Dear Editor,
I am a regular reader of your News Paper, “NIGHTWATCH”, and fancy it a lot, especially the WATCH MAN CARTOONS. But your Editorial of Wednesday, May 16th 2018, captioned THAT LIBATION POURING AT THE INAUGURATION caught my special attention as I quickly read through your News Paper and I here wish to respond to it:
By your first paragraph, you tried to set the tone to the whole editorial piece. But to my mind, that introduction is not well explained in the body of your work. It only looks like an “opening of a can of worms”. That is what I find an issue with. Secondly, your conclusion does not seem to flow from any premise in your work. It only makes a statement about Catholic priests that is an unexplained accusation. I am a Sierra Leonean Catholic priest of the Spiritan Congregation [Holy Ghost Fathers] in ministry for thirty[30] years this year 2018, and resident in Bo City. Although I am not in good health at present, yet I feel obliged, as a Catholic priest, to respond to your accusation against us, Catholic priests.
Please, allow me the space to quote in full your Introduction and Conclusion which caught my attention and made me respond to your work. It is for the benefit of those who might have not read your Editorial, but are now reading my response to it. In your Introduction, you said the following: “THE POURING of libation during last weekend’s inauguration of President Bio caused consternation among some Christians and Muslims who had already heard the prayers of Christian and Muslim priests and thought that they were enough. It should be noted in passing that the two religions stated above are those recognized by the state in which almost all citizens belong either to one of them or the other. To give the impression that the practice of African Traditional Religion is also being slipped in for recognition is anachronistic and primeval”. Your conclusion says the following: “WE ARE ACTING in a kind of locum capacity for Catholic priests who seem to have abdicated their religious responsibility of advising the President against the irreligious practice”.
MY RESPONSE: I am fully aware that matters of faith and religious belief are sensitive issues anywhere in the world and at any time. My intention of responding to the editorial in the NIGHTWATCH News Paper captioned, THAT LIBATION POURUNG AT THE INAUGURATION, is therefore, not to offend the sensibility of anyone;- Christian, Muslim, African Traditionalist or otherwise. What I intend here is simply to call the attention of Sierra Leoneans to an issue that you raised which concerns our national life together as a people. There is no doubt that Sierra Leoneans are notoriously a religious people. However, our state is regarded in law, by our national constitution, as a secular state. What this means simply is that our nation Sierra Leone does not embrace any one religion, and by that fact, no one religion can claim national right and supremacy over other religions practiced by Sierra Leoneans in Sierra Leone.
I am a Catholic priest in ministry and in good standing for thirty years now. If I am to take a position of interest in matters of religion, it should naturally be in favour of Christianity in which I was born some sixty years ago, and still practice today. But in the context of the discussion confronting us in the write-up which is the pouring of libation, I have chosen to speak on the side of the African Traditional Religious believers whose religious sensibility, I feel is being offended by the editorial of NIGHTWATCH News Paper of 16th May 2018. It is to be noted, Mr. Editor that most of the believers of African Traditional Religion in Sierra Leone do not read your News Paper, the NIGHTWATCH, and also are not even privileged enough to write literary works of the type that you and I are capable of. So they may never read your opinion expressed on their religion in your prestigious NIGHTWATCH News Paper and supply answers to your opinion on their African Traditional Religious practice of the pouring of libation. I am therefore, writing this work, partly, on their behalf and partly for the clarification of ideas and thoughts, and the advancement of knowledge.
The first thing I wish to say about African Traditional Religion is that it is a religion like any other religion in the world, with a creed and believers. It may be limited to the African continent, but it is widely practiced there including the nation of Sierra Leone. In fact it may be the third largest religion in Africa, after Christianity and Islam. The pouring of libation which we are discussing is a major, and almost an indispensible part of African Traditional Religion. Libation is poured by man, ultimately to the Almighty God, but through the intermediation of Ancestors. What I believe should be the issue to discuss here is not the pouring of libation by Sierra Leoneans;- for experience shows that most Sierra Leoneans do it anyway, either in the private domain of their homes or in the public places of their social and religious life. So why should it cause consternation among any section of the people of Sierra Leone by virtue of their own religious beliefs at a national celebration such as what we just witnessed at the inauguration of the head of State of Sierra Leone at the national stadium on the 12th of May 2018 ?
Mr. Editor, what I think your editorial has succeeded in bringing out into the public light for a national discussion is whether Sierra Leoneans have the right or not to pour libation at a national State Celebration. I am aware that even in colonial days in Sierra Leone, the Colonialists had allowed Sierra Leonean Traditionalists to pour libation at very important national, historical functions in Sierra Leone. For instance, libation was poured at the official opening of the very first institute of higher learning in Bo town in the then Protectorate of Sierra Leone. [the Bo Government Secondary School]. That ceremony of the pouring of libation at the Bo School in 1906 had immediately followed Christian and Muslim prayers being said, witnessed by the White Colonialists, by some Paramount Chiefs and a cross section of Sierra Leoneans from almost all parts of the country.
