VICE President Yemi Osinbajo on Monday lamented that religion has often been deployed to create division, spread hate and unleash violence on one another.
Osinbajo added that notwithstanding the negative use of religion, it still remained a veritable tool for a national and global development, stressing that the Federal Government would continue to use the mandate given by the people to cater for the welfare of the citizens.
The vice president spoke during the Ninth Toyin Falola annual international conference at Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun state.
The conference, put together by the institution, had “Religion, the state and global politics”, as its theme.
Osinbajo, who was represented by the Registrar, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, also noted that religion in Nigeria has not been properly understood.
The vice president, who described the theme of the conference as germane to the prevailing situation in the country, said: “The Interface between religion and the state was limited to issue of secularism, secularisation and separation of power between state and religion.
“Contemporary scholarships have, however, noted that religion covertly or overtly, places more role in human and societal lives, than previously acknowledged.
“Religion is a veritable tool for a national and global development.
“On the other hand, religion has often been used or implicated as a divisive factor, often employed as instrument to spread hate and unleash violence over one another.
“It is therefore expected that this conference will make its finding available to the federal republic of Nigeria for the improvement for the welfare of all.”
Also speaking, former President Olusegun Obasanjo said many Nigerians wish the country well daily but expressed concern that there are also others who want to leave Nigeria on the supposition that they were not getting the best out of it.
Obasanjo, who was the distinguished guest of honour, said the country may not move forward if it continues to lose its identity to diversity.
The elder statesman who presented a paper titled: “Towards a re-unification of the sacred and secular: religious interventions in politics,” declared that both religious leaders and politicians are linked together.
He said: “You can’t take one and leave the other. You can’t take politics and leave religion and you can’t take religion and leave politics, they are together.
“It ought to be that way, politics without religion, I don’t know what you would call it; they both affect the welfare and the well-being of all of us as we live in life.
“As far as religion is concerned, there are two issues; diversity and identity.
“We are so badly handling our diversity that we are losing our identity. As long as we are doing that, we are going nowhere.
“The management of diversity must be right, religion, politics and ethnicity are parts of our diversity which must be well managed.
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“When you mismanage diversity with impunity, it is particularly annoying. It can lead to what we may not want it to lead to.
“I don’t know of any Nigerian who doesn’t wish Nigeria well, but, I know many Nigerians who are unhappy and want to leave Nigeria.
“Our issue is so because, what they expect from Nigeria they are not getting it. The role of religious leaders and religion is to lead but, lead them also to also to let politicians learnt a best lesson.
“God is a Nigerian because, what we have gone through in Nigeria and what we are going through, probably, Nigeria should not be on the map of the world. That’s why I say God is a Nigerian.”
In his keynote address, the Bishop of Sokoto Diocese of the Catholic Church, Bishop Kukah, who spoke on Caesar and God: Prophetic engagement of the state in Africa, said religion has failed in Africa.
“Only in Nigeria we can go to war because of religion, We are not going to go to war because, of no water ; we are going to go to war because, we don’t have road . BUT, we are not going to go to war because we don’t have decent housing, we are not going to go to war because of lack of salary, we are not going to go to war because of injustice, but we can go to war in the name of God.
“Nigeria seems to be like a polygamist who is married with two wives. Somehow, Christians are complaining that they are treating Muslims better; Muslims are complaining that they are treating Christians better.
“But, nobody is complaining whether religion is getting its due. But essentially, my argument is that, unless religion through some of us who are leaders and practitioners find itself rescued from the clutches of politics and politicians the wrong notion will continue as it is in Nigeria. Somehow religion will be a problem.”
To Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun, religion in Nigeria has become a divisive, when it should have been a unifying factor.
Abiodun said the effects of mismanagement of religious beliefs have made Nigerians to see one another as different, divisible units with varied worldviews, rather than seeing themselves as one entity of humanity.
He said: “In the past, we have always assumed that religion and the State are two different entities. But recent events have continued to lay bare the fact that the connections between religion and the State are increasingly relevant.
“We have continued to see demonstrations that most of peoples’ actions and commitments are derivable from their religious beliefs.
“If we have to talk about security, peace, co-existence and even, socio-economic development, we cannot divorce religion.
“In recent times, the global community has been confronted with acts of terrorism which have been tied to religion, whether rightly or wrongly.
“What is more confounding is the fact that these acts of terrorism are also supposedly sponsored by politicians against the state, and, or by the government against another government.
“In Nigeria, we have had more than our own fair share of acts of violence which some quarters have tied to religion, and even the state.”