BY WILLIAMS C. IHEME
Africa is a melting pot of different religions. Its present day belief systems are a combination of indigenous African religions that were practiced before the colonization of Africa and imported monotheistic faiths-most notably Judeo-Christianity and Islam. African colonialists were successful in introducing and replacing the indigenous religions first because they had the advantage of formal education. All religions are based on some form of superstition-beliefs that are unsupported by scientific evidence-but a formally educated mind has the advantage of entertaining doubt, and using the instrument of doubt to strongly challenge the tenets of religious belief. The 15th century African’s deficiency in formal education compared to the colonialists they interacted with was the former’s inability to question and examine their superstitions in a philosophical manner.
The African colonialists also demonstrated their superiority through scientific, and especially by military strength-shooting opponents to serve as a deterrent in an era when many Africans believed that only angry gods could wield a power such as striking down a powerful man in broad daylight. The colonialists also showed that they had a superior god by exploiting the vacuum that exists in all non-monotheistic religions, which is the acknowledgement that there is a mighty god in the universe, of which their own smaller gods are inferior agents. Colonialists claimed that this allpowerful god was theirs, and corroborated this assertion by developing large expanses of unused land originally deemed to be “evil forests” where the various African gods lived, by building churches and schools therein. There was also the occasional show of power when they administered superior medicines that cured diseases in local communities. Being able to survive in the taboo forests and the strategic display of sciencebased medicine convinced indigenous Africans that the colonialists’ god was the right one; thus they surrendered their own religious faith and their gods, especially when the missionary movements started to demonise Africans who retained their traditional religions.