Raise life insurance in a Nigerian church and you will meet a particular kind of resistance.
Are you planning to die? Why are you speaking death over yourself? God is your insurance. If you had faith you would not need a policy.
The objection is sincere, it is widely held, and it has left an enormous number of Christian families without protection they could have afforded.
It is also, on examination, not a biblical position. Here is the actual case, the genuine objections, and how to decide.
The theological question, settled reasonably quickly
Does buying insurance display a lack of faith?
If it does, so does a great deal else that no one objects to.
Locking your door displays a lack of faith in divine protection. Taking medicine displays a lack of faith in healing. Saving money displays a lack of faith in provision. Wearing a seatbelt, employing a security guard, keeping a fire extinguisher — every one of these is a preparation for a bad outcome you are asking God to prevent.
Almost nobody applies the objection consistently. It is applied to insurance specifically, largely because insurance involves naming death out loud.
What Scripture actually commends:
Joseph’s fourteen-year plan in Egypt is the clearest case — grain stored across seven good years against seven bad ones, described approvingly, and the mechanism by which a nation survived. That is insurance in everything but name.
Proverbs repeatedly commends the person who anticipates: the ant storing in summer, the prudent person who sees danger and takes refuge while the simple keep going and suffer for it.
And 1 Timothy 5:8 states that a person who does not provide for their household has denied the faith. Provision does not obviously stop at the boundary of your own lifespan. A man who dies at fifty leaving a wife and four children with no income has not provided for them, however faithful he was while alive.
Does buying insurance mean “speaking death”?
Only if writing a will does, and only if a doctor discussing risk does. Acknowledging mortality is not summoning it. Every insured person in Scripture’s terms is simply doing what Joseph did — accepting that difficult seasons come and preparing while the good season lasts.
The honest counter-position is that trust in God should be sufficient, and that reliance on financial instruments can become a substitute for dependence. That is a real spiritual risk and worth watching. But it is a risk attached to how you hold the provision, not to whether you make it. A person can trust God completely and still store grain.
What life insurance actually does
Stripped of the sales language: you pay a regular premium, and if you die during the covered period, the insurer pays an agreed sum to the people you name.
Why it matters more in Nigerian context than most people realise:
It pays quickly, when everything else is frozen. In the months after a death, accounts may be inaccessible, probate takes time, and property cannot be sold in a hurry. Insurance proceeds paid to a named beneficiary largely bypass that delay. The family has money for rent, school fees, and food in the period when they most need it and can access nothing else.
It converts illiquid wealth into cash. Most Nigerian family wealth is in property. Property does not pay school fees in December. A family can be asset-rich and unable to eat.
It protects against the relatives. A payout to a named beneficiary is considerably harder to dispute than an interest in land. For a widow facing pressure from her husband’s family, insurance proceeds are frequently the only asset that is unambiguously hers.
It is cheap when you are young and healthy. This is the single most underappreciated point. Premiums are priced on age and health. A healthy person of 28 pays a fraction of what the same person pays at 48. Waiting is expensive, and a health diagnosis in between can make cover unavailable at any price.
The types, briefly
Term life. Cover for a fixed period — 10, 20, 25 years. If you die within it, it pays. If you do not, it pays nothing and expires. Cheap, simple, and for most families the correct product.
Whole life / endowment. Combines cover with a savings or investment element. More expensive, and the returns on the savings portion are frequently poor compared with investing the difference separately.
Group life through an employer. Many Nigerian employers provide this, and many employees do not know their cover amount or their named beneficiary. Check both. Note that it usually ends when the job does — it is a supplement, not a plan.
The general rule: buy term, keep it simple, and invest separately. Products that bundle insurance with investment tend to serve the seller more than the buyer.
How much, and for how long
A common benchmark is 10 times annual income, though that is a starting point rather than an answer.
Build it from actual needs instead:
- Outstanding debts, including any mortgage
- Children’s education through to completion, at realistic future costs
- Household living costs for the years your family would need to adjust — commonly 5 to 10 years
- Any specific obligations you carry, including support to parents
- Minus existing assets that could be liquidated
On the term: cover should run at least until your youngest child is financially independent, and ideally until any mortgage is cleared.
Who needs it most: anyone whose income supports other people. If your death would leave someone unable to pay for their life, you need cover. A single person with no dependants generally does not.
Cover the non-earning spouse too. A wife who runs the household without a salary is providing services that would cost a great deal to replace. Her death would create real financial pressure, and this is routinely overlooked.
What to check before buying
Is the insurer licensed? Verify with NAICOM, the Nigerian regulator, before paying anything.
What are the exclusions? Read them. Common ones include death within the first year or two from certain causes, and specified high-risk activities.
What are the disclosure requirements? Answer every health question truthfully. Non-disclosure is the most common reason claims are denied, and the family discovers it at the worst possible moment.
What is the claims record? Ask the insurer directly about claims paid, and ask anyone you know who has actually claimed.
Is the beneficiary correctly named? Name the person, keep it current, and tell them the policy exists. A policy nobody knows about is not claimed.
Is it inflation-adjusted? A fixed sum assured in naira loses value over a 20-year term. Consider whether the cover keeps pace, or plan to review and increase it.
The reasonable objections
“Premiums are wasted if I don’t die.” True of term cover, and it is also true of your car insurance, your health insurance, and your house insurance. You are not buying an investment. You are buying the removal of a risk your family cannot absorb.
“I would rather invest the money.” A legitimate strategy, with one flaw: it only works if you live long enough to build the fund. Insurance covers you from the day the policy starts. Most families need both — cover for the next twenty years, and investing alongside it.
“I don’t trust Nigerian insurers to pay.” The most substantive objection, and it deserves a serious answer rather than dismissal. The response is due diligence rather than avoidance: check NAICOM licensing, check the claims record, choose an established insurer, disclose everything honestly, and keep the documents where your family can find them. Non-disclosure causes more denied claims than insurer bad faith does.
“My church will take care of my family.” Some will help. Very few can replace an income for fifteen years, and this is not a plan.
The decision
If people depend on your income, buy cover. Buy term, at the largest sensible amount you can sustain, for a period that runs until your children are independent. Do it while you are young and healthy, because it will never be cheaper than today.
And hold it the way Joseph held the grain — as ordinary provision made in a good season against a bad one, not as a substitute for trust in God.
Storing grain was never a failure of faith. It was how a family survived the famine.
General information, not financial advice. Insurance products, terms, and regulation vary — speak to a licensed adviser and verify any insurer with NAICOM before committing.
