INTERCULTURALITY

This paper is situated within ongoing debates on the decolonisation of African cultural knowledge and the re-evaluation of indigenous expressive forms that have been misrepresented through colonial and postcolonial lenses. Nigerian dances, in particular, have long been interpreted through frameworks shaped by the Caliphate expansion in northern Nigeria and British colonial rule, resulting in reductive stereotypes that collapse diverse traditions into a singular and erroneous notion of “Nigerian dance.” The central problem addressed in this study is how such historical and epistemic distortions continue to influence scholarly, popular, and global understandings of Nigerian dance practices. The objective of the paper is to challenge these misrepresentations by foregrounding two culturally specific dance traditions—Anaañ Ekpo and Yoruba Bata—within their indigenous philosophical, spiritual, and social contexts. Drawing on John S. Mbiti's relativist perspective, the study adopts a qualitative, interpretive methodology that combines cultural analysis, historical review, and postcolonial critique. This approach emphasizes meaning as produced within particular worldviews rather than through externally imposed evaluative standards.The paper further examines contemporary postcolonial efforts to reclaim, reinterpret, and transmit these dance traditions in the face of cultural globalisation, commodification, and homogenising representations. The expected outcome is a reframing of Nigerian dances as complex, dynamic, and culturally grounded practices. By applying a relativist lens, the study demonstrates how decolonised interpretations can counter colonial legacies and restore indigenous epistemologies to the study of Nigerian dance.

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