In your editorial, you pitched your argument of the pouring of libation at the State inauguration of President Julius Maada Bio against Christianity and Islam which I think is dangerous to our religious tolerance and national coherence in Sierra Leone. You also touched on the sensitive issue of a Democratic Constitutional right when you said that Christianity and Islam are the recognized religions by the State in which almost all citizens[of Sierra Leone] belong either to one of them or the other. I don’t believe that your statement is true to either the reality of life lived in Sierra Leone or to any provision in our State Constitution of 1991. But if for some reason, as you claim, the State recognizes only Christianity and Islam as the two religions of the State of Sierra Leone, then I am afraid that we have a Democratic Constitutional problem at hand here, and we should, as a matter of national concern, call the attention of our national Constitutional Lawyers and the Minister of Justice to that said provision in our Constitution, in the interest of national unity. My simple reason is that there is a large population of Sierra Leoneans who practice African Traditional Religion which involves the pouring of libation. Most of them live in our towns and villages on the countryside, and are not so visible in our cities to propagate their religious faith through loud speakers and modern popular mass media. But they are in Sierra Leone, and are socially and religiously well organized in communities. Some of them are chiefs and paramount chiefs. They are all citizens of the land that we all love and call Sierra Leone; -they pay tax, they vote in local and national elections. They also live by the Constitution of the State of Sierra Leone; – they appeal to it for justice when aggrieved, and are reprimanded or punished by the same Constitution when they trespass. Just because most of our African Traditional believers cannot read what is written in our national Constitution, does not mean that they should be marginalized or deprived of the benefits of citizenship as prescribed by the national Constitution. If the members of African Traditional Religion are Sierra Leoneans with all rights and duties like you and me, why should their religious practice of the pouring of libation cause consternation among any particular well-meaning group of Sierra Leoneans at the State inauguration ceremony of the President of Sierra Leone? As a matter of fact African Traditional believers were also present at that State function. Their tax money was also used in organizing it, apart from anything else. Christians and Muslims believers should therefore, not feel that they have any greater Constitutional right over the believers of African Traditional Religion in Sierra Leone. The national constitution says that all citizens of Sierra Leone have the right of association and of worship. That is why they were not merely invited to the inauguration of their President, but were also called upon to actively take part in the ceremony of the inauguration by praying for their president and nation, the Christian way, the Muslim way and the African Traditional Religious way. This is recognizing an aspect of life that makes us Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leoneans are not all Christians and Muslims, and they were always not so. Christianity arrived in Sierra Leone probably in the 15th,16th, 17th centuries. Islam may have predated that. And before the arrival of those two religions, the inhabitants of the land that we call Sierra Leone today were African Traditional Religious practitioners among whom were the Boulom, the Sherbro, the Vai-Gallinas, the Mende, the Temne, the Limba, the Kono, the Kissi, and others. They might have all venerated their Ancestors by the pouring of libation, and through them to the One Almighty God of us all. There are still today many African Traditional worshippers in Sierra Leone from North, South, East and Western Rural Area. Many Sierra Leoneans today are descendants of those early believers of African Traditional Religion. For instance, there is a whole section in Bo town, the second largest City in Sierra Leone, called Njai town. “Njai” is an African Tradition Religion and is still practiced today. There is a Njai house in Njai town, about a kilometer from where I live at C.K.C, Bo City. Njai priests live in Njai houses. As a young boy growing up in the 1960s-1970s, I saw many Njai people on their regular feast days and at their annual celebrations in my home town of Gerihun, Baoma Chiefdom, Bo District. There is still a Njai house in Gerihun today. In Kailahun District we have the Kondowa and the Wujeh African Traditional Religious worshippers who are found mainly in Tailu Madina and Bayama Pewema villages, respectively. I am sure that there are many other Traditional Religious Communities in other parts of Sierra Leone.
Coming back to the Editor’s concluding statement that Catholic priests have abdicated their religious responsibility of advising the President against the irreligious practice, I think that the editor really needs to tell us, Catholic priests, how we have abdicated our religious responsibility of advising the President against irreligious practice, and to whom have we abdicated it. Our Catholic faithful know well that their priests take their pastoral responsibilities very seriously in serving them in their Catholic Churches and outside the confines of the Church. The current President of Sierra Leone, His Excellency Julius Maada Bio is a practicing Catholic, and is proud of being one. President Bio was elected barely a month ago as President of the Republic of Sierra Leone. We the Catholic Clergy [Bishops and Priests] give President Bio the needed pastoral ministry in our Catholic Church like any of our Catholics. I see that the Editor is called Emmanuel and I know that the name is Christian. If he belongs to any Church community, I believe that his priests/pastors offer him the pastoral ministry he needs like any member of their Church.
CONCLUSION
From what I have outlined in this work, I wish to say that the editorial piece of Wednesday 16th May 2018 in the NIGHTWATCH News Paper is directed against African Ancestral Veneration which involves the pouring of libation. The Editor does this by misrepresenting the African Traditional Religious practice of the pouring of libation at the Presidential inauguration of President Maada Bio and also by offending the sensibility of Catholic priests in Sierra Leone. The editor uses words such as anachronistic, primeval, necromancy, fetish, ariogbos, irreligious when referring to the pouring of libation. On this background, he says that Christianity is a religion of the progressive portion of mankind, Christianity is not a theory or a speculation, but a life;- not a philosophy of life, but a living which I agree with in the case of Christianity. But I hope that he does not, by those assertions, believe that African Traditional Religion is devoid of all progress and is not practical or life oriented.
I wish to finally say that the editor has clearly shown, by his editorial of 16th May 2018 on the pouring of libation at the recent Presidential inauguration in Freetown that he is either against libation pouring or that he simply does not understand the phenomenon of Ancestral veneration in African Traditional Religion. African Traditional Religion may be unclear and perhaps, be a vexed question for some Christians and Muslims in Sierra Leone, yet African Traditional Religion is no doubt, part and parcel of our African religious and social consciousness in Sierra Leone today. Therefore, African Traditional Religious practices cannot be ignored or merely termed anachronistic or relegated to primeval behavior in the Republic of Sierra Leone.
Rev. Fr. Gabriel Luseni, C.S.Sp.
Spiritan House, C.K.C, Bo City
00232-76621622.