Is Social Media Driving the Rise of Atheism in Nigeria?

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June/July 2025Nigeria
Atheism

Photo Illustration by Ezinne Osueke / THE REPUBLIC. Source Ref: Cathedral Church of Christ, Marina / WIKIMEDIA, Oshun Statue / WORLD HISTORY ENCYCLOPEDIA.

THE MINISTRY OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS

Is Social Media Driving the Rise of Atheism in Nigeria?

With the proliferation of social media and the easy access to information it provides, young Nigerians are turning their backs on the Abrahamic Gods.
Atheism

Photo Illustration by Ezinne Osueke / THE REPUBLIC. Source Ref: Cathedral Church of Christ, Marina / WIKIMEDIA, Oshun Statue / WORLD HISTORY ENCYCLOPEDIA.

THE MINISTRY OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS

Is Social Media Driving the Rise of Atheism in Nigeria?

With the proliferation of social media and the easy access to information it provides, young Nigerians are turning their backs on the Abrahamic Gods.

Before the 21st century and the viral use of social media, veteran author and dramatist, Professor Wole Soyinka, was the face of atheism in Nigeria, especially in the South West. The Nobel Laureate has famously adopted Ògún, the Yorùbá god of war, iron and creativity, as a patron deity, and has tapped into Yorùbá mythology and aesthetics to create an African dramatic theory. For these reasons, he is often mislabelled a practitioner of Ìṣẹ̀ṣe, an African Indigenous Religion (AIR). However, it is important to note that he remains a disbeliever of the God claim. 

Today, as can be observed on social media, the 90-year-old playwright and poet is no longer the singular face of atheism. Atheism now has many faces and has in fact become faceless. Mubarak Bala, president of Humanist Association of Nigeria (HAN), who was released in January 2025 after spending over four years in jail for ‘blasphemous’ Facebook posts; Leo Igwe, the founder of HAN; David Hundeyin, an investigative journalist; Professor Uju Anya, a US-based university professor and researcher; Uloma, a well-known feminist on X; The Ranting Atheist, who owns The Ranting Atheist Podcast; and Gbenga Arawoyin, an investigative filmmaker—these are some of the country’s most vocal atheists. Many more people also post religious rebuttals and endorse godlessness from ‘unknown’ X handles. 

But atheism is not the only non-Christian, non-Muslim attitude to God and the God claim that is on the rise in the country. AIRs such as Ìṣẹ̀ṣe, a Yorùbá spirituality, are enjoying more visibility, too. Onìṣẹ̀ṣe, practitioners of Ìṣẹ̀ṣe, are fast becoming influencers for their faith on social media platforms such as X. Besides long-known figures such as Ifayemi Elebuibon, (the world-famous Ifá priest, Ifá archbishop of Osogbo and writer) and Peter Fatomilola (Ifá priest, filmmaker and writer), some prominent onìṣẹ̀ṣe include Ayodele Olofintuade, writer, researcher and Ìṣẹ̀ṣe archivist; Iyanifa Osundamilola, an Ifá priestess and educator; Iyalorisa Omitonade Ifawemimo, an Orisa priestess and educator; Olúwo Jògòdò Òrúmìlà, a famous Ifá priest; Tunrayo Daramola (Spiritual Wife), an Olorisa and educator; Akinola Funmilayo Ifafunwa, an Onífá; and Baba Ajisefa, a babaláwo.  

