Apparently, civilisation arrived only when the first missionaries planted their crosses on our soil. Before then, we were told, we knew nothing of morality, community, or the divine. Strange, though, because our ancestors somehow managed to build kingdoms, resolve disputes, farm fertile lands, and raise children without once thumbing through a King James Bible.
Long before pews and pulpits became our weekend routines, there were gods—ours. Gods who spoke the language of the thunderstorm, who danced in our masquerades, who judged us by the weight of our actions, not by how loudly we recited a borrowed creed. Sin, as a concept, did not exist. But there were taboos, boundaries, and consequences. The universe had balance, enforced not by eternal damnation but by the simple idea that every action had a price.
Then came the sales pitch. Colonialism arrived not only with railways and gunboats but with a new catalogue of belief: civility or savagery, light or darkness, heaven or hell. And we, ever hospitable, traded in our deities for imported saints. Shrines were abandoned. Ancestral names were mocked. Suddenly, worshipping in our own tongue was branded backward, while chanting in Latin was hailed as progress.
Traditional religion, of course, wasn’t a free-for-all. It had priests, yes, but also rainmakers, herbalists, drummers, and custodians of memory. It offered not just worship but a worldview, with morality anchored in daily life and respect earned, not demanded. Elders were sacred, and wisdom came not from books shipped across oceans but from stories woven around firesides.
Christianity undeniably brought gifts: schools, hospitals, literacy, and the promise of salvation. But it also demanded sacrifice—not the kind on altars, but of memory. To embrace the cross, we were told, we had to bury our gods. And we did. With surprising enthusiasm.
Now, we wrinkle our noses at the mention of Ogun, dismiss Amadioha as superstition, and quickly baptise our children with foreign saints’ names while insisting our ancestors knew only darkness. Yet look around: did we become more virtuous? Or just more confused?
This is not a manifesto for pagan revival. It is a reminder that culture is not the enemy of faith. You can sit in church on Sunday and still acknowledge that your people once spoke to the divine—in languages that required no translation. Heritage is not heresy.
So perhaps it is time to retire the myth that we arrived at morality only when missionaries docked. Our forebears had gods, order, and a sense of the sacred long before anyone handed them a cross. Pretending otherwise is not just amnesia; it is self-erasure.
Because whether we admit it or not, before the cross came, the gods were already here.
