DEMARGINALIZING INDIGENOUS AFRICAN DEITIES IN AN AGE OF TERROR

Abstract

The demonization and consequent marginalization of African indigenous religious practices by the colonial West has indeed led to the erosion of African values. Despite the terrors orchestrated by alien religions across the globe in general and Africa in particular, only a few scholars have called for the demarginalization of indigenous African spirituality as a means of rebuilding the man and his world. For instance, Soyinka, one of Africa’s foremost literary scholars has contended that African spirituality has been marginalized by the aggressive, often bloody intrusion of Christianity and Islam on African soil. And for him, African spirituality provides sources of spiritual strength to its people and acts as rallying point in their struggle for liberation and human dignity. In its attempt to further this line of thought, this paper argues that African indigenous deities have been misrepresented, demonized and pushed outside the margins of the continent’s discourse of spirituality by the practitioners of alien religions who at the momentseek to bring the world to a state of nothingness. Focusing on some selected Igbo deities, the paper interrogates some disgruntled mistranslations that demonize heroic indigenous deities in order to establish instances of the epistemological damages which the colonizer has done to the colonized. It further argues that given the curious approval of terror in alien religions, and especially the mindless ferocity of their fanatic and fundamentalist adherents, it is expedient to interrogate the grounds upon which African indigenous religions and deities are marginalized. Notingthat the assault on African spirituality accounts for the erosion of African identity and indigenous values, the paper suggests that in the current age of religious terror, there is an urgent need to demarginalize and uphold the enduring values of indigenous African spirituality.