By Akin Osuntokun 

The power politics that defines Ilorin ensued in the 1820s with the defeat of Are Ona kakanfo Afonja, in the Alimi (the Fulani spiritual consultant to Afonja) insurrection against the political status-quo (personified by the former).The insurrection rapidly resolved in the jihadist incorporation of Ilorin into the Sokoto Caliphate. More than any historical figure, Afonja was representative of the century long regime of civil wars, rebellion and external pressure that culminated in the implosion of the Oyo empire.The metaphor of this tragedy was that of a commander-in-chief taking up arms against the sovereign and empire he was sworn to protect and secure.

The Afonja villainy is not diminished by the acknowledgement of the fact that it was the rogue sovereign, Alaafin Aole, who initiated the mutually assured destructive confrontation between the two ill starred actors. Afonja was a villain quite alright but only as the most prominent of many rebellious warlords who had little consciousness or notion of the Yoruba national unity that we now presume and take for granted

A crucial commencement rites of a newly installed Alaafin was the proclamation of a war against a contrived target and a concomitant directive to the kakanfo to take the battle to the putative ‘enemy’. Problem is, it is mandatory for him to win the war and he is otherwise condemned to death if he fails. 

Wishing the latter option on his commander-in-chief, Aole chose a made to fit specification, (Iwere Ile), that was certain to ensure the desired outcome. Iwere Ile was near militarily impregnable and ritually inviolable. In so doing, the sovereign had practically sentenced the kakanfo to death. Having secured the sympathy of the oyo empire ruling council, the Oyomesi, Afonja responded with a counter attack declaration of war against the monarch and vanquished him. It became the turn of the Alaafin to reciprocate and acknowledge the implicit gesture for him to commit suicide (regicide). Upon the death of Aole, Afonja intensified the momentum of his rebellion and pronounced a unilateral declaration of independence from the central authority of the empire. He thereby transited from the commander-in-chief of the (Oyo empire) realm to its ubiquitous and most consequential violator. 

Nemesis soon caught up with him as he was served the same dish he previously served the Alaafin. 

Detached from the umbilical cord of the Oyo empire, he was cut down in the Alimi heralded fulani conquest of Ilorin. The bitter-sweet rejoinder to the prior Yoruba disinheritance of Ilorin was the categorical repulse of Fulani expansionism at the rout of their forces by the Balogun Odeyinka Oderinlo (my favourite Yoruba generalissimo) led Ibadan army at Osogbo in 1840.The ramifications of the potential failure of the Yoruba army at Osogbo are too dire to contemplate.There had been talks of the ambition of the custodians of the Sokoto Caliphate to ‘dip the Koran in the Atlantic seaboard in Lagos’.This was the euphemism for the projected conquest of Yoruba territory all the way to the Lagos coast. 

As a Participant-Observer of Yoruba history, I have always prioritised the study of the pre colonial Yoruba-Fulani engagement. The striking coincidence was how my search for historical recollection on oderinlo coincided with the symbolic proclamation and commemoration (by the governors of the Yoruba states) of Ìsèse day. This was against the immediate backdrop of the escalation of the theocratic chauvinism with which the Moslem faithfuls of Ilorin had bullied the Pan Yoruba traditionalists of the cosmopolis. 

As I’m wont to do, whenever I find myself in Ibadan and with a few hours to spare, I tend to wander into the university of Ibadan bookshop. I then head straight to the Yoruba bookshelf compartment. This time around, I was rewarded with the display of a biography on Oderinlo, authored by one of his numerous descendants. Reading through the book, I was struck to learn that Oderinlo, the man of destiny, was actually born and raised in Ilorin. More surprising is the revelation that Oderinlo was one of Afonja’s brigade commanders and fought alongside the latter (in what turned out to be the last battle of Afonja’s career) against the Alimi fomented palace coup. 

Subsequent to this coup was the tragedy of the Eleduwe war. 

Not the best memory of the Oyo empire, the war pitted Alafin Oluewu against the Ilorin Fulani occupation army. The tragedy was not so much in losing the war as the manner in which it was lost. The military hierarchy of Oluewu’s contingent comprised the Alaafin himself, Eleduwe (the bariba king), Oluyole and Oderinlo (of Ibadan) Kurunmi of Ijaye, Prince Atiba of Oyo and Timi Agbale of Ede. Over a perceived slight, the latter two planned to ‘desert the kings in the heat of battle’. And they did. Ultimately, Eleduwe and Oluewu were killed ‘and thus the battle to break the yoke of Ilorin failed because the warlords deserted their kings when it mattered most’.

