I am trying to understand my relationship with religion and why I am now against it. I will do so by reviewing some incidents from my life so far. I have changed the names of the people mentioned in this story.
The Exam
I loved Physics in secondary school. To be fair, I loved all the sciences. My only problem was math—I was bad at it then, and I’m bad at it now. The theories made perfect sense, but the numbers always betrayed me.
I remember during an exam in my first term of SS1, staring at the questions and knowing nothing. Failure was staring back. My eyes wandered the exam hall—the ceiling, the floor, the other students. The guy ahead of me was cheating, copying formulas from a book of significant figures we were allowed to bring in. I asked him for it, and he passed it over.
Later, walking out of a bathroom, Nosa ran past me, chased by another student—Gozie, the high-achieving, know-it-all type. As he ran, Nosa tossed the book into the bathroom. Gozie didn’t see. Thinking he’d dropped it, I picked it up and returned it to him. A decision I would come to regret.
Soon after, our housemaster, Samu, called Nosa and me out of class. He grilled us about the book; we both played ignorant. I figured Gozie had reported us, and I feared what would come next. Samu made us kneel in the hallway outside the class and caned our palms, painting them a dull green. I assumed that was the end of it.
After exams, we were summoned to the office of the assistant administrator. I attended a Catholic school, and this man, John, was a deacon training to be a priest. He had a reputation for being “wicked” and unnaturally skilled with a koboko.
He voided our exam scores, caned us again, and then ordered us to kneel in front of his office with our arms outstretched, mimicking our Lord and Saviour. We did this for the entire day, for five days straight. I was twelve. If our arms sagged from exhaustion, he would emerge to cane us again. By the third day, my arms were numb and I considered it relief.
His office opened up to the main campus road, so students, staff, and visitors passed by, watching two boys kneeling there, arms trembling. Some stared. Some whispered. Others shuffled along quickly, eyes diverted. The punishment only ended when a woman saw us, tears on our faces, and went to speak with him. John finally released us.
I know I deserved punishment for cheating. But to that degree, and from a man of God? I don’t think anyone deserves that.
I never told my parents. By then, I had learned they didn’t care for my (many) stories of abuse from school. They called it discipline.
The Timer
University. My parents sent me to Covenant University, making it two for two in Christian schools with a concerning reputation.
The school required students to attend mandatory church services. One was CHOP, held early in the morning from 6 to 6:30. Most students skipped. I was unlucky enough to skip on the wrong day and got grouped with others for “prayer punishment.”
You might wonder, what is “prayer punishment”? A supervisor, usually the student chaplain, would set a timer for a few hours, and we had to pray “fervently” until it went off.
We were out in the open. Me, and at least five others at the top of the chapel stairs. The chaplain started the timer, and we were off to the races. I couldn’t last five minutes. The sheer absurdity of it—the bastardization of what prayer was supposed to be—broke me. I tried to say some words, but they wouldn’t come out. I just stood there, stuttering, tears streaming down my face.
I didn’t understand it. I had spent six years in a Catholic school, and a lifetime before that in and around church. I had served as an altar boy. I had spent years in sunday school and earned the right to receive Holy Communion. The words were inbuilt by then, yet here I was trying to perform devotion, and the words curdled in my throat.
This was three or four years ago, and it was the last time I ever cried.
The Gravel
My final year of secondary school, I was fifteen and a boarding student. To prepare for WAEC and JAMB, we had normal prep from 8 to 10 p.m., a half-hour break, then another study session from 10:30 to midnight.
One night, after normal prep ended, the non-final year students went to their dorms. The rest of us final-year students didn’t feel like studying, so we stayed behind, talking and laughing.
Ten-thirty came, then 10:40. No one was moving. A few of us started to feel uneasy, so we headed to the Jubilee Hall. The frog-faced housemaster was waiting. He asked where the others were. We told him. Then he told us to kneel on the rough gravel road.
I had Osgood-Schlatter disease. It sounds clinical, but it simply meant a bone in my knee was tearing away from the rest, and it’s common amongst kids who play sports. It created a permanent, angry bump that screamed in protest at the slightest pressure. The bump is still there, but it doesn’t hurt anymore—not like it did then. During chapel, I didn’t even kneel during prayer despite the soft pads on the pews. He knew, as did every teacher, but he made me kneel anyway. I tried to shift my weight, to find some position that didn’t make me want to scream. There wasn’t one.
He fetched the rest of our classmates from the classrooms, sent them inside to study, then took a cane and lashed each of us “early birds.” Within minutes, purple bruises swelled beneath my palms.
Then he told us to go inside and study.
The Luggage
After JSS2, I spent three years as a day student. They were the best years of my youth. But in my first year of SS3, my parents decided I would return to boarding school. I didn’t mind much, and we agreed I’d go back that Saturday.
I was in class on Friday when a student walked in and said the housemaster was looking for me. I couldn’t imagine why—since the first incident, I’d been a model student. I’d even won awards for good behavior.
I walked down to the hall and found my parents there. Next to them was my luggage. I’d been looking forward to Friday all week. For three years, I’d ridden the same bus to and from school. My friends on the bus had planned a “party”—nothing elaborate, just cake and soft drinks and the kind of goodbye that makes you feel seen. I was going to miss them, but we’d have that last day.
My parents told me I wouldn’t be going home. I was staying, starting as a boarding student right then. I remember not saying a thing. I took the first set of bags and walked inside. I returned, took the next set, and went back in.
I didn’t say a word to them then. And I didn’t speak to them for a long time after that.
To Conclude
I’m 22 now, and I still live with my parents. They still make me go to church. I’ve tried to explain my disinterest, my reasons for feeling this way. They don’t listen. Their answer is always the same: “in your own house, you can live by your own rules.”
Every Sunday, I sit in the pew. I don’t say the words. I don’t sing the hymns. I wear my disinterest proudly. I consider it a silent rebellion. And I understand now what I’ve always been shown: religion is a tool. A tool for control, for enforcing behaviour, for justifying cruelty. I’ve watched men of God act in direct opposition to the words they swear by.
I don’t know what I believe in anymore. But I know what I’ve seen, and I know it is not for me.