By Adagbo Onoja
Introduction
Marxists in Nigeria are turning to religion in numbers warranting the claim of a clerical turn among the tribe. We may still not know the number of Marxists who have transformed into pastors, imams and virtual prayer warriors but many now own churches with large congregations, to cite an example. Others are very active on social media platforms. It is not something that started only yesterday. The clerical turn among Nigerian Marxists started since the late 1980s and it has been a steady trend ever. The spilling over of their clerical activism to the virtual space, especially on Facebook, is the most recent dimension.
Both the earliest and the recent dimensions may be cited as a paradox of the radical nationalism of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) whose ex-cadres are the leading lights in the turn. The height of the radical activism of NANS is also the time it started degenerating, long before its implosion in the mid-1990s. Well-groomed and tested cadres of the defunct National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) have been on the move.
At first, they were greeted the same way the people of Umofia in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart greeted the early converts to Christianity and their colonial patrons. The natives believed the foolishness of these elements would soon become clear. In the end, it was the entire community that got it wrong. Similarly, comrades watched as the number of comrade pastors kept increasing from the lone ex-University of Nigeria, Nsukka comrade who started it all. Today, no less than over a thousand hard headed ex-presidents of some of the most organised students union governments in the days of yore are either powerful pastors, owners of a church, some religious players in Islam or so. In Abuja, the key player in one of the huge Pentecostal churches is a Marxist pastor. And he argues that it is something for which he should be granted the status of exceptionalism. It is not everyone who can combine the two, he argues, especially that he is also a politician. There is another set that run very powerful religious campaigns, utilizing the virtual space. The details are not that accessible in terms of the comrade-malams but one of the most engaging philosophers of the Marxism – inspired students rebellion in the 1980s just returned from Hajj.
Where is this coming from? What may explain why so many Nigerian Marxists are executing a clerical turn as pastors, alhajis and virtual religious warriors? What is pursuing them from Marxism into religion rather than into ideological ferments closely tied to Marxism? Why are they not turning to Animism? Could they have seen the light (in the power of money, political power or ethnic nationalism as against Marxism?). Has religion proved too powerful, especially as survival gets more and more difficult? Are they violating orthodoxy consciously towards the potential of serving a purpose in future ‘war of position’ politics if and when that becomes inevitable?
There would have been none of these questions if anything called the Communist Party of Nigeria sent them on clerical missions. A communist party assignment is like a military officer killing for survival in a war. It is not a sin. So, if it were a communist party of Nigeria assignment for these Marxists to open churches or mosques or shrines, that would have been no problems. Andrei Gromyko who was Soviet Foreign Affairs Minister for over 50 years wrote in his autobiography about Stalin emphasizing the need for him to attend the church service as a way of mixing with ordinary Americans as he (Gromyko) left to assume duties as Soviet ambassador to the United States. He found a way to do that even as he wondered whether Stalin thought about how embarrassing it would be for the American press to capture an atheistic Soviet foreign minister in a church. Nigerian Marxists migrating into prayer warriors are not doing the same thing as an assignment from a sitting communist party secretary.
Crisis of Critical Understanding of Marxism?
Might we better understand what they are doing by thinking that they probably never really understood Marxism in the first case? It is doubtful if any of the migrants from Marxism to religion would accept this even as that could be such a tempting analysis. Marxists have positioned themselves at the core of the politics of change, especially in parts of the world still in tough embrace of mass misery arising from their historical bashing. As a result of the ideological standpoint, Marxists are more genuinely sensitive to the pains of that misery for their peasant parents, working class kin and compromised national bourgeoisie. Marxists exhibit unusual confidence, derived from dialectical thinking involving the fusion of a thesis and its contradiction – the anti-thesis – into a synthesis that is qualitatively superior to anything before it. It is not part of the consciousness of the Marxist to think of dialectical materialism as anything discursive. That being the case, Marxists are incapable of contemplating the vulnerability of the dialectical process to the representational practice of power that can come into play as in the case of the colonization of Africa, producing a completely different outcome that has almost nothing to do with an anti-thesis developing from a thesis into a synthesis.
The enormous confidence from the hypodermic instruction administered by historical materialism means that a few Marxists can successfully challenge any status quo. National liberation movements demonstrated that against the last set of colonialists to depart Africa. Although the belief in the humanity of the colonised which underpins the creativity and courage to mount costly offensives against more materially powerful colonial authorities should have indicated to Marxists the superiority of ideas, the materialist interpretation of history is what drives the superabundance of confidence. And the confidence achieved results, as the Portuguese would testify in their memoirs on colonial adventures in Southern Africa.
