Shouldn’t we pray for our economy?

“When things went bad, we turned to God,” Reverend Cannon Olubisi Odejimi, the Doyen of Stockbrokers at the time, said on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (Nigerian Exchange) on June 30, 2009. The Doyen spoke as he gave the background to the genesis of a practice that started among the stockbrokers as the capital markets sank in the wake of what was known as the Great Recession.

The stockbrokers turned to God, praying in the morning at the start of trading, and in the afternoon, when trading closed. The practice of praying by stockbrokers has endured since then.

Not many people would be excited about this topic here today. That’s because, to them, there is no place for prayers on economic issues. There is no place for prayers in the factory or the marketplace. The market, that intricate web of buyers, sellers, and middlemen that defines the activities in various segments of the economy, is soulless. It has no feelings, neither for the losers nor for the gainers.

There is no place for prayers in the banking hall, board room, or the commodities markets. They are convinced there is no place for prayers when it comes to planning, producing, and marketing.  

However, Nigerian stockbrokers proved such persons wrong. Stunned by the market collapse, locally and globally, they began to pray, praying before and after trading each day. They did not pray in place of their work. No! That is not the kind of prayer being advocated here. It is rather the kind of prayer that supports or complements work, hard work, no matter what aspect one is referring to. Hard work and prayer can and must go together. Otherwise, things could go wrong for longer than we imagined. We will continue to expect good decisions but end up having the wrong ones.

I took the time to document this reaction of the stockbrokers, as I reported the market daily from the gallery of the Stock Exchange. Such prayers and the reasons that led to them are documented in one chapter of my book When Stocks Got Stuck: The Fall and Rise of Nigeria’s Capital Market.

I spoke to a number of the brokers, trying to find out why they resorted to God. One of them was a member of the Council of the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers. He told me why they resorted to praying, and it is clear that Nigeria has found itself in such a situation once again. “In a situation where you did not know what to do, you just had to rely on God. It dawned on everyone that that was the way to go and the practice has continued till today,” he told me.

We need to pray, but certainly not for manna to fall from heaven for us. Rather, we need to pray that the right environment might be created for the right things to be done and that the days of wrong policies might be over in the land.

Take for instance, the prayer that the Stockbrokers offered on August 19, 2009, five days after the CBN sacked the managing directors and executive directors of five banks and the day that it published names of major debtors to the five banks, the stock market dipped further and at the end of trading, the index fell by 2.6 per cent.  The import of that development was quite clear to the broker who said the closing prayer on that day.

He asked God to intervene in the market, because, “the intervention of government is not enough”.  He said the operators did not like the direction of the market. “Come and control the market yourself,” he prayed to the Almighty. And the brokers all roared: “Amen”.

The Doyen continued this prayer on September 7, 2009, when the Director-General of the NSE (now NGX), Professor Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, led a team of the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers executives to close the market and make some announcements. “You told us that those who don’t want to work should not eat,” he reminded God. “That is why we are here” He asked God to give divine illumination to brokers so they could give the right direction to the market. As for those who were “troubling” the market, he asked God to speak to them so they could turn their minds to the good of the country.

We need to pray, as Doyen Odejimi said, for illumination. Both the leaders and the followers need illumination.  Nigeria operates a market-based economy.  Economists have established that markets do fail, which means that they could give the wrong signals that lead to the wrong decisions being taken by policymakers. In that case, it means that a complete reliance on the market as a guide to policymaking could be disastrous because some of these policies are sure to fail because they are based on the wrong premises. or actions?

Ironically, those opposed to prayers for the economy believe in prayers. That is why they flock to places of worship on Sundays, Fridays, and other days of their choice to pray to the powers they believe in. When it comes to praying for the economy, they oppose it. Why would our leaders see clear-cut cases and still go ahead to make the wrong decisions? That means we need to pray.