Of Okija Shrine, Unforgiving Deity, & Tech-Savvy Ezemmuo

(By Mark-Anthony Osuchukwu) - Inside Okija shrine with the Goddess who never forgives

In the middle of a forest lies the dreaded Okija shrine, home to Ogwugwu-Mmiri, one of the most powerful deities in Igboland. Leading to the shrine is a dirt road plied by men on a date with spirits, surrounded by vegetation and fear. The shrine is a half-hour journey on okada from Ihembosi, a busy community in Anambra State. Save for the sputtering of the bike and the chirping of birds, the entire world is silent. A two-man journalism crew from Nigeria Abroad, we are on a mission to poke into the shrine’s historical mystery, and separate fact from fiction. 

The okada whines to a halt by a lonely structure where a man in red cap is sitting on a low stool. We pay the rider and approach the good man with pleasantries.

“Clear your throats before you come any further,” he commands. 

 A young man in his 40’s, his charge, a ritual for all who visit the shrine, is larger-than-life, instilling fear and obedience. We clear our throats, unlocking his hospitality.

“I am Ezemmuo Meekaodimma”—Chief priest bent on doing good. “What did you bring for the Alusi?

It is not our first visit. The day before we had come to book an appointment for this interview, and were told of what items to bring along: kolanuts, edo, native male chalk, native female chalk, and dry gin. We present the items.

“Whatever you give to the Gods can never be taken back,” Ezemmuo states, as if reading our rights.

A Worshipper, His Maligned Gods, and Hypocrisy of Christians

Dede Ege, man, and the art of gods by Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu

I have seen a lot of foolish gods. Grandmother once told me about one who complained that teenagers that often played around his shrine gave off smelly farts, to his eternal suffocation. Poor, lazy dude, he wouldn't move an inch. Another wiped out an entire family for the sin of a member he left unhurt! There is no category of foolishness that has not been practised by some god somewhere, even in ancient Rome and Greece.

I have seen a lot of gods--and that is because, to read Homer, Herodotus, or Plutarch, ancient purveyors of the Greek and Roman gods gist--to read them is to be an eye-witness seated cross-legged at the scene of the event. Ancient Greece probably had more gods than humans, some of them thoroughly silly--and I shall not attend to your lingering suspicion that perhaps man, often unwise, made the gods in his own image; that the foolishness of the gods can be explained in the social genetics between man and what he created--I shall not attempt such a sacrilegious thinking, gods forbid!

Negotiating Orunmila: His Mask, His Wisdom

"A mask of Orunmila stared down at him from the wall, or at least the artist in Osogbo had said the large eyes belonged to the god of wisdom. His mother would have been horrified by the serene wooden face, angered even, by what she would dub apostasy.
     When he prayed, he prayed to Allah the most merciful. But what was he to do with all these gods and goddesses and spirits and ancestors that had peopled his village in Kwara before the first cleric arrived with a Koran? He did not worship Orunmila but he thought to himself, this wooden embodiment of wisdom hung on his wall."

Chibundu Onuzo, 2018: 145

Welcome to Lagos

Africa, Communal Philosophy, and Outlier Thinkers

"The very idea of a communal philosophy that is entailed in the notion of particularistic studies of traditional African philosophies might be put in question. It might be suggested that to talk of the Bantu conception of this or the Zulu conception of that is to postulate a unanimity or consensus in philosophical belief among the traditional peoples for which there is not, and probably can never be, sufficient evidence. It is necessary, in response to this, to explain at once that talk of communal philosophy of an ethnic group does not necessarily imply  that the conceptions involved are entertained by all members of the group. What it means is that anybody thoughtfully knowledgeable about the culture will know that such conceptions are customary in the culture though s/he may not subscribe to it. The evidence for a communal philosophy is very much like that for the customs of a culture. In fact, in quite some cases, customs are encapsulations of some aspects of communal philosophy.
        It is important, however, to note that a communal philosophy is the result of the pooling together over a considerable length of time the thoughts of individual thinkers. Propositions about, say, the constituents of human personality or the nature of time just don't materialize impromptu out of a cosmological bang, big, small, or medium. They emanate from human brans. In an oral tradition the names of the thinkers are often forgotten. This is not always so, however. In Ghana, for example, it is not at all rare for a proverb to be prefaced with the name of its author. Nor is it unusual for such sayings to evince originality and independence of mind. It goes without saying, therefore, that a communal philosophy is a gathering together of inputs from thinkers who may not have agreed on all points. And this, perhaps, accounts for the apparent inconsistencies that one sometimes notices in such bodies of belief."

