THE REALITY AND NON-PECULIARITY OF THE YORUBA'S BELIEF IN REINCARNATION: AYE KEJI EXEMPLIFIED

Abstract

Everyone knows that death is the inevitable end of man. What plagnes the mind of many,consciously or otherwise, is the question of what happens to man when he breaths his lastbreath. While some are of the opinion that after death comes judgment; a detenninant ofwhether one goes to eternal blissful domains, or into everlasting tonnent; depending onwhether he had lived piously or otherwise, while on earth. Another school of thought opinesthat the soul of the dead will reincarnate by taking abode in a new physical body, born as anew baby and live another nonnallife, whereby he/she has the opportunity to correct his/herwrong actions in the previous incarnation. While some are of the opinion that when the soulhas gathered wisdom, knowledge and understanding through several incarnations, it becomesone with the creator; others believe that reincarnation is a continuous process without neithera beginning nor an ending. The Y oruba of South-Western Nigeria, like most other Africans,believes that humans reincarnate in order to re-choose their destiny and fulfill their lifeambitions which they had no chance to achieve in a previous incarnation. An examination ofsome Yoruba traditional songs about death and what follows, show that they believe in 'a dayof reckoning' and the continuum of the life cycle. Reincarnation, generally speaking, isalways thought of, and discussed as a religious phenomenon, most probably because itborders on the super-natural; an issue to which only God; the creative force, has the totallycorrect answer. My bid in this study is to establish through self-confessed persons thatreincarnation is a reality, as against Majeed's (2012) summation that reincarnation as aphenomenon "serves the need of personality identity and as such, it is irrational". Aside fromthat, this study examines and concludes that the acceptance of the reality of reincarnation isnot peculiar to the Traditional Religion of the (African) Y oruba, it is a common nexus inother faiths, unlike what obtains in Christianity and Islam; the two officially recognized(foreign) religions in Nigeria. My exemplifications from Ay~ keji (The other world); aparticularly selected Nollywood film, is as a result of its direct relativity to the issue of thisstudy, which is pivoted around African indigenous thought system and philosophy.