Soyinka made the remarks on Saturday during an interaction with a professor of African Literature, Louisa Egbunike.

Wole Soyinka, the world-famous Professor of Literature and renowned author, has said that religion was not allowing Nigerians think like rational humans.

Soyinka made the remarks on Saturday during an interaction with a professor of African Literature, Louisa Egbunike.

He said, “Religion has become the number one problem for Nigerians.”

Soyinka added that any religion that becomes an excuse for the adherents to flout Nigeria’s laws should be “tackled head-on”.

He said, “If for instance a legislator, later a governor, can claim the right to be a pedophile and indulge in cross-border child trafficking, celebrating child marriage, then consummating that event, which is against the law of a nation, and he says he has a right to do it because his religion permits it; then both he and that religion should just be shown the way to the law courts and treated like other phenomena of society.”

Soyinka said the same treatment should be meted to those who “use religion to excuse building a church, which collapses on the head of humanity, many of them not from Nigeria, several from South Africa.

He added, “And then you say it was caused by supernatural forces when you know very well that you flouted the conditions for increasing the floors of your building.”

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