In a law firm in the city of Kaduna, Nigeria, a 30-year-old Legal Assistant closes his eyes in an office meeting, mouthing (or pretending to) words he stopped believing 15 years ago. In Sokoto, Nigeria, a 25-year-old final-year university student bows their head during prayers each Friday, so as not to raise suspicions about their unbelief. In Nairobi, a university lecturer carefully avoids departmental religious discussions, knowing that revealing her atheism could cost her professional relationships. Across the continent, millions of Africans navigate a quiet reality: they live without religious belief in societies where faith is assumed, expected, and often legally (and illegally) enforced.
Africa is frequently portrayed as the world’s most religious continent, where Christianity and Islam dominate public life and traditional beliefs remain deeply rooted. Yet beneath this narrative exists a growing but largely hidden population of atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and religious skeptics. These individuals face a peculiar burden: their freedom of conscience, the fundamental human right to hold or not hold religious beliefs exists on paper in most African constitutions, but remains profoundly constrained in practice.
The Hidden Population
Quantifying non-religious Africans presents unique challenges. Most surveys conflate lack of religious affiliation with low religiosity, missing those who maintain nominal religious identities while privately rejecting belief. Nevertheless, available data suggests this population is larger than commonly assumed. Pew Research Center studies indicate that while institutional religious affiliation remains high across Africa, significant minorities express doubts about religious teachings or rarely participate in religious activities. In South Africa, the most secular African nation, recent census data shows approximately 10-15% identify as having no religion. In countries like Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria, the numbers appear smaller but represent millions of individuals. In Nigeria, since 1963, there has not been another census with question about religious affiliation. While there is no reliable government estimate showing a representation of the percentage of irreligious people, most surveys only provide for “Christianity”, “Islam” and “Others”. According to a 2018 estimate in The World Factbook by the CIA, the population is estimated to be 53.5% Muslim, 45.9% Christian (10.6% Catholic and 35.3% other Christian), and 0.6% as other.
Yet statistics tell only part of the story. The true scale of African secularism remains obscured by what researchers call “survival religiosity”—the performance of religious identity for social and economic survival. Many secular Africans maintain mosque or church attendance, participate in religious ceremonies, and publicly affirm beliefs they privately reject. This invisibility is not mere social convenience; it is strategic self-preservation. This survival religiosity extends to workplaces, business premises and social events and all the more so, for employees, who are usually at the mercy of religious zealots-employers, in a society marred by high unemployment rates, low social mobility and cronyism. Using a new method, the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics reported an overall unemployment rate of 4.3% in Q2 2024, though this data was described by the Nigerian Labour Congress as not being realistic.
Several factors enforce this silence. In many African societies, religious identity is inseparable from ethnic, family, and community belonging. To declare oneself non-religious is often interpreted as rejecting one’s heritage, disrespecting ancestors, or betraying family honour. The communal nature of African social life means that religious observance is rarely private; it is usually witnessed, expected, and collectively enforced. Additionally, the post-colonial association of African identity with either Christianity or Islam has created a false binary where rejecting religion appears to mean rejecting African authenticity itself.
The result is a paradox: Africa’s secular citizens exist in significant numbers but remain systematically invisible, their silence mistaken for absence.
This erasure manifests in the most mundane circumstances. The last time I was in a government health care centre, almost fainting from typhoid fever, the registrar was more interested in insisting I select one religious identity (only 2 options exist—”Christian” and “Muslim”) in the form being filled for me, rather than initiating the process of accessing medical care. Sadly, this erasure of identity is the norm in most government institutions.
Navigating Family & Community
For most secular Africans, the family represents the first and most painful battleground. Religious practice in African households is rarely individual; it is woven into daily routines, life transitions, and family identity. Morning prayers, meal blessings, religious holidays, and communal worship are expected participation rituals. To abstain is to announce difference, and difference within the family unit is often treated as betrayal.
The consequences of disclosure vary but follow predictable patterns. Young adults who reveal their non-belief to parents frequently face threats of disinheritance, accusations of demonic influence, or claims that they are breaking their parents’ hearts — emotional manipulation. Some are subjected to forced religious counselling, exorcisms, or extended stays with religious relatives meant to “restore” their faith. In extreme cases, families sever ties entirely, leaving individuals socially and economically adrift in societies where family networks provide essential support.
In extreme cases, the consequences turn deadly. People have been subjected to serious body mutilation and even murdered in the name of restoring honour or for committing apostasy. In 2016, a Pakistani woman living in Kano, Nigeria, was killed by her family after converting from Islam to Christianity—a fate that secular Africans also risk when their non-belief becomes known in conservative communities. Under Sharia law as practiced in twelve northern Nigerian states, apostasy can theoretically warrant the death penalty, though mob violence often precedes any legal process. In most cases these atrocities are committed or directed by male relatives—fathers, brothers, uncles—who act as enforcers of communal religious expectations and view religious defection as an unforgivable stain on family honour.
Marriage presents another minefield. In communities where weddings are religious ceremonies and interfaith unions already face resistance, admitting atheism or agnosticism can make someone unmarriageable. Parents arrange meetings with religious partners; relatives intervene to prevent relationships with known secular individuals. Those who marry without disclosing their beliefs often spend decades performing religiosity within their own homes, attending services, raising children in faiths they reject, living fractured lives to maintain family peace.
Beyond family, community surveillance reinforces conformity. In close-knit neighbourhoods where everyone knows everyone, absence from Friday prayers or Sunday services prompts questions, gossip, and social sanctions. Professional networks, business associations, and social clubs often organize around religious identity. To stand outside these structures is to forfeit access to opportunities, recommendations, and communal support systems that grease the wheels of daily.
The psychological toll is disastrous. Living double lives produces anxiety, depression, and profound loneliness. Secular Africans describe feeling like permanent outsiders in their own communities, unable to fully trust even close friends with their true convictions. The enforced silence around fundamental questions of meaning, morality, and identity creates intellectual and emotional isolation that many carry for decades. Living your true self as an irreligious individual can be exhilarating but can also be a costly choice in societies predominantly made up of people who expect absolute conformity and condescend to others who do not share their beliefs.
To be continued ….
By Kenneth Eze