A LOCUST OF FAKE MIRACLES IN AFRICAN CHURCHES: A NEED FOR REORIENTATION ON THE AFRICAN VALUE OF TRUTH

One of the greatest cankerworms of Christianity in contemporary Nigeria is the maddening quest for miracles and prophecies. This has constricted the criteria of what constitutes a true man of God, or a minister, to one who can perform miracles and give prophecies. It has equally led to a situation where some men of God stage manage miracles and prophecies to meet their faithful popular demand of miracles and prophecies. The mind-boggling paradoxes in this scenario are how fake miracles have become a norm in a religion whose founder, Jesus Christ, is regarded as the “Way and the truth”, and how a people who are of a cultural background where honesty is a core value system willfully engage in the business of spiritually manipulating and hoodwinking unsuspecting individuals. This informs the research questions of the paper, which are: What is a miracle? What makes a miracle fake? What is the possible leeway out of the present conundrum of fake miracles? It is in light of this that the paper, through a critical and explorative method, examines the present locust of fake miracles in Nigerian Christian churches and the African notion of truth, with a particular focus on the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria. The study establishes that to curb the present surge of fake miracles by supposed ministers of the gospel, there is a need for reorienting the ministers on the African value of honesty. To do this, the study relies overwhelmingly on secondary sources such as books, online journals, newspapers, and internet.