The Long Read Series on Africa: Sum of the preacher man – Nigerian prosperity churches practice what they preach

“The lord loves a cheerful giver,” proclaims a preacher as she warms up the congregants for Bishop David Abioye’s third service of the day in the 15,000-seater Living Faith church near Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. “As you drop your offerings today, your financial captivity will be turned around for good,” she promises. Slipped in among the Bible verses are instructions on how to pay by cheque or online. What the Lord thinks of your correspondent’s reluctant gift is left unsaid.

As ushers wielding lime-green baskets take the offerings, a choir croons, “I’m restored and I’ve been rewarded.” Mr Abioye, resplendent in a pinstripe suit and gold tie, explains how God repays prayer with hard cash. “This week people will be giving to you,” he proclaims. Congregants jump up and cheer. “As I’m speaking they are already looking for your telephone number,” he shouts. All this, he says, is thanks to the “purchasing power” of Jesus’s blood.

Mr Abioye is a pastor in a Pentecostal empire known as Winners Chapel. It is led by Bishop David Oyedepo, who practises the prosperity he preaches. He zips around in private jets. He once dismissed a report that he was worth $150m as an “insult” and “too small”. His business model combines the power of the pulpit with the slickness of corporate marketing. His books include “Understanding Financial Prosperity” and “Satan Get Lost!”

Like many charismatic pastors, in Nigeria and elsewhere, he preaches that faith will bring material rewards, and that the faithful should express their devotion by tithing, ie, giving a tenth of their earnings to the church. Some millionaire pastors hint that their wealth is evidence of their piety. The stacks of cash sent up the chain from their church branches may help, too.

“There really isn’t a line between what belongs to the pastor and what belongs to the church,” says Ebenezer Obadare, a sociology professor at the University of Kansas. Christian forgiveness seems in short supply for those who fail to deliver. In July a pastor in a branch of Winners Chapel said he was sacked for failing to raise enough cash. Winners Chapel says it was because he didn’t attract a larger flock.

Some holy men have earthly business interests. Pastor Enoch Adeboye’s church has a construction company, a window factory and hundreds of holiday chalets at its Redemption City religious camp. Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, a televangelist, runs satellite broadcasting channels in America and Britain and an online shop, which accepts payments in 120 currencies. Bishop Oyedepo’s church has a 10,500-acre campus called Canaanland which has a bottled-water factory, bank and petrol station, as well as a palatial home for the bishop.

Several Nigerian churches own universities. These are popular with parents, partly because many of Nigeria’s public universities are mediocre. Covenant University in Canaanland has strict rules: mobile phones are banned. It also has an impressive sports stadium, high-tech lecture halls and taekwondo classes. Posters vaunting its academic rankings adorn the walls, alongside photos of Bishop Oyedepo. The university says 98% of graduates land jobs or employ people themselves within two years of graduating.

Yet for many church members, it is unaffordable. The young staffer who showed your correspondent around the campus longed to study there, but his family, who have attended the church since 2003 and tithed till it hurt, could not pay the fees. It was cheaper to send him to university in Ghana. The university says it provides value for money, and that Bishop Oyedepo’s foundation gives scholarships to students at Covenant University and other universities. Still, at Covenant, which has at least 6,000 undergraduates, the foundation currently provides only about 30 scholarships.

A worker at another Winners Chapel church laughs when asked if his salary is enough to send his children to the church school. Matthew, a parent who attends the 100,000-seater Glory Dome of a different megachurch in Abuja, says the church school is too expensive for his children. “My father went to a missionary school for free,” he says. “Why are we not doing the same?” The reality, says Mr Obadare, is that these are “moneymaking enterprises”.

Covenant says it reinvests its earnings in the university. But “the university is owned by the church,” adds the vice-chancellor, Abiodun Adebayo. Does the church expect some return on its investment? “You grow until the time when you are big enough to also be supporting the church,” says Mr Adebayo curtly.

The blurry lines between megachurches and their businesses matter for tax reasons. Churches are not taxed. In theory their businesses are. But figuring out where churches end and their businesses begin is not easy.

Critics do not mince their words. The logic of prosperity churches is similar to that of Ponzi schemes, says Mr Obadare, but with the added advantage that when people do not get rich, pastors can promise that their riches will come in the next life. Criticism of these beliefs may be expected to come from intellectual institutions such as universities, he adds, but in many cases these have bought into the churches’ view of the world. The result in Nigeria, where more than 80m people live on less than $1.90 per day, is that church “members are getting poorer and poorer”, says Francis Falako, a professor of religious studies at the University of Lagos. “And the pastors are getting richer and richer.”

Source: The Economist
25 September 2021 Edition