LONG ABSTRACT: Among the Igbo of south-eastern Nigeria, a museum was one of the prized possessions in every lineage before colonization by Britain. These days there is a three-prong assault on museum: through dread, disdain and dollarization. Museum holdings are viewed with dread by new church sectaries, disdain by those who consider themselves to be Westernised, and targeted for looting by rogues who plunder them for unscrupulous buyers outside Africa.
Objective
The objective of the paper is to report that in a situation of asymmetrical power relations between adherents of a group’s indigenous religion and purveyors of an extraneous religion with a hegemonic agenda, the case of the Igbo of Nigeria seems to indicate that the losers will be the native communities who are forced to replace collective memory with induced amnesia. As the imported religion from Europe and America strikes roots in recent years, the vitiation of the Igbo traditional religion has been hastened. It is ironical that the model of Christianity that has emerged since the end of the Nigerian civil war in 1970 is more hostile to the traditional Igbo belief system than the varieties that were propagated by the early missionaries that arrived here in the 1880s.
Anthropological relevance
The paper contributes to the post-contact anthropology of religion literature presenting an emerging trend that should disturb anyone interested in conserving the integral package of world’s religions as part of humanity’s efforts at social organization. None of the current threats would have been effective in the days when the traditional belief systems were virile. Each of the threats would have been considered a taboo with grave consequences. I undertook this study continually from 2005 until 2022 using participant observation.