THE RISE OF AIRS

In his 2022 book, Decolonizing African Studies, Nigerian historian, Professor Toyin Falola, claims that ‘despite allegations from foreign actors’, AIRs did not fall out of favour because they were inferior or inherently evil. ‘Instead,’ he wrote, ‘their support was eroded by colonizers and missionaries who had gained the social, economic and political power necessary to dislocate [AIR] either by force or deceit.’ According to Professor Falola, the first step, then, towards decolonizing African religions is to delegitimize the demonization of AIRs. This is because, as Falola argues, Christian indoctrination has programmed Africans to accept western ways and has warped their own perception of their true African identity. One could say the same of the Islamic indoctrination that makes Nigerians, especially of in northern region, readily accept Arab ways, religious or cultural, at the expense of their African identity. One evidence of this is the complete loss of the Hausa Bori religion, which has been wholly eaten up by Islam. Another could be found in Kwara State’s Council of Ulama’s (Islamic Clerics) warning against the celebration of an Ìṣẹ̀ṣe festival in Ilorin in 2023: ‘The Emirate might be a Yorùbá-speaking city, it must be realized that its present culture is no longer that of Yorùbá, Hausa, Fulani, Nupe or any other, but purely an Islamic culture.’ 

The proliferation of Ifá and Òrìṣà educators on platforms like X and campaigns like ‘Èṣù Is Not Satan’ are efforts to delegitimize the demonization of AIRs. Ditto the work of young oníṣẹ̀ṣe filmmakers such as Tunrayo Daramola, Ifagbenjo Ifarotimi and Adedayo Ifagbenle, who are working to undo Nollywood’s years-long demonization of AIRs. Through their work, these filmmakers are continuing the efforts of veteran oníṣẹ̀ṣe Nollywood filmmakers such as Peter Fatomilola and Yemi Elebuibon, as well as established post-colonial Nigerian cinema directors like Tunde Kelani and Kunle Afolayan. This re-education might have inspired a comeback to AIRs.  

People belonging to minority groups that are discredited by the Abrahamic religions are also turning to AIRs. For example, the Nigerian writer and pantheist, Moyomade Aladesuyi, in a feature for Minority Africa, writes that Ìṣẹ̀ṣe subverts binary gender, citing how it either has ungendered Òrìṣà or those who embody both masculine and feminine energies plus ‘everything between and beyond.’ This, she writes, is why queer practitioners find Ìṣẹ̀ṣe validating and empowering. The colonialists, both the Arabs and the westerners, denigrated AIRs, forcing people to embrace Abrahamic religions, which in turn ostracized queer people and denied them access to religious spaces for being queer. Homophobia, Ugandan LGBTI activist Val Kalende argues, is in fact a legacy of western colonialism. With a Christianity-inspired penal code, western colonialism criminalized homosexuality and institutionalized the now-widespread hatred and bitterness towards queer people. Similarly, Arabic colonization upset the more inclusive African cultural practices they met and introduced more inherently patriarchal ways of life. 

Thus, one could infer that the inclusiveness of AIRs is one reason the practice is on the rise today. Although queerphobia might be encountered among homophobic AIRs practitioners, according to Aladesuyi, this is not as a result of the tenets of AIRs. For her part, Olofintuade traces the embrace of Ìṣẹ̀ṣe to love—unconditional, practical, real-time love. As she told me in an email: 

What I believe is happening now is that people (including myself), are finally realizing how powerful they have always been, and that home has always loved them, that they are enough. There is nothing wrong with them, they are not òtòṣì ẹlẹ́ṣẹ̀ (poor sinners). They are gradually unlearning self-contempt brought about by imperialism and anti-Blackness.  

I find a correlation between Olofintuade’s words and Aladesuyi’s feature. If there is no self-contempt, and no one is ‘a poor sinner’, then people can fully be who and what they are. They can practice self-love. 

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THE RISE OF ATHEISM

In ‘Reimagining Religion: The Rise Of Atheism in Contemporary Nigeria (2014-2021)’, Nigerian independent researcher, Adebisi Emmanuel, traces the rise of atheism to the wide use of social media platforms. From his research, in which he interviewed a pastor, an imam and an atheist, Emmanuel finds that questioning believers, both Christians and Muslims, turn to social media platforms for answers when their questions are dismissed as ridiculous or as ‘questioning God’ by the religious. The Ranting Atheist, the atheist interviewed for Emmanuel’s research, traces his deconversion to social media. ‘The vast resources that opened my eyes were on the internet,’ he told Emmanuel. ‘Information is easily accessed today. Religion relies a lot on mystery. The demystification of religion by the internet is the major factor.’ 

