The Disposability of Ritual Animals: Raising the Animal Rights Question around Yoruba Rituals

Abstract

The use of non-human animals as a category of sacrificial items in Yoruba rituals raises a fundamental question of whether animals’ rights discourse and advocacy have had some restricting influence on how non-human animals are rather treated as ritual disposables in Yoruba rituals. While the sacrifice of non-human animals is upheld in Yoruba culture as a part of the moral construct of the Yoruba society the act raises an ethical question as to whether or not there is any moral consideration for the interest of the non-human animals sacrificed to ensure cosmic stability. This paper raises the question of selecting non-human animals for the purpose of securing the universe inhabited by non-human animals and humans in view of a perceived silence regarding this question in Yoruba ritual scholarship. The paper contends that the socio-moral framework of the Yoruba culture is not such that is avers to the consideration of the interest of non-human animals. Hence, on the strength of the basic contention of the stage theory of moral development as explained by Judith Boss (1999) this paper will assert that there is need to reconsider the use of non-human animals in Yoruba rituals by aspiring to a higher level of moral development which could enhance the protection of the interest of non-human animals.