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Kaduna, Nigeria – Denouncing God can be a dangerous thing in Nigeria, where religion is the rhythm of life.

Atheism, considered blasphemy by many, is a largely underground movement that’s hard to quantify but increasingly reported among millennials.

Atheists come together in private on WhatsApp groups and use pseudonyms on social media sites to share ideas.

The Nigerian population of nearly 200 million is split almost evenly between Muslims and Christians with sizeable followers of traditional spirituality.

“As a clergyman, this makes me sad that today we have people in Nigeria going in for atheism,” Gideon Obasogie, a Roman Catholic cleric tells A Jazeera. “The effect of this will be terrible. For one who says there is no God, he can do all kinds of horrible things … I feel this will lead to anarchy and chaos.  The rise of atheism in Nigeria is not wonderful news.”

In recent months, Nigerian atheists have registered three pro-secular organisations: Atheist Society of Nigeria, the Northern Nigerian Humanist Association and the Nigerian Secular Society.

“We need these organisations as a space for people to come out,” says Mubarak Bala, who helped to register the groups. 

Bala attracted media attention in 2014 after being admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Kano by his parents when they found out he was atheist. 

He says his father and uncles held him down for 30 minutes and forced him to take medications given by the psychiatrist, who told him “everyone needs God”.

“People began secretly contacting me, telling me that they too, don’t believe in Allah. Even Christians told me they don’t think Jesus is God and they just have questions about the whole religion thing,” Bala said. 

Most keep their beliefs secret.

Bala is the only atheist who allowed Al Jazeera to use his real name.

Al Jazeera travelled to three cities – Kano, Kaduna and Abuja – to meet some “undercover” atheists in their twenties and thirties.

Kenneth: ‘My family told me I am possessed’

“I grew up a rebel. I grew up a black sheep in the family. If I go to church, I go because I am forced to go to church.

I’ve never believed anything, so at a point, the pastor of the church I was attending with my family told me that I am possessed with an evil spirit because I was always questioning God and the Bible.

As an atheist in Nigeria, you will be ostracised. 

Up to today, I have many people who keep their distance from me simply because I ask a lot of critical questions about religion. Many of them don’t even know I’m now an atheist.”

Jiddah: ‘I realised Islam didn’t have my interest as a woman’

“I’ve always had questions, unanswered questions right from childhood. 

It’s not like I was the ideal Muslim girl, because I did a lot of things that Islam did not permit me to do such as wearing men’s clothing – meaning trousers – going clubbing, having premarital sex.

Basically, I realised Islam didn’t really have my interest as a woman. As a child at the Islamic school, I would always ask, ‘Where is God? Why can’t we see him or her?‘

What I got was a beating, serious flogging because you shouldn’t ask such questions. 

The breakthrough came I guess when I met Mubarak [Bala]. I found him on Facebook and I sent him a friend request.

(Note: Before receiving death threats, Jiddah said she would use the site to criticise Islam and had 8,000 followers. She has now closed her account.)

Then, we began to talk about religion. Mubarak would say, ‘It’s just like me telling you there’s a cat right here and you can’t see it. Why would you believe anything like that?’ 

So gradually, I just rid myself of that belief in God and it’s been liberating. 

But it’s heartbreaking because you really want to talk to your friends about these things and explain to them because you want them to feel what you feel. But you just can’t.”

Shehu: ‘A scholar can declare you an apostate’

“In Islam, I used to see stuff that didn’t correspond with reality. I tried to study Islam but I kept seeing more and more things that I just couldn’t believe I was reading.

I went to school in Malaysia and learned about intellectualism and what I learned blew my mind. I was learning about science that broke down the myths of religion. Things just became clear.

I came out and told my father, thinking he would understand. It backfired.

We come from an Islamic royal family in northern Nigeria.

My dad, he went to the NGO I was working at. He was a board member and told them to fire me. So they did. 

Then he brought a woman for me to marry so I could just conform and be normal. 

My dad prevents me from telling anyone about my beliefs. Here in Nigeria, a Mallam – a respected Islamic scholar – can declare you an apostate as an atheist and order you to be killed, just like that. So I’m undercover.”

Peter: ‘Why is it that Christianity had to come through conquest?’

“My mother was quite religious. Every Sunday, we’d go to a Catholic church. 

The religion, Christianity itself, came in through several tools. Slavery, colonialism and of course, the subtle colonialism, which is missionary style.

So my question has always been, why is it that something that I need had to come through in such an inhumane way? Why is it that it had to come through conquest?

Some people were put to the sword and they had to take it whether they liked it or not. 

For my safety … if folks find out I’m an atheist, I could lose out on work opportunities (Peter is an IT professional). If people here in Nigeria find out I’m atheist, I think that would be the death of my reputation. Religion is a scam.”

Freeman: ‘The killings here over religion do not help’

“The killings that happen so much here in Nigeria over religion do not help. 

I came back home one day from school and I learned that a lot of houses had been brought down by our people, Muslims, just thinking that they did that for God. 

I watched somebody being burned to death on the road. I was coming back from school. I actually had friends, my Muslim friends, who went out to kill Christians and they asked me to join them and they actually believe they were doing it for God.

