Choosing the Ooni's Successor

(Dele Momodu)--Fellow Nigerians, let me confess that my trip to the ancient city of Ife last Thursday was a most harrowing experience. As a matter of fact, the drive itself was very smooth devoid of the usual hurly-burly on that notorious Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. We set forth on our journey around noon not knowing what to expect along the way. Road travel in Nigeria has defied common logic. You require methods to the malfeasance and madness of our dare-devil drivers. We drove all the way to Ibadan without any major drama of bottlenecks and we thanked God for journey mercies.

The second leg of our journey was from Ibadan to Ile-Ife.

The Ooni of Ife and Tradition

Source: news punch.org

(Olusegun Adeniyi)--As a first year undergraduate at Ife in 1985, I was confronted with this myth that in the town on which our campus was domiciled, rituals were performed with human beings all-year-round except only on one day. But after Dr. Dipo Fashina (the ever-uncompromising former ASUU president popularly known as Jingo) had put enough sense into some of us (through Philosophy 101) to begin to doubt everything, I asked a roommate, indigene of Ife, whether the story was true. When he replied in the affirmative, I sought to know whether any member of his family had ever been lost to such practices and he responded: “A kii f’omo ore b’ore”.

That saying, crudely translated, means that indigenes can never be used for rituals involving human sacrifice. Of course, I must point out here that throughout my four-year stay at Ife, I was not aware of any incident of a student being lost to rituals. That is not to say we did not hear stories of some “strange” happenings at the period. That perhaps then explains why since the information broke last week that the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuade, had ascended into the spirit world, there are stories of people either avoiding travelling to/through the town or of residents going to bed earlier than usual.

As the Ooni Retires to the Penthouse

Ooni of Ife; source: informationng.com

(Pendulum by Dele Momodu)--Fellow Nigerians, the controversy surrounding the health status of The Ooni of Ife would have been unnecessary if many of us had understood or respected the Ife tradition. Ile-Ife being the cradle of civilisation is steeped in endless myths and the ancient town parades countless pantheons for about 401 deities who are worshipped all year round. 

Ile-Ife and Benin City cherish their culture and never joke with tradition. They revere their kings and hold on fastidiously to the belief that these kings can never die, they can only retire to the ceiling, a concept that is probably alien to members of the modern generation. This is why it is possible for a powerful king to depart this terrestrial space unannounced for months by the traditional institutions. The people have accepted a system that may seem abnormal to foreigners but not to us.

What has made The Ooni’s case so contentious is because the news of his departure escaped and exploded from abroad and our Ife Chiefs are righteously miffed about the antics of some busy-bodies who seem hell-bent on rendering them irrelevant. This is unacceptable no matter how modern the world as become. Traditions the world over are either kept or wholly jettisoned. There are sacred rites or protocols that are observed and performed by the Catholics at The Vatican. For example, there cannot be an emergence of a new Pope without the appearance of the famous white smoke. It is the same for the Muslims who must search, find and sight the moon before proceeding on starting or ending the Ramadan. Modernity has not been able to obliterate those age-old traditions.

The "Great Journey" of Ile-Ife's "Great Crown"

Source: exploringafrica

"In the history of Ile-Ife, 1903 was an earth-shattering year for the yoruba people. It was the year that the Ooni, the god-king of the Yoruba, encountered directly the full impact of British modern colonial rule. From the perspective of the Ooni and from the perspective of the colonial governor in Lagos, the year ended the preceding era and opened a new investiture for Ile-ife City and the Yoruba states of south-western Nigeria.

Although the governor, Sir William Macgregor, referred cursorily to the occasion as the 'Great Crown' case, to Ooni Adelekan Olubuse 1 (1894-1910) and to the Yoruba people, it was a precedent-setting 'Great Journey' because it marked the first time in the history  of Ile-Ife that an Ooni would venture out of his palace and beyond the center of the universe.

For Westerners, the occasion would have been tantamount to asking God to leave heaven to answer the call of a mere mortal.

The Ooni traveled to Lagos, then the center of British regional administration. For the Yoruba, news of the unprecedented journey provoked fear, anxiety, and uncertainty because it was a great taboo for the Ooni to vacate the sacred city of Ile-Ife to travel to another seat of power, however that power might be defined."

Jacob K. Olupona (2011: 77)

City of 201 Gods: Ile-Ife in Time, Space, and the Imagination