Many scholars believed that western religion especially, Christianity and Islam which were brought about by colonialism and modernization have failed to adjudicate or uphold justice in most African countries such as Nigeria where the Bible and Quran are usually used to swear the oath of allegiance to the state by its officers.
The Anyiam Osigwe Anyiam Foundation held a conference on corruption which created a platform where African philosophers from different locations converged to discuss the African predicament and the savagery invasion of corruption in all works of life. They gave recommendations on how the monster called corruption can be tackled. One of the measures to curtail corruption as prescribed by some of the scholars (which seemed popularly agreed upon) was that Africans should go back to their traditional religion. That is, traditional gods should be used in the law courts to swear-in public office holders. These scholars believed that traditional religious gods have proved themselves potent in avenging any form of unfaithfulness from officers after swearing them into office.
But will the condition of things really change if traditional gods were used to appoint office holders? Will people not manipulate the whole process of swearing? Christians and Muslims believe that the ‘Almighty God’ do avenge (which always take a long time), but, the Nigerian predicament on corruption needs a faster means to curtail corruption. Traditionalists believe that traditional gods can be the final resort if only Africans can forsake their western religions and return to the indigenous religion. Lest we forget, traditional religion was actually neglected for western ones because it allowed some heinous crimes to be perpetrated by its worshippers even though it avenge wrongs. For example, the killing of twins in Calabar, using people for rituals to ward-off evil occurrence in the land, cutting the parts of the body of a king which the next king will ingest and so on, are even greater crimes which the gods found right in their sight. It was in the bid to eradicate these vices that western religions were introduced. If we are now to resort to our traditional religion, there is every likelihood that many of these vices would be rejuvenated.
In conclusion, I believe that both western and traditional religions have their strengths and weaknesses inherent in them. The religions brought by western civilization may be slow in avenging wrong, it seem to have helped in eliminating the crime rate amongst traditionalists. The traditional gods seem fast, but they have also encouraged what a rational agent will call evil.
