Like their movies, like their lives

Recently, two overbleached, treacherous termagants drew the curtains on their marriages on Twitter. Evidencing the Yoruba proverb that a child meant to wallow in the mud will inevitably fall off a mat, they said they had given their all and could proceed no further. Within just three years they had had enough, yet this society is teeming with women of gold who have kept their homes for ages. Blinded by money, the termagants went into marriage with illusions of grandeur. They pretended to want to keep a home, tied to their mother’s oja. Look no further than their homestead, because the Yoruba say that it is a worthless mother (iya iya) that breeds children of wretchedness (omo ise). Throughout history women of low morals have wrecked kingdoms and nations. A perverse woman is a pestilence of creation.

The attention whores did not remember tomorrow when they sealed their marital vows under the glare of hard currency, touring the globe in private jets. They spoke of no pain when the world worshipped at their feet; when they had breakfast at Chelsea Restaurant and lunch at the Trump Tower; when they watched the El Clasico live at the Bernabeu and the reverse fixture at Camp Nou, receiving autographed jerseys from the blasphemously christened masters of the universe. But when a little challenge came, they began crying like the ghommid egbere on social media. Such ladies are like the vegetable ebolo: no amount of water can take away their foul smell. They are dirty from body to soul and spirit. If you let their beauty carry you away you will disgrace your ancestors, some of whom also died in disgrace. It is treason for a judge to lack discernment and be married to a glorified prostitute, but it is even more distressing when such perverse women drag the entire society through the mud with themselves. The mud is the sow’s natural habitat, but it shouldn’t be the province of princes.

But where else, apart from their horrid homesteads, might the attention whores be getting their influence from? Might they be taking a cue from popular culture, particularly Nollywood ? To all intents and purposes, such celebrities have hardly anything of value to offer ideologically, and we must begin from their artistic production. Here, I dwell specifically on what is called the Yoruba movie or Yorubahood if you prefer. Some of it is good, but a lot of it is nothing but cultural abdication. In 200 level at the Obafemi Awolowo University, I remember one of my greatest teachers, Dr. Sola Ajibade (now a professor) answering in the negative, my question whether the Yoruba movie practitioners were projecting Yoruba culture in positive light. The course title was Yoruba Oral Literature. The don said Yorubahood was desecrating Yoruba culture and I must confess that I didn’t grasp the full import of his submission until years later. In one of his papers, the celebrated linguist, Ayo Banjo, thumbed down the movies for consistently reflecting a bygone age and being pernicious in their messages and I must say, I couldn’t agree more.

I begin with a movie whose title I cannot recall at the moment. In that movie, a man impregnates his elder brother’s wife. However, we are told that this act is in fulfillment of prophecy, because a prophet had prophesied while the feuding parties were still children that the devious act in question would be the only means for the erring younger brother to ever have an offspring in this world! In other words, the movie rationalizes snatching one’s sibling’s wife. In another, the rape of a maid is justified on the ground of yet another prophecy, namely that “pregnancy would come through filth.” That pregnancy, we are told, is God’s means of opening the wife’s own womb. If you still don’t get my drift, then consider this: often in the Yoruba movies, a woman in search of the fruit of the womb is told something like the following: “Take this soap, bathe with it at exactly 2 a.m, then make love with your husband and you will conceive. If you don’t, you will never conceive again in this life.” As it turns out, the husband is not at home, and then the wife resorts to an affair with the gateman or some other male servant who is ready to offer the needed assistance! What balderdash! Pray, what is the connection between soap and conception? Where do these human beings get these pernicious ideas from?

Gradually, Yorubahood is destroying the Yoruba moral fabric. In the days of yore, juju maestro Ebenezer obey, sang: “oun ti o da o da, ma gboko lowo ore,” warning against wife/husband snatching. Fuji king, Wasiu Ayinde, was even more direct: “Beniyan o mu, oloun a mu; iyawo to tile ale de to gb’oko e leti,” meaning: “If a human does not punish her, God will; the wife who, on returning from her concubine’s place, gives her husband a slap.” In spite of his lewd disposition, even Abbas Akande was clear-headed enough to warn against wife snatching: “E ma se be ko da mo” (Don’t do it, it’s bad). However, evidence from the lifestyle of the Yorubahood practitioners demonstrates convincingly that they have, for years, been carefully moulding society in their rotten image.

Consider the recent case of an actress getting married to her previous husband’s friend and facing query over the striking resemblance between her son and the new lover. Is this a case of Oba’s child being given to Osun? We may never know, but a Yoruba folk singer crafted these arresting lines years ago: “Isowo aturota; onisowo lo yan won l’ale, alakowe na lo gbomo fun.” Gloss: “Traders in lies; it was a trader concubine that had their bed, but it was a bookish person they gave the child to.” This woman snatched a friend’s husband and if her ex-husband is to be believed, she was frolicking with the new husband while married to him. Another actress whose marriage collapsed less than two years after marriage was accused of consorting with a notorious thief disgraced at the Computer Village while married to her husband who, of course, is no saint.