They said it’s God’s wish. They said that’s what God wants them to do and that it’s also what the Quran says. It really makes me upset.” 

Nasir: ‘My father said I should leave or he’ll kill me’

“I am against Islam entirely. Not just the way it’s practised, but against it fully. 

My parents, they know I don’t believe in God.

My father is an Islamic scholar and one day he called me and my mum, and he asked if it was true, [if] what he was hearing about me being an atheist is true. I said yes.

So, he brought out a knife. He wanted to kill me. I was telling him, ‘Wait let me explain to you.’ 

He said, ‘How can you explain to me?’

I was scared actually and we were struggling, me and him. Then my mother seized the knife. My father said I should leave the house or he’ll kill me at night. So I left the house and started living at my workplace.

My father sent me away and then a relative talked to him and told him I changed my mind and told him that I’m no longer an atheist. But my father knows that’s not true.

Some of my relatives keep me away from their children because they say I will corrupt them.”

Ayuba: ‘It would break my mother’s heart if she knew’

“My mother will call me and say, ‘Have you been giving your tithes to the church?’ 

Like, if you don’t pay, then you’re stealing from God and God will punish you for that. So, it’s like a way of indoctrinating people, trying to put fear in people.

I grew up in ECWA (Evangelical Church Winning All, formerly known as Evangelical Church of West Africa).

The whole story of the Bible and creation, I don’t know. My mother, it would break her heart if she knew I am atheist.”

Abdul: ‘My father started preaching against me’

“I told my father that I don’t believe in prayers any more. He was grooming me to become a mallam, an Islamic scholar, like him. 

He never encouraged me to go to Western schools. Even when I went to university, I just did it on my own.

He started preaching against me a few years ago. 

He’s an Islamic scholar so people listen to him. Him preaching against me, you know, someone could take action to harm me.

In his sermons, he would say, ‘Just imagine, my son went to Western school so now he believes there is no creator. He thinks he is smarter than all of us and he gets his notions from a computer,’ because he used to see me on the computer. 

I see my father and other religious people as victims of their beliefs. I had to stop going to my family house.”

These interviews were edited for clarity and length.

All of the interviewees’ names, aside from those in the introduction, have been changed to protect their safety. They also requested their ages were not published, out of fear of being identified.

An investigation has uncovered new details about Maldives government corruption days before a presidential election and weeks after the European Union moved to sanction its leaders.

Published on Tuesday, the research finds that at least 50 of the nation’s prized tropical island leases were obtained at hugely discounted prices without public tender, and – according to the country’s top auditor – were illegal.

President Abdulla Yameen, who is hoping to secure a second term on Sunday, intervened to help clear at least 24 deals to lease islands to tourism companies, the report says.

The president was also personally involved in direct discussions about at least one of those deals, according to the report.

Leaked chat logs and other documents reportedly show one of Singapore’s richest men, Ong Beng Seng, offering luxury hotel rooms to the president and former vice president.

The hotel tycoon, who runs a number of Maldives resorts, did so at a time when he and his company, Hotel Properties Limited (HPL), were seeking islands in the Maldives.

Shortly afterwards, Ong sealed a deal for two uninhabited islands without public tender, one for $5m and one for free, the report says.

At the time of publication, neither the billionaire nor the president had responded to the researchers’ request for comment.

Bags of cash

President Yameen has faced corruption allegations since 2016 when Al Jazeera released its award-winning investigation, Stealing Paradise.

Revealing widespread corruption for the first time, it included testimony from men who said they had carried bags of cash to the president, details of an international plot to launder $1.5bn, along with wholesale bribery and embezzlement in the island deals.

Initially, the government did not respond. However, since the investigation’s release, President Yameen has made a qualified concession that he received cash at home.

His presidency has been marked by efforts to crush dissent, imposing a 45-day state of emergency and jailing or forcing into exile many political opponents.

Those actions, plus a crackdown on the political opposition, media and human rights, have led the EU to move towards sanctioning the nation’s leaders.

It has put in place what it calls a “framework” that will allow it to impose travel bans and asset freezes on senior officials if it decides they have undermined democracy and the rule of law or seriously violated human rights.

‘An orgy of corruption’

With a presidential election just days away, specialist corruption and organised crime reporters have released new details of government graft, describing it as “an orgy of corruption”.

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) exposes how ministers and officials began a fire sale of the nation’s prized tropical islands to tourism companies,  illegally leasing around 50 of them and embezzling much of the proceeds.

That was a huge increase. Previously, the Maldives had only around 100 resorts that had been slowly constructed over four decades. But after Yameen’s election, at least 50 more were approved in just a few years.

The OCCRP’s work is based upon data obtained by Al Jazeera that formed the basis of the 2016 investigation Stealing Paradise, an exposé that revealed massive government corruption for the first time.

Reporters looked at data obtained from three golden iPhones belonging to former tourism minister and vice president, Ahmed Adeeb.

They analysed the information and cross-referenced it with other leaked paperwork, bank and government records, court documents, and the Paradise Papers leak from offshore services firms in Bermuda and Singapore.

