APA - Cotonou (Benin) The 16th edition of the Voodoo festival, intended to safeguard and promote the country's cultural and spiritual tradition, will be celebrated on 10 January in Benin, APA learnt Wednesday from official source in Cotonou.

"Voodoo is a religion ignored, denigrated and often relegated to idolatry. The celebration of this festival at the national level will allow not only the Benineses but also Africans to revalue the ancestral form of worship," Fidrle Dossa, a sociologist and anthropologist at the University of Cotonou, told APA.

"The declaration of 10 January as date of the voodoo festival in Benin by former president Nicephore Soglo in 1992, is a way of rehabilitating the religious practice," he continued

"It is the eminent divinity of the African wisdom whose ultimate goal is to guide the Human being while indicating which invisible power should one dedicate him or herself to when in need of assistance," Dossa explained, adding that "Voodoo is a religion of tolerance, love and forgiveness."

According to statistics, 37% of the Beninese people practise the traditional religions otherwise known as animism, whereas Catholics account for 27%, Muslims 22% and the Protestants 10%.