- It’s high time pilgrims paid for pilgrimages
THE recent disclosure by the Lagos State Government that it spends N2.4 billion a year in sponsoring would-be pilgrims to Mecca and Rome is an indication of how much Nigeria as a whole must be spending to support the private exercise of religion.
On a scale of national priorities, that kind of expenditure is hard to justify. In economic terms, it is unsustainable.
The Lagos State Government deserves commendation for ending it.
To all intents and purposes, Nigeria is a secular state. There is no official state religion, but the state guarantees freedom of worship. Everyone is free to worship whatever deity he or she chooses. The state also guarantees freedom of conscience. Citizens are free to believe or not to believe, as conscience dictates.
It is of no consequence that the constitution does not specifically designate Nigeria a secular state. But, considered together, the clauses guaranteeing freedom of worship and conscience, and the absence of a state religion, establish Nigeria firmly as a secular state.
This status does not enjoin the Nigerian state to accord all religions equal assistance as is generally supposed. Rather, it enjoins the Nigerian state to be indifferent to all religions and all faiths and all creeds.
The state’s only obligation is to create an atmosphere where citizens can worship and pursue their faiths without fear and without harassment, consistent with the law of the constitution. Everything else lies in the private realm.
However, it is one of the longest-standing anomalies in the behaviour of the Nigerian state that it has been carrying on as if it beholden to two major religions –Islam and Christianity – and their adherents. In a polytheistic polity, there is no equity in this. But equity is not even what the constitution enjoins. What it demands is official indifference.
Instead, the Nigerian state organises and underwrites pilgrimages to Mecca and Rome for their adherents. It sponsors hundreds of the faithful for these pilgrimages, perhaps the highest expression of an individual’s personal commitment to his or her faith. It provides pilgrims with foreign exchange at a discount, in effect subsidising their quest for salvation.
To the extent that such beneficence is not accorded traditional religions and their adherents, it can be considered discriminatory. Given the litigious nature of our society where every dispute or controversy ultimately ends up in the courts, it is a wonder that it has not been challenged, by practitioners of traditional religions or by civil society.
The arrangement is rendered still more inequitable by that fact that the sponsorships usually go to the privileged who can afford to pay their way, and to the well-connected.
Setting aside constitutional considerations as well as equity, there is little economic justification for the huge sums the Federal Government and the states expend every year in providing one form of subsidy or another for religion.
Even without the harsh economic climate with which Nigeria is grappling, that kind of expenditure is hard to justify. In this time of recession and with so many demands competing for a share of the nation’s dwindling receipts, the case for ending it is unassailable.
In far too many states, school children sit on the bare floor for their lessons, or under the open skies with trees as canopy. Institutions of further learning lack the facilities and resources to prepare the young for the challenges of an increasingly competitive workplace in a globalising world. Health services are rudimentary at best. Nigeria’s standing on the Human Development Index paints a story of acute and pervasive deprivation in a land of abundant resources and tall ambition.
This situation calls for a radical reordering of priorities. On such a scale, subsidising the exercise of faith or the quest for personal salvation ranks so low as to be expendable.
More than any of its counterparts, Lagos can afford to continue the subsidies. But it has wisely chosen to end them. The Federal Government should follow its worthy example. So should other states, none of which is its economic match.
