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25 

RELIGION AND HUMAN VALUES: AN 

INQUISITION OF THE AFRO-CENTRIC 

IMPERATIVE. 
 

Prof. John Afiagbokai ONIMHAWO 
Department of Religious Management and Cultural Studies, 

Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma. Edo State, Nigeria. 
jonimhawo@gmail.com 

& 
Cyril Osilama ADAMU Ph.D 

College of Education, Ekiadolor, Benin City. 
cytechsystem@yahoo.com 

 
Abstract 
Contemporary debates by scholars on the relevance or otherwise of 
African values system and thought process had further opened the 
floodgate of the ambivalence between those scholars seeking to define 
African values and morality within the parameters of a conventionalized 
Western religious epistemological hegemony, thereby accentuating the 
superiority of Western values. On the other side of the debate are 
scholars pursuing an “Africanist” explanation which embraces an 
authentic mode of African knowledge construction of human values and 
morality.  The objective of this paper is to examine the Afro-centric 
imperative of the African thought process in the current moral discourse, 
in order to extrapolate an endorsement which will grant space for a 
hybrid of moral reconstructions between Christianity and African 
indigenous religion and thought process. This study is cached within the 
theoretical framework of the Afro-centric Cultural Distinctive Paradigm 
(ACDP) which encapsulates African indigenous religion and human 
values. However, within the grindstone of spotlighting African human 
values, is the inevitable project of decolonization. This paper therefore 
explores the task of decolonizing African thought against the backdrop of 
the ontological normative dialectics of superiority and inferiority. This 
paper argues against the superiority of Western thought and values over 
African values. In order to argue for this conclusion, this discourse finds 



338 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

it expedient to denude in more precise terms, some positive human 
values of African thought process; an investigation that leads to the 
interplay between the decolonization of African thought and the 
decolonization of the African intellectual landscape. This paper disturbs 
and unpacks the colonial project and calls to contestation Western 
hegemony and the continuous dominance of Western thought even 
amongst African scholars (theologians and philosophers).  This paper 
concludes by asserting that the differences that exist between African 
religious human values and western values must not necessarily have 
normative consequences; as things can be different without having to be 
placed within a normative hierarchy.  The contention that African values 
should be of less worth than Western values is therefore repudiated. The 
Paper advances the understanding of religion and human values from the 
perspective of African indigenous worldview.  The recommendation is 
that there should be an integrated approach to resolving the current 
crises of human values. 
Keywords: Religion, Human Values and Afrocentricism. 
 
Introduction 
The deadweight of accentuating African indigenous religious and human 
values in contemporary scholarship is fraught with many difficulties 
punctuated by fluctuations, oscillation, and occasional regressions. 
Although some progress is being made, this progression has not always 
been rectilinear but nonetheless exhibiting some level of advances.  
Vivaciously this process has been set in motion by the aspirations of 
many African intellectuals like Kwame Anthony Appiah, Kwasi Wiredu, 
Henry Odera Oruka, John Mbiti, Bolaji Idowu, Frantz Fanon, and Aimé 
Césaire; and many other African activists like Steve Biko and Nelson 
Mandela. Interestingly the project of decolonization of the African 
thought process has also been the preoccupation of non-African 
contemporary scholars like Björn Freter1 and very few others. These 
antecedents should suggest that the crusade before African contemporary 
scholarship is the acceleration of the contention to decolonize African 
thought process, including the valuation and transvalution of indigenous 
religious and human values.  

The crisis of values pervading contemporary Nigeria moral space 
is inexorable, which requires a high level of critical reflection in the 
search for ways through which the moral challenge posed by the agents 
of Western acculturation can be adequately addressed. The tremendous 
impact of Western acculturation on the nation and the speeding erosion 
of well enacted Afro-centric religious and human values are readily seen 
in the ways many African indigenous normative systems are being 
seriously undermined even by some African intellectuals and African 



Section III: Religious/Socio-Cultural Perspectives And Human Formation    339 

converts to non-indigenous religions. This situation has led to the 
waning away of African values system in the face of alien values.  
 Therefore the enterprise to underscore African religious and human 
values is one that must not be taken lightly, because every society has set 
of values covering the whole ramifications of the society, and these 
values apparently play regulating roles in human relationships and act as 
stabilizing factors of the society. As asserted by Kanu “value system is the 
cultural outlook of a people and the understanding of the value system of 
the people is the understanding of the belief system and cultural system 
of the people in question.”2 

