  The connection has been taken by most scholars to mean that African moral values and principles derive from religion, implying that African morality is, thus, a religious morality (Opoku, 1978: 152), Danquah (1944: 3), Sarpong (1972: 41), Busia (1967: 16), Parrinder (1969: 28–9), Idowu (1962: 146). The claim implies in turn that the moral beliefs and principles of the African people derive from those of religion, that religion provides the necessary justification for moral values and beliefs, and that moral concepts, such as good, bad, right and wrong, are defined (or, must be defined) in terms of religious prescriptions or commands. However, there are other scholars, such as Godfrey Wilson, Monica Wilson, Maquet, Wiredu, who deny the religious basis of the moral systems of the societies they studied. Kwasi Wiredu observed that “the Akan moral outlook is thus logically independent of religion” (Kwasi Wiredu in H. Odera Oruka and D. A. Masolo, 1983: 13). Godfrey Wilson wrote that “Among the Nyakyusa the ideas of social behaviour are not connected with religion, nonetheless they exist” and, after mentioning the moral virtues of the Nyakyusa, he added that “But the positive, ideal statement of these virtues is not made in religious terms” (Godfrey Wilson in Ottenberg and Ottenberg eds., 1960: 348). On the morality of the Rwanda, Maquet wrote that ‘Thus the ethics of the Banyarwanda are not integrated on a religious basis such as the will of God' (J. J. Maquet in Forde, 1954:184). In Mende ethics, “Wrongbehavior is regarded as a breaking of some specific rule of conduct, not as the flouting of some divine or absolute law of the universe” (Kenneth Little, in Forde, 1954:134). These are unambiguous statements of the nonreligious foundation of the morality of at least some African societies.