The black Africans before slavery prayed to there ancestors and their ancestors prayed to the ancestor before them and it kept going on in that order. Here,

Whoever we prayed to never saved us from slavery, that's for sure;

I think i may want to disagree with you cos i still believe that even in slavery, not every one made it back, yes. But at the same time, not everyone died.

Remember the story of the Israelites in the hands of the Egyptians, it is pertinent to say that they suffered, died, yet a good number made it alive into the promised land that they built there new nation and amidst all the difficulties, they still believed that the gods they prayed to was the one that has taken them out of Egypt. I think that was why it was easy for them to mould and start worshiping those gods and ancestors again while Moses went to get the ten commandments.

I don't know Bible that much anyway and might have quoted wrongly but the point i want to make is that, there is one true living God and there were ancestors who saw to the plights of the people before Christ.

That's why you have names like "amdioha god of thunder" and so on and so forth.

Thanks for sharing this thought provoking piece brother.