidents now perform annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and Mecca, not to negotiate trade deals or continental alliances but to kneel, weep, and genuflect to phantoms and goblins of the sky. That is when they are not running to Washington, New Delhi, or Moscow to answer their peers who summon them to attend Africa Summits, which are never held on African soil.
These men – no, these misrulers – have turned State House into Holy Temple. They govern with crucifixes and prayer beads, not constitutions. When cholera breaks out? They declare a three-day fast. When the naira falls? They summon prayer warriors. When kidnappers abduct schoolchildren? “Let us all pray together as a nation.”
“In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.” – Robert Green Ingersoll.
Pray? What of the obscene security votes that disappear into individual’s pockets? What of the billions budgeted for defense? What about the drones, the armored vehicles, and the intelligence agencies? Were they baptized, too?
This orgy of spiritual escapism has turned governance in Africa into one giant prayer meeting. State functions now begin with invocations and end with laying on of hands. Even public hospitals do not start the day without prayers.
Yet, despite all the religious pyrotechnics, not one pothole gets patched, not one slum gets upgraded, and not one factory gets built. We turned all the post-independence-built factories into prayer chapels, and we wonder why unemployment is high.
African presidents spend more time with Pastors and Imams than scientists, engineers, or philosophers.
Meanwhile, the clerical class – those miracle-peddling charlatans in priestly cossacks and with shiny shoes and darker souls – have become the unofficial opposition. Men of God who own private jets and satellite churches in Miami but haven’t built a single hospital or provided clean water for their flock – snake oil in Gucci suits.
The average African is told to pray for wealth while his resources are auctioned off to multinationals by officials who just tithed at Sunday service. We have the most religious continent on Earth – and the most underdeveloped. Surely, someone must explain to us how righteousness correlates with ruin.
We have been played. Hard. Not just by the West, but by our rulers—these god-invoking, verse-spitting, spineless plantation overseers who’ve made kneeling and supplication a national ideology.
One loquacious, self-promoted Archbishop in Ghana called for prayers to rescue the sinking cedi.
Kenya’s Ruto tells citizens to fast and pray to survive inflation, while his motorcade alone could invade a small country. You can’t make this up.
Uganda’s Museveni—Africa’s own Methuselah in fatigues – has held office longer than many of his citizens have been alive. Every year, he organizes national prayer rallies – to ask God what? After 38 years in office, if you still need divine guidance, perhaps it’s time to try retirement.
We are ruled by cowards in cassocks, crooks in kaftans, and conmen in clerical collars. These are not leaders. These are spiritual scammers running pyramid schemes of piety while looting with both hands.
And the people? We nod. We chant, “Amen.” We vote again. We even defend them. Because we, too, have sold our minds to the clouds. We no longer ask for roads. We ask for “breakthroughs.” We don’t demand water. We pray for “showers of blessing.” Instead of infrastructure, we hold vigils. We spent all our waking hours in one religious jamboree or the other.
But as Ola Rotimi told us, the gods are not to blame.
It was not gods that cut the budget for education. No almighty god signs the loan from the IMF or inflates the price of fertilizer. Gods didn’t rig the elections. All these malfeasances are committed by the shameless, sanctimonious reprobates we have in power in Africa who cloak themselves in hypocritical piety.
Africans, let’s stop listening to stupid sermons. What we need is not more churches. Not more mosques. We don’t need bishops in government or mullahs in ministry. What we need is cold, secular, competent governance. We need governments that build roads, not cathedrals. We need leaders that deliver vaccines, not verses.
“…Building Church and universities.
Deceiving the people day by day.
Me say dem graduating thieves and murderers…” – Bob Marly
The Chinese are not praying for a high-speed rail; their engineers build them. The South Koreans did not develop through deliverance sessions. The Europeans have largely given up on God – and look at their infrastructure!
But Africa? Ah, we host continental fasts for economic growth.
And the result?
We are rich in minerals but poor in spirit, rich in culture but poor in direction. We have gold, oil, cocoa, and cobalt—but no shame.
We are ruled by shameless men who cannot fix a drainage ditch but can quote Isaiah 40:31 on national TV. Their motorcades stretch for miles, but their legacies fit in a single tweet: “We prayed, and God will do the rest.”
No. We did not vote for god. We did not vote for shepherds. We voted for stewards. Accountable, mortal, fallible stewards. Leaders who understand that power is not divine but contractual that they serve at our pleasure, not Heaven’s.
Until we stop romanticizing this fusion of altar and authority, until we stand up and call out these pulpit-propped parasites for what they are – enemies of our progress draped in divinity – we will remain the laughingstock of human civilization.
So, the next time you hear a leader say, “We leave it in God’s hands,” remind them: Mr. Presidents and the rented Vuvuzelas, please stop wasting our ears. God did not run for office; you did.
And if you cannot lead without a Bible in one hand and a bank alert in the other, kindly step aside. We’ve had enough of the gods.
What we need now—desperately—is governance. Let the pastors build hospitals, let the imams build factories, and let our presidents—if they still dare—build futures, not faith-based excuses. After all, we do not see the reprobates in our presidential palaces in Africa kneeling or supplicating before they award themselves fantastic salaries and emoluments. We do not see them entreat heavenly fathers before they spend humongous amounts renovating their already lavish palaces. We do not see these misrulers plead with Holy Ghosts before they replenish their presidential fleets with the latest jets. They should top fooling us with their stupid display of piety.
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Polemicist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Chief Exorcist of African Hypocrisy.)
“Stultitia Delenda Est – Stupidity Must Be Destroyed.”
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