Oderinlo and the Yoruba army were third time lucky. After the Afonja war, Oderinlo had departed Ilorin and found his way to Ibadan where dispersed warriors from Oyo, Ife, Ijebu and all over the Yoruba realm regrouped to form the Ibadan military state. ‘The Ibadan, under Oluyole were to defend and protect all the Yoruba towns and provinces to the North and North East’. It was in response to this call of duty that Oderinlo found himself in the third major military encounter (at Osogbo) where they turned the tide of battle against the Fulani.

For some years now, I have taken a shine to studying Ifa as a hobby and as a general reader. In the course of this vocation, I had acquired a meaningful knowledge of Yoruba history and prehistory. It is anyone’s guess that this is not a socially correct proclivity among the African elite let alone the pseudo religious hisbah of Ilorin.There was no end to my momentary mortification when I was outed by President Olusegun Obasanjo at the public ceremony to mark my sixtieth birthday ceremony. “Akin is so versed in Ifa, probably he could be an Ifa priest”. I aspire to use myself as a catalyst for the demystification of Ifa in the consciousness of the Yoruba political and social elite, to supplant the extant blind alienation and self-willed ignorance.

This negative attitude was prescribed by colonialism in its mission to delegitimize the African tradition and impose its worldview as the ideal. At its most explicit, it was typified by the French assimilationist colonial policy, ‘the aim of which was to assimilate and transform all Africans in “French” colonies into black French men and women. To accomplish this goal, France had to eliminate all African cultures and assimilate all Africans into French culture’. If there is any contentious subject on which the Yoruba in particular and the human community need reintroduction, it is Ifa. “Ifa is not but contains religion, it is not science but contains science, it is not philosophy but contains philosophy.. Ifa is a compendium of Yoruba thoughts and history”. 

Rationality demands that you need to know and understand precisely what it is you are running away from before taking to your heels otherwise you will ab initio be running blind. Ifa is a myth begging to be demystified, a necessary demystification of sociocultural reality. It is a victim, first and foremost, of colonialism and its inherent requirement to delegitimize the precolonial history of Africa. Now, it has become a permanent victim of the posturing and demagoguery of Christianity and Islam. 

One aspect of Ifa in which the Yoruba are typically running blind is the concept of Esu. The blindness was originally fostered by the mistranslation of the English bible to Yoruba by Bishop Ajayi Crowther where he equated Esu with the Satan of the Bible. So let us seize this occasion to put the deity in its proper perspective. “Èṣù is a deity in Yorùbá land, an Òrìṣà (arch angel of Olodumare). Èṣù is a friendly prankster. Esu is Only a Messenger who delivers whatever messages he is sent, be it positive or negative (a messenger does not dictate what message. Èṣù láàlú does not have an English name just the way Ṣàngó, Ògún, Ọbàtálá, Ọ̀ṣun and others don’t have an English name. Èṣù is Èṣù!. Èṣù láàlú does not have all those bad features ascribed to Biblical Satan. People should therefore stop judging Yorùbá Traditions, Customs, Beliefs and Spirituality as “Sinful”, in Jewish biblical sense’. 

Among the Yoruba, there is something of a paradox in the contradiction between the subconscious individual belief in the relevance of Ifa to the resolution of any resurgence of crisis in human experience and a conscious social and collective disavowal of its reality. It is a paradox that is borne out in the ambiguity of individual and private accommodation of Ifa by those who simultaneously profess Christianity and Islam.

I have not come across any contemporary tradition that surpasses the Yoruba in the placement of emphasis on morality and good conduct. 

This distinction is well captured in Ifa corpus and the concept of omoluabi (one who behaves as a well born). It is in consonance with the prioritisation and reification of Iwa (virtue), that she was metaphorically married to Orunmila, the preeminent divinity. “In odu ogbe ogunda, Orunmila once sought the means of success in life and was told that the only way was for him to marry iwa. He accordingly married iwa and became very successful. Hence everyone has been seeking after iwa, with the result that iwa became the mother of many children..”

In the words of its foremost proponent, Wande Abimbola, 

“Ifa is the greatest heritage of Africa. It talks about everything. It is our own encyclopaedia which is held orally. It is a testimony to the fact that human brain can retain a lot of information without having to write anything. Unfortunately, a lot of it has been forgotten but a good deal of it is still alive. Ifa is the greatest African gift to the whole world. Unfortunately, while Ifa has travelled all over the world, Yoruba people, who are the real owners are ignorant about it because somebody changed our minds. There are white people who are now Babalawo and some of them have private jets from the practice…There are people we call Onisegun, they are not Babalawo. Babalawo does not do evil.‎”

Originally published at Thisday