In proffering solutions to the misadventure of the Nigerian 
project, the dominant tenor within the public space is the narrative that 
posits that the solution to the Nigerian question is at the narthex of 
formulating the right economic policies and fashioning a suitable 
political ideology. This line of thinking has reached a crescendo that any 
contrary opinion is often repudiated. While some level of truth resides in 
the above assertion: that economics and politics play undeniable 
importance in the development of any nation, public discourse tends 
however to discount the most fundamental aspect of the society: namely 
its ethical dimension. Therefore, an accurate design of economic policies 
and the adoption of the proper political ideology, without a 
corresponding attestation of an ethical value system are most unlikely to 
yield any meaning human development. Ethical behavior in every area of 
the public space should provide the fundamental philosophical 
foundation for authentic human development, because: “economic and 
political choices as a society are ultimately determined by moral values.”3 
Plato said, “States are as men are; they grow out of human character.” So 
the Nigerian state is a product of the Nigerian character as a nation 
cannot rise above the values of her citizens. 

What is profoundly and eminently obvious is that there is a crisis 
of values in Nigeria, which has led to the agitation and clamour for 
invigorating and maintaining durable and lasting positive values in 
Nigeria. The draught of positive values is made manifest in all sphere of 
public life. There is the abuse and perversion of teachers-students 
relationship which is supposed to be a vital mentoring relationship. 
Religious institutions have fallen into moral disrepute owing to a 
number of high profile scandals with the attended disdained for the 
emissaries of organized religion.  Religious leaders are increasingly 
vulnerable to the criticism that they are far more comfortable courting 
the rich and the powerful than speaking truth to power. The post-
modern Nigeria society is increasingly being typified by instant 
gratification that feeds on short-termism, profiteering, fraud, sexual 
irresponsibility and perversion.  Without making hasty and unsustainable 



340 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

generalizations, the consensus is that the Nigeria public space is suffused 
by inordinately disproportionate returns on non- investments (which in 
popular palace is called corruption), cheating, predatory exploitation and 
feverish individualism at the expense of the common good. 

Arriving at a broadly agreed upon set of values that will launch 
Nigeria into the path of moral rectitude is one of the most urgent tasks 
for Nigerian public intellectuals and social thinkers. The objective of this 
paper therefore is to examine the Afro-centric imperative in the 
enthronement of positive religious and human values in order to 
extrapolate an endorsement which will grant space for a hybrid of moral 
reconstructions. 
 
Conceptual Clarity 
Religion  
Religion is a victim of definitional pluralism as there is no scholarly 
consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. For the purpose 
clarity, the paper adopts Émile Durkheim definition of religion as a 
"unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things".4 By 
sacred things Durkheim meant things set apart and forbidden, beliefs and 
practices and all those who adhere to them. Sacred things are not, 
however, limited to gods or spirits. On the contrary, a sacred thing can 
be a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house.  Religious 
beliefs, myths, dogmas and legends are the representations that express 
the nature of these sacred things, and the virtues and powers which are 
attributed to them. Antoine Vergote on his part defined religion as “… 
the entirety of the linguistic expressions, emotions and, actions and signs 
that refer to a supernatural being or supernatural beings.”5 Vergote took 
the term supernatural simply to mean whatever transcends the powers of 
nature or human agency.  

Therefore religious values are ethical principles founded on 
religious traditions, texts and beliefs. These values are usually considered 
to be the high moral and ethical values that people of faith aspire to 
achieve.  In contrast to human or personal values, religious-based values 
are based on the scriptures and or a religion's established norms. For 
example, Judaism has the Ten Commandments. Christianity has both 
the ten commandment and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Islam provides 
spiritual guidance through the Quran and Hadith, while African 
traditional religious values are expressed through the customs, culture, 
beliefs and practices of the Africans. 
 Christians and Muslims comprise the predominant religious groups 
in Nigeria. Christianity is more common in the southern region of the 
country, while Islam is the dominant religion in the north. Indigenous 
traditional religion accounts for about 10 percent of the population. 



Section III: Religious/Socio-Cultural Perspectives And Human Formation    341 

These traditional religions are specific to certain rural or indigenous areas 
and are usually intertwined with either Christianity or Islam. Each of 
these religious groups has various religious values which serve as a guide 
and control of human behavior, dictating right from wrong.  
 
Human Values 
Many social scientists have tried to give meaning to the word “value” by 
articulating many definitions. Among these are: Allport, Jones and 
Gerald, and Rokeach. Allport in his publication titled Pattern and Growth 
in Personality sees value as: “a belief upon which a man act by 
preference.”6 Jones and Gerald in their join text defined value as: “any 
singular state or object for which the individual strives or approaches, 
extols, embraces, voluntarily consumes, incur expenses to acquire as 
positive value.”7 According to these social scientists, values sensitize the 
person; they move him around his environment because they define his 
attractive and repelling nature and particular cognitive categories. 
Therefore a value offers a motivational force, defines, sustains and 
modifies attitude and behaviour. 

