MzAgams

What Are They?

Not scripture. Society.

Every Sunday, I examine one of the rituals, stories, performances or social rules through which power operates in Nigeria.

These are not sermons in the conventional sense. They are counter-sermons: a weekly interruption of the messages we are taught to accept without question.

I read the signs hidden in ordinary life—the rice distributed after tragedy, the public shaming of women, the demand to “respect elders,” the pressure to reconcile with abusers, the politician performing concern, the pastor preaching obedience, the family protecting its reputation at the expense of one of its own.

Each sermon asks:

What is really happening here?
Who benefits from this behaviour?
What fear, belief or social reward keeps it in place?
Why do people continue participating, even when the outcome harms them?
And what might we do differently?

The format is simple:

Gather.
We begin with an ordinary event, saying, ritual or public performance.

Read the signs.
Not scripture. Society.

Expose the hidden mechanism.
The shame, fear, hierarchy, obedience, transaction or mythology underneath what we are seeing.

Offer a counter-ritual.
A different way to speak, respond, refuse, organise or act.

Lesley’s Sunday Sermons are about Nigeria, but they are also about human beings: how we create systems, how those systems begin to control us, and how we might withdraw our participation from what no longer serves us.

Expect law, history, feminism, folklore, humour, irreverence, personal observation and the occasional raised eyebrow.

No altar call.

Just an invitation to see more clearly—and, having seen, to stop cooperating with the lie.