Man Proposes, God Disposes

I’m here to tell you Gods honest truth

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. For some people, he stopped there and put their destiny in their hands. For others, he just continued creating. The difference between these two sets of people is impossible to miss.

Let's consider how this difference shows up in Nigerian big men. When you ask one who has a lot of money how he made the money, he is quick to tell you the God-honest-truth: God did it.

God forbid it stops there. If you ask the Nigerian criminal why he raped a 12-year-old and killed her, he would repeat the God-honest-truth to you as well: it's the devil. If you ask a Nigerian politician how he got to power, he would tell you the non-Lockean truth: God put me there. And is he lying?

If you ask the same politician what to do about a thorny political problem, they too would repeat the God-honest-truth to you: we need to fast and pray. Not only do we need to fast and pray, we also need to build a very large church or a very large mosque. We also need to organize prayer programs for our many problems. After all, if God cannot save us, who can?

Since God is the only entity that can save us, it follows that every other place without our dysfunctions is a product of God's grace. Every horrible thing that happens in Nigeria happens elsewhere , you see. It's common to find a Nigerian government official tell you another one of the Gods-honest-truths: it also happens in saner climes.

If one complains about herdsmen invading forests and killing farmers by the bushel load, a government official would be on hand to remind you that America had mass shooters too. If you complain about home invaders, you will be reminded about gang shootings abroad as well. If you complain about erratic electricity, you will be told about Spain not having light for four days. If you complain about bad roads, a neat picture of a ghetto in 2007 France will do the comparing trick.

If everywhere else suffers the exact same indignities that we do, why, then, are other places more developed? God's grace. And it's fair too, since Jesus is a white man. Perhaps God has a bad case of institutional racism baked into the dispensation of his grace.

The truth is, there is no failing — or success — of the Nigerian state that cannot be explained by the way of miracles and superstitious fables.

The Nigerian people are not innocent victims of this predisposition either. In their churches and mosques and offices, they also reveal their preference for this attitude toward life itself. There is this pernicious belief everywhere that things ought to just occur, and if they don’t, they surely cannot be blamed for it. Is there one shop owner who believes a business class is more profitable for their business than a hand-laying session by a pastor they believe in the most? Which would you rather have, a business class or the unction to function from God?

When the Nigerian encounters someone who’s made their money via clearly illegal means, he remarks that the fellow has been blessed. By who? No one knows. By blessings that emerge unforced out of the ether. When the same fellow faces some large disaster, he’s been cursed. By whom or what, no one cares.

The Nigerian “political commentator,” who is often quite educated, is possibly the worst offender. He never stops talking about the strength of institutions and systems, like those institutions aren’t controlled by flesh and blood and instead drop from heaven. And they might as well actually drop from heaven with the way this analyst talks about them. We just need better systems and institutions, he croons. Like they will magically emerge out of the ether and aren’t the product of the idiosyncrasies of the Nigerian population.

The Nigerian immigrant, thousands of miles away from this dysfunction, has a perhaps more forgivable attitude toward these things. He is quick to declare that there is nowhere like home, and when you ask him why he hasn’t gone back home, he tells you the God-honest-truth as well: if not for our bad government, what would I be doing here? One would think the bad government was made up of aliens. But the truth, as always, is we believe that these things are just a product of God’s providence, like a hurricane or an earthquake. Bad government is as much of a natural disaster as a tornado: who can stop it?

Another way this belief shows up is in the way people describe things. Lagos, for example, is smelling. Does that say anything about the character of Lagosians? No. Lagos just smells spontaneously. No one did anything to make it smell. And of course, it also shows up in the way “technocrats” respond to their own failings.

Over the last week, it was discovered that JAMB, the country's premier examination body, failed to mark the papers of nearly four hundred thousand students — almost 20% of the total participants of the exam. In response, the official handle of the body made this statement.

Man Proposes, God Disposes!

It has been established that a technical glitch affected 157 centres out of the 887 centres in the 2025 UTME. This was basically responsible for the general low performance of the candidates scheduled to sit the examination in those centres.

This sparked anger and outrage at the handler of the account, but that anger, while righteous, was misplaced. The Registrar of the body, Ishaq Oloyede, was the one who titled his speech at the press conference uncovering this scandal “Man Proposes, God Disposes.” He proposed a great examination exercise, and miraculously God disposed a horrifically flawed one. Who can question God?

In classic God-disposing fashion, God has also disposed two other universities to release statements “standing by” Ishaq. The handler was merely following the lead of Ishaq, so as not to get disposed by God as well.

In a previous article, I argued that belief in the superstitious, even if it exists, is bad in and of itself. As you can see, the logic here is sound. If God’s grace is the reason why anything exists, and if all failings and successes can be placed at the foot of an immaterial creator, why should one do anything? Why should one strive for anything? Why should people do better?

Why should the Nigerian politician, who's been chosen by God, care about the predicament of his people? Why should the criminal, who's forced to commit crime by Satan, take any of the responsibility that comes with it? Don’t you know it is all in the hands of God? After all, we all know the God-honest-truth: man proposes, God disposes.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. For Nigerians, he never stopped creating — because surely, we can’t be expected to.