 Another attempt to create a more lucid meaning of the word 
“value” is found in the work of Rokeach titled The Nature of Human 
Values. Rokeach says “a value is an enduring belief that a specific mode of 
conduct or end state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an 
opposite or converse mode of conduct or end state of existence.”8  

Experts in the humanities have described human values as “our 
very core, the especial essence of who we are as human beings.”9  Human 
values are the virtues that guide us to take into account of the human 
element when we interact with other human beings. Human values are, 
for example, respect, acceptance, consideration, appreciation, listening, 
openness, affection, empathy and love towards other human beings. 
These are the demonstrable and authentic values on which any human 
society should be built upon. Some human values in traditional African 
society include honesty, morality, respect for elders, respect for fellow 
citizens, communality and family loyalty. One of the most significant 
values that traditional Africans hold to be of great importance is the 
wisdom of its elders. Age is a symbol of experience and intelligence, and 
the mistreatment of said elders is viewed as taboo. 
 
Afrocentricism and Afro-centric Cultural Distinctive Theoretical 
Framework 
Louis Gates and Anthony Appiah view Afrocentrism as a cultural 
ideology or worldview that focuses on the history of the people of 
African descent. It is a response to global Eurocentric attitudes about 
African people and their historical contributions; it revisits their history 



342 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

with an African cultural and ideological focus.10 In most studies, 
Afrocentrism is usually interchanged with Afrocentricity which deals 
primarily with Pan-African ideology in culture, philosophy, and history. 
Afrocentrism can be seen as an African inspired ideology that manifests 
an affirmation by conceptualizing a glorified heritage that is distinctly 
African. This is what defines the Afro-centric cultural distinctive 
theoretical framework. It often argues against or minimizes European 
cultural hegemony and influences, while accenting historical African 
civilizations that independently accomplished a significant level of 
cultural development. In general, the Afro-centric cultural distinctive 
paradigm is usually manifested in a focus on African culture and the 
history of Africa. It involves an African version of an African-centered 
view of history and culture to portray the achievements and development 
of African traditions which have been inferiorized by the West.11 In his 
book, The Afrocentric Idea, Asante defines Afrocentricity as "the placing of 
African ideals at the center of any analysis that involves African culture 
and behavior."12 It should be emphasized that this perspective is not an 
explicit argument for African superiority in culture and history, although 
some scholars have used it to that end. Rather, the Afro-centric cultural 
distinctive paradigm is a conceptual tool for seeing the history of African-
descended peoples through their own lens, and not through the lens of 
Europe or the West. As a mode of analysis, Afrocentrism has remained 
remarkably durable over the past two hundred years; however, scholars 
have often reached radically different conclusions in their utilization of 
this analytical tool. 

According to Asante, what is today broadly called Afrocentrism 
evolved out of the work of African intellectuals that flowered into its 
modern form due to the activism of African intellectuals in the civil 
rights movement and in the development of African studies programs in 
universities as a distinct academic ideology.13 Proponents of Afrocentrism 
support the claim that the contributions of various Africans have been 
downplayed or discredited as part of the legacy of colonialism and 
slavery's pathology of "writing Africans out of history."14 Afrocentrism 
argues that for centuries, Africans and other nonwhites have been 
dominated, through slavery and colonization, by Europeans, and that 
European culture is diametrically opposed to efforts by non-Europeans 
to achieve self-determination. For this reason, according to 
Afrocentrism, people of African descent need to develop an appreciation 
of the achievements of traditional African civilizations; indeed, they need 
to articulate their own history and their own system of values.15 . 

Afrocentrists assert that traditional African culture contrasts with 
European culture in being more informed by its history “circular” rather 
than “linear”; more cooperative; more intuitive; more humano-centric; 



Section III: Religious/Socio-Cultural Perspectives And Human Formation    343 

and more closely integrated with the spiritual world.16 Renewed attention 
to this culture, they argue, can benefit Africans by reminding them that 
their own culture, which was long been devalued by Europeans, has a 
rich and ancient heritage. In addition to emphasizing the past, 
Afrocentrism encourages the preservation and elevation of contemporary 
African culture.17 
 
