Earlier, the Lagosian had reportedly given scholarships to 40 Nigerian boys through his Academy for Innovative Art and Technology—ACIATECH. On Wednesday, May 5 2021, he was at a Celestial Church of God parish in Lagos, happily attending the boys’ graduation ceremony.

According to several reports, Badru was the subject of a religious ritual during the thanksgiving: some spiritual perfume was emptied on him from head to toe—amid lit candles that encircled where he was made to kneel, another planted in his palms. Suddenly, fire engulfed his entire body from the candles. He sustained severe burns and later died at a hospital.

One can glean from accounts of his death that the deceased was virtually soaked in highly flammable substance before naked flames. And one may perhaps criticize his failing in all this: a man of his exposure should have known better. Perfumes often have fire warnings: “Because they contain various amounts of ethyl alcohol, perfumes are considered a flammable liquid, hazard class 3; the solvent in most perfumes is ethyl alcohol which has a flashpoint of 55 degrees Fahrenheit, certain to burn,” says a comment on Quora.

Though I know nothing of Badru’s education, his philanthropy in the sector spoke to his refinement. It is heartbreaking to lose such an asset to what I deem religious rascality. Rascality, at least considering the church’s response.

Leadership of the Celestial Church, in one of whose branches the ugly incident took place, later issued a ridiculous statement—not an apology or condolence to the victim's family; rather, a directive to its branches to henceforth ensure that “spiritual perfumes” were diluted with water before use. Often, this is how religion treats human life: capture, distort, destroy, and move to the next.

In November 2019, 20-year-old Chinanu, a phone and computer hardware technician, was murdered by religion in Abia State.

On his way from work, he had suffered injuries from resisting hoodlums who had attacked to dispossess him of gadgets in his custody. Stabs from the attack easily would heal from medical intervention—except that he declined medication even as his condition worsened; instead, he was taken to a church.

The church abhorred medicine. Chinanu was asked to have faith, and faith sealed his fate—another promising youth lost. After writing about his death on Facebook, I was assailed online and offline by some members of his church. They explained that a person at the point of death should not seek or be offered medical help but should depend only on faith to live. Religion has been that committed to human slaughter, even in the time of Germany’s Karl Marx in 1843.   

Sociologist and economic theorist, Marx, in his work A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, uttered that famous line: "Die Religion...ist das opium des Volkes"—Religion is the opium of the people. The full quote offers more clarity: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

Marx was annoying as hell on his own, but you get his point.

For those who don't know opium, it's a reddish-brown, heavy-scented addictive drug, often used illicitly as a narcotic, and occasionally in medicine as an analgesic. So, like every other abused substance, people get addicted to it, and its abusers usually get high or sedated.

The figurative opium has no mercy. It takes captive many on its way—educated or not, especially in Nigeria where the education of the learned and commonsense of the uneducated tend to buckle under faith. Islamist jihads, for instance, are in part fueled by a belief that Allah rewards those who kill infidels. For criticizing a certain Catholic priest in southern Nigeria known for dubious prophecies, I was threatened by his followers and a colleague blocked me on Facebook. Even the man’s followers later destroyed their own church’s property in a rage that could only be holier than faith itself!

Like Chinanu, we lost Kayode Badru in such a horrifying way, but we must bravely look ourselves in the eyes and say the bitter truth: those deaths were avoidable. Badru died by fire, one that was lit years ago by religion—and merely exploded on May 5.