The story of the past and the present constitute history. The telling is important in order to shape the future.
After three days working with some of my comrades in Osogbo on the #IrapadaOsun Campaign of Olajide Esan; AAC’s brilliant and visible governorship candidate in the forthcoming Osun State Guber Elections, I left for Aregbe to join a bus back to Ibadan.
As I moved to enter the bus, I saw a “simple young man” sitting at the front. His eyeglasses gave him away as the radical professor of history who had helped to poke our beloved Great Ife in the eye over its continued losing touches with academic freedom; the supposed bastion of the university system.
”Hi, your face looks quite familiar!”
He tried to dodge, in a typical “please don’t know me o” way. But I went further. “You must be Professor Bukola Oyeniyi!”
And there and there, I signed up for a multi-million naira lecture right from the motor park at Osogbo to Terminal 2, Iwo Road, Ibadan.
We discussed his criticism of the cancellation of the book launch of Moyo Okediji on “Ifa Tuntun” and the plethora of reactions from the Obafemi Awolowo University community; management; and the Great Ife Alumni. His criticism is centred on the basic theme of the university as a laboratory of academic freedom where people are meant to cross-fertilize ideas; disagree; and also agree without anyone being shut out.
While the excuses for cancelling Okediji’s lecture on Ifa Tuntun have been hanged on some publishing hitches, the real reason behind the cancellation is the opposition by some powerful Ifa Initiates who believe that the professor is not an Ifa Initiate and thus must not be allowed to write on Ifa, not to talk of going so scientific and artistic in handing out new discoveries and lessons called “Ifa Tuntun.”
The barrage of attacks on Professor Okediji is apparent in the researching on the traditional institutions especially of the Yorubas. I remember I once attempted to seek permissions to record the famous Two Hundred And One (201) songs of the Okute Festival of the Idepe-Okitipupa people in Ikale land. I was told to either join the Ogboni or another cult to be able to do such. This has stalled the recording.
Ifa Initiates and other traditional cult elements must be made to understand that one of the reasons the kernels of the traditions were being kept with initiates was the colonial attacks in an earlier period. Those in charge of culture and traditions had to find ways to hide some of the core elements of their belief system to avoid these being shattered by the the colonial state. Now that the colonial system is far gone, though neo-colonialism heats us all up, the way to go is to open up and critically examine our traditions in order to advance and teach more of these these our offsprings within the context of today’s world.
It is I’ll-informed and backward to want to stay stuck with the old order while the opportunities of re-aliving them through social and academic advancements in a digital world presents itself. By now, Ifa should be well digitized for any Uyi or Uwa to be able to study just like they are now with video games, AI and other robotics.
These are the thematic engagements that the Okediji’s book launch at OAU, Ife would have presented if our beloved ivory tower of “learning and culture” had not been turned to petty grounds where Wike and Remi Tinubu are the Socrates and Aristotles overtime by reactionary administrators and anti-intellectual agents running the institution.
Our other discussion during the lovely trip varied from the electoral violence in Osun as well as the place of history in the evolution of the Yoruba. While our conclusions on Osun State elections got generalized with the current state of Nigeria, the deeper talk on Yoruba history is worthy of a of book-length analysis. This I will be touching on exclusively and around deeper themes in the second and third parts of this piece.
As the rains remind me of the Obe Eweta I am missing in Ikale, the technical analogies with which Bukola Oyeniyi explained topical issues bordering on history, freedom and class are reminders that brilliance is not etched in stone.
As Toyin Falola shows, writing and teaching should come naturally and easily. Oyeniyi showed this so beautifully in the 18-seater bus journeying as a passenger; a mother with two active kids had to ask for clarification on the “pen” being “mightier than the sword”, a personification that belittles the self-jollification of neo-fascists whose belief in the use of force to dismiss democratic decisions of the collective had been the “by fire, by force” parades of unwanted politicking as being witnessed in Osun towards the next elections.
The people are being told, barefaced and with multiple happenstances that the federal might will be forcing it’s advantages of state power, through blood and mud, to chase off a rather dancing populist non-performer (if real indices of growth and development is anything to go by,) and occupy Abere with a bleaching “Halfusa progenitor”- a failed Finance Commissioner whose only achievements across two governments of Aregbesola and Oyetola must be the shoyoyoism of his bleaching body. The working people in Osun must rise, as must the oppressed masses across Nigeria, and take back our moving forward!
While the now fading off Asejire river bridged our welcome to the city of Oluyole amidst the lovely liveliness of Alakiya and Gbagi markets, the departure of the intellectual as a simple but fierce pedagogue in a country severely permeated with mass oppression scratched my retina. One had just gotten a meeting and lecture of a lifetime from a cherished teacher and writer who we shared the great mentorship of the legendary historian Toyin Falola. Oyeniyi was also a Research Assistant to J.F Ade Ajayi whose premier historicism defined an era.
Aside radicalism, the kindness of Oyeniyi during the trip was also a wow. Che Guevara is correct that behind the fierceness of radicals is that ebullient love for humanity!
by Kunle Wizeman AJAYI
