Baiyeri, Hezekiah Banji Belief in Reincarnation Among the Igbo of Nigeria: A Challenge to Christianity

ABSTRACT Every religious belief – ancient and modern is rooted in traditions of the religious system. Its dynamism is assessed through the process of continuity and discontinuity. The most interesting part of this work is based on the fact that each religious groups in the society, has its fundamental religious tenets. In this case, this work is poised to analyze the issue of belief in reincarnation among the Igbo of Nigeria and its challenges to Christianity. As a result, the uncompromising pressures from Christianity have provoked the researcher through this work to argue for the defence of reincarnation, a religious belief and practice in African Traditional Religion. This work is poised among other things to filter the mind of Christians who misinterpret the concept of reincarnation or jettison it for one reason or the other. In other to achieve this, the researcher applied primary source of data collection which involved interviewing some of the traditionalists or traditional practitioners in the community who have lived years ago. From this, it is observed that a typical examples of reincarnated live have been observed in different part of the community, though related scholarly works were also used to back up the findings. In effects, this work also melted down the aggressions from Christian’s perspective by unfolding most of convincing 9 evidences to clarify that African traditional religion has sustained and will continue to live with its belief system.