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The concept of God, divinities and spirits in African traditional religious ontology has been so misunderstood by many scholars to the point of seeing Africans as people who did not know the Supreme Being nor worship Him. This paper seeks to examine how Africans conceive of the Supreme Being, divinities and spirits. The paper shows that the concept of God is not strange to Africans but in traditional Africa there is no atheist. It sees the divinities as beings who receive authority from the Supreme Being to serve in the unitary theocratic system of government. The paper sees the spirits as strangers, foreigners and outsiders in the category of things that should be defeated using spiritual powers.

Abstract:In recent times, traditional medicine has continued to receive increasing acceptance in Nigeria among many other African nations. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that about 80% of Asia, Latin America and African populations use traditional medicine to meet their primary health care needs. For a lot of people in these countries especially those living in rural areas, traditional medicines are the only available, easily accessible and affordable source of health care. This paper has tried to trace the historical background of traditional medicine in Nigeria, its contributions and progress made so far in health care delivery. It also considered various types of traditional medical services as well as methods of healing employed by traditional medical practitioners in reaching out to their numerous patients. This paper adopted qualitative research method in its approach. Qualitative research approach permits the researcher to investigate the issues that enable decision-making behaviour in a non-numerical manner. However, due to the nature of the research, oral and group interviews were added to elicit data from respondents. Research questions were also framed to elicit information from respondents using open-ended questions. The result of the integrated content analysis shows that despite various challenges facing traditional medicine, it has contributed immensely to the development of health care delivery system in Nigeria. The paper therefore, recommends among others, that in order to adequately maximize the health-care coverage of the multi-populated traditional Nigerian villages and communities with varied and variegated health challenges, sicknesses and ailments, there is obvious need for the formalization of the traditional health care services through the integration of traditional medicine into the health care delivery systems of various local and state governments in Nigeria.

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