I asked The Ranting Atheist if he still believes that social media is largely responsible for the rise of atheism in Nigeria. He answered in the positive, adding that it is especially so for the Gen Z. But he also pointed out the current economic difficulty in the country as a factor. ‘The economic hardship is in fact another [factor],’ he said. ‘I know that some atheists have been made by the previous election, seeing how things happened, seeing how religious leaders carried themselves and were just [telling lies] left and right.’ 

During the 2023 presidential election, the youthful supporters of the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, expressed enthusiasm for a potential new Nigeria under Obi. They canvassed, tweeted, voted and prayed fervently. But when Bola Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress’ presidential candidate, emerged the winner, many posts doubting that God answers prayers or that God exists at all surfaced on X. If one can logically expect the authors of those posts to have begun the process of deconstructing their religion, it is easy to see how the hardship the country is currently experiencing under the Tinubu-led administration can contribute to their deconversion process. 

To test out the validity of these aforementioned factors, I conducted a poll on an atheist social media group. The question was ‘How did your deconversion start?’ The options, four in all, were: (1.) By consuming irreligious content on social media (including YouTube and Spotify); (2.) By personal questioning (such as interrogating doctrinal or scriptural contradictions, assessing the condemnable acts of some religious figures, unanswered prayers, the problem of evil, etc.); (3.) By reading books, especially scientific and irreligious books; (4.) None of the above. Twenty-six people responded. Eight of them picked the first option, fifteen picked the second, and two people picked the third. Only one person opted for the fourth choice. From the poll, one can see that while it is true that the internet might have given rise to atheism in Nigeria, curiosity and inquisitiveness on the part of ex-believers is a bigger factor contributing to deconversion. The second factor which The Ranting Atheist claims is responsible for the rise of atheism in the country—namely: economic hardship—can be considered a subset of the second category provided in the poll. Consequently, one could conclude these two indexes might be the biggest factors in the country’s growing lack of theistic beliefs. 

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THE COST OF RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM

Religious extremity has cost Nigeria a lot. Fanatics’ God has inspired lynchings and mob killings in response to alleged blasphemy, bred religious intolerance and sparked violence against other religions. Clerics have even been reported to scam the vulnerable. For example, in the investigative journalist Fisayo Soyombo’s seven-part series, Prophet of Their Pockets (I-VII), he documents his encounters with Christian and Muslim clergies when he visited four churches and four mosques as a gay man seeking ‘healing’. All except Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries (MFM) Camp City, Ogun, and Holy Cross Cathedral, Lagos Island, demanded cash and material possessions and gave fake prophecies and false visions. At the former, he was told to fast and pray, and at the latter, he was made to have a ‘chat’ with a reverend father. 

Though practitioners of AIRs have claimed that sacrifices do not require human ritual killings, there are homicide cases popularly called ‘ritual killings’. Arawoyin was enraged by the recurrent killings ‘claimed to be for money rituals’ and has since embarked on a project to dispense the belief that juju is real—to expose ‘tricksters’ claiming the supernatural power of juju, and, consequently, to put an end to the spate of ‘ritual killings’. (Arawoyin also frequently investigates fraudulent herbalists, alfas and Christian healers, exposing on video their fake visions and false promises, with which they scam people of cash and material possessions.) 

Religious leaders influence elections and endorse political candidates based on religious sentiments, which sometimes lead to policies seemingly inspired by the religious beliefs of the endorsed politicians. One recent example of this is the hajj subsidy provided by President Tinubu, a Muslim whose vice president is also a Muslim. This is especially undesirable in a secular country. There is a National Christian Centre and a National Mosque, both in the Nigerian capital city of Abuja, but no national temple, synagogue, worship centre for other religious groups—and, of course, no conference centre or the like for atheists and freethinkers. This is not surprising, as religious groups that do not belong to the two Abrahamic religions typically fight for recognition from the government. 

