Yoruba and the resurrection of ancient demons

SOMEWHERE around 753 BC, two young men named Romulus and Remus founded Rome. Rome was the seat of anything evil, a sanctuary for criminals of all hues. As the city expanded into an empire, the seat of Caesar assumed god status. Caesar, like almost any other emperor, was a bloodthirsty murderer, and the Roman Emperors that inherited his seat before the papacy came and displaced them from 800 AD onwards were more or less like him. That is pretty much how the human society works: you behead innocent husbands, murder pregnant women on the farms, sell children sent on errands into slavery, then become Emperor and god, and your children become princes, living large on the sweat of a subjugated people and claiming royal blood. This is the story from India to China and from Egypt to Oyo. But minus the Holy Roman Empire, which will soon be resurrected as the Reconstituted European Union under papal rule, no empire lost in history has ever been regained. I noted this in a 2022 piece, “Pathetic Putin.”

Anyone breathing fire and brimstone and reminding us of a dead empire is actually reminding us of stories that are better forgotten, stories of how his ancestors murdered and cut our people to pieces and raped our maidens. Let the power-drunk remember the power-drowned. No to second slavery. I get am before no be property. I do not look at faces when I write, or I would never have published “The Mohbad mob”, which today has been completely validated. Let those who want to re-enact the cruelty of the past mind the thorns: no one gives way to yesterday’s horse rider.

In my very first submission on this page titled “There is nothing like farmers-herders clashes in Nigeria” (October 16, 2021), I posited that false categories, in part because of the ontological link between humanity and falsehood, are an inevitable, and perhaps inerasable, feature of life as presently constituted, and that they are a tool of power rather than the product of ignorance. Consider this: a herder armed with machetes and guns cuts down a farmer working on his/her ancestral land in cold blood, then the powers-that-be call this a clash between farmer and herder! The murderous onslaught of Fulani herdsmen, which closely mirrors the past, bloodthirsty activities of Oyo soldiers in Oodua territory, is now being minimized, a tactic I called “a linguistically sophisticated suppression of truth.”

That is why the provocative, bilious and completely unwarranted assault on the Throne of Oodua by the Alaafin of Oyo is now being described as a clash, when the truth is that it is only one party that is launching assaults, without the other putting up any resistance. Moses Olafare, the spokesman for the Ooni, made it clear that his principal had asked him not to issue any reply, and that any further word he said was his own opinion, but see the volume of essayists online offering the Ooni unsolicited advice! And what makes the Alaafin’s case worse is the fact that the Ooni never bestowed an “Okanlomo Yorubaland” title on Jubril Dotun Sanusi. What he did was honour him as “Okanlomo Oodua.” How many commentators have noted this key fact?

Oyo expansionists can keep crafting their distorted history, but Yorubaland was never at any time a single kingdom. Indeed, until colonialism, no part of what is the South-West today, apart from Oyo and its tributaries, was ever known as Yoruba. The word Yoruba was just borrowed for convenience and if the owners want it back, let it be returned to them. The fact that your ancestors murdered and oppressed many people does not make you a perpetual lord over unwilling peoples. It is a grievous disease to be idle and jobless, fishing for trouble. Will a son be worshipped by his own father just because he has or once had power?

During the 17th century, Oyo had horses and grains, reaching its acme in the 18th century, largely through profits derived from the slave trade. With the abolition of slavery, its power waned. Yes, the British colonialists initially gave higher recognition to the Alaafin of Oyo due to the memory of Empire, but the Oodua nations chose to return to their history. The Oyo that the Alaafin hankers after did not start great; it only attracted greatness at a point, and then went into decline. No Alaafin is king over the Ekiti, the Ijesha, the Owo, the Ondo, the Ilaje, the Awori, the Remo and the Ijebu. How can the people who threw off Oyo yoke via Ibadan through the 16-year Kiriji (Ekiti Parapo) War (July 30, 1877-March 14, 1893) now return to that yoke in 2025? Will the children of Fabunmi of Oke Mesi and Ogedengbe of Ilesa be enslaved again? Ibadan has actually served Oduduwaland more than Oyo ever will, yet the Olubadan has never threatened fire and brimstone.

Breathing fire in 2025 is not the way to build this land. The crown that the Ondo, the Remo, the Ilaje, the Awori, the Ijebu, the Ekiti and others wear today did not come from Oyo. I am tired of addressing professors and pursuers of violence. When certain wild, analphabetic thugs shout themselves hoarse, chanting “Oyo owns the crown,” ask them which crown they are referring to. The Ooni acknowledging the military might of Oyo at any point in time does not diminish his throne in any way. Let the warmongers rest.

Who hinges present action on past glory? Your forebears had power yesterday, and then you want to seize tomorrow? Did your fathers tell you they own even today? You expansionists, why not climb Olumo Rock and claim ownership, and see if your head will still rest on your neck by midday? Your fathers of whom you are so proud must have owned the Atlantic and the Sahara desert. Now that I remember, they owned Karachi and the Congo goldmines. They invented mummification in Egypt; they occupied America long before the Paleo-Indians, and long before the Barbarians of Gaul fought the Battle of Maldon. They owned and still own everything, even the air we breathe. Yes, they own the clouds and hailstones; they were such good inventors. They will not cease telling us about their ancestors.

READ ALSO: About the name ‘Yoruba’