Western Textualisation of African Values and Thought Process 
Edem Kodjo, the author of ‘Africa Tomorrow’ aptly describes the western 
textualization and colonization of African values and thought process as 
the condition of the African “torn away from his past, propelled into a 
universe fashioned from outside that suppresses his values, and 
dumbfounded by a cultural invasion that marginalizes him. The African 
... is today the deformed image of others.”18 The westernization of 
African values is the perception of ethnic and cultural inferiority, a form 
of internalized oppression engrained in the contemporary African 
psyche. This disposition was supported by an educational system which 
drew the African away from his community and misled him by showing 
him the green pastures of the European society where he is not allowed 
to graze.19 Western education introduced a western culture-transmitting 
process with an attitude that neither respects the core values of African 
culture, nor leads the present generation to acquire accumulated 
knowledge of African values with pride. The educational process directed 
the African thought process away from African values; equipping him 
with a type of education that is antagonistic to the African cultural values 
and thought patterns.20 Onwubiko said: 
Western system of education was very well calculated to teach the new 
Africans that in order to rise in the ladder of the new culture and acquire 
the status it promised; they must be alienated, ideologically and 
physically, from their root and their cultural past. The colonial agents 
presented themselves as symbols of human beings, in the image and 
likeness of whom all future generation Africans were to be created.21  

This is the thinking that foreign values are always better and 
superior, while the indigenous are primitive, uncultured and barbaric. 
Therefore a colonized African thought is the acceptance, by the 
colonized, of the culture or doctrines of the colonizer, as intrinsically 
more worthy or superior. This is the mentality that still plagues Africa 
many years after independence, and despite all the knowledge and 
education. This is why Nyerere said: “of all the crimes of colonialism 
there is none worse than the attempt to make us believe that we had no 
indigenous culture of our own or that what we did have was worthless or 
something of which we should be ashamed, instead of being a source of 
pride.”22 Therefore the Western textualisation of African values is 



344 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

responsible for the wholesale importation and adoption of Western 
values and the repudiation of African heritage, as if there was never 
anything good in Africa history and values. 

African nationalists who worked so hard for the liberation of 
Africans from physical enslavement and actual colonization may not have 
realized that intellectual slavery and mental enslavement that works 
insidiously at the level of the mind was more pervasive, more vicious and 
even more cruel and exacting, than political colonization. Once people’s 
mind is conquered and enslaved, the dominion and domination naturally 
extend to other domains such as politics, economics and even religion. 
This mental enslavement comprehensively dehumanized and stripped 
Africans of their humanity; a situation which makes the work of the 
conqueror easier. Thus, the colonization of African mind makes Africans 
tend to treat Europeans and their allies as demigods.  

The effects of the colonized African mind also included the near 
extinction of African culture, which has greatly diluted or destroyed 
African heritage, including the destruction of African traditional 
institutions and religion. The Europeans forced the people to learn their 
language, taught them how to eat European food and dress like 
Europeans, abandoning their own traditional eating habits and dressing. 
From then on the Africans occupied only the inferior positions of the 
colonial administration and never had a say in the government of their 
own countries. Those employed by the colonial administration felt 
proud and more superior to the others. Even today Africans who are 
schooled in western ways of life feel more superior to other Africans. 
This deculturalization of Africa paved the way for the acceptance of the 
dominance of Europe and European values over African heritage, and the 
rejection African culture in exchange for the colonial culture.  

A colonized African thought process is today a burden and 
barrier to the progress of Africa, as Africans now prefer foreign lifestyle, 
culture, music, literature and others. Today Africans conduct two (at 
times three) separate full-blown marriage ceremonies, because in our 
minds, until the “White Wedding” is done the marriage ceremony is not 
complete. Thus there is the traditional marriage (which is actually the 
proper marriage ceremony according to African heritage), then the 
marriage at the registry, and the third which is the “white wedding”. In 
politics, the colonized African thought process seeks to implement 
democracy as defined by the western nations without regard to the fact 
the democracy as a system of government grew and evolved from the 
way of life of these nations with their own variant of democracy.   

It is believed in most part of Africa that one will automatically 
become rich if he/she can travel to Europe or America, as many Africans 
believe there is no poor man in Europe because it is a whiteman's 



Section III: Religious/Socio-Cultural Perspectives And Human Formation    345 

country. This is why many young Africans: men and women are ready to 
cross the Sahara desert on foot upward to Europe through dangerous and 
unfathomable means through the sea. The colonized African mind 
believes that what makes a beautiful African man or woman is the 
whiteness or fairness of the skin. So that an individual is ready to bleach 
the skin to white as it is the belief that white skin is better than black 
skin.  

