Religion and African Pluriversalism

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue III, March 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

Religion and African Pluriversalism

C.C. Okereke, Samuel Mba Onwuka
Department of Religious Studies/Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Abia State University, Uturu, Nigeria

Abstract- Africa is known with indigenous, strong and rich heritage ranging from culture, tradition, belief system, to languages and norms and morale. These had existed centuries before the incidence of colonialism in Africa. This paper seeks to look at the nature of imported religious identities and how they have over the years influenced the diverse African traditional knowledge and truth. The methodologies of this paper are combination of historical, descriptive and documentary research design based on qualitative research method. This paper among other things discovers that African traditional belief system has been endangered by the imported religions, for example, Islam and Christianity. There has never been a universality in African traditional belief system due its diversity, and no one single exclusivity in matters of knowledge and truth as one culture can no longer speak and others should just listen and not raise their voices. Imported religions have their own origin and this origin cannot be replaced for the belief inherent in the indigenous African traditional systems. In this case, the paper then recommends the need to free our mind from these imported religions in order to preserve our original traditional heritage as a continent, even in this neo-colonial imperialistic state.

Keywords: Religious Identity, African Pluriversalism, Traditional System, Cultural Orientation

I. INTRODUCTION
Pluriversality is the philosophy that argues that there is no one single exclusivity in matters of knowledge and truth. Given the immense contact between cultures in recent times, the universal perspective holds that one culture can no longer speak and others should just listen and not raise their voices. Walter Mignolo, the de facto progenitor of the concept of Pluriversality, argues that pluriversality is not cultural relativism, but the entanglement of several cosmologies connected today in a power differential. That power differential is the logic of colonialist covered up by the rhetorical narrative of modernity. Modernity is a fiction that carries in it the seed of Western pretense to universality. It is clear that monotheistic religions went as far claiming that their positions are most appropriate and hence should be adopted by all and sundry in order to attain salvation (Mignolo, 2013).
The world today is characterized by a plurality of faiths and cultural identities (Pratt, 2013). Hence, this plurality of faiths comes with a contrasting of religiously influence (Oyibo, 2017).Huntington in his foremost book: The Clash of Civilizations (1993) makes sufficient allusion to this claim when it asserts that the western civilization that is influenced by Christianity, is, as it were, on a war path with Islamic civilization. However, his assumptions have been heavily disputed. Critics suggest, among otherthings, that he ascribes

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