Sounding Afterlives of Traditional Religious Slavery and Oath Systems in Nigeria

Abstract

The agonizing afterlives of the traditional religion conquest and the cultural oath system alterations by the adherents of imported foreign religions to Nigeria brought spiritual favoritism to the Bible and the Quran as an object of oath. Consequently, the traditional religion suppressions emboldened Nigerian leaders and politicians to do away with the fears of the traditional gods, which they had earlier feared and venerated. Therefore, this study explores the afterlives of traditional religious slavery and the foreign politics of modern oath systems and their consequences on the socio-political lives of Nigerians. The study adopted an ethnographic method that included participant observation, interviews, and textual analysis. Secondary data were sourced from books and the internet. More so, the song of Fela Anikulapo was analysed, which exposes and itemizes the negative effects of traditional religious slavery in Nigeria. Based on the religious diversity theory, the study argues that Nigerian religious tradition differs from the foreign religious philosophies and doctrines; however, the skewedness of the two unequal religions has negative consequences on the socio-political lives of the people. Finding reveals that the exterminations of the cultural oath systems contributed to Nigeria's downfall with in-depth corruption, abject poverty, suffering, lack of social amenities, hopelessness, and sickness, ‘JAPA’, and early deaths in Nigeria. Findings also reveal that music is a useful weapon of historicity and excellent cultural ideological reawakening, and that music is significantly valuable to sustainable development. The study concludes that the antidote to cure Nigeria of endemic political imbroglio and economic challenges permanently is the resuscitation of the fearful cultural oath systems