SOCIO-RELIGIOUS AND ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF TRADITIONAL FUNERAL RITES IN EZZALAND, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigated socio-religious and economic implications of traditional burial and funeral rites, using Ezzaland (as its scope). The purpose of this dissertation was to find solution to the burden of socio-religious duty of sending the dead home to the world of the ancestors by bereaved family, impact on families, causes of joy and merriment instead of mourning and sympathy, justification for expensive burial and funeral rites in Ezzaland, Nigeria. Data for this work were collected using primary and secondary sources. The collected data were interpreted using the cultural and qualitative models. This work finally reveals the following: The practice of burial and funeral rites is culturally normative in Ezzaland, and it is a social reality. It discovers also, that the existence of burial and funeral rites in their cultural and religious forms grant their socio-legal acceptance in Ezzaland. Furthermore, it reveals that the structural framework of Ezza society permits burial and funeral rites as part of the institutions in Ezzaland to perform various fuctions which include: socialization, social control, symbol-media of communiation and platform to remember the dead. The death of any member of the family leaves them with fear, sorrow and pain. Therefore, the duty owed to dead by the living is a befittiing burial. However, the rites associated with burial and funeral rites are meant to send the dead home to the world of the ancestors. But in doing this, the process has rather become very expensive that people now wince under the burden of this socio-religious duty of sending their dead home .It reels that this problem has caused families a lot of socio-religious and economic problems such as poverty, indebtedness, prostitution, child labor, abortion, destitution, death, violation of human rights, environmental pollution and desecration of environmental sustainability.