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Of Traditional Yoruba Religious System and Tolerance

Thursday morning, I was at a bank in Ibadan with a friend who teaches at the University. A man came to the bank sometime after we got there with three children. My friend looked at the kids who were busy tossing a filled balloon over their heads and wondered if I felt the thrills of Christmas. I remembered, at that moment, how I used to feel whenever Christmas approached. The Christmas season is a time for ‘Aso Odun’ – cloth bought to be used on Christmas day; it was also time for a few toys. Thinking about it now, I wondered how it came to be that a major feature in the Christmas presents package is a toy gun – water toy guns of dart toy guns. I always looked forward to that. When we were much younger, we all wore ‘anko’. We would be dressed in the same fabric, sown in the same style, for the Christmas day. I remember that even though I was really young I always hated it. After a while that stopped and we simply had Aso Odun.

I turned to the oldest of the children who came to the bank and asked whether he was looking forward to Christmas. He replied Yes. My friend said that he didn’t have that old thrill any more. I said the same thing for myself. The man we met at the bank said that he still looked forward to the Christmas season, not because of the Christmas itself, but because it was a time for people to meet. It was a time for family members who have been away from home for a long time to go to their villages and stay for a while. In Germany, I learnt that Christmas day is a very family day. People go home to their families and have the family dinner together. (One of my friends told me that she normally drank a lot of wine to be able to go through the ordeal of staying with the family.) The man went ahead to say that his father was a Muslim but that he himself had converted to Christianity. He said, however, that he continued the tradition of going back home during the Eid el Kabir celebrations to kill a ram for his Muslim family members.

My friend pointed out that that was a very important part of the Yoruba religious system. In the Yoruba traditional religious system, in the same family, one could have each member of the family worshipping a different god, without any person proselytizing or persecuting another. That, my friend said, was a great indication of tolerance. It, my friend continued, informed why the man we met at the bank still gave presents to the members of his family who were still Muslims, during an Islamic ceremony.

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By loomnie – December 15, 2007

  • Anja
    To me it seems religious tolerance in Nigeria has clear boundaries:

    If you have are Christian, Muslim and to some extend Ifa, you are acceptable. Although I remember that one of my friends, an Ifa priestess, had difficulties with her Nigerian host family because the later were afraid of her magic, it seems Nigerians mostly accept people with a different religion than their own.

    However, they find it hard to cope with people without any religion. If you tell them that you don't believe in god(s), then you likely will get to hear a preach or get "dragged" to the next church. Although they do it in a friendly way, I do not consider that tolerance.
  • That is the wonderful thing about our culture, in that it is welcoming. I am Yoruba and was raised Christian, but I have family members that are Muslim. As a child, I remember going with them to pray on Fridays and they would come to Church on Sundays. I managed to escape Arabic practice with the Imam however (thank goodness).

    This was a good post about the spirit of Xmas as well. If there is one thing I miss about Nigeria, it is spending Christmas and New Years with loads of family members in one house. Oh well. Merry Christmas to you.
  • Ol boy you don land? Wow didn't even know.
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