Recently, someone sent into my mail box a funny email listing the outrageous names of some churches in Nigeria. Although I do not believe that some of the names listed are real churches, I am also not without proof of they some do exist. There are a few from the list which I believe may exist, names such as:
– Strong Hand of God ministry
– Accredited Church of God
– Holyfire Overflow Ministries
– Angels on Fire Chapel of Peace
– Strong Hand of God ministry
The names that are far too ludicrous for anyone to believe include names like:
– Guided Missiles Church
– Jehovah Sharp Sharp Ministry
– Liquid Fire Ministry
– Ministry of the Naked Wire
– Trigger Happy Ministry
– Seven Thunders of Jesus
However comical and factual in existence some of these names are, it speaks to a larger concern in the religious climate in Nigeria today. I am not exactly qualified to comment on these phenomena, but I must say that the trend has become very laughable and is becoming more of a mockery to those who are walking and living in truth. I am actually more interested in another trend more worrisome to me, and that is the style of church expansion in the country and indeed around the world; it is not peculiar to Nigeria.
Continue reading
I met Scoppy for the first time after Secondary school, when I came to take care of my grandmother in Lagos Island. I was still a sporting freshman in Lagos life and was always bewildered at how things functioned in the highly disordered Island life. Scoppy (a tweak of the area boy name Scorpion) is one person that embodied the perfect description of a local guy that lives in the area, and carried out any act possible as survival tactic. He could be a gateman on one hand, and a manned gate (thug) on the other. He could be a petrol station attendant as well as an oil entrepreneur selling petrol in jerry cans. Interestingly, he could also function as a local government tax collector, while also working as a bus conductor. In his varying roles in Island society, it is his night life that gives me the wonder about how such guys survive in Lagos Island. Scoppy wanted nothing out of life, but to sleep, make money, eat, drink, smoke, and womanize. Whatever could afford him these ‘luxuries’, he would fully engage. He once landed in some sweet deal that got him a foreign currency. I was happy for him, even though I had no idea where he got his big break from. I was courteously hoping he would change is mind and change his life. But no! Scoppy went to Federal Palace Hotel and blew away his riches in less than a month and was back on the streets buying rice and stew from Mama Bunmi.
Thoughts of a Calabarboy. 