INTER-RELIGIOUS CRISES IN THE NIGERIAN SOCIETY: A FOCUS ON AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION AS A VIA MEDIA

Abstract

Nigeria is a multi-religious society comprising several religious traditions but the major ones are Christianity, Islam and African Traditional Religion. The first two are missionary religions and as such are bound to struggle for spheres of influence with mutual suspicion, rivalry and the eventual snowballing into the different inter-religious crises we have had over the past four decades in the Nigerian society. The paper observes that all the inter-religious crises witnessed in the country was ochestrated by the influences of Christianity and Islam. With this reality on ground, the paper is focusing renewed attention to African Traditional Religion which is not a missionary religion because people are born into the religion and persons live out their religion from craddle to death. This then means that, African Traditional Religion would likely not compete for spheres of influence which makes it a peaceful religion that can co-exist with other religious traditions in multi-faith society like ours. The beliefs and practices of the religion makes it a via media between the extremes of Christianity and Islam in the religious equation and the incessant inter-religious crises spilling out thereof. The study is purely analytical in nature based on secondary sources of data. Some of the recommendations of the paper includes the following amongst others: government at all levels should introduce African Traditional Religion into our education system to learn basic beliefs and practices of the religion in order to use same for living harmoniously for the growth and development of a multi-faith Nigerian society, policy makers in Nigeria at all levels should adopt the bottom to top approach including the use of indigenous peace mechanisms inherent in African Traditional Religious Culture for the formulation of laws that will ensure peaceful co-existence of all and sundry.