‘Religion Will Kill Nigeria If It Is Not Controlled’ – Soyinka Warns

Professor Wole Soyinka has warned that if religion is not tamed in the country, it will end up killing it.

The Nobel Laureate stated this in Abuja on Thursday, Januay 12 at the presentation of a book, Religion and the Making of Nigeria, written by Prof. Olufemi Vaughan.

He said President Muhammadu Buhari had said if Nigeria did not kill corruption, corruption would kill the country.

Condemning killings in the name of religion, the revered playwright stated, “I would like to transfer that cry from the moral zone to the terrain of religion. If we do not tame religion in this nation, religion would kill us.

“I do not say kill religion, though, I wouldn’t mind a bit if that mission could be undertaken surgically, painlessly perhaps, under anaesthesia, effectively sprayed all over the nation or perhaps during an induced pouch of religious ecstasy.

“However, one has to be realistic. Only the religiously possessed or committed would deny the obvious. The price that many have paid, not just within this society but by humanity in general, makes one wonder if the benefits have really been more than the losses.”

Soyinka said he often imagined what the world would be if religion had never been invented.