Religion, Nigerian Politicians, & Ruinous Duplicity

(By SegunAdeniyi) - By imposing a theocratic order that pushes the responsibility for ‘blessing the people of the state’ to God … [Nigerian politicians] are assured of support in a society where majority of the people are ever ready to die for the faith they proclaim, even if it does not reflect in their character and lifestyles. The interesting thing is that the same people who order the destruction of vehicles carrying alcohol in Kano may be sharing such drinks with friends in the privacy of their homes. It is the same with Christian governors who build expensive cathedrals in their government houses, to reinforce the unholy wedlock between the pulpit and the political podium. …

We should all be worried about the growing importance of religion as a marker of identity and a tool for political exploitation in our country. While religion can indeed help to restore moral order, the experience of Nigeria has shown that it is actually being deployed in promotion of private interest. By invoking religious sentiments, the people are easily triggered to action in support of whatever cause the political leader seems to be pursuing. In a predominantly illiterate society, nothing can be more appealing than to be seen as ‘one of us’ by the masses.

          The story of the drunkard and his bottles of beer [see below] … is very instructive. The man could pick and choose which bottle to destroy and which one to keep because it was all part of an elaborate scam to keep on deceiving himself that he was making the right choice.

Of the Supernatural and Modern Half-Believers

"...Student of folklore Christina Hole describes the half-belief when she notes that while '... most people would hotly deny that they believe in magic, many frequently resort to it in luck-bringing rites, precautionary words or actions against misfortune.' Most of us may know a person (or may be a person) who, after asserting that a certain rather unpleasant occurrence has never happened, will then 'knock on wood' ... --probably a relic of the ancient belief that woods such as elder and oak have magical, protective powers.
          The modern knocker-on-wood may do so with a mocking laugh, or some other outward disclaimer, in case his associates (or employer or wife) suspect his maturity and sanity. Nevertheless, he performs the ritual. He may also carry a rabbit's foot, or similar 'lucky charm, ; though he may deny that he believes that it contains any magical power to bring him good luck. But he makes sure, when he goes lout, that he has it with him. He is a half-believer; he is trying to hedge his bets.
          Incidentally, some of the superstitious magical practices we still indulge in are often not recognized as such. We know it is 'foolish' to believe that a broken mirror will bring bad luck (one's mirror image supposedly contains one's soul, and breaking the mirror prevents the soul's return to the body). We may not know that the enjoyable modern ceremony of throwing rice (or its up-to-date substitute, confetti) over a newly married couple is in fact an ancient fertility ritual--the scattering of products of plentiful nature being a symbolic and magical act intended to make the marriage equally fertile and productive."

Douglas Hill and Pat Williams, 1965, 20-21

The Supernatural

In Memoriam: Robert Gabriel Mugabe

Of Fela, His Music, and Social Change

(By Sylvester Asoya) - “Arrest the Music!” 

I met Professor Tejumola Olaniyan a couple of times just before his exciting work: “Arrest the Music: Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics” was released.

The amiable scholar who teaches African Cultural Studies and English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told me some interesting stories about Fela during the course of our conversation. The most fascinating for me, is the growing popularity of the Afrobeat king at leading centres of learning in the United States and other parts of the free world. According to him, Fela is currently a subject of great interrogation and extensive study, especially on issues of popular culture and mass mobilization. 

Olaniyan also revealed the origin of his bizarre title, “Arrest the Music!” “Arrest the Music!” was actually a military order by an unlettered soldier on sighting Fela on the performing arena during one of those government sponsored raids on Kalakuta, Fela’s former residence around Ojuelegba area of Lagos in 1977. 

But Fela was indeed, the music! On this score, I think the untutored soldier voiced unusual philosophy.

Of Yoruba Cosmology, Mythology, and Terra Incognita

“The central Yoruba tradition—that of the sacred myth describing the creation, evolution, and jurisdiction of the deities and historical heroes—represents a remarkably rigorous cosmology of intellectual coherence and elegance. It is a universe of elemental forces natural and social with finds metaphoric expression in a pantheon of deities, whose complicated interrelationships, jurisdictions, and necessities are rationalized into an architectonic system of knowledge. The sophisticated worldview embodied in this myth has as its central value the balancing and harmonizing of powerful forces—natural, numinous, and social.

Out of the interplay of deities, ancestors, and humanity, through a process of mutual obligation expressed in language, ritual, and protocol as handed down by tradition, society became possible. A universe of history, stability, morality, and order was achieved.            

But bordering on this system of stability was terra incognita: the evil forest, the bad bush. Here was the home of chaos, where random spirits without name or history, of bizarre forms and malignant intent were to be found. This was the domain of the deformed, the unnatural, and the abominable. The Sunufo, distant cousins of the Yoruba, have a mask that expresses this. It has the snout of an alligator, the tusks of a boar, the horn of a rhinoceros, and the ears of a zebra. It represents an animal that existed before order was imposed on the world.

