Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

In this era of enlightenment, the world looks up to Africa to tell the African story by herself. The African religion has been designated as fetish, animism or idolatry; and her sacred alusi considered magic or diabolical. But this is a wrong narrative by the expatriates, and even Africans themselves, who are products of colonialism and foreign religious education, till date. It is important therefore to query religion propter se as a phenomenon and with it verifies African Traditional Religion which houses the alusi phenomena. It must be ascertained if the Igbo believe in the Supreme Being and what is the relationship between the alusi and the Supreme Being. This qualitative research which employs interviews and secondary sources found out that alusi is not bad in itself. Like every other religion, alusi, in its various typologies, nomenclatures and categories were created by to serve societal needs. This researcher also found out that alusi is divine as it employs the bonding which every other religion enjoys to mediate with Chukwu in His theocratic government. The word of mouth is central to the animation of the alusi and the vocation and ministry of the dibia is essential to the effectiveness of the shrine. This research found out that the shrine of alusi is akin to the places of worship of foreign religions of today. Furthermore, Alusi is a divinity created to solve the problem of evil as the moral conscience and police of morality for the Igbo.

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