Apart from direct dangers to the mental and physical well-being of individuals, the two dominant religions in Nigeria tend to engender hatred, division and enmity in families, villages, towns, states and the country as a whole.

In fact, despite the hysterical shibboleths of sycophants, broad sections of Nigerians believe, correctly, I am afraid, that President Jonathan’s administration is among the most corrupt since independence. If religion were a force in fostering good leadership, Nigeria would have been the greatest country in the world, even surpassing the United States, given her incredible human and material resources and clement weather conditions.

In-between are the complex cultural practices associated with religious worship. Of course, human beings exist, but the question concerning the existence of a supernatural being called God is yet to be settled finally one way or the other since no definitive proof is available on each side of the debate. Therefore, acceptance of the reality of God is a matter of belief and faith, leaving open the tantalising possibility that the supreme object of religious worship might be imaginary, although I think that the reasons for rejecting the existence of the God of religion are far stronger than arguments for belief. Before the advent of Christianity and Islam into the various indigenous communities that eventually became Nigeria, the various peoples had evolved what is generally referred to as African Traditional Religion (ATR).

Although our discourse today involves a critical examination of religion as one of the most significant causes of Nigeria’s underdevelopment, we shall begin with a few comments about Christmas.

I still remember the travails of late Professor J.A. Omotola, former VC University of Lagos, who worked tirelessly to ensure that the university became the primus inter pares among tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Despite mistakes here and there, Professor Omotola tried so hard to ensure massive positive transformation of UNILAG within the shortest possible time.

I know some brilliant and dedicated lecturers in several universities who have been in the same academic position for over a decade, whereas their less knowledgeable colleagues are promoted rapidly because the latter have godfathers and are able to play dirty sleight of hand academic politics that elevates mediocrity above meritocracy.

However, and this is the crux of the matter, those responsible for running the universities on daily basis have, through financial rascality, misused available financial resources. Wastages and corruption in the system are legion. They include explosive increase in the purchase of official cars, frequent unnecessary trips by top management of universities many of whom are senior academics, huge allowances and gifts for members of university councils, lavish convocation ceremonies, overpriced contracts awarded to relatives, friends and cronies of VIPs in various campuses most of which are poorly executed, and so on.

Most lecturers who detest frequent indefinite strikes are pusillanimous about speaking out openly; they prefer to hide their real opinions rather than endure intemperate verbal attacks from vociferous pro-strike colleagues. In most universities nowadays during congress meetings to decide on strike, lecturers who refuse to jump uncritically into the ASUU bandwagon are derided as pro-government saboteurs.

The title of our discourse today is cloned from Walter Rodney’s incisive critique of the brazen exploitation of Africa by European powers entitled How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. But despite huge differences in the content of Rodney’s work and our analysis, there is a fundamental intersection: just as the developmental trajectory of Africa was adversely affected by contact with Europe, quality education in Nigeria’s public universities is steadily being eroded as a result of unwholesome attitude to work by an increasing numbers of university teachers.

There is a deafening silence about the civil war in public discourse and we want to draw attention to it so that Nigerians can ascertain where the rain started beating them and take corrective measures to avoid being drenched by another downpour in future. Thus, in our analysis, you can replace ‘Igbo’ with the name of another ethnic nationality and ‘Northerners’ with ‘Southerners’ and my argument will still hold. The major point readers who might accuse me of unnecessary bias ought to bear in mind is that wickedness and injustice are morally reprehensible universally, and no genuine humanist should condone any of them no matter who the perpetrators and the victims were.