How were we to know that, beyond the drapes and façade of public veils, we have made unfair transpositioning? One person I think we are guilty of conferring heroism upon when in fact he is not, is Siminalayi Fubara, the governor of Rivers State. I recall how Nigerians oscillated round him during his travails, villainizing his traducer, Nyesom Wike, while making hero of a straw man we should have known he was
By Festus Adedayo
As we walked into the venue of Professor Abimbola Adunni Adelakun’s mother’s 25th memorial in Ibadan, Oyo State, last Thursday, two conflicting perceptions warred for territorial possession of my mental faculty. For context, Adelakun is the award-winning columnist with the Punch newspaper whose Thursday offerings are a delight to gobble. Until recently an Associate Professor in the Department of African/African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, in July, Adelakun became an Associate Professor of Global Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School. With me at Adelakun’s re-conjuration of the memory of her mother was ace columnist, Lasisi Olagunju, whose mother’s passing 20 years ago would be memorialized too in Eripa, Osun State, two days later. I couldn’t find any reasonable anchor in what I saw as the two intellectuals’ mundane trade. For clarity, I have a deconstructive impulse towards memorialization.
Those two intellectuals were engaged in the construction of memorials for the dead. So, what is death? Western thoughts say it is the final cessation of life. Death is also construed by Western-influenced philosophy as a lieutenant of the Supreme God, Olódùmarè. In Yoruba cosmology, death, called Ikú, differs.
In Africa, death is construed as a natural transition from a visible person to an invisible spiritual object. We diverge from the West in this worldview. To Africans, the spirit is the essence of man and is incapable of being destroyed by death. African dead exchange mortality for immortality. Our dead merely move to another realm as ancestral spirits, thus showing the connect we carve between the living and the dead, the visible and invisible worlds.
Memories and the dead
It is this belief in the continued existence of life even after death that guides funeraries. Believing that the dead are somewhere watching, funerals are kept sacred to impress the dead. It is also why cremation has not found foot in African belief which holds that the whole body parts of the dead would live all over in the spirit world.
To justify the elaborate rites accorded the dead upon passage among the Igbo, Stella Ogbuagu, in her “The Changing Perception of Death and Burial: A Look at the Nigerian Obituaries” Anthropologica, (1989), says “funerary rites are performed to enable the spirit of the dead person to travel safely to the world beyond, to establish a continued link between the dead person and his kin, and also to satisfy societal expectations that the family show how virtuous and successful (in terms of personal achievements, etc.) and well loved their deceased kinsman was.”
In spite of our belief in the continuity of life after death in Africa, however, there is still a feeling of void at the departure of a loved one. Indeed, death is a depthless hole dug in our hearts. A number of feelings of hopelessness, truncation, finality are expressed by the Yoruba upon the news of death. In elegies for the departed, my people chant a dirge which approximates death to a visible encounter forever delinked, except at chanced meetings by the wayside, and embraces in dreams (Ó di gbéré, ó d’àrìnàkò; ó d’ojú àlá!). One other expression of void in death is the comparison of the departure of a loved one to a dead rat whose walk path is consumed by weed growths (Ẹmọ́ kú ojú Òpó dí) or the aardvark, a pig-like bush animal called Àfẹ̀èbòjò, dying and leaving a big mourning among the community resident in its hole, (Àfèèbọ̀jó kú Ẹnu isà ń s’ọ̀fọ̀).
There is however a disjunction in my people’s submission on death, a binary of opinions, if you like. While on one hand, they believe that the dead don’t die, they also seemingly agree with Western thoughts that death is a finality. For instance, while they say, in one breath that the dead don’t know how much their coffins are purchased, (Òkú ò mọ iye àá ra agọ̀) they also say that the dead can achieve immortality in their offspring and that the dead who leave children behind do not sleep.
But why do we memorialize the dead? Each time my younger brother brings up the idea of orchestrating a public ceremony to memorialize our parents, I not only scoff at the idea, I disdain it. Is this for the dead or the living? On a personal note, there is no day I do not remember and mourn my parents’ passage. Their earthly actions guide me and I clone their patterns in parenting my children. It is why Prof Adelakun and Dr. Olagunju’s public memorialization of their mothers last week struck me as beneath intellectuals. I have since then been made to understand that people have different ways of memorializing their loved ones. While for some, it is through rituals, for others, it is ceremonies and objectifying their memories.
I am however not unmindful of the psychology of memorialization. Memories of the dead are like soothing balm and help smoothen coarse surfaces left by death. They are indeed crucial for grieving, healing, and keeping the essences of our loved ones alive. Memories and memorials transform pain into love as I witnessed in the two columnists last week. In establishing a foundation at the University of Ibadan for her mother, Adelakun must have succeeded in re-creating her late mother afresh.
I believe that our