Franz Fanon’s book Black skin, white masks” provides some 
edification here. Fanon writes that “the juxtaposition of the black and 
white ‘races’ has resulted in a massive psycho-existential complex”.23 
Fanon through his work sought to liberate the black man from the 
arsenal of complexes that germinated in the colonial situation. Fanon 
believes that it is necessary for the black person to overcome the 
psychological effects of colonialism.24 

Freter avows that what is largely responsible for this state of 
affairs is the superiorization of Western thought over African thought. 
According to Freter: 
Western thought is infused with a permanent tacit assumption of 
superiority of a metaphysical proportion, a diffuse conviction of being 
the one and only thought that truly counts. It is from this assumption of 
superiority, entirely in accordance with Western textbook dialectics, that 
the idea of inferiorisation directly and necessarily emanates. When one 
entity is considered superior, others must be considered inferior. Anyone 
who thinks in this manner has good conceptual reason to make the leap 
from one to the other. This movement of thought shows only that the 
plain and arbitrary positing of one’s own greatness simultaneously means 
the positing of the other, i.e. the one which is not great. This positing, 
because it follows necessarily from an arbitrary act, is itself also 
arbitrary.25 
 The onslaught Christianity and Islam on African traditional religion 
is yet another sad narrative. While early missionaries condemned and 
forbid our forebears from venerating African ancestors; on the other 
hand, the missionaries introduced and propagated the veneration of the 
saints which most often were Eurocentric ancestors. On one hand the 
missionaries condemned our most revered masquerades, while in the 
same breath brought in Santa Claus. These missionaries saw nothing 
good in African indigenous religion including African theocentric names 
that conveyed more theocentric connotation to the African mind. Indeed 
the whole of African traditional religion was cached in derogatory 
terminologies. However due the consented pioneering efforts of 
Geoffrey Parrinder in 1954, later Bolaji Idowu and John Mbiti where to 
protest against a long history of derogatory elucidation of Africans, their 
culture and religion by outsiders. Interestedly African Traditional 



346 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

Religion (ATR) is now widely taught in African universities and 
Seminaries, but its identity remains essentially negative. To the West, 
what was not Christian was non-religious and non-theocentric. What 
was African was inferior and what was Western was superior. The 
success of Christianity and Islam on the African continent in the last 100 
years has been extraordinary, but it has been, unfortunately, at the 
detriment of African indigenous religion and culture. 
 
Religion and Human Values: The Afrocentric Imperative 
The African tradition consists of basic human values which are 
indispensable for authentic human development.26 It is expedient to 
denude in more precise terms, some positive human values of African 
traditional thought process: 
 
African Value for Human Life 
The greatest arguments against African traditional religion and customs 
by Westerners and their apologists are the practices of human sacrifice 
and twin murder, which are usually evidenced as lack of regard for 
human dignity. The misleading slant arising from these practices 
eventuate in the colonial writers to describe Africans as primitive, dark, 
pagan, brutes, cannibalistic, crude and savages. While these writers can 
easily be forgiven for their epistemological deficiency, the point must be 
hurriedly made that African society has a very high regard for the human 
person and the preservation of human dignity.  

The dignity of the human person is seen in African cosmology 
and human origins. Ikenga - Metuh asserted that: viewed from the 
standpoint of his origin and final destiny of man is best understood in 
relation to God, his creator. Man comes from God. He has a definite 
mission to fulfill in God's plan and will eventually go back to God.27 The 
dignity of human person is seen in relationship of being created by God, 
the human complex nature which God imprinted in man is the crown of 
God's creation and provision for a continual interaction through rituals, 
despite human limitations. 
 The dignity of the human person is also identifiable in the African 
insatiable desire to worship. Mbiti has rightly observed that Africans do 
not know how to exist without religion.28 Wherever the African is, there 
is religion and its morals. In pre-colonial Africa, the human person is a 
religious being, wherefrom follows his human dignity. The African 
concept of human dignity is not found in earthly riches and abundance, 
but in the nobility of his religious being. Therefore the relationship 
between individuals is based on the recognition of their intrinsic worth 
as human beings; not necessary only in what they possess or what they 
can do for each other. 



Section III: Religious/Socio-Cultural Perspectives And Human Formation    347 

African Sense of a good Life 
In all African traditions, the idea that there is far more to life than vested 
self interest and the inordinate pursuit of riches is deeply ingrained in the 
African thought process. There is the African proverb that says: “a good 
name is better than riches”.  This is a timeless truth in African values 
system which seems to have been jettison in post-colonial Africa. It is 
indubitable that one of the greatest problems of today’s Nigeria is within 
the ambience of self-centeredness and unbridled vested self interest. The 
Nigeria society today needs to re-evaluate and re-emphasize what it 
means to be rich. Certain questions beg for answers: is the frantic 
acquisition and primitive accumulation of wealth all that Nigerians have 
to live for, or should Nigerians be seeking intangible human values that 
cannot be subjected to monetary evaluation, but which nonetheless are 
the real basis for living a fulfilled life? What matters most is a good 
character. In African traditional society wealth will come to naught if one 
lacks good character. A life without moral rectitude is nothing but vanity.  
Interestingly contemporary social science researches are fast coming to 
the conclusion that inordinate pursuit of capitalism and the zero-sum 
competition for money and status in the developed world is a major 
source of unhappiness.29  