Kwasi Wiredu, 1998

"Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion"

African Studies Quarterly, Volume 1 Issue 4

15 Facts on African Religions

Religion Distribution in Africa

(By Jacob K. Olupona) - African religions cover a diverse landscape of ethnic groups, languages, African Religions: A Very Short Introduction shares an interesting list of 15 facts on African religions.
cultures, and worldviews. Here, Jacob K. Olupona, author of 

1. African traditional religion refers to the indigenous or autochthonous religions of the African people. It deals with their cosmology, ritual practices, symbols, arts, society, and so on. Because religion is a way of life, it relates to culture and society as they affect the worldview of the African people.

2. Traditional African religions are not stagnant but highly dynamic and constantly reacting to various shifting influences such as old age, modernity, and technological advances.

3. Traditional African religions are less of faith traditions and more of lived traditions. They are less concerned with doctrines and much more so with rituals, ceremonies, and lived practices.

Discovering Things Fall Apart

Source: reading.cornel.edu

(Chinua Achebe)--"Soon after [an] encounter with my future father-in-law I moved to Lagos to interview for a new position at the headquarters of what was now called the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC). The Talks Department hired me to maul over scripts and prepare them for broadcast. A tedious job, it nevertheless honed my skill for writing realistic dialogue, a gift I gratefully tapped into when writing my novels.

In my second or third year at University College, Ibadan, I had offered two short stories, 'Polar Understanding' and 'Marriage is a Private Affair,' to the University Herald, the campus magazine. They were accepted and published. I published other stories during that time, including 'The Old Order in Conflict with the New' and 'Dead Men's Path.' In my third year I was invited to join the editorial committee of the journal. A bit later I became the magazine's editor.

At the University College, Ibadan, I was in contact with instructors of literature, of religion, and of history who had spent several years teaching in England. Studying religion was new to me and interesting because the focus went beyond Christian theology to encompass wider scholarship--West African religions.

Philosophizing the Ifa Corpus

"Philosophising for the public should be about helping that 'modern' Yoruba fella understand that no philosophical text is superior to the Ifa corpus produced by the genius of his people; that the Western progress and modernity he celebrates while recoiling in Christian or Islamic horror at the first mention of the Ifa corpus were all once part of a Western 'pagan' intermesh of history, myth, and science until fellas like him applied themselves and separated the science from everything else; that the microphone that his pastor uses to give him gospel every Sunday was part of that pagan mix until the separation; that there is still room to separate that science from the Ifa corpus for the elevation of humanity if only he and I would study it, apply ourselves to a creative extraction of that knowledge, and stop diminishing it as an inferior pagan text."

Pius Adesanmi

You're Not a Country, Africa

Yoruba "Paganism" and Religious Tolerance in Africa

"Esin kan o pe k'awa ma s'oro." I have translated what it says and what it leaves unsaid but implied:
'Oro hampers no faith. Let no faith hamper Oro.' Here we encounter the first indication of intrinsic humanism of Yoruba spirituality: the valuation of pluralism. We encounter consciousness and validation of the spiritual essence of the Other. Indeed, we are in the presence of the accomodationist ethos of the Yoruba world view. For what this Oro canticle hints at and acknowledges is the presence of other faiths in its own spiritual space of actuation.

The African and Religion

"Africans are notoriously religious... Religion permeates into all the departments of life so fully that it
is not easy or possible always to isolate it.... Wherever the African is, there is his[/her] religion...

"One of the sources of severe strain for Africans exposed to modern change is the increasing process (through education, urbanization and industrialization) by which individuals become detached from their traditional environment. This leaves them in a vacuum devoid of a solid religious foundation. They are torn between the life of their forefathers which, whatever else might be said about it, has historical roots and firm traditions, and the life of our technological age, which, as yet, for many Africans has no concrete form or depth.