Last week David Cameron was overheard describing Nigeria to the Queen as ‘fantastically corrupt’. A Nigerian businesswoman acknowledges the charge but argues against the hypocrisy that tolerates one rule for the rich West and another for the world’s poorer countries

In his hour-long sermon last Sunday – brief by Nigerian standards – the priest at my local Catholic church told us that he did not think it had been right for our president, Muhammadu Buhari, to admit publicly at last week’s anti-corruption summit in London that Nigeria is a corrupt country, following David Cameron’s remark that the nation is “fantastically corrupt”.

Better, he said, for our leaders to pray that the Holy Spirit might take hold of the lives of Nigerians and lead us on the path of probity and righteousness. Even on the Feast of Pentecost a good preacher can weave politics and current affairs into a reflection on the readings of the day.

It was unusual for me to be at church; I no longer attend regularly. So many common practices in churches here just don’t resonate well with me – the way women are almost invariably allocated subordinate roles; the  self-satisfied preachers of the prosperity gospel, jetting around Africa, peddling the message that their grotesque wealth is a sign of God’s blessing; the vicious homophobia; the manic preoccupation with the casting out of demons.

Instead, most Sundays, while the rest of the family – and virtually the whole of my home town of Calabar – dresses up and troops off to church, I stay at home, put on a CD of my favourite hymns being sung by King’s College Choir, and quietly murmur a few prayers.