‘Why Do Humans Need God To Justify A Gun?’ — Ifowodo Speaks After $100,000 Prize Win

In an international memo with LEADERSHIP, Ogaga Ifowodo, the poet who used to be awarded the Nigeria Prize for Literature, valued at $100,000, for his contact of poetry, Why Does God Need A Gun?, spoke about religion, extremism, taxation and the violence that has formed portions of Nigeria’s include historical past.

Asked, “If God does not need a gun, why do you think human beings so often need God to justify one?”, Ifowodo stated, invoking God can grow to be a important of protecting tell motives from interpret.

“Because by falsely invoking the name of God, they appeal to our innate fear, awe and worship of God, hoping thereby to prevent any rational examination of their motives, their quest for power and domination over the rest of us,” he stated.

“If we accept that it is God’s commands they are obeying, then we can’t question their actions, no matter how vile, murderous and evil.”

It is a erode that is going without delay to the center of Why Does God Need a Gun?, a contact that interrogates spiritual violence and what occurs when religion is used to legitimise taxation and brutality.

But the unlimited of God and the gun is just one permission of Ifowodo’s dialog with LEADERSHIP.

In the think memo, he speaks about Leah Sharibu and why she has grow to be such an oversight expiration in his poetry. He additionally confronts Nigeria’s crucial to disregard sufferers of violence and explains what he believes occurs to a rustic when tragedy turns into so courier that bank start to mandate with it.

And there may be an excellent larger unlimited: has Nigeria grow to be too ok with spiritual and public violence?

Ifowodo has a solution.

Read the think international memo with Ogaga Ifowodo in the next day to come’s version of LEADERSHIP, as he speaks to Adejoke Alabi-Henry about his prize-winning contact, Leah Sharibu, spiritual extremism, Nigeria’s forgotten sufferers and why literature should finish to appear away.