Christian religion is one of the imported religions that were imposed on the African through colonialism. I am not sure that many who today make a lot of noise about it ever knew about the atrocities committed by those who sought to spread it in the early times. The inquisition which took so many lives does not exclude the religion with the tag as a religion of violence just like Islam.
Our forebears fought great wars to resist them before they were over powered. Since it set foot on our soil life has never been the same again. Little wonder the legendary Chinua Achebe in his famous book ‘Things Fall Apart’ lamented that “things have fallen apart and the centre can no longer hold because they have put a knife into the thing that weld us together”. That is the reality of the moment.
Religion is part of the culture of a people. Christian religion is of the western world especially the Europeans. Strictly speaking the black man had no religion. The traditional religion was a labeling of the pristine mode of worship of the black man. Man is a spirit (mmuo) encased in human body. God Himself is a Great Spirit. Man only communes with himself (spirit)
The relationship of man and God is a spiritual thing and it requires a high degree of purity characterized by integrity and love before the African can stand before his Creator (in Igbo Chi ukwu Okike). For the invading culture to take root it had to use propaganda, brain wash and blackmail to demonize our culture. Our culture remains superior no matter how you may despise it.
When the colonialists left, those who succeeded them till date have continued in the damage of destroying what is left of our culture in the name of such practices like deliverance. In the process they attack and destroy the remnants of our effigies, artifacts and relics whereas the Oyibo people will create museums to protect theirs.
As ignorant as our people, they told our forebears that the effigies are demonic yet they carted them away making use of them because they appreciate the ‘energies and power’ they represent. Hypocritically, our people are contented with worshipping the graven image of Mary the mother of Jesus but demonise the man who worships the deities.
We are good to go so long it is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but here we demonize our Amadioha, Sango, Igwekala etc. Ignorantly or rather stupidly out of zealousness some communities have changed their ancestral inherited names because according to them it is demonic, denies them progress.
It is the same with some families who have denounced their fathers name and changed it to what they think is godlier. I know a community in Isu local government area of Imo State that bears Umuarisi but chose to change it to Umuchukwu. What has today torn the once peaceful Nkerehi community in Orumba South Local Government of Anambra State is its change of name to Umuchukwu by one of its big wigs. The community has known no peace since then arising from disagreements among the community members.
All the expected benefits arising from the changes flies in the face of reality that nothing truly changes. In some of the communities that claim lack of progress you will discover that some big wigs there are making tremendous successes in their endeavours even with the old name while after the name change there is no change. It is proven then that successes and failures are not because of the name the community bears.
Today people are burning the Ofo in their families because they have been misled to believe that it is evil, fetish and holds back progress in their lives. What is not known to them is that they have destroyed nothing. They have only managed to destroy the image which represents the spirit, but not the spirit. When you destroy the body you have not destroyed the spirit that inhabits it. The spirit is only displaced and made to wonder.
A Lagos based Igbo spiritualist and school teacher, Ogechi Ibekwe explained it better when she stated as follows.
‘The symbol you see there is just a representation of the spirit. The true spirit is invincible and cannot be seen. Have you ever noticed that it is as if your problems multiply each time you call a pastor or priest to destroy the statue after some time, more serious problem escalates.
‘This is because you have succeeded in taking away the dwelling place of the spirits and so made them homeless just as God in the Bible told Solomon to build a home for him because he has been roaming from one house to the other. Solomon later built him a home. When you take away the dwelling place of these spirits without showing them a new place to reside, then you have asked them to come stay with you; now depending on your closeness to them shall you receive either blessing or curse.
”Remember when God in the Bible had no house, he had to sleep in the home of some people, some he blessed and some he cursed or even killed. And also remember that when Jesus casted out the demons he gave them a place to stay in the swine, but they were not comfortable so they had to move further to the river.
”When you ask a priest to remove a shrine; one thing you don’t know is that these people know how to exclude themselves from the wrath which is to come. They know how to vindicate themselves from the wrath of the spirit. They will always tell the spirit that they are innocent of the act that whatever punishment should go to the person who called them to do the destruction, since it is destroyed at the persons order. He (the priest or pastor) goes free while the people who called for it bear the consequences.”
We should therefore be mindful of our obsession for worship of God which leads us to lay mines for ourselves. The best we can do for ourselves is to do introspection and query everything we have believed in relation to our culture. Some of us unfortunately were born into this believes and swallowed everything because many are on that path and hold that the majority is right.
Let me restate even though that may sound stupid in the ears of people. We can never recover or find ourselves out of the woods unless we return to our culture and the original unadulterated ways of worship. Our culture is the foundation and base of our development. It had everything that can take us to the Eldorado we long for before we were misled to believe otherwise.
We are only groping in the dark because we superimposed a different thing on our foundation and there is a mismatch. Nothing can ever work well. No country can ever grow without its culture. No doubt we appreciate the dynamism of culture and the influence of other cultures but never its complete abandonment as we have done.