On Onaiyekan—When Heaven Becomes Corruption’s Laundromat -By Prince Charles Dickson, Ph.D

Nigeria is perhaps the only country where a politician may steal enough money to build three universities, donate twenty bags of rice to a prayer house, and immediately be introduced as “a great philanthropist and pillar of the faith.” The congregation applauds. The cleric smiles. Cameras flash. Heaven receives a bank alert it never requested.

“Sai Baba! Sai Malami!” the praise singers thunder, while the distinguished guest adjusts his cap, grips his prayer beads and looks humbly into the middle distance. By evening, another politician is occupying the front pew of a cathedral, lifting two hands in worship, although one suspects the third invisible hand is still inside the public treasury.

This is the Nigerian religious-political circus: spectacular costumes, sacred vocabulary, endless pilgrimages and remarkably little evidence of moral transformation.

We must begin with an important correction. It is neither fair nor provable to claim that 99.99 per cent of corrupt politicians are practising Muslims and Christians. What can be said is that Nigeria is overwhelmingly populated by people who identify as Muslim or Christian. Pew Research Center estimates that Muslims and Christians together constitute virtually the entire population. Consequently, most politicians, honest or dishonest, will publicly identify with one of those religions.

The real scandal, therefore, is not that corrupt politicians belong to religions. It is that corruption appears perfectly comfortable living beside loud professions of faith. It eats breakfast with Christianity, attends afternoon prayers with Islam, and sleeps peacefully beneath framed quotations from scripture.

Nigeria has produced a curious creature: the devout kleptocrat.

He fasts, but the treasury must break the fast. He pays tithe, but not tax. He performs ablution, but refuses institutional cleansing. He kneels before God and places the country beneath his shoe.

He asks forgiveness every week without returning what he took.

He sponsors pilgrimages with money that could have equipped hospitals, then asks the pilgrims to pray for Nigeria’s development. This is like stealing somebody’s generator and requesting prayers for the darkness in his house.

Christianity does not teach this. Islam does not teach it. African traditional morality does not teach it. Even ordinary home training does not teach it.

Both Islam and Christianity treat public trust, justice, compassion, honesty and care for the vulnerable as serious moral obligations. Neither faith provides a theological washing machine into which stolen funds can be inserted and brought out smelling of incense. A pilgrimage is not a corruption amnesty. A church donation is not a plea bargain. Sponsoring religious programmes does not convert public theft into charity.

You cannot steal a community’s borehole and donate bottled water during Ramadan. You cannot divert teachers’ salaries and build a church auditorium. You cannot inflate a road contract, abandon the road, then organise a thanksgiving service after surviving an accident on that same road.

At some point, even hypocrisy deserves professional embarrassment.

The economic context makes the performance more offensive. Claims that “over 79 per cent” of Nigerians are poor depend on the definition and dataset being used, so that figure should not be repeated as a settled fact. However, the verified picture is already grim enough. The World Bank estimated that more than half of Nigerians were living in poverty in 2025, while its Nigeria country assessment says poverty remains widespread and that poorer households may spend up to 70 per cent of their income on food.

Meanwhile, nearly 35 million Nigerians were projected to face acute or severe food insecurity during the 2026 lean season, the highest level recorded for the country in the relevant analysis.

These are not decorative statistics. They represent children arriving at school too hungry to learn, parents dividing one meal into three diplomatic portions, pensioners choosing between medication and food, and graduates discovering that their certificates have become expensive bookmarks.

Against this background, unexplained political wealth is not merely vulgar. It is morally violent.

The statement that any present or former officeholder possessing ₦5 billion must automatically be a thief may satisfy public anger, but law and fairness require greater care. Some politicians had legitimate businesses, inheritances or investments before entering office. Wealth alone is not proof of theft.

However, unexplained wealth is a legitimate basis for scrutiny. Where a public officer’s assets are wildly inconsistent with lawful earnings, the burden of public explanation becomes unavoidable. Nigeria’s Code of Conduct system requires public officers to declare their assets and liabilities, while the Code of Conduct Bureau is responsible for receiving, examining and monitoring those declarations.

