Couple of days ago, I found myself walking down the pedestrian
lane trying to figure out my way to a particular telecommunication company,
hoping to have my Sim Card Number retrieved, was quite fortunate to run into an
old friend, we heartily exchanged pleasant pleasantries, the hugs was soothing,
considering the fact that I have been roaming under the hot sun for a very long
time. She eventually gave me the right coordinates and even eventually
volunteered to walk me there. While we were busy running the coordinates of our
mouths, navigating our way through the ever busy market, took us not quite long
to notice that other passersby were falling off their lanes like some magical
winds were blowing them off their lanes . We waited, and we relied on our
sights to help us catch a glimpse of the missing piece in the crowd, and it
took us no magical eyes for us to see the figures clad with dry raffias, decorated
with red pieces of cloths, the grotesque mask on their faces looks more of
decorative artifacts than something meant to invoke fear, nothing sacred about
them, and the annoying feature about them is that underneath these gigantic
collections of clothes and raffias are little children, whose flowers are yet
to blossomed fully, they wobble under their sacred cannons for their shoulders
seems too fragile to carry these weights, and when they tried to make those
grunting sounds the matured masquerade do make, they sounded like puppies
trying to imitate mother Dog, with every strength I could garnered I try not to
laugh at them, the canes with them seems frightening, it reminded me of my
secondary school days in which long
smooth canes were the masters of our life. I dare not incur the wraths of these
a heavenly visitors; my back is not a suitable place to welcome any strange
visitor.
We changed course, and after she had taken me to the
promise land, we said our goodbyes, just as I proceed to appreciate other
beauties around; I suddenly remembered my friends comment when she saw these
heavenly visitors, ‘our society has grown past this’ I walked on as I ruminated
on this, my mind seems blank, I could not get my thoughts together, so I
promised myself that I will re visit the topic before drifting to utopia later
at night.
So later in the day, with the evening breeze kissing
my temples uninvited, I took a stroll along my memory lane, and being true to
my words, I decided to give a penny for thought, the masquerade scene seems
flushing back, and like a water breaking its dam, they all came breaking their
boundaries.
Rhoda’s comment
re-echoed, and I said to myself, yes our society is far advanced in age
and structure, in the face of these changes, must we allow the stream of time
erode our cultural norms? I was really at a cross road here, knowing not where
to cast my dice, I thought harder, with my face pressed against my pillow,
hoping that I will find answers in the dark abyss.
Modernization has indeed brought in great and
welcomed development to our present realities, life has been made easier, it
seems with these various degrees of technological advancements in our world,
our Eve has eaten the forbidden fruit the second time, for our eyes are now
opened to a new world of untapped possibilities, the world at our fingertip,
smiles. Both the material and the immaterial aspect of our civilization seems
to have been greatly influenced with the advent of science, but despite all
these , must we forsake all our cultural values on the altar of modernization?
To the African man, his culture is inseparable from
him, same with his religion, take these entities away from the African man, and
you have nothing, J.S Mbiti said,’ Africans are religiously and notoriously
religious’ take away these factors away from the indigenous man, and you have
taken his identity away from him. Our forefathers defended our cultures with
pride, and some even lost their lives in the process. Many African writers and
apologists have dedicated a larger chunk of
their lives protecting the
African heritage. Quite saddening that we live in a liberal oriented society in
which we are quick to embrace new ideas without giving it much thought, many of
our traditional values has long been neglected and traded for mirrors and
ammunitions on the transatlantic market, and it does not really bother us much.
At this junction, I must put that, not everything
about our traditional heritage is good and morally acceptable, take for instance
the killing of twins in Nigeria, thanks to Mary Slessor for showing us that
twins are as normal as any single born children. The practice of human
sacrifice and other obnoxious acts came to an end thanks to the advent of
modern religions. So it’s a welcome development that modern religions were
introduced into the mainstream of our cultural structure. Light has been given to the various shady
elements of our cultural norms, but I ask, is it everything that comes with
modern religion can be adjudged to be right? Even as we forsake most of our
traditional norms simply because we think in our normative understanding that
one religion is better than the others, leading to the question, how do we
judge the morality of each religion, is there any standard we have to judge
whether a religion is better than the other, religion is basically human’s
handiwork to access the spiritual and transcendental realm, save him from his
various insecurities and fear of the unknown which has shrouded his world.
Man is fallible and imperfect, so how can an
imperfect being claim to have a perfect knowledge of discerning which is which
when it comes to issues above his realm, religion might be man’s craft,
nevertheless, it far greater than man himself, for any individual to access the
transcendental realities, he must possess an esoteric knowledge of the order of
things. So it is no gainsaying for me to posit that man in his dealing has no
audacity to choose which religion is better than the other, or which element of a particular religion is out of
place, this can only be made possible on one basics, and that is on the claims
of divine or supernatural intervention or revelation, the subjective nature of
religion makes it difficult for us to validate these claims of supernatural
dealings, except if only there is a scientific means of verifying supernatural
claims and of course we all know the big gap between religion and science,
though apologists have all provided some reasons to proof that religion and
science are compatible, I look forward
to the day when we will have sufficient facts to prove that they are both
compatible.
Let’s not diverge from our main discourse, modern
religion, irrespective of the various changes it has brought to our indigenous
religion is not perfect in its real sense, same applicable to our indigenous
religion, we as human have no objective standard of judging which religion is
better than the others, so upon these various facts, I recommend that each
religion be given an equal opportunity to thrive, no religion should be killed
just because another religion seeks acceptance. We must have the right to call
our own our own irrespective of the external forces involved; nevertheless we
must do away the barbaric aspect of our traditional values, we need no esoteric
knowledge to tell us that the killing of human
for sacrifice, and other obnoxious rituals are totally unacceptable.Before i finally drop my pen, and aire my conclusion on this issue, it is pertinent for me to hear your views.
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