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DECOLONIZING RELIGION

Colonizers were able to convince us that our myths (or religious beliefs) were barbaric and thus nudged us to take on their own myths as a mark of civilization. Centuries after the Arabian colonizers left, and 65 years after their western counterparts officially left, Christians and Muslims in Nigeria are still convinced that AIRs are diabolical. One example of this is the tendency of Christians and Muslims to mistranslate the names of deities in AIRs. For example, the Yorùbá deity Èṣù and the Igbo deity Ekwensu are both mistranslated as the Biblical Satan and the Qur’anic Sheitan. Thus, to decolonize religion and correct colonial-cum-historical-cum-religious errors, there is a need for more campaigns like Èṣù Is Not Satan. It is high time the decolonization project fully took off. If, religion continues to play a discriminatory and sentimental role in a secular country, is it not necessary to seek a detachment or, at least, reduce its involvement in state affairs?  

In my email to Olofintuade, I had referred to Ìṣẹ̀ṣe as ‘a form of spirituality’ and called people now embracing Ìṣẹ̀ṣe ‘new practitioners’. To the first point, Olofintuade writes that:  

I do not consider my practice [a] spirituality. This is not to denigrate those who do, as some also consider it a religion. Ìṣẹ̀ṣe is the ways of life of the indigenous peoples [sic] of Yorùbá. This includes statehood (the Ọba system), the justice system (ògbóni), policing (orò), policy designs (egúngún), and economies (ọjà). Divesting oneself of the imperial gaze means relearning the language and twisting one’s tongue around words that have become foreign instead of primal. I am also not a returnee as my ancestors have always been Aláwo and Olórìṣà. 

Of the second ‘mislabelling’, she responds: ‘In ìṣẹ̀ṣe, there’s no such thing as “new” because ọmọ ẹni kò kí ń ṣe ìdí bẹ̀bẹ̀rẹ̀ ká fi ìlẹ̀kẹ̀ sí ìdí ọmọ ẹlòmíràn (one’s child is the most beautiful amongst a million children that belong to others).’ These responses further helped me acknowledge how deeply colonization has eaten up our heritage, legacy and identity, and how much is to be done to divest ourselves of colonialist discoloration. I have always known how Africans have a long way to go to decentre imperialist heritages, but Olofintuade’s comments further complicate that thought. 

However, when asked for his thoughts concerning young Nigerians leaving the Abrahamic religions, The Ranting Atheist reacted with mixed feelings. He thinks it a good thing that young people are seeing through the lies of the Abrahamic religions, but still considers Ìṣẹ̀ṣe lies, though ‘our own lies’. He likes that Onìṣẹ̀ṣe do not disturb anybody but worries that they are still superstitious and could in fact behave exactly like Christians when challenged by atheists. ‘So, while they [young Onìṣẹ̀ṣe] are heading in the right direction,’ he told me, ‘they are still in the superstitious mentality, which is still problematic to me. But it is less of a problem because they are not using Ìṣẹ̀ṣe to enact their political ways since they are in the minority.’ 

For her part, Olofintuade reacted with much optimism to the same question. First, she conceded that one cannot decolonize a system (religious or not) designed to oppress one; the only thing one can do is decentre and divest. ‘All major systemic change in the world has always been brought about by a few voices strong enough to stand their ground,’ she said. Olofintuade gave the example of Iyálorisà Omitonade Ifawemimo, who she claimed was the first to speak up on social media about Ìṣẹ̀ṣe. ‘I remember the trolls, the attacks, the stupid interviews by newspapers, but she stood her ground,’ Olofintuade said. She acknowledged, too, Kola Tubosun who she said started the Yoruba Names dictionary and the #tweetinyoruba day online. ‘There are so many voices that made this possible that it is a beautiful thing to behold!’⎈

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