I woke up one morning, and the lids that covered my eyes was shed off and i begin to reason in accordance to the ancient people who God has given the privilege to exist before I do. What come straight to my open mind ismy rich culture God has endowed me and my tribal kinsmen with. God has open my mind, and the mind of few yorubas who has not yet allow their religious believe and practice to affect their culture and tradition upliftment.
Now, what is digging deep into my mind is how we yorubas allow our religion to affect our culture and tradition. The western world and the Arid Arabs brought the religion we practice today, but when this two aliens came they brought us two things, i.e, their Religion and Culture. We are all victims of circumstances, we accepted them with open hands and they make us a foolby turning our lives around to hate our aged culture and tradition.
I am christian, I believe in God, and in Jesus Christ as the world saviour, some believe in Allah and the Prophet Muhammad as a messenger of Allah. This is a welcome religion because they brought hopes, liberation, peace and joy to our generation compared to the old religion our fore father practice which involved human sacrifice and the rest. And I stand to be quoted, 'the major reasonwe abandon our religion was as result of a better hope the later brought to us'. But with utmost sincerity, the culture that accompanied these religions, did it worth it for us to revolutionize our heritage?.
The basic question is that why should we mixed our religion and our heritage culture together?, these two are part of our life that makes our existence to be supreme compared to the other creatures God created. But these two parameters of our life can be confusing because they are equal and opposite.
It is a fact that all religion come with certain culture, but the practice of this culture give no room for the termination of our own culture, it is our overwhelming attitudes towards these religions that makes us to lay aside our God-given culture.
What pains me most is that everything in the south western region of Nigeria has been either christened or islamised. There is nothing like Traditional Marriage, Naming ceremony, outings, etc again. Some even think that by doing all this your are backsliding in your faith. Our children are not been tagged with yoruba name again. Some are even given good yoruba name, but decided to customize it, (Adebayo = Hardebayour, u can see many of those brainwashed fellow on facebook and twitter.). So, does that mean writing our full name and surname is a sin according to your faith, maybe your pastor or imam has told you that Adebisi is a name of a god, and he told you writing it this way (Hardebysie or Adebyislam) is Godly.
'Yoruba Ronu', if this trend should follow suit, Yoruba race is prone to extinction....
Kunle Orodele