Big business

The research gives a full picture of the pillaging of the Maldives and allows researchers to understand which businessmen secured leases and what has been built on the islands and lagoons.

Former tourism minister and vice president, Ahmed Adeeb, was at the centre of the scandal but has not been able to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.

Arrested in late 2015, he was later convicted of a plot to assassinate President Yameen and of corruption linked to the island lease schemes. He is serving a decades-long sentence.

His friend and co-conspirator, Abdulla Ziyath, was also jailed for his role in the corruption and is serving eight years.

Ziyath was the head of the Maldives Marketing & Public Relations Corporation (MMPRC), an organisation that was set up in 2009 to promote the nation’s tourist industry abroad but which morphed into the central authority on new island leases.

From early 2012, the two men worked closely to lease islands, soliciting bribes and embezzling payments.

Two years into their schemes, they found a lucrative loophole. In order to get around a legal requirement that all leases up to 50 years go through an open bidding process, they instead entered the government into joint ventures with private companies.

In the years afterwards, the government would walk away, leaving the business to do what it wanted without government oversight, having avoided an open tender process.

Starting in mid-2014, interested investors simply approached Adeeb or Ziyath, often via a middleman, negotiated a price, signed a contract, and paid the MMPRC by cheque or bank transfer.

“Those who benefitted were the ones who had a direct line to the minister,” a businessman who acted as a middleman on at least one deal, told OCCRP on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisals. “It was all done in the open.”

“Some foreigners flew in just to sign the deals,” the source said. “They must all have known it was all illegal.”

The money paid for the deals was often then transferred to private bank accounts. Some of the cheques were simply rerouted and paid into different accounts using friendly contacts in the banks.

Some of the money was then reportedly handed by bagmen to the president or his allies, as covered in Stealing Paradise.

The president’s orders

Current and former government officials have told OCCRP that President Yameen was central to the operation of the scam.

From prison, Adeeb has claimed he was tasked with running the country while the president “counted the cash.”

A government official with direct knowledge of the deals, who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution, told OCCRP it was the president who ordered Adeeb’s tourism ministry to lease islands without tender via joint ventures run by the MMPRC.

Under Maldives law, uninhabited islands are managed by the Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture. In order to lease them out for development, Adeeb routinely sought — and received — orders from the president to bring the islands under the Tourism Ministry that Adeeb led, according to the official.

“For 90 percent of the islands, I can say [Adeeb] wrote to the president’s office and requested the president hand those islands over to the tourism ministry,” he said.

“Obviously the president knew.”

According to the OCCRP, messages from Adeeb’s phone show the president knew about at least one MMPRC island deal from its outset. On June 30, 2014, Yameen messaged the tourism minister to ask about Mathiveri Finolhu, an island in the Alif Alif Atoll. Seven minutes later, Adeeb replied: “Today will Hand over sir, sorry for the delay.”

Adeeb’s phone messages also show that Yameen apparently had at least one meeting with Ong Beng Seng, the Singaporean hotelier. Ong’s company received two island leases shortly after.

The president has previously denied he was fully aware of the corruption.

At the time of publication, OCCRP had not received a response from his office or that of Ong Beng Seng.

Whistle-blower fled

A 2016 audit found that just shy of $80m due to the MMPRC was either never paid, paid in part, or went missing. Some islands were also found to have been given out at clear discounts.

Another audit, submitted two years earlier, had raised the issue of the corrupt scheme for the first time. Then-Auditor General, Niyaz Ibrahim, produced a report detailing how the MMPRC had made millions of dollars in suspicious foreign currency transactions and exposing payments to a company linked to Adeeb.

Niyaz suspected corruption and says he brought his concerns directly to President Yameen, who had him removed from his position.

“I briefed the findings to the president in a one-on-one meeting,” Niyaz told OCCRP. “He accused me of unprofessionalism, and of being biased against his government.”

This is a gross violation of law, these islands have to come back to the state.

Niyaz Ibrahim, Auditor General

Niyaz continued to live in the Maldives until 2016 when Stealing Paradise was broadcast.

It featured an interview with him reacting to the revelation that he had been placed under surveillance by Adeeb, who had instructed special operations police officers to “blast that place” where he had been.

Niyaz says he faced threats and fled to exile in Sri Lanka a day before the documentary was aired.

Of the corrupt deals, he says, “they’ve been doing this for ages, so they know there is no way for the public to hold these criminals accountable. They take Maldives law as a joke.”

He is now calling for the government to seize the islands that were subject to illegal lease agreements.

“This is a gross violation of law, these islands have to come back to the state.”

International hotel brands did not participate directly in the illegal leasing of the islands. Instead, they later signed management or licensing contracts with middlemen and developers and profited from those agreements.

Niyaz believes they should have conducted better due diligence.

“If they are associated with corruption, that will not be good for business,” he said. “There may be no direct legal responsibility, but they have an ethical and social responsibility to the Maldivian public.”

In 2016, the president’s loyalists passed an amendment to the tourism law that removed the requirement for public tenders. Opposition politicians denounced the move as a measure that effectively “legalises corruption“.

Image: Mike Pont/WireImage