Fasting cannot fix what laziness built, by Bukola Oyeniyi

January 2026 is almost upon us, and as predictably as harmattan dust, another ritual season approaches. Nigerian religious leaders—particularly influential voices from Southwest Nigeria—are preparing to impose yet another round of 50-day fasts, 100-day fasts, and assorted marathon prayers on their followers.

These exercises will be announced with solemn urgency, framed as the necessary spiritual price for “breakthroughs” in the new year. Members will be told that without fasting, nothing moves; without prayer, nothing works.
At the same time, these same religious leaders will ridicule China as a godless country and dismiss the Netherlands as a sinful capital of the world. Yet while Yoruba men and women are being commanded to starve their bodies and suspend their reasoning faculties, China will quietly erect a 60-storey skyscraper, and the Netherlands will complete an entire agricultural cycle—from incubation to food table—in two weeks. And when Nigeria needs money to build roads, railways, power plants, or refineries, it is to these “godless” and “sinful” societies that it turns for loans.

Something is fundamentally wrong with this picture.
For more than twenty years, Nigerians—especially Yoruba people—have invested enormous man-hours in fasting and praying. We have prayed for jobs, fasted for promotions, shouted for prosperity, and stayed awake for nights seeking divine intervention in our personal and collective lives. What do we have to show for it? At both individual and national levels, the answer is uncomfortable but honest: very little. We wanted breakthroughs. We fasted and prayed. We got slogans, not systems; prophecies, not productivity; vigils, not value.

China chose a different path. Instead of fasting, it studied. Instead of praying against poverty, it invested in education, science, engineering, and long-term planning. It learned how things work—codes, circuits, logistics, manufacturing, infrastructure—and mastered them. It did not bind demons of underdevelopment; it trained engineers. It did not fast against backwardness; it built universities, factories, and research institutes. Today, China manufactures the tablets Nigerians pray over, builds the roads Nigerians beg God for, and produces the equipment Nigerians import while speaking in tongues.
The Netherlands followed the same logic. Rather than shouting against hunger, it applied science to agriculture. Rather than praying for food security, it engineered it. In a country smaller than many Nigerian states, the Dutch perfected precision farming, logistics, cold chains, and agro-technology to the point that chickens can go from incubation to food table in record time. Their “sin” did not prevent them from thinking. Their supposed godlessness did not stop them from planning. Their prosperity did not come from fasting; it came from knowledge.

In Nigeria, especially among the Yoruba, we have mastered the art of disguising failure as devotion. When systems collapse, we call for fasting. When schools fail, we organize prayer chains. When hospitals decay, we hold night vigils. When roads kill citizens, we anoint tyres with oil. Religion has become a convenient alibi for intellectual laziness and institutional incompetence.

We build churches and mosques instead of laboratories. We shout ourselves hoarse for ìsèsè—a cultural renaissance of traditional religion—believing that rediscovering rituals will fix what we have refused to study. Christianity, Islam, and traditional religion have all been tried as shortcuts to development, and all have failed us—not because faith is evil, but because faith was never designed to replace thinking. Our desperation has taken many forms: fasting, praying, jumping, chanting, invoking ancestors. The result has been the same: perpetual poverty.

Let us be honest with ourselves. Tablets do not come from fasting. Good roads do not emerge from night vigils. Functional hospitals are not produced by tongues and tears. Clean water does not flow because we bind principalities. Power plants do not work because of all-night prayers. Nations are built by learning, planning, discipline, competence, and sustained effort—not by spiritual noise.

This is not an argument against faith. It is an argument against stupidity wrapped in religion. One can pray and still study. One can believe in God and still learn physics. But fasting as a substitute for knowledge is fraud. Prayer as an alternative to policy is deception. Religion as a cover for laziness is dangerous.

After twenty years of multi-day fasts, what exactly has changed? Are our universities better? Are our industries stronger? Are our children more skilled? Are our cities more livable? Or have we simply perfected the ritual of spiritual escapism—using God to avoid responsibility?
The Yoruba are a historically intelligent people. We once valued learning, craftsmanship, trade, and governance. Our ancestors built cities, systems, and institutions without fasting for 100 days. Somewhere along the line, we surrendered agency to prophets and pastors, imams and spiritual entrepreneurs who profit from our stagnation. They grow rich while their followers grow weaker, poorer, and less capable.
Enough of disguising failure as religion.

As 2026 approaches, we must choose a new path. Not another fast, but another curriculum. Not another vigil, but another skill. Not another prophecy, but another plan. Learn. Learn seriously. Learn relentlessly. Learn science, technology, medicine, engineering, agriculture, governance, ethics, and management. Learn how the world actually works.

Fast if you want. Pray if you must. But do not expect fasting to fix what laziness built. Do not expect miracles to replace mastery. The nations we envy did not pray their way to prosperity—they learned their way there.

This new year, let us stop begging heaven for what only disciplined human effort can deliver. Let us stop confusing noise with progress and piety with productivity. Let us reclaim our dignity by reclaiming our minds.
Enough rituals.
Enough excuses.
Enough self-deception.
The way forward is simple, even if it is hard: learn, learn, and learn.