There is abundant anecdotal evidence to suggest that people find 
new meaning and fulfillment in their lives when they free themselves 
from the acquisitive treadmill and begin to give of themselves. In other 
words, social science is now proving what African indigenous 
epistemology and axiology have always known through the wisdom of 
African ancestors that: generosity rather than consumption is the key to 
happiness. Current social researches are therefore reclining to the 
traditional African thought that what is truly require for happiness is  
nurturing healthy relationships, cultivating friendships, serving others, 
raising well-adjusted children,  and being involved in a community.30 
Only a life that transcends the narrow goals of self-aggrandizement and 
self-gratification can be truly happy. A society of transcendent human 
values such as those found in African traditional society can be truly safe. 
A society in which all individuals are committed to nothing more than 
the single-minded pursuit of their self-gratification at the expense of 
everything else is a dangerously predatory society in which no one can 
ever be truly safe – sadly these are the operating parameters of most post-
colonial African societies. This situation of self-centeredness is what is 
expressed in the Afemai proverb: mokpaira rele ikhekhe le gbo “I will eat all 
alone suffers constipation.” 
 
 
 



348 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

African Sense of Parenting  
In African traditional values system, parenting takes a lot of forms which 
enables a child to develop into a responsible adult. Some of these forms 
of parenting are: through story telling (folktales), the extended family, 
traditional rites, and the mother's care, attention and love.31 The 
uniqueness of this system with regards to parenting in traditional African 
communities is that the responsibility in taking care of the child is not 
only to the biological parents. This is shared by all in the extended 
family. This is buttressed by the African proverb on parenting which says 
that, “a single hand cannot nurse a child”. This in Afemai would mean: 
aro obokpa ro omo. Yet again, another African proverb says “it takes a 
village to raise a child”. This implies that although the mother has the 
responsibility of taking care of the child, the responsibility is being 
shared by all.  

Arguably therefore, the most significant indicator of national 
instability is not found in politics or economics but in the ways in which 
children are raised and socialized.  Parents, teachers, older relatives and 
friends must be good exemplars to young ones and should have lasting 
positive influences on our lives. These early influences define their 
identities and what they later understand to be acceptable standards of 
societal behaviour. The family, very broadly defined, is the premier 
learning environment. Research has shown that what happens to a child 
in the earliest years has a formative impact on the personality and 
character development which in turn affects the rest of his life.32 It is 
within families that the critical standards of right and wrong are acquired. 
In African traditional society parents are the primary audience before 
whom children model a lifestyle of integrity, purpose and service to the 
common good.  
 
The Lack of Monetization of Values 
There is no gainsaying the fact that contrary to the African human values 
system that the monetization of values has broken down our traditional 
definitions of authority within the family system. Before now, the most 
respected were those who were reputed for their ethical constancy and 
moral authority. Just now, the most influential members of the family 
are those who have illicitly or otherwise earned wealth from stints in 
government or corporate enterprise.33 Despite the knowledge of their 
crimes, we celebrate these men and women because of what we stand to 
gain from them financially. Those who are the real voices of reason 
within the family are marginalized, derided for their lack of financial heft 
and mocked for their insistence on values that are now consider 
irrelevant. 
 



Section III: Religious/Socio-Cultural Perspectives And Human Formation    349 

African Sense of Community-based Living  
African value for community-based living and relationships are found in 
works of Davidson,34 Mbiti,35 Okere36 and Ogbujah37 and a lot more. The 
sense of community or communality refers to the awareness which 
identifies an individual not as a solitary being, but as an entity whose 
being and survival is consequent upon its union with other human 
beings within an identified locality. In traditional Africa for instance, a 
person is known and identified in, by and through his community. 
Individual lives, moves and revolves around the community. To a large 
extent, a man’s achievements depend primarily on how much of his 
community’s standards he accommodates: he sees as his community see, 
and acts as his community acts.38 Communal life is among the cardinal 
values in Africa. Africans do not practice individualism like most Western 
nations. They live a life of community and solidarity. The African man’s 
idea of security and its value depended on personal identification with 
and within the community.  