Generally, no other creed other than nationalism, has had as much phantasmatic grip on its card carrying members and even non-card carrying members as Marxism. Even French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, the most successful sarcastic attacker on the body of ideas enveloped in Marxism, came back to write about The Specters of Marx as global capitalism tumbled from one crisis to another in the post-Cold War, without any of the big name universities, think tanks, statesmen and intellectuals of the IMF and the World Bank coming up with any magic wand. Marxism is waning because its emancipatory rebuke of exploitation has come face to face with its problematic epistemic root. But even then, it remains one of the most successful theoretical insights in social analysis and a powerful political creed. So, if not crisis of critical enough comprehension, why might the Marxists in Nigeria be turning in a different direction?
Religion’s Defeat of Enlightenment Modernity
If inadequate understanding of the potential and limits of Marxism would not be acceptable to Marxists shifting to religion, might the migration be understandable in terms of religion’s victory over modernity? Uhm! Marxism, like much of Enlightenment philosophy, has not got much regards for religion. It is debatable if it is religion itself they hated or the way the ruling class of continental Europe were observably using the name of God/religion to consolidate power. One thing led to another and hatred for religion and for God became pinned on Marxism and Marxists. Even that ‘kobo-kobo’ religious leader next door who has not read a page of any of Marx’s works feels nothing of it to make authoritative claims about how Marxism is against religion. For even the more educated proselytizers, there are hardly any other evidence beyond the one liner: “religion is the opium of the masses”. The long and short of it is that Marxists are broadly seen as non-believers, and this is irrespective of the truth or otherwise of that profile. But whether Marx actually posed Marxism to religion, the two things emanate and function on completely different ontologies.
In privileging reason, science, truth and progress as the cornerstones of modernity, the European Enlightenment became a complete contestation of religion. Until Immanuel Kant came around, all the Enlightenment thinkers were standing on religion. Even Descartes who made the most profound but also the most problematic statement for Enlightenment thinking, stood on religion. He fell back on God as his insurance against the four grounds for his enterprise in radical doubt.
Kant, Hegel and Marx, to name the real rebels, were the ones who put a knife on the Cartesian formulation of proof of knowledge. Emphasis on Marx, Hegel and Kant is not to dismiss the empiricists, the logical positivists and other numerous claims in-between but to recognise the moments in Enlightenment philosophy’s struggle for survival. The tragedy is that no such struggles have saved Enlightenment thinking from rupture today. Although the attacks and rupturing of Enlightenment came most from the Frankfurt scholars, postmodernism, deconstruction or the decolonial moment, it is religion and faith in God that is celebrating surviving the Enlightenment attack. In fact, religion has basically submerged Enlightenment. In the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs, there is an interesting review essay titled “secular stagnation: how religion endures in a Godless age”. The article captures the point being made – the victory of religion.
Positivists have been busy explaining the collapse of the defunct USSR in terms of ethnicity, great power security competition and/or economic crisis associated with demand management in a socialized economy. More critical thinkers go beyond these explanatory models. They argue the collapse in terms of the contradictions or the unsustainability of the Enlightenment logic, its excessive emphasis on predictability, calculability, singularity and determinacy. In the end, socialism underpinned by Marxism which is deterministic in tandem with Enlightenment epistemology became a manifesto for dictatorship and authoritarianism. As the argument goes, such a system can never survive because the social space is itself inherently an open, discursive space. In that space, every single event or personality or action attracts an infinitude of meanings. The authority and power that would be required to suppress infinitude of meaning will give any form of socialism a thoroughly bad name.
This criticism is not coming from the religious establishment but largely from insiders in Marxism (Frankfurt scholars/critical theorists, Gramsci, the French 7 most of whom were Marxists and, lastly, the post-Marxists). But religion is the sphere enjoying the benefits of the ontological battles waged by these insiders. It is not clear why religion is still hostile to poststructuralism, for example, when it is poststructuralism which has given religion the firmest validation of faith as a constitutive force. By saying that reality is what we make of it, poststructuralists/constructivists completely eliminate the need for evidence of God’s existence. It is an unintentional contribution to religion but a good one. Could religion’s continuing hostility to poststructuralism then be a product of a habit, of ignorance or just carelessness?
Whether Nigerian Marxists decamping into the clerical fortress understand their action in the above sense or not is beyond the scope of this piece. All that Intervention asserts in this report is that the above analysis is what offers a more credible context for understanding the clerical turn. That is at the theoretical level. At the empirical level, some other explanations might offer better insights. Some Marxists might have been pushed into religion for material reasons. Some might be there as a way of buying peace from the combined assault of Madam and the children against an irreligious father. Yet, others might be doing so for political reasons just as others might be responding to fear of the unknown, especially in a society in which spiritual warfare is believed to have become more pervasive. Human beings are believed to have become more wicked, more selfish and more careless about the interests of their neighbours, communities and associates. The incredible number of domestic violence in Nigeria today attest to this, particularly the cases of baby factories, defilement of minors, sexual enslavement and ill-treatment of domestic workers.
