Olakunle’s girlfriend was not very religious when they started dating in 2023, though she is a Christian from birth. Olakunle (not his real name), a 20-something-year-old photographer and journalist from Ibadan, Nigeria, had to make it clear he was not religious at all. At first the girlfriend had no issue with this, only, perhaps, hoping that Olakunle, an ex-Christian, would convert back to Christianity. ‘I believe she had it in mind to, like, change me in the long run,’ Olakunle told me.
They argued frequently about the existence or nonexistence of a supreme deity. But that was it. Then she became even more religious in 2024. According to Olakunle,
“She became very religious, very, very religious that I was even shocked, and, once, she told me that God is telling her to move away from anything that would stain her purity. In order to move closer to God, she had to move away or avoid anything that is not, like, [pure], [she had] to move to the light, [she had] to stay away from darkness. That’s just the way she said it.”
They broke up five months later.
Barely two months after the breakup, Olakunle tried to find love on Tinder. It wasn’t successful, and he soon deleted the app. ‘I mean, you see all these profiles, and you’ll be, like, [discouraged]. You see all these details about [people’s] affiliations [on Tinder], and you see a Christian, you see people who are just religious. Yeah, I just deleted the app,’ he said.
For now, Olakunle is also not actively seeking a partner or a love interest in irreligious gatherings. He has tried to do so but also without success. This has tired him out. ‘You know there are intersections to this thing. I might find someone who is irreligious, but then are they the right person?’
He thinks that when people, even the religious—especially the religious—are looking for partners, they seek out people that share their core values: ‘So I think it’s the same experience for the irreligious. Even though the [dating] pool is very small. So that’s the case. The experience [actively seeking a partner in an irreligious gathering] was not encouraging. I guess that’s why I’m fed up.’
Searching for Love
On paper, Nigeria is a secular country, with its 237.5 million citizens free to practice multiple religions of their choice. There is indeed a plurality of religions, including African Indigenous Religions (AIRs), the Reformed Ogboni Fraternity, Judaism, Chrislam, the Grail Movement, the Baháʼí Faith, and Hinduism. But its Christian and Muslim populations are among the largest in the world; there is a predominantly Christian south and a predominantly Muslim north. The percentage of Nigeria’s population who are religious is placed at 93% and that of its population who are convinced atheists is only one percent.
It doesn’t help that the nonreligious are in danger of both physical and non-physical harm if their lack of religious belief is known about. Many still live under a pretence, performing religiosity rather than being true believers. Consequently, being upfront about their disbelief of the God claim when romantically interested in a religious person is a decision they have to make carefully. But if they eventually meet freethinkers like themselves as love interests, they still need to look out, as Olakunle pointed out, for those who share the same values as they do.
Melvin is in his 20s, and his current partners are both religious. He became an atheist in 2019 but never came out to his previous partner, who is a Christian. He saw how devoted the partner was to Christianity and thus feared the fallout that might ensue. ‘I didn’t want to have the whole conversation about “why are you an atheist?” and “why don’t you believe in God?”,’ he told me.
At the time, he was also keeping up an appearance as a spiritual person. ‘I was still under the veneer that I was spiritual—but not religious—in a bid to avoid the whole conversation [of] why don’t I go to church [or] why I avoid all of the religious practices he [the partner] was involved in.’
They therefore didn’t discuss religion before they got into the relationship. The conversations were more about their personalities and the things they both liked. Now, Melvin disapproves of that approach. ‘In a [sic] hindsight, it was not good. It’s best to put things in the open before you get into something,’ he said.
These dynamics in romantic relationships have left Nigerian freethinkers in search of love few to no options. Melvin has never dated an atheist. ‘I have met atheists but I haven’t met those atheists that we could move forward into having a relationship. So all the people I have been in relationships with are religious people.’
Besides, he believes atheists are hard to find within the queer community. In his experience, queer people, though queer, are not willing to let go of their religious beliefs. Their religious beliefs, just like their sexuality, are an integral part of them:
People who are willing to admit their doubts and suspicions about their beliefs are not easy to come by, meaning the queer people I’ve met, they’re religious, they’re Christians or Muslims. But there’s this cognitive dissonance where they compartmentalise their religion and their sexuality. So it doesn’t matter that their religions basically preaches [sic] against this [being queer], yet they’re willing to freely accept their sexuality.
Jade, a 20-something-year-old university assistant, also thinks that there are not many atheists around her. As she told me:
I don’t meet a lot of them in my regular life. Almost everybody I meet is religious, everybody has one religion or the other. I can count the people I know that are irreligious. Maybe like three or four people that I know that are irreligious my entire life. It’s like I got to know them before I even know that about them [being irreligious]. Maybe some people are now pretending, but based on my environment a lot of people are religious.
To be continued ….
By Adesomola Adedayo
[This article first appeared in The Freethinker magazine]