Yoruba "Paganism" and Religious Tolerance in Africa

"Esin kan o pe k'awa ma s'oro." I have translated what it says and what it leaves unsaid but implied:
'Oro hampers no faith. Let no faith hamper Oro.' Here we encounter the first indication of intrinsic humanism of Yoruba spirituality: the valuation of pluralism. We encounter consciousness and validation of the spiritual essence of the Other. Indeed, we are in the presence of the accomodationist ethos of the Yoruba world view. For what this Oro canticle hints at and acknowledges is the presence of other faiths in its own spiritual space of actuation.


"Oro is demonstrating its awareness of the politics of otherness unleashed by the intrusion of two foreign faiths into the Yoruba world. Oro is acknowledging the presence of Christianity and Islam. These two newcomers are the esin kan that are being subtly referenced and advised to live and let live and not hamper older forms of spiritual expression. Oro will not bother you, for there is room enough in the sky for birds to fly without colliding. Oro is extending an olive branch to one religion that claims to be a religion of peace and another that claims to have been founded by the prime of peace himself.

From their history--or rather, the history of how their pacific essence has been twisted and bloodied across centuries by ignorant and intolerant adherents--we know that Christianity and Islam are strangers to the cosmopolitan and accomodationist graciousness of this Oro processional. For no sooner had the two religions been 'let in'--a la Stanley Meets Mutesa--than they began to invest in a sanguinary politics of otherness in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.

"One began to manufacture infidels who must be put to the sword via purificatory jihad, and the other, tolerating no alternative paths to spirituality, decreed itself the way, the truth, and the life. The draconian take-no-prisoners philosophy of these two religions could, of course, only eventuate in their total blindness to the accomodationist humanism of Oro....

"The humanism and pluralism which our forebears valued and celebrated are not mutually exclusive with Christianity and Islam. Esin kan o pe k'awa ma s'oro espouses an ancestral dictum of tolerance that Nigerian Muslims and Christians need to learn from. Will they ever be sufficiently humble to admit that they have anything to learn from spiritualities that the most obdurately ignorant among them still label paganism?"

Pius Adesanmi

You're Not a Country, Africa