The things we face as Africans after the adoption of Tradition has opened doors to hypocrisy, We no longer want to balance who we are with who we are expected to be. As Africans, we have suffered the inferiority complex of being less to any other country regardless their foreign status even if measured less to ours and we have lived too long wanting to imbibe their ways that we often take chance with learning about others just to prove we know something our kind does not.
Till date, Nigerians still celebrate the learned as ‘First Nigerian To study Mechanical Engineering, First Nigerian to do this or do that’, another form of comparison with the landmark of people we look up to and all it has given back to us is atrocities, disaster and lawlessness.
The African Tradition maintained order, people knew rewards or consequences of actions without it written anywhere in History, but learned as we grow to know who we are and what side of the world we belong. The festivals and culture all had a purpose, the community right was a belief system. But today, Religion has persecuted our tradition and we all now want to eat or cake and have it, we want to say we are Africans but civilized, we want to change the culture, diluting what is with what we want.
There are gay pastors now, I guess they read the Bible too, conflict within the church, African pastors consulting deities, we are all going for a blend that cannot define to us who we are. Do we want to be traditional or do we want to be religious? Religion is an account of events of either personalities, fundamental teachings of being good towards our fellow man and pointing out our rights and wrongs. They were written. But tradition is no way different from this, if nothing at all, it was a rigid form of governing subjects to do what is expected .
Suddenly, religion came and everyone has an opinion, no one wants to learn as they grow, we all now have feelings. Tradition makes every action go through trial, kinsmen sit to deliberate on decisions to arrive at a positive conclusion, not based on feelings or sentiments, but on the greater good for great number of people.
We need to understand that religion and tradition are two separate things which cannot be exchanged with each other, One is to teach you to accept who you are while the other is to help you be a better man, both can be used to our advantage, but first we need to understand the channels and the usage of each at the right time, in the right place for the right purpose.
