The church: A failed state?

Nigeria as a country is predominantly made up of poor , uneducated and ignorant people looking for their daily bread and with little value for delaying gratification. More than ever the role of bridging the gap between the poor and the rich is a responsibility for our "good" wealthy men. By good I mean any wealthy individual with a conscience and I'll assume all our religious leaders fall in this category.. assume (but our politicians are most definitely NOT included).

My parents attend an orthodox church (name witheld) and one that has a university. When they wanted to start building their university they levied or got donations from all their member churches. My parents' church had to squeeze money out to pay for a university. A few years after the university was built I don’t think any member of their church could afford to send their child to the university and one would expect a form of compensation e.g. offering scholarships to outstanding students from some of its member churches but till date there isn’t one. Then I wonder what’s the sense in a poor mother paying to build a school and keeps praying her child gets educated and the child isn’t even offered a slight chance of getting educated not even from a scholarship. So even if he's the most brilliant student in Nigeria his chance being educated is tied to his mother getting money.

I ask myself, if missionary schools where as expensive and didn’t offer scholarships will my father and mother and a host of other people have the education they had. Missionaries came, brought their money invested their time to educate us and gave lots of opportunities. Excellence was rewarded with scholarships even to study abroad then and the system produced very great minds, Soyinkas and co. If we are to assume our government has failed what has the church done to create a system that gives back to the community. In reality a university should be self running and profiting but if you had gone to a bank to borrow money to build won’t you pay interest? So the least one can do is to convert the interest to opportunities for your members who served as a bank for you.

Personally I knew someone a year ago who was really struggling, had no house, no job and knew nobody in Lagos. He worked really hard in church so much that his pastor noticed and on a fateful day gave him N1 million yes 1 million naira. But that gift as experience later taught me was as good as a curse. What he really needed was a job, a house and maybe a few connections something that would make him have a steady income stream and make something out of his life on the long term. I won’t criticize the pastor for his actions but I think it’s better to teach a man how to fish than to give him a fish even if it’s a million naira fish. With that level of diligence I’m sure on the pastor’s recommendations, some of his wealthy members won’t hesitate to employ the young chap.

About a year ago I worked from home and because I barely had light (NEPA), I'll go to the UN library not far from my house and would read and work from there. Today I have an office I can go to everyday. Andrew Carnegie one of the wealthiest philanthropists of all time built  about 3000 public libraries and I’m sure over time had given millions of people an opportunity to improve their lives far more than giving handouts of thousands of dollars would have done. So what we really need isn’t money but opportunities to develop ourselves, get educated and have a chance to create a living for ourselves.

I’m not attacking churches or pastors it’s just that I think they are the only credible institution we have left, If our politicians don’t care about us, I think our religious institutions still or SHOULD care (Just like maltina does). I feel in empowering our community and giving everyone an equal opportunity to excel, what our government has failed to do we will be able to correct.