Ogaga Ifowodo, one of the poets shortlisted for the 2026 Nigeria Prize for Literature, has questioned the use of religion to justify violence, asking why an all-powerful God would need human beings to protect him with guns.
Spealing during the interview with ARISE NEWS on Wednesday, Ifowodo said his collection, Why Does Your God Need A Gun?, examines what people believe and the consequences of those beliefs for themselves and others.
“Things that we believe, as human beings, are capable of believing. And what that belief portends for not only us, but our fellow human beings.”
He said the collection began under a different working title before the central question of the book emerged during the revision process. “His book began life under the working title, Creed and the Incredulous.”
Ifowodo said the working title later became The Incredulous, before he settled on Why Does Your God Need A Gun? after completing the draft. “Then it became the Incredulous, simply the Incredulous, with the I-N in parentheses, so you could read it as the Incredulous and the Incredulous.”
He said the title emerged while revising the manuscript for publication. “When I finished the draft, and then I was revising for publication, I got to the point where the poet Persona, for whom the first in the series of 26 poems that begin the collection under the title From the Forest of a Million Demons, Leia Sharibu leaves the veil of her captains.”
Ifowodo said the question became the title because of its central challenge to religious violence. “Why does your God need a gun? At that point, it’s accordingly that will be the title. It is his past life with that title.”
He said the question is rooted in the idea of an all-powerful God who does not need human protection. “And God doesn’t need a gun, that’s for sure. God the Almighty, the Omnipotent, the Omnipresent, the Omniscient, all from the Abrahamic religions, created human beings out of mere clay.”
Ifowodo questioned how human beings created by God came to believe they must protect God through violence. “Somehow those human beings who were made out of mere clay now suddenly think that they are God’s protectors.”
He said such beliefs can lead to violence against communities and young people. “They have to save God. To the point of bending arms, wipe out your communities, imprison young people, take them from schools, snatch them into the forest.”
Ifowodo said the central question is therefore why an all-powerful God would need a weapon or human protection. “So the question is, why won’t your God, who is the Almighty, who is the most powerful, need a gun? It’s a rhetorical question.”
He said the collection goes beyond Nigeria and examines religious terrorism as a wider global problem. “And it’s explored beyond what is happening in Nigeria, the religious terrorism in Nigeria. It’s a global tsunami.”
Ifowodo said the collection also examines how similar forms of religious persecution occur in other parts of the world. LIt also explores in the second two other paths how this happens in the rest of the world.”
He cited the persecution of writer Salman Rushdie as another example of violence carried out in the name of religion. “Once upon a time, when resisting the religious fatwa passed on Salman Rushdie, which not too long ago also manifested again when a man raged, you know, he just wanted to blind him.”
Ifowodo said he referred to Rushdie in the collection through the image of the eyes of the world. “So, you know, I actually call that point the eyes of the world. That’s Rushdie.”
He said the attempt to blind Rushdie represented an attempt to prevent people from confronting religious violence and what he described as blasphemy. “The aim for the two eyes is to blind them to their terrorism, to their blasphemy.”
He described the contradiction as people committing what they consider blasphemy while claiming to defend God. “Because that’s the ultimate blasphemy. A little blaspheming God in the name of protecting God.”
Erizia Rubyjeana
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