JOURNALS

ABSTRACT

African culture is essentially a religious culture as we see it. African customs and their behaviour are geared toward the religious concept, almost completely (K.O. Dike). Just as the missionaries were trying to convert to a new religion they could not escape condemning Ekpeye traditional festival as heathenish. What else could the missionary do but attack the Ekpeye traditional cultural festival which represents the rival religion they were trying to supplant? However, missionaries could not bring to Nigeria the “pure milk of the Gospel”. But unlike major people of the world human beings were unable to emancipate themselves from the cultural, emotional and social frame in which they were accustomed to living and expressing their religious life. Some lived in an age when European civilization and Christianity were believed to hang together as cause and effect, as root and branch. Regrettably early in the 19th century, many Africans were becoming deluded with the idea that the less African they were the more Christian they become. Therefore this study became necessary to investigate the Ekpeye Traditional Festival an important aspect of Matzoth Fest. The purpose is to understand why the missionaries condemned Ekpeye traditional festival without first understanding the cultural heritage of the Ekpeye traditional festival they were denouncing. This study employed the Library research method and reviewed critical literature on the subject as well as relying heavily on information deduced based on the researcher's elaborate reading. The study concludes that the cultural awakening among educated Africans in the 19th century did not owe its origins to any external influence but was spontaneous. The study recommends that African study indigenous religions themselves; the white missionaries had lived in a valley of delusion by assuming that Christians were a higher exponent of the Deity than the Nigerian "pagans"