The issue of religion and how it has affected the development and unity of Africans was the subject of heated debate among scholars at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), on Wednesday August 21, 2019.

The Chair of Missiology and Dialogue of Religions, Catholic Theology Faculty, Julius Maximillian University, Germany, Prof Chibueze Udeani, provoked the debate through his lecture: ‘Religion: the Core African Epidemic of the 21st Century’, presented at a Public Lecture organised by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in collaboration with the Department of Social Work, UNN.

Udeani said that although Karl Max described religion as the opium of the masses, the concept has a more devastating effect on Africans than the opium.

“Religion is the main epidemic that has balkanised African unity and retards our development,” he said while stressing that the problem started as a result of Africans adoption of foreign religions in their search for the ultimate reality.

Such adoption, according to him, robbed Africans of the unique experience of encountering the ultimate reality through their culture and tradition. He said that every religion is an elective shadow of a particular people which could corrupt the belief of other people when exported outside its place of origin.

“Africans have made mistake of applying other people’s experience of ultimate reality in solving our own problems; why can’t we have our own unique experience?” the religion scholar queried.

He suggested that Africans should develop the courage to be Africans in order to face other races, “we need to burn what we are adoring and adore what we have burnt,” Udeani said.

Prof Damian Opata, an adherent of Igbo Traditional Religion said that his religion does not condole fundamentalism, which is a common characteristic that has pitched one religion against the other in Nigeria and the rest of the world.

“We believe in the existence of small deities, but none of them is powerful enough to challenge the Godhead in the name of the devil,” Opata said. He added that the emphasis on the existence of the devil by other faiths have made religion an endemic problem in Nigeria.

The Associate Dean, Faculty of the Social Sciences, University of Nigeria, Prof Njoku, differed by stating that there was nothing wrong with most religions practiced in the Nigeria. “The problem is the irreligious in our religion”, Njoku, who is also a Catholic Priest, said.

He said that religion, when practiced rightly, plays a critical role in shaping human personalities.

Chairman of the event, Prof Romanus Ezeokonkwo, lamented that the proliferation of many religion organisations in Nigeria had added to the confusion of the people on the best way to worship God. He said the lecture had awakened people’s consciousness on the need to interrogate the contribution of religion to Africa’s development.