Religious Tolerance and Peaceful Co-Existence: The Case of Female Religious Cults Relationship in Ijebuland, Ogun State Nigeria

Abstract

There is in Nigeria today, a depressed mood of daily occurrences of war, tension, impending collapse of the political system, social decay, corruption and religious violence. The core cause of this crisis in Nigeria among other reasons is religion. Despite various government’s efforts to put an end to all the violence there seems to be no end to the violence and intolerance dividing the nation. The various violent or religious crisis has had a bitter impact on inter-religious relationship in a pluralistic religious state like Nigeria. Most of the violence was caused by religious crisis, lack of tolerance among the different religious groups or faith, ignorance, the struggle for power and monopoly-having absolute knowledge about God. Since all the religions practised in Nigeria advocate peace, harmony, tolerance, patience understanding, good neighbourliness and even the idea of ‘live and let others live’, one then wonders why all the religious crisis or violence against each other. The theme of this paper is religious tolerance and peaceful co-existence from the perspective of the traditional African religion taking examples from the inter-cultic groups in Ijebuland. It is necessary to note that inter-cultic groups in Ijebuland would continue to be an integrating power that would unite people in Ijebuland and not disintegrate them. The traditional religion through the various activities of its adherents should be a reckon force for integration since there is a mutual inter-cult relationship among the various cultic group. Among these group of people, their religion is not a mere faith which they profess but a way of life, a system of social control through which they get an organizing mechanism in which they live their everyday life peacefully.

Keywords: Religious tolerance, peaceful co-existence, female cults, Ijebuland