Impacts of Colonialism on Religions: An Experience of Southwestern Nigeria.

Abstract

Exploitation by a stronger country of weaker one or the use of the weaker country's resources to strengthen and enrich the stronger country is what is termed as colonialism. Henceforth, many parts of the world in general and African continent in particular experienced this phenomenon. Nigeria as one of important countries in Africa experienced exploitation between 1861 and 1960 under the Great Britain. Its advent had impact on many things such as politics, economy, religion, education and social set up of the country. Therefore, the paper intends to explore the impact of this phenomenon on religions in south-western Nigeria. The paper discusses the two religions (Traditional and Islam) which had been known in this region long before the period of colonialism. It also looks into the negative and positive of its impacts. It hashes out various resistances from the masses and how British government overpowers them. The paper is library-oriented research which means data and materials are drawn from books, articles, magazines and relevant websites. In other words, qualitative research methodology is used. Among others, the finding shows that there are two religions on ground before the advent of colonialism. It also shows that the advent of colonialism added another religion which is known as Christianity to the existing ones. It also discovered that the negative outweigh the positive impacts.