By Alade Rotimi-John 

The origin of the Yoruba consulting Oracle otherwise referred to as Ifa is traceable to the people’s oral tradition way back in antiquity. Olodumare or the ultimate God of the Yoruba people had mandated his Arch-Prophet, Orunmila, to deploy his God-given wisdom to organise and manage the affairs of human society.

Orunmila lived both in heaven and on earth. He had access to the heavenly places as a matter of course even as he lived among men. On one occasion, Orunmila’s human nature took the better part of him. One of his children, a popular account has recorded, insulted him.

He was so enraged that he decided to return to heaven. After his departure, society was in great distress. Several entreaties were made to him to return to earth; to Ile-Ife, his ancestral base on earth. Orunmila rebuffed the overtures but in the end offered the people an Oracle to be consulted whenever they needed his counsel or assistance.

The name of the all-time Oracle is Ifa. The practical utility of Ifa in the affairs and events of the people through divination is probably the best known function of the deity even as Ifa embodies the totality of Yoruba intellectual culture and is the scripture of Yoruba religion with texts containing over 4, 906 Chapters making up its literary corpus.

Orunmila, the originator or founder of the Ifa system, is a human being though deified as an orisa or messenger of God. There is no matter on which Ifa may not be consulted. Though a sacerdotal institution, Ifa’s secular precepts are couched in scientific formulae or theorems. In Yoruba cosmology, there is no knowledge that is outside the purview of Ifa and so it is widely consulted on an infinite range of issues. The acknowledgement of Ifa’s eclectic knowledge is rendered in dialectical or reasoned Yoruba idiomatic expression as “Omoran bi Ifa ‘o si” : a knowledgeable one like Ifa does not exist.

Ifa divination is the medium for learning the mind or will of God respecting, for instance, the suitability of a candidate for Obaship.  Popular narrations ironically detail the facts of the coronation rites of Kings or of what transpire in the coven even though only initiates are admitted therein.

Covered calabashes containing different household culinary items or seasonings e.g salt, cloves, cooking oils, pepper, bitter kola, honey, etc figuratively representing the projected tenure in office of the in-coming Oba are presented before him for his choice.

This symbolic ceremony will presumably determine the trajectory of the reign of the Oba.

Peace, tranquility, social development, business growth, etc are encoded in the Oba’s choice. So also are pain, disaster, plague, distress and a general sense of unease representing the fall out of a wrong calabash choice.

When a King’s reign is suffused in social agony, economic distress, afflictions, plagues, war, insecurity, banditry, etc it is generally believed that the King had made a choice evidencing that present state of affairs.

The contemporary state of things in Nigeria appears to suggest that at “coronation”, the Tinubu presidency choice had foreshadowed an uneasy or unpleasant situation by its probable choice of an empty  calabash, or one containing pepper, charcoal, or a parrot’s eggs each representing abdication, social unrest, death or an ominous fate respectively. A weary or sad situation is obviously the end result of a wrong choice. Its symptoms fatally suggest that there can be no real substitutes.

This situation is sadly true in the sense of its perceptual values. Its effects are felt everywhere and by everyone. Its symbolism is a form of transcendental knowledge. However, its effect is readily available to all even as peace and joy cannot be arrived at in vacuo. The people are today objects and subjects of the unsurmountable dilemma of someone else’s wrong choice or ill preparation. The lack of the effort of imagination on the part of the people may be ascribed to them as their own flaw that has conduced to their present epic tragedy.

In it all, Ifa has been the predictive agent pointing in the direction of results or consequences which were unheeded. Perceptive watchers of the Nigerian condition have likened it to the parallel which mythographers drew from the popular story of Sisyphus, a king of Corinth who was condemned to roll a huge stone uphill, though it always rolls down again. His labour, better known as a ‘Sisyphean task’, demands endless and often fruitless effort. The futility or absurdity of man’s endeavours has been well captured in the myth of Sisyphus.

Classical mythologists may have clairvoyantly envisioned the reign of a President Bola Tinubu in the mythical story of Sisyphus who is variously mentioned as King of Corinth, ancestor of Bellerophon; a trickster and rival to Autolycus who in Homer is noted as being in Hades for crimes which formed the basis of his incarceration.

Tinubu has publicly approved the lores of the lacklustre administration of Muhammadu Buhari, his predecessor in office. Buhari, who in popular estimation ran the country aground by his indifference to or alleged connivance with the perpetrators of some of the worst social tendencies in Nigeria’s socio-political history – terrorism, banditry, kidnappings, untold graft, etc is the hero of Tinubu. Buhari’s policies and programmes he has sworn to continue with under a nebulous Renewed Hope agenda.

For reasons of political expediency, Tinubu has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the issues that are threatening the continued  corporate existence of Nigeria. But Karma, that unyielding record keeper and sweet remembrancer of our individual malfeasance and iniquities, has noted Tinubu’s role in egging Buhari on even as the latter despoiled the land, rendered the fields grey, and made homes desolate or inhospitable.

It will appear that the Buhari/Tinubu era is the sad chapter of our national history closest to the gory nightmare of the Biafran debacle – the tragic experiences of an unnecessary war, the moral predicament of society, material hardship, the failure of the inbuilt integrity of national institutions, the repudiation of age-long societal values, the establishment of a new debilitating ethos in public responsibility, the ascendancy of a vile full generation of unfeeling, insensitive leaders of government business, and the emergence of a national elite that is, at best, duplicitous or mealy-mouthed even as it is complicit with evil.

The Tinubu labour, like the excruciating labour of Sisyphus, will appear to be a contradiction in terms. It is labour in the wrong direction and so in vain because it contradicts the conditions for fruitful or productive labour. Even the avowed skills of a Master Strategist are inadequate to prevent the cataclysmic fall of a stone that is predestined to roll back each time in faithful obedience to the unalterable law of nature.

In Otura Meji, Ifa discloses a hidden truth: Every human being sent by Olodumare to the earth must go before the Orisa-nla to choose the blessings he desires with the condition that he cannot choose more than one blessing. Whatever a man’s preference  – be it wealth fame, wives, progeny, prosperity of any kind – the choice is free and unlimited except by the protocol of one kind of blessing to one man, no more  … Our heavenly choice determines our earthly life, a wrong choice above results in suffering below.”

– Otura Meji
The foregoing is akin to the choice which an Oba is confronted with at the beginning. His choice determines the success or otherwise of his reign. By deductive reasoning, we all can safely guess the choice which the leader made at the beginning.

The Bible observes in Proverbs 29: 2

“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice. But when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.”

The people of Nigeria are mourning.

Rotimi-John, a lawyer and commentator on public affairs, is the Deputy Secretary-General of Afenifere. He can be reached via: [email protected]