THE AMBIGUITIES OF OKOT P'BITEK'S DECOLONIZATION OF AFRICAN RELIGION

Abstract

A cursory glance reveals that anthropologists, philosophers, historians, colonial masters and missionaries have understood Africa variously. Unfortunately, this understanding has often been in the negative. This has relegated Africa to the background of mere obscurantism, and misled the world into believing that Africans are savages, primitive and reside in a dark continent where they sleep on trees, eat raw fruits and consort with apes. The need to reconstruct this history, has led to the emergence of positive efforts to re-establish, dig out and recover the stolen and damaged personality of the African by both scholars of African and western backgrounds. Okot p'Bitek remains one of those African scholars who have distinguished themselves in the critique of western misunderstanding or distortion of the African realities or worldview. This piece, therefore, focused on his critique of the western understanding of the African worldview. This work discovered that while trying to make an amend to the disfiguration of the African reality by western and African scholars, Okot showed himself a different class of his western and African counterparts as he is not without the influence of western thinkers. This paper employed the critical approach in the study of Okot p'Bitek's understanding of the concept of African traditional religion by some western and African thinkers. Given the very nature and concerns of this approach in research, it would focus on a reflective assessment of Okot p'Bitek's perspective in order to reveal the power and challenge the structures of his argument.