African traditional religion clearly plays a distinctive role as the ultimate source of supernatural power and authority that sanctions and reinforces public morality.
To maintain social order, peace and harmony, traditional Africans believe that success in life, including the gift
of off-spring, wealth and prosperity are all blessings from gods and ancestors.
They accrue to people who work hard, and who strictly adhere to the customs and traditional norms of morality of the community, people who strictly uphold the community ideal of harmonious living.
Only such people could entertain a real hope of achieving the highly esteemed status of ancestorhood in the hereafter.
In cases of abomination, grave offence or defilement against the community like murder, incest, etc., the moral pollution has to be cleansed or expiated by special ritual experts in order to appease spiritual beings and ancestors who are believed to have been also offended.
Until the expiation is done, the entire community (and not only the individuals directly involved), stood a real and imminent danger of suffering a disaster.
The serious moral breach has destabilised the fundamental peace, balance and harmony that should prevail between the visible world of humans and invisible world of spiritual beings and forces.
The affected community could, therefore, expect severe punishment from the supernatural custodians and guarantors of morality.
For most African groups, ostracising an individual or group that has fragrantly disobeyed the community is thought to be the most severe punishment that could be meted out to any body. It feels like death for any one so punished since such a person is regarded as an outcast.
He or she would not be allowed to share in the life of the community.
There would be no visits to the family, no exchange of greetings, no one would sell or buy from members of the affected family.
So severe is the punishment of ostracisation, that every member of the community highly dreads it, and would do everything possible to avoid it.
It does, on the other hand, show the kind of tremendous power of the community in traditional African background.
Traditional Africans believe that spiritual beings, especially ancestral spirits, guarantee and legitimate the ethical code.
The vast majority of norms, taboos and prohibitions is directed towards protecting the community and promoting peace and harmony.
Communal farmland, economic interests like the market-place, stream, or shrine are generally surrounded with taboos, including who may or may not enter, and when and under what circumstances people are permitted or not to enter such places.
Stealing is abhorred.
It is in fact, an abomination to steal things relating to people’s vital life-interests and occupation, like yam crop among the sedentary farm cultivating communities of traditional Igboland, or stealing fish held in a trap laid by someone in a stream or river among the fishing communities of Ogoni and Kalabari in the Niger Delta area of the country.
There are also special restrictions and norms regulating the behaviour of people towards public functionaries like lineage heads, the king or queen, traditional priests, diviners and medicine-practitioners. Such persons are generally regarded as specially sacred, and representative of the community. Their residence is equally sacred. So, are instruments of their office.
There are norms and taboos that try to address the need of the
individual human person for security of life and property.
For example, most traditional African groups have stiff penalties for wilful murder of a person, not an enemy at war, including bringing about the death of a foetus. Any one guilty of murder would be required to repair the crime usually by providing another human being to the family of the person killed, a person relatively closer in age to the deceased.
The offender would then be bound to take his/her own life through public hanging. There are also severe penalties for wilfully damaging people’s crops, economic trees, and animals.
Religion may be distinct and separate from morality, as many scholars have rightly argued.
For traditional Africans, however, the line dividing the two is very thin indeed.
African traditional religion plays a crucial role in the ethical dynamics of the different groups. In the traditional African background, ‘gods serve as police men’.
Àfrican traditional worldviews invariably outline a vision of reality that is, at once ethical in content and orientation. Human beings and their world are the focal centre of a highly integrated universe.
Hence, traditional African worldviews have been described by some people, as heavily anthropocentric.
Human conduct is seen as key in upholding the delicate balance believed to exist between the visible world and the invisible one.
The area of morality is yet another relevant avenue through which traditional Africans try to form people and reinforce in them the important idea and value of harmonious community-living.
Every social group evolves its distinct ethical code. Every society has its norms of acceptable behaviour, taboos and prohibitions. Many traditional African groups have in addition, motivational features and incentives through which compliance to the norms of approved behaviour and social ideals are encouraged.
There are equally rituals of purification, as well as punitive measures that try to deter and curb the tendency to deviate.
Community-living on the other hand, remains a cherished value among traditional Africans.
However, the dramatic changes in the socio-political and religious aspects of life bring considerable pressure on the people’s sense of community.
With the progressive relativisation of the traditional religion, the traditional role of the latter in inculcating and promoting harmony and peaceful co-existence become more and more diminished.
At a brainstorm session on reassessment of the diminishing public morality and the way forward yesterday in Saki, participants who spoke one after the other noted that the profound sense of the sacred and feeling of awe, which the traditional religion brought to life in general and different institutions in traditional societies, have become greatly circumscribed.
They pointed out that the ability of African Traditional Religions to promote the community ideal of peaceful and harmonious co-existence in contemporary African society is in a state of progressive decline.
“The rate of displacement of the traditional religion by the forces of radical social change in Africa is generally slower in rural areas than in urban cities”.
In a communique at the end of the Forum read by the Convener, Idris Omodunbi, it asserted are visibly in a state of transition, a stage of
betwixt and between, with the attendant anxiety, tension and confusion being felt at virtually every facet of life of the people.
According to the communique, ” the destabilisation of traditional religions has clearly left wide gaps in the social structure, particularly in the bonds of
interpersonal and inter-group relationships. Fortunately, the forces that precipitate and sustain radical change in the continent, including Western culture and socio-political systems, Christianity and Islam, now largely provide new framework and elements for community-living and harmony in most societies of Africa.
“The prevailing radical social change has
far-reaching implications for the ideal of community-living in contemporary Africa. On the one hand, he said the worldview with which people explain
and control reality is no longer the traditional one which is religion-dominated”.
Also, the communique submitted that certain traditional African beliefs, customs and practices associated with the idea and promotion of community-living among many African groups, have been outlawed.
“They were considered either too cruel, or simply opposed to the aims of colonial administration and/or Christian missionaries.
“For example, polygamy, which has as its major objective to produce many children and thereby increase the size of the community as much as possible, is in serious decline in many parts of modern Africa.
This, the communique stressed , is as a result of the combination of several factors, including Christian missionary preaching against it, better health-care services, and changing economic circumstances.
It further argued that the traditional belief in ancestors and other spiritual patrons, as well as the vital role they were believed to play in fostering community-living, have been seriously relativised in most contemporary societies.
It added that masquerades are not part of the apparatus of modern state administration, as schools have largely displaced traditional initiations as the main channel for formal education and socialisation of youths.
“While it is true that the traditional religion still has considerable influence in the life and culture of many African
peoples, it no longer enjoys exclusive dominance and control over the life of the vast majority of the population. Civil society now prevails.
“There are constitutional governments, civil law, agencies of government responsible for law and order, Western-type schools for formal education and socialisation.
“Above all, plurality of religions is now the existing order in the Continent with Christianity and Islam being the dominant faiths. The law of diminishing returns have since befallen African traditional religions.
“The situation has changed radically today. The experience of
colonialism, Christian missionary activity and Islamic religious campaign have given rise to a radically different socio-political and religious background in Africa. ‘’
Indisputably, colonialism created a new social and political order in sub-Saharan Africa, created modern nations by pulling together traditional groups with diverse language and cultural identities, as well as urbanisation given rise to mega-cities in various parts of the Continent.
Most communities are no longer homogeneous but heterogeneous and plural in virtually every aspect of their life. The pertinent question is: Has a wedge been driven between the sacred and the so-called secular aspects of life?”.
