AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

African Traditional Religion has severally been defined as the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of the Africans. It is the religion which resulted from the sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present Africans, and which is being practiced today in various forms and various shades and intensities by a very large number of Africans. The call for national development has been the most re-echoing political topic in Nigeria’s recent history. Economic dependence is the major impetus used to support the call for regional independence. African Traditional Religion is a major Religion in Nigeria thus it has some potential that could empower the nation. Religion has been used to refer to human beings relationship with that which they regard as holy, sacred, transcendent, worthy of especial reverence or divine. This divine dependence of man on the supreme is still very manifest in the life of every African. It is important to note that African religion is not just about humans’ relationship with the supernatural or sacred as found in other religions, but African Religion is a way of life; thus the saying that that Africans are chronically religiously. The missionaries saw the religious culture of Africans in contrast with the tenets of Judeo-Christian religious culture because African religious culture has no sophisticated symbolic religious and cultural structures as Christianity such as written history or Holy Scripture, temples and other recognizable oriental order. As a result, the traditional religious culture was hastily condemned without second thought. Having condemned the culture, her medicine and other positive aspects were also condemned. In this work, the researcher brought out the economic relevance of African Religion like her medicine, consultations and tourism which if annexed will generate fund for National development.