Nigerian Traditions That Are Worth Admiring

Hello guys how you're fine. Take care and stay safe. I care.

Today, I'll be discussing some Nigerian traditions that are kind of nice. Mostly stuff that are related to how the average Nigerian is brought up.

In Nigeria, culture is mostly tended towards morals and etiquettes and related issues. Most parents when I was younger still upheld those string cultural norms. In fact, every decent parent did. Mine was no different, and I'll be taking mostly based on my experiences, and if need be, I'll make a contrast to the norm. Let's get into it.

1 greeting and respect

As a proper Yoruba boy, you're expected to lie down flat when greeting an elder. You were openly chastised outside if you failed in this area, and if you were chastised outside, it meant you had brought disgrace to your parents. If you bright this sort of Shane to your parents when I was younger, you usually weren't spared the rod. My home was slightly more "modern" so to speak, so we weren't beaten as much as others homes. But my mum would make you wish you were stripped naked and beating by just continuously nagging at you. There were different stories I heard about how parents beat their children when I was young that I never experienced. One really funny one to me was wetting the child's back with water after stripping him naked and beating him with a leather belt.

Now, so far, I've described what happens if you don't greet someone. Imagine what happens if you disrespect an elder. And disrespect here is very tricky. If you liked at an elder the wrong way, you could be tagged as disrespectful. If you greeted an elder just one tone when you passed and didn't greet on your way back, you were definitely disrespectful. If you maintained eye contact the wrong way (or in any way), you were very disrespectful. Almost anything that rubbed an elder the wrong way could be interpreted as disrespectful. The result was, you would keep how you felt about an older one to yourself and treat all elders with equal respect.

2 Belief in a God, or gods

Owing to so many problems African countries have, we have sort of learnt to believe in powers greater than ourselves and hoping that the said powers would save us. In Nigeria, it's not so different. As a child, it was very rare to see an atheist. As a matter of fact, I bet say any as a child. It was common to call them names such as "fools", "ignorant"and the likes. I never thought theism could be questioned in any reasonable way until I was a teenager. Only after I started my quest for knowledge did I pay attention to the arguments and realize atheists did have several points on their favor. Overall, I'm closer to being an agnostic as far as religion is concerned, but if I must choose one, I'm still learning towards theism because it doesn't look random to me. I think someone set the whole process in motion and ensures things stay that way. Then, there's quantum physics that clearly suggests to me that the universe is alive and knows when phonomena are being observed.

I'll probably write what I understand and don't understand about quantum physics tomorrow. I don't want this article to be lengthy, so I'll stop here.

These are the stone of the few traditions that are worth admiring. Every other thing about the country is just revolting.

Thanks for reading guys. You're awesome!