Information Related to "Being Christian in Nigeria"
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Due to extremely poor economic conditions, young men and women tend to
live with their parents for as long as possible.
It is very common to see 30-year-old (or older) men and women still living at home even though they might be working. This is because young people need years of savings to be able to afford a simple place of their own and then save for a wedding. Even then, young people often depend on their parents and relatives to finance as much as 90 percent of the cost of the wedding.
Education is one of the few ways to improve one's lot, and there is often great pressure to sacrifice all—even one's religion—for the opportunity to succeed. In this difficult environment, three young people in the United Church of God prove that one can be Christian in Nigeria.
Ibironke Abiona Akinbo is 28 years old. "Ronke," as her friends call her, finished high school at age 15. It then took almost five years for her to secure a university admission to study law. She had gained admission once, but there were too many admitted and the school decided to revoke the admissions of the last 150 students. She was among them.
Now she is a student of law at the state university where she lives. Sadly, due to incessant strikes by lecturers or student riots protesting one issue or another, the school has closed many times. What she expected to be a five year program has now extended to eight years.
In 2007, which was to be her final year, she learned there would be a mid-semester exam during the annual Feast of Tabernacles (see Leviticus 23:33-43), when she planned to be gone. Her friends urged her to cancel her plan to attend the biblical festival, but she decided to be true to her religious convictions and go anyway. Ronke decided to observe the Feast even though she knew it would mean failing the exam and perhaps losing an extra year. She decided to pray and hope that when she later sat for the final exams she would make a good enough grade to pass anyway.
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