However with the arrival of the colonial overlords, different 
ideologies and philosophies about human relations such as individualism 
came into play.  Mbiti  noted that for the Africans, to be human is to be 
in a community, participating in the beliefs, ceremonies,  rituals  and  
festivals  of  that  community  that  gives  them  sense  of  belonging. 
Membership of the community is emphasized more than member’s 
individuality; for a society is based more on obligations, than on 
individual rights and individuals assume their rights in exercise of the 
obligations, which makes a society a chain of inter-relationships. 39 The 
autonomy and rights of the individual person are enjoyed in 
relationship.40  

Individuals are not regarded as complete until they have been 
identified with a community. “Each one must belong to kith and kin, to 
parents, brothers and sisters, who are immediate, and to a wider 
relationship within the extended family. There is nothing like 
individualism. A person belongs to an immediate family, hamlet, village, 
clan and town. This belonging enhances chances of survival and ensures 
security and growth.”41 
 
Sense of Brotherhood and Hospitality  
Before the  advent  of  Western  civilization  and  culture  to  Africa,  the  
sense  of  brotherhood  and  hospitality  were some of the cardinal 
human values of African indigenous society. The Sense of hospitality is 
inherently indispensable in African tradition society. There was always 
spontaneous accommodation of strangers and visitors. Unlike the West, 
no appointment and special invitation are needed for one to visit a distant 
relation or neighbour.  On arrival, one is treated kindly, just as one 



350 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

would wish to be treated when visiting another home. This spontaneous 
acceptance is expressed in many symbolic ways like presentation of kola 
nuts, traditional gin, coconuts etc. These are given to show acceptance 
and safety.  
 Onimhawo and Adamu in their study: An Afrocentric Perspective on 
Human Migration:  
The Nigerian Experience succinctly argued that the common membership 
of one universal human family constitutes a legitimate basis for the idea 
of universal human brotherhood in African conceptual thought. This 
idea is depicted for instance in Afemai maxim: Oya lo khi iyokpa oya “A 
human being's brother is another human being”.42 This maxim asserts 
unmistakably that a human being is related only to another human being, 
not to a beast. Implicit in the African perception of humanity is the 
recognition of all persons, irrespective of their racial or ethnic 
backgrounds, as brothers. This is the reason why in African cultures the 
word ‘brother’ is used to cover various and complex family relationships 
linked by blood ties.43 But the word is also used, significantly, by persons 
between whom there are no blood ties; thus, the word is used 
comprehensively. The comprehensive meaning given to the word 
‘brother’ in African culture is intended, indeed, to lift people up from the 
purely biologically determined blood relation level onto the human level, 
the level where the essence of humanity is held as transcending the 
contingencies of human biology, race, ethnicity, or culture.44 
 
African Sense of Solidarity  
The  traditional  African  community  attitude  to  work  is  one  factor  
that  explains the African sense of solidarity. In African cultural context 
duties such: building of a hut or a house for a kinsman especially of 
someone  that  is  old  or  a  person  that  is  not  well  to  do  in  the  
material  sense,  is  often  seen  as  a  collective responsibility that calls for 
the contributions of many.45 This African concept of solidarity is aptly 
captured in Afemai proverb: Obokpa ovue akh’ uno “one hand cannot 
cover the mouth of a pot.” Yet another Afemai proverb says Orokpe okio 
gwa, “one tree cannot make a forest”.  Furthermore, kinsmen can 
mobilize a workforce to the farm of a dead relative or someone who is 
bereaved to help out in maintaining the farm and keep the bereaved 
family going.46  

Everywhere in Africa society there is the spirit of Ubuntu (I am 
because we are) which Barbara Nussbaum says “is the capacity in African 
culture to express compassion, reciprocity, dignity, harmony and 
humanity in the interests of building and maintaining community with 
justice and mutual caring.”47   
 



Section III: Religious/Socio-Cultural Perspectives And Human Formation    351 

Sense of Respect for Elders 
Africans generally have deep and ingrained respect for old age. Grey hairs 
earn an individual the right to courtesy and politeness. The elders are 
respected first because they are believed to be the teachers and directors 
of the young. They are the repository of truth as their words and 
instructions are heeded to for the promotion of good behaviour among 
the young. The elders are also taken to be the custodian of communal 
wisdom and therefore they are conceded leadership in the affairs of the 
people.  One  of  the  reasons  for  this,  is  the  nearness  of  the  elders  
to  the ancestors.  The respect given to the elders has its practical effect in 
the maintenance of custom and tradition. The young are always looking 
forward to being elders and they are often told that if a child respects an 
elder, he would be respected by the young when he becomes an elder. 
This is the fundamental principle behind human relations in African 
cultural milieu 

The idea of Old People’s Homes is an aberration in traditional 
African society and a promotion of a careless assumption that a man is 
deserving of respect only, and only if the man is  virile and productive. 
To entrust the welfare of the elderly to institutional caregivers is an 
abomination to the African mind. The care of the aged is situated within 
the family. It is so cherished and so organized that there is no need, in 
the African setting, for the cheerless nursing homes for the aged as it 
exist today in Europe and America48 and speedily taking roots in Africa.  
 
