Nigerian-Americans Celebrate Dual Heritage with Family Photos

(By Tolu Oye as told to Claudia Owusu and Kanyinsola Oye) - The Nigerian-American Siblings Using Traditional Family Portraiture to Celebrate Their Heritage

Photographs have always been a way for my family to hold on to our past—no matter how far we moved, or how complicated the idea of “home” became for us. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, I keenly remember my mother dragging me and my siblings every year to the JCPenney Portraits studio for our family picture. What made the ritual so uncomfortable was that we were not dressed like other Midwestern families at the mall. My mother had us all in matching golden-brown-and-beige traditional ankara, an African wax-print fabric with vibrant patterns.

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

Female Kings Among the Yoruba

(By Sulaiman Salaw-udeen) – The Many Female “Kings” of Ekiti

Yoruba tradition precludes princesses from becoming kings, but many of them have been installed regents or stop-gap kings in many towns and cities across Southwest Nigeria.

Like the conventional monarchs, they often come decked in traditional Agbada, Buba and Sokoto and wear round-headed caps festooned in attractive designs. They wield the familiar royal horsetail and are normally graced with obeisance by humble and adoring subjects who call them ‘Kabiyesi’, a Yoruba word for ‘Unquestionable’.

But their often rotund faces and other feminine features do always set them apart from the male world which their looks and their relations with male chiefs gave them away as. They are females and are fleeting occupiers of the exalted throne of a traditional ruler or Oba across towns and communities in Ekiti. They carry the common title of regents.

Wole Soyinka: From Ake to the World Stage

Millennial Priestess Rejuvenates Orisha Tradition

(By Wana Udobang) - Why you should care 

Because ancient practices should be understood, not left in the shadows.

Omitonade Ifawemimo presents as a modern-day sage, with gleaming eyes, a petite frame — and wisdom to spare. She is in fact a 20-something Orisha priestess, with an easy smile and tightly knotted hair. And she has made it her mission to teach and preserve the Orisha and Ifa spiritual practices, which are indigenous to the Yoruba people of Nigeria and adjoining parts of Togo and Benin.

“When you see her in person, she is this tiny presence,” says journalist and culture historian Molara Wood. “She is not this image of an intimidating traditional-religion adherent that a lot of Nigerians have.” 

Ifawemimo’s journey started at the age of 5 when she was initiated into the Orisha traditions by her parents, and by 15 she found herself dining with elders and mastering the art and science of divination, chanting and rituals. At 20, through a combination of study, practice and heeding the spiritual call, she earned her place as a priestess.

Of ‘Oniyangi’ and ‘Elepo’

(From Segun Adeniyi) - Let me state from the outset that I am not the writer of this story as it is one  of those interesting offerings being circulated on WhatsApp. Since I found the message rather instructive, I am posting it with minor editing because, in a way, it fits into Mark Twain’s warning that we should never argue with “stupid people” who could easily “drag you to their level and then beat you with experience”.

It is a story of two men: One, called ‘Elepo’ because of the nature of his merchandise, which was palm oil; and the other, ‘Oniyangi’ also because of the nature of his own merchandise, which was sharp sand. One day, a long, long time ago which no one living can actually define, Elepo and Oniyangi set out from opposite directions to market their merchandise. After travelling many days by foot, which was the only means of transportation in those days, they met at a narrow intersection. It was such a narrow path that only one person could go through at a time. Elepo insisted on the right of way. Oniyangi would have none of it.

Both argued until other travellers met them at the spot and a large crowd soon gathered. Having failed to pacify both men, some wise travellers suggested a way out – they should slug it out; and that whoever won the contest should have the right of way. Quickly, each man set down his merchandise by the roadside and they squared up one to the other. The battle was ferocious and long; in the end, Elepo had the better of Oniyangi, lifted him off his feet and landed him on the floor. The crowd roared!

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