His Eminences: The Sultan of Sokoto and the Metropolitan Archbishop Emeritus of Abuja
Nothing Says That Pastors, Imams and Alfas Cannot Produce a Democratic Revolution
While it is true that a substantial number of citizens are not flocking to the churches, mosques and shrines, it is still the case that religion has defeated modernity. Otherwise, we cannot explain this. Dr Otive Igbuzor is a Marxist, with residual touch of Stalinism. He presides as a Pastor at the Palace of Priests Assembly. He doesn’t see anything contradictory in that. That is possibly because of the themes he touches upon in his preaching sessions. In one such outing, the theme was ‘Fight against Oppression’.
His church – the Palace of Priests Assembly (PPA) – was celebrating that Sunday as Freedom Sunday within the framework of Catalysts for Global Peace and Justice Initiative (CPJ), a partner of International Justice Mission (IJM). According to his talking points, the Freedom Sunday was dedicated to “sharing about the reality of modern-day slavery, teaching about God’s heart for justice and inviting Christians to join the fight to push back darkness in the world and shine to the glory of God.”
The pastor drew attention to the defining details of ‘the Reality of Oppression, Inequality and Modern-Day Slavery’ such as over 45 million people being held in slavery across the world; three of the richest people in the world having asset more than the combined gross domestic product of 48 countries; over one billion people going to bed hungry every night and between 4 to 12 million people being held in forced commercial sexual exploitation. To make matters worse, the statistics pale into nothing when situated in the condition of their possibility: the production of slave mentality through “prolonged and entrenched oppression, inequality and slavery.”
He goes on to establish the challenge it is for Christians to join the fight against oppression, inequality and slavery, because God hates oppression; God commands us not to oppress; God protects those who are oppressed; God will punish oppressors and God demands that we resist oppression. Needless indicating that every of these claims came accompanied with quotations from the Bible to prove them.
Intervention is tempted to generalise from Pastor Igbuzor’s preaching the likelihood of most Marxist pastors thinking that they are still Marxist crusaders but now from the clerical terrain. The themes they touch upon and which are also what most of the churches and other religious houses touch upon – fighting poverty, fighting corruption, fighting bad governance, etc – speak to this claim. Irrespective of what they think of the preaching they conduct, there is the articulatory character of the preaching sessions. In other words, the preachers bring together diverse inferences, join them together to reach pragmatic conclusions with implications for subject positions in the larger society. The fact that pastors are more influential than parents in many homes across Nigeria today should interest readers.
So, clerical Marxism/Marxists may be lost in the misleading belief that they are radicalizing religion by infusing Marxism into it, they are doing something very radical that they do not seem to be aware of and which neither their Marxist critics appreciate. What they are creating through articulatory practice is a certain hegemonic consensus on the key issues of the day from the standpoint of religion. There is nothing to stop the sedimentation of the interpretations they are pushing to a vast audience on a consistent basis. By implication, the category of Marxist religious warriors are, unconsciously, beating the path of power through hegemonic articulation, with good prospects of prevailing in power terms against contending narratives, including classical Marxism. Unlike Marxists insisting on a cataclysmic moment of takeover of power, clerical Marxist are, knowingly and unknowingly, angling for power as winners in a power relation that their discourse could produce within and outside adherents in the larger Nigerian society. Since we are talking of the entire religious space here rather than one religion, there is a sense in which clerical Marxists in Christianity, Islam and Animism could, collectively, be closer to the revolution Marxists seek through a Jacobinist moment, particularly if Islam and Christianity were not locked in a needless checkmate game in Nigeria.
It is in that sense that clerical Marxists can be said to be violating orthodoxy but have potential to serve a purpose in future ‘war of position’ politics. Who will tell Intervention that a Marxist (who really understands Marxism, its strengths and weaknesses) with tough control of a huge population of believers will not become a decisive player in an electoral test of strength or even defense of electoral fortune in 2027? This is more so that Marxism in Nigeria has not been organised in a manner that incorporated the organisational tactics suggested by post-Marxism. So, traditional politicians do not take them seriously before now, with the exception of the late Gen Shehu YarÁdua and Ashiwaju Bola Tinubu. Atiku Abubakar, with all his reported wizardry in politics, does not have roots in Marxist circles, for example. Nor does Peter Obi and neither does Olusegun Obasanjo.
Conclusion
So, what is the clerical turn among Nigerian Marxists all about? It may have to do with material, psychological and political calculations if studied in a case by case manner but a more critical, overarching answer would be to situate it in the defeat of Enlightenment philosophy by religion. The articulatory character that defines the clerical turn in Nigerian Marxism can produce contingent outcomes to the chagrin of traditional Marxists. This is more so that religions does not have the crisis of radical contingency that trouble all other discourses. Religions doesn’t have that because, with the exception of Judaism, all other religions seek to convert or recruit more believers. So, most religions do not have a body of excluded subjects who may unite to come back and haunt or rupture it.