African Sense of Extended Family 
According to Pantaleon Iroegbu “African languages generally have no 
words for uncles, aunts cousins and nieces. All these are part of the one 
family. The family is one, but extended”.49 Marriage is a means of family 
extension especially between two families.  The extended family system 
is very much alive in contemporary African societies as a community of 
brothers and sisters, which is the basis of, and the expression of, the 
extended family system in Africa.  
 
African Sense of Religiosity 
Africans are everywhere and always profoundly religious. African 
spirituality simply acknowledges that beliefs and practices touch on and 
inform every facet of human life, and therefore African religion cannot 
be separated from everyday living. For many Africans, religion can never 
be separated from life. Unlike the West, religion is a way of life, and it 
can never be separated from the public sphere. Religion informs 
everything in the traditional African society, including marriage, health, 
diet, dress, economics, birth and death. The Africans eat religiously, 
drink religiously and bath religiously. African spirituality is truly holistic. 



352 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

For example, sickness in the indigenous African worldview is not only an 
imbalance of the body, but also an imbalance in one’s social life, which 
can be linked to a breakdown in one’s kinship and family relations or 
even to one’s relationship with one’s ancestors.50 

Africans are deeply religious, for the African, life is religion and 
religion is life. The attachment to and worship of God, form a 
dominating part of their world view. All they do or say and permit is 
impregnated with a vision of the divine, and all natural reality is 
explainable in function of the supernatural. African social values rest on 
the moral values which in turn rest on religious values.51  

To many people it is perverse and perhaps sacrilegious to 
separate the moral and the religious values. It is the presence of religion 
that lends meaning and authority to values. Religious or spiritual element 
in the African man characterizes his relationship with the divine, with 
God and/or the gods. And it is an indubitable fact that this sense of 
religion is the promotion of moral excellence.52  
 A conscientious inquisition of the preceding prefatory would indeed 
reveal the imperativeness of adopting the Afro-centric cultural distinctive 
paradigm. Namely, that the African values system contains positive 
human values that can provide the ontological foundation for a moral 
reconstruction, even between Christianity and African thought process 
inclusive of indigenous religion. The note of caution is that care must be 
taken to excogitate certain aspects of African traditional values that might 
not be wholly in tandem with contemporary realities. This should not 
come as a surprise because every culture consists of both the 
counterintuitive and the perdurable. 
 
Conclusion 
This discourse established the importance of accentuating African 
indigenous religious and human values in contemporary scholarship. 
The role of human values was exhaustively discussed and denoted 
because of the understanding that the value system of a people is 
consequent upon the understanding of the beliefs and cultural system of 
the people. The paper examined the Afro-centric imperative of the 
African thought process in the current moral discourse, and concluded 
that the Afro-centric cultural distinctive paradigm encapsulates African 
indigenous human values. It was expedient to denude in more precise 
terms, some positive human values of the African thought process which 
included an investigation into the African value on human life, African 
sense of a good life, African sense of responsible parenthood, the lack of 
monetization of values, African sense of community-based Living,  
African sense of  brotherhood  and  hospitality , African sense of 



Section III: Religious/Socio-Cultural Perspectives And Human Formation    353 

solidarity,  sense of respect for authority and the elders, African sense of 
extended family and African sense of religiosity. 
 Given that no one values system is error proof, African religious and 
human values must be carefully examined in order to extrapolate the 
very best of African traditional values systems which continuous to 
reverberate their usefulness in our contemporary era. The paper asserted 
that the differences that exist between African religious human values 
and western values must not necessarily have a normative consequence; 
as things can be different without having to be placed within a normative 
hierarchy. The contention that African values should be of less worth 
than Western values is therefore repudiated.  
 
Recommendations 
This paper makes the following recommendations: 
a. that African institutes of human character formation like seminaries 

should faithfully study and seriously promote African traditional 
values system, including African indigenous religion; 

b. that African converts to non-African religions should have a rethink 
and revaluation of their disposition to African traditional religion, 
namely to change their attitude from condemnation to 
commendation and understanding; 

c. that policy makers should be aware of the importance of the 
Afrocentric imperative in the enthronement of positive human 
values in Nigeria; 

d. that African scholarship should be at the vanguard in the promotion 
of African human values both within and outside Africa; 

e. that the negative clout presently beclouding African Indigenous 
religion should be removed through proper enlightenment.  

 
 
Endnotes  
                                                      
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Tradition: A Philosophical Appraisal” African Journal Online 7(2010):149, 

https//doi.org/:57930/58765 
3 Kayode Fayemi, “Crisis of Values: Reclaiming our Society”, Lecture at the Women 

in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) Conference, Lagos, March 

10, 2016.   



354 Formation of the Human Person in the 21st Century 

                                                                                                                         
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