The correct democratic question is therefore not simply, “Are you rich?”

It is: What lawful activity produced this wealth, when was it earned, was it properly declared, were taxes paid, and can the explanation survive independent investigation?

A senator cannot tell citizens that wealth is a “mystery of God” when his declared salary is public knowledge. Divine favour is not an accounting category. “Grace” cannot explain twenty-seven properties, twelve companies and a warehouse full of dollars. Even manna came with distribution rules.

The deeper problem is that parts of Nigeria’s religious establishment have become involved in an unhealthy exchange with political power. Politicians provide money, access, vehicles, land and proximity to government. Religious leaders provide legitimacy, titles, photographs, prayers and a moral raincoat.

The politician arrives as “His Excellency, the divinely chosen servant-leader.” Nobody asks how the servant acquired a private jet while the people he serves cannot afford transport. Nobody wants to upset the offering basket. Prophecy suddenly develops selective eyesight.

To be balanced, many Nigerian clerics, Muslim and Christian, speak courageously against corruption, defend vulnerable communities and refuse political capture. Many politicians also practise their faith sincerely and serve without stealing. The disease is not universal.

But the silence of influential religious institutions is often too expensive to ignore.

A cleric who constantly condemns young people for indecent dressing but cannot condemn officials who undress the national treasury has misplaced his moral measuring tape. A preacher who sees spiritual danger in hairstyles but none in budget padding needs more than revelation. An imam who lectures poor traders about honesty while celebrating officials with inexplicable fortunes has reduced religion to ceremonial wallpaper.

Religious leaders must recover the courage to ask unpopular questions. Before accepting a massive donation from a public official, they should ask whether the donor’s known income can reasonably support it. Institutions should publish major political donations and establish ethical rules governing gifts from politically exposed persons. Stolen money does not become holy because it enters a religious account.

The state must also stop outsourcing accountability to divine judgement. Nigerians frequently say, “God will judge them,” which is true within religious belief, but God also gave the country auditors, investigators, courts, journalists, voters and laws. Waiting exclusively for celestial prosecution is institutional laziness wearing a prayer shawl.

Asset declarations should be effectively verified, and greater public access would strengthen accountability. The ICPC has itself previously advocated publication of public servants’ declared assets as an anti-corruption measure. Investigative institutions must follow money without consulting party membership, regional origin, denomination or prayer vocabulary. A thief speaking in tongues and a thief reciting Arabic remain thieves requiring evidence-based investigation and lawful prosecution.

Citizens also have work to do. We cannot condemn corruption in Abuja while celebrating it when “our son” returns home with unexplained wealth. Communities organise receptions. Traditional titles multiply. Clerics pronounce blessings. Relatives announce that God has finally remembered the family. Nobody asks what job produced the convoy.

Our outrage is often tribal, partisan and denominational. We investigate opponents and interpret allies. When their politician steals, it is corruption. When ours steals, it is strategic empowerment of the constituency.

Nigeria will not defeat corruption until stolen wealth becomes socially shameful rather than socially impressive.

The politician who cannot explain his fortune should not receive a chieftaincy title, front-row seat, honorary doctorate or harvest-launch chairmanship. He should receive questions. Many questions. Questions with documents attached.

Religion must become more than pilgrimage photographs, prayer caps, rosaries, flowing gowns and amplified declarations of righteousness. True faith must disturb injustice. It must make theft uncomfortable, generosity accountable and leadership answerable.

Otherwise, the mosque becomes a photo studio, the church becomes a reputation-repair workshop, and religion becomes perfume sprayed over the odour of public theft.

The final question is not whether Nigerian politicians pray. Many clearly do.

The question is whether their prayers have ever met their consciences. Because a nation cannot shout “Amen” loudly enough to convert corruption into governance. Either way—May Nigeria win.