TRADITIONAL RELIGION, CULTURE AND THE PEOPLE OF ALOR-UNO

RELIGION is a fundamental, perhaps the most important, influence in the life of most of Alor-Uno citizens,  yet its essential principles are too often unknown to other Nsukka citizen who thus make themselves constantly liable to misunderstand the beliefs of every Alor-Uno child. This defines the identity of every Alor-Uno child. Do you believe that? Think my fellow citizens, this is because other Nsukka citizens see us as different people though that is not my problem.

Religion enters into every aspect of the life of every child of Alor-Uno citizens, both old and young and it cannot be studied in isolation. Its study has to go hand-in- hand with the study of the people who practise the religion and the peoples cultural heritage. When we speak of  Traditional Religion in Alor- Uno, we mean the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of the Alor-Uno citizen. It is the religion which resulted from the sustaining faith held by the forebears of the present Alor-Uno, and which is being practised today in various forms and various shades and intensities by a very large number of Alor-Uno citizens, including individuals who claim to be Christians. I think there is need to explain the word „traditional‟. According to Oxford Advanced leaner’s Dictionary it means the beliefs, customs or the way of life of a particular group of people, that have not changed for a long time. It can be described as indigenous, original or foundational belief of Alor-Uno people before the coming of Christian religion. This is a heritage from the past, but treated not as a thing of the past but as that which connects the past with the present and the present with eternity. Over time the indigenous religion of Alor-Uno people has changed due to the coming of foreign religion known as` Christianity’ but now the people don’t see it as foreign but as part of them, what a great improvement!!! Then the question is `what happen to the indigenous religion’, I mean what happened to the traditional religion of Alor-Uno people, the culture our forefathers passed down to us. From this question, I know some of us will say that those tradition and belief are archaic yes it is old but we can rebrand it and make life out it. Another question is how can we make life out these old traditions? Hmmmm!!! My fellow Alor-Uno citizens all we need is changes in those traditions, the understanding of personhood, one’s immanent metaphysics and the inquiry into existence generally is rooted in religion therefore lets work towards changing this tradition and culture. We are not unconscious of the fact that Alor-Uno is a large town with multitudes of villages who have different people, shrines, grooves and myriads of dialects. But in spite of all these differences, there are many basic similarities in the culture and tradition of these people.

Some of you may say that I am primitive or ignorance of the fact the Alor-Uno is a developed but the true fact is that we are far from development, let me explain the word primitive : According to The New Webster Encyclopaedic Dictionary defines primitive as „pertaining to the beginning or origin; original; first; old fashioned; characterized by the simplicity of old times.‟ but it seems you have forgotten where you started. History is a spring board to the development of a people, I know that young people like me seem particularly prone to dismissing the past as irrelevant, the modern generation feels they own the world and seeks to push away the baggage of the past generations, they also think that there is no benefits  in studying the past generation, for we to solve the problem of a Alor-Uno at large we must first of all find the root cause of the problem, which lies in the history of Alor-Uno. Do we need a griot? Yes , where can we find one who will tell us our history. The true strory.

We need to harness our indigenous craft, the problem here is not how to harness it but the people of Alor-Uno see those indigenous craft as old tradition, then lets tap from what we have UNN. According to Bishop (prof.) Godfrey Igwebuike Onah (Catholic Bishop of Nsukka) in the first Adada lecture held on 10 September 2011 he said “in the forty-seventh chapter of the book of prophet Ezekiel we read of the fresh water flowing from the temple into the sea, making the waters of the sea wholesome and giving new life to all living things (plants and animals) with which it came into contact. And one wondered whether the fresh water flowing from the Temple of knowledge, UNN- that revered den of roaring lions and lionesses – was flowing underground to somewhere else and therefore, could not touch Nwa Nsukka, refresh his vision and mentality in order to help him purify his culture and preserve its values in a way that would be more enriching to him and his community in contemporary society”.

Alor-Uno is over twenty five thousand (25000) in population but we cannot boast of two thousand five hundred graduates(2500), few lawyers, medical doctors, academic doctors but no single professor what a shame. This is very bad, the last Adada lecture I attended, on 18^th December 2012 was a big challenge to me this is because there were so many academic doctors and professors but in the register Alor-Uno was absent, perhaps that day I was the only Alor-Uno representative. That is by the way, lets go back to the business of the day.

Ohhhhhhhh!!!!!!

My fingers are weak now, I think i will end this whole thing with a simple statement “not every change is a progress, for the simple reason that not every movement is forward.

The best motto for Alor-Uno is CHANGE FOR PROGRESS.