Yoruba World: A Rich Tapestry of Culture, Religion, and Orature

“But the youthful imagination was fed not only by the awesome images looming in the dim, sacred, ile-ere. Ritual, spectacle, song, dance, drumbeats, mystery, and power surrounded him. Poetry, pageantry, and history combined in the luminous presence of the egungun as the ancestor became flesh and danced among his children. The boy was attracted to the art of the storyteller, a tradition of oral literature that has reached a very high level of complexity and diversity among the Yoruba. But to call these expressions of the culture ‘stories’ is reductive. As developed in this culture, their elaborate narrative line incorporated elements of theater, music, mime, ritual, magic, dance, and the linguistic elements of proverb, poetry, riddle, parable, and song. They were not told so much as performed, dramatically reenacted, so that the accomplished taleteller had to be master of a range of skills. He was at once actor, mime, impressionist, singer, dancer, composer, and conductor, using his range of artistic skills and even the audience and environment to create a multidimensional experience that has no obvious equivalent in Western culture. A more elaborate expression of this form—most often with a strictly religious reference, being ritual recreations of sacred myths—was performed by costumed dancers to the accompaniment of religious music, and became known to Western observers as ‘folk operas.’”

Michael Thelwell, 1984, 182-83

“Introduction,” The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by Amos Tutuola

Of Yorubaland and 1st Encounters with Christianity

“What was not anticipated was the way in which the integrity of the indigenous Yoruba institutions of Abeokuta would begin to fell an unprecedented and unassimilable pressure. This is not to say that the region had been culturally insulated. At the time of Odegbami’s appointment (circa 1900-10), Islam has long been present and mosques were not unknown in the city. Islamic culture and doctrine and Yoruba belief and practice co-existed relatively free of tension, for Islam in West Africa went back many centuries and each system had had time and pressing reason to adjust, however uneasily, to the peculiar character of the other.

The new pressure came at this time from an intolerant, bumptious, and vigorously proselytizing European Christianity, a new dispensation that was not to content itself with the harvesting of souls and the elevation of the spirit, but which increasingly set itself the task of transforming societies. The missionaries—courageous and mostly doomed—frequently brought, or possibly had to bring, to their civilizing mission that narrow self-righteousness that is so often the sword and shield of the religious idealist.

More significantly, hard on the heels of their chapels, mission schools, and hospitals had come new laws and moral codes which were enforced by native courts, a parallel civil service buttressed by police and military forces, a mercantile economy accompanied by a different system of currency, and a new and mysterious system of land tenure, all of which in combination represented during the transition first a parallel government and then a superceding one. The cumulative effect of this challenge on all the traditional institutions

"Living in Bondage: Breaking Free" - A Sequel

Ramsey Nouah (L) and Kenneth Okonkwo

(By BellaNaija) – [A] sequel to Nollywood classic “Living In Bondage” is here … and it is titled “Living In Bondage: Breaking Free”.

Created by Play Network Africa in conjunction with Native Filmworks, the movie is co-produced by award-winning producer, Steve Gukas, Dotun Olakurin and Charles Okpaleke; and directed by Nollywood star Ramsey Nouah.

Living in Bondage: Breaking Free is the story of Nnamdi, Andy Okeke's mysterious son, and his vaunting quest for the big life, one that he would do whatever it took to realize. Nnamdi’s untamed quest for the quick buck, fast car, easy living, inevitably took him on a perilous journey that is better told by the cast of stellar performers, classic and current, including Kenneth Okonkwo, Kanayo O. Kanayo, Enyinna Nwigwe, Nancy Isime and Munachi Abii.

Misfortune as Father of Superstition

"I was lonely in the midst of people, thought so much that I took ill. It was a life that had no substance in it, completely vacuous in the present and in the future. I began to ask introspective questions, making attributions to spiritual diabolism. Misfortune is the the father of superstition. My woes must be spiritual, I concluded.
          The spiritual churches I visited varied and amplified my confusion. I was lost in the labyrinth of prophetic declarations. At one place, I was told that Ekwueme had spiritually sealed my destiny; at another, that there was an ancestral curse upon me. A third said my paternal uncle had shot down my star spiritually. Prayer after prayer. Fasting and seed-sowing, yet nothing changed in my life. A fellow prescribed yet another spiritual house. 'It's the final bus stop; stubborn shackles are loosened there by our father in the Lord.' My spiritual shackles appeared to have been forged with something stronger than iron since there was no breakthrough after a visit to that church. All I wanted was a change in my circumstances, a better job to enable me rent my own abode, and pursue higher education. So, I could not understand why God would not look into my petitions, ordinary as they were. I had now become extremely despondent; my mind had reached a critical state of despair. Finally, I was fed up, and gave up on spiritual solutions."

Immanuel James, 2014, 66-67

Under Bridge

Seun Kuti: God is the Tool of Oppressors

Straight Talk With Kadaria