‘OKIEMUTE’ AS AFRICAN SENSE OF FUTURE TIME

ABSTRACT

Africans have always been more concerned about ‘the past’. For example all our values, traditions and culture tend to take us back to our past and J.S Mbiti brought this to light in his ‘Concept of time’. According to Mbiti, Africans have no future; just a long past and a present which is contrary to the western concept of time. In this contemporary age, Africans seem to have placed more emphasis in the future rather than the past. Africans are now more concerned about future events. Procrastination and lateness has become a way of life. Situations are left to be resolved ‘with time’ instead of doing it in the present. Africans appear to have a new sense of future time. This project, therefore criticizes J.S Mbiti’s concept of time as regards to contemporary Africans using an Urhobo traditional expression ‘Okiemute’ as African sense of future time. It portrays contemporary Africans as people who adopt the western concept of time while gradually detaching from past African cultures.