OUR RELIGION AND OTHERS' !

Acting VC of Obafemi Awolowo : Ti e ba ni ju ogofa orisa ko le gba yin la, jesu ni kan lo to gba yin.

Literally means "if you have more than 120 deities, they can not save you, only Jesus can.

The Audience : Prof Elujoba's speech was flagrantly greeted with resent and indignation.


Source : student's journalist
Iya Oonirisa of Ife retorted : e ma da VC loun, won ko gbagbe Isaiah, Jeremiah, Mose ninu Bibeli won,nitorina ema se je ki a gbagbe isese ni tori oun ti awon baba wa file wa lowo ni sango, obatala abbl

In English it means " Don't mind VC, they didn't forget Isaiah, Jeremiah, Moses in their bible, don't let's us forget our tradition and culture for what our forefathers bequeath us were sango (god of thunder), obatala (god of river or so) etc

Iya Oonirisa : she further stated, that Nigeria is a secular, hence should be treated as such and nobody should try to relegate another religion.

The Audience: Her speech was welcomed with cheers and mouth-watering applause.

Those highlighted speeches and moods were excerpts of what ensued on Friday at a symposium organised by the Institute of cultural Studies, OAU, in conjunction with "The Sijuade Family" at Oduduwa Hall, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State. Titled " The past and life of Late Ooni of ife, Oba Okunade Sijuade.

From my score card, the Prof Elujoba fatally flawed in his opening speech and I never expected such a speech from a scholar in a culturally sensitive gathering, he approached evangelism through a wrong means amidst wrong moods. Where he got it wrong are
first, the symposium was organised by culturally acclimatized group and not and not ecclesiastical group
Second, the audience was so traditional, most audience were kings, who may also be regarded as "Igba keji orisa" (second in command to deity)
Third, it was a symposium was attended by Kings, majority were traditional worshippers, a few were christianity and Islam adherents, hence should be treated as a secular gathering.

As a learned person, I expected him to have studied the mood of his audience, their religion affiliation and the reason for the gathering before he presented the opening speech. The symposium was organised by an institute of cultural studies which had no fewer than ten Kings in attendance including ooni of ife Oba Adeyeye Enitan amongst others.

The mood of the audience plays a vital role when making speeches, the mood of the audience in Prof Elujoba case was far from condescending, why? He preached the gospel amidst the wrong gathering, he proclaimed appropriate words in an inappropriate way to appropriate persons with inappropriate moods.

What we need to learn from this against the future as adherents to a particular religion , we need to observe our audience and study their mood, it is definitely and imperatively good to preach what we believe in, proclaim the cause we believe in but does that mean we shouldn't respect others for their religious tendencies?

Nay. Nay, I reiterate!

Religion is an individual tendency and not collective or institutionalised tendencies and as such courtesy demands that we respect other persons religion so as to avert religious furore. We need to be extreme about religion, even the harbingers and religion originators weren't extreme.

Perhaps, religion is just an identifier of how some persons worship their God or gods or the cause they believe in, the fact that you want them to come to light because you know have conviction that you are in light don't warrant flagrant condescension of their religion.

We need to jettison our "holier-than-thou" approach to religion and preach the cause we believe in without resenting mind and shy away from relegation of other religion in the course. Who knows if you would have been a subscriber to the religion you are condemning had it been you were not born into your present religion. Perhaps, no religion can was mentioned in our holy books, and religiosity should not be regarded as spirituality.

Perhaps, we shouldn't be so fanatically affiliated to a particular religion and allow it to becloud our senses of reasoning, treat people the way they and respect their believe.

I am very much sure that this nation would have been greater than this if not for one of the banes of this nation which is religion - bigotry.

With religious tolerance, we can culture and nature a peaceful co-existence of multi-religuous cum secular nation without upheaval

"For verily I know that when you know the truth, the truth shall set you free".

Hv always said it. The fact that u are designated a proffessor doesnt necessarily imply that u will be logically sound. Imagine a prof that is still a slave to the arabic/jew gods in this 21st century. The indians hv held on to their indigenous believes see the progress they hv made in human development now juxtapose that with any of these other countries that vehemently practice these funny abrahamic mythology!....I weep for Africa

Zeus777:
Hv always said it. The fact that u are designated a proffessor doesnt necessarily imply that u will be logically sound. Imagine a prof that is still a slave to the arabic/jew gods in this 21st century. The indians hv held on to their indigenous believes see the progress they hv made in human development now juxtapose that with any of these other countries that vehemently practice these funny abrahamic mythology!....I weep for Africa

you nailed it bro.

Christians and stupidity are very close


imagine the nonsense a professor said upon his so called education

The fact that we share the same surname prefix which makes him an original Ife is an embarrassment.

I hope the Yorubas don't do to their culture what the Igbos and others have done to theirs. Its a shame that an educator could stand in front of people and insult an original African culture culture. If the Europeans had eradicated their own culture would we have Christians today in Nigeria? USELESS OLD MAN

YungMillionaire:
I hope the Yorubas don't do to their culture what the Igbos and others have done to theirs. Its a shame that an educator could stand in front of people and insult an original African culture culture. If the Europeans had eradicated their own culture would we have Christians today in Nigeria? USELESS OLD MAN

They kind of did. If they didn't, they would be worshipping Odin and Thor today. Christianity is not European. It was adopted and adapted from the Middle East

RedboneSmith:


They kind of did. If they didn't, they would be worshipping Odin and Thor today. Christianity is not European. It was adopted and adapted from the Middle East

Same idea. So what if the Middle Easterners abandoned Christianity? The point I am trying to make is every society has its culture. If you abandon your culture, another culture will REPLACE IT. This is why I am neither a Christian or a Muslim. Because both Christianity and Islam are FOREIGN culture- basically a form of colonialism.