CHAPTER ONE
1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Aristotle many years ago asserted that it is the nature of man to know: in other words, every man seeks to know. In fact, philosophical activity started out of the spirit of wonder when men were no longer satisfied with the mythological explanation of reality. It was their curiosity that sparked off this enormous discipline man is awed by the stand back of mystery of the universe. Man stand back and ask himself question in order to understand the universe.  Man has ever been in search of the knowledge of the world. What is knowledge, what is its nature and scope, are questions that have attracted philosophers from various orientation or schools of thought.
The western philosophical tradition has been divided sharply on what constitutes the source of knowledge namely: Rationalism and Empiricism. Unfortunately, this controversy has led to dualism in knowledge and consequence a bi-fraction of man should be considered as a metaphysical unit. Against this extremism in knowledge, African proposes another criterion of acquiring knowledge. Anyanwu has correctly observed that:
……any appeal to empirical and rational methods has no meaning and relevance unless we know the basic assumption about the African cultural reality we want to know1
The Africans as human being following the metaphysical imperative of human nature equally want to know, what is the nature of this knowledge? How do we come to know the things we claim to know? Does consciousness constitute a philosophical data, without which his life cannot begin in the first place?
It is in light of the above question that we have decided to carry out a research titled “knowledge in Traditional African Perspective”.
1.2. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
From time immemorial, knowledge and what ever constitutes its nature have been a topical issue and a problematic one in philosophical circle. The problem of knowledge arose in the past, more often than not, as a result of philosophers. Inability to seek for the unity of experience. This in no doubt led to the unfortunate controversy between Empiricism and Rationalism.
Since the advent of African professional mode of philosophizing. The African philosopher must get ready to examine the old controversy of epistemology. Rationalism  and Empirical; one of the most recent problems that seem to be militating against  progress  in African philosophy today is the ontological status of African Epistemology. K.C. Anyanwu has argued that “the basic problem of any philosophy is epistemology or the theory of knowledge, that is the method which the mind must follow in order to arrive at the trust worthy knowledge of reality. Epistemology provides the basic premises with which other problems, namely metaphysics, religion, moral political and aesthetic doctrines can be approached”.2 Anyanwu therefore places knowledge as prior to being.
This is however a centesian way of philosophizing which has randomly been condemned by Ukagba in his unpublished doctoral dissertation (1993)3.  For Ukagba, being is always  prior to knowledge or else we fall into Reductio Absandum, knowledge is the knowledge of somebody, a being. The being who must cognize must exist first before the act of cognition and this is why Ukagba asserts that ontology  or metaphysics comes before Epistemology. We shall examine the premises of these different positions in this research in order to find where the truth lies.