Natasha and her Osun goddess

A short four minutes, thirty three seconds video of what looks like Kogi senator, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, worshipping at the Osun shrine in Osogbo is trending. If she is truly the one in the video, then her traducers better back off before the deluge comes with its fury. You do not beat the child of the goddess and get its applause.

Professor Karin Barber is a foremost authority in Yoruba praise names (Oríkì). In a 1990 piece, she tells two Osun goddess stories which may guide those fighting her daughter. The first, Barber says, is from a devotee of Oya which stressed the ferocity of Oya contrasting it with the meekness of her co-wife Osun: “Osun was the senior wife, Oya the junior. Oya was very beautiful, given to dressing up and showing off. She didn’t do her share of the housework. She was lazy, bossy, violent and unco-operative, and just sat there beautifying herself while her senior wife did all the work. Osun was mild and peaceable; she turned the other cheek to every insult and advised everyone to leave Oya alone. Osun said if Oya couldn’t be bothered to grind the pepper, she would do it herself. If Oya said she wouldn’t draw water, Osun would run and do it. Osun would say, ‘Just sit down and rest.’ Oya would sit there smirking and preening herself.”

Barber comments that “Osun is here represented as mild, patient and kind-hearted, easily overborne by the more forceful character of her co-wife. This is a picture of Osun presented in many stories.” But, Barber says, Osun’s own devotees “tended to stress the opposite view of her personality.” She can be angry; she can be ferocious.

The second story speaks to that other side of the goddess. Barber says she got the story from Baale Osun, the head of the Osun cult. It is a story that warns the bully not to take the goddess of love, beauty and procreation for granted: “In the ancient times all the orisa made a plan to get wealthy. They prepared a certain medicine which, if planted in yam-heaps, would produce money, children and all the things they wanted in life. In those days Osun was the only woman, and all the big Orisa – Ogun, $ango, Soponna – decided, despite Ifa’s advice to the contrary, to keep her out of the plan.

“They held their meetings in secret. But Osun overheard them. She was furious, and decided to get her revenge. After they had dug the heaps and planted the medicine, she crept out at dead of the night and sprinkled some of her river water on the heaps. The next day, the other orisa came out full of joyous anticipation to dig up all the good things from the heaps, but they found nothing there. They tried again the following day; again, Osun neutralised their medicine. Finally, they decided to take Ifa’s advice and invite Osun to join their scheme. They dug the heaps again, put in the medicine, and the next day they were all blessed with untold riches.” Barber says the storyteller concludes that “Osun is a woman like a man: no one can get away with provoking her.”

A statesman with loads of wisdom shared the video with me. He wondered why those big men lacked refinement; why they thought they could win the battle and the war at the same time without consequences. I do not know what they boast of in Akwa Ibom or Kogi Central. Whatever it is, they may have to race down to the Grove in Osogbo very soon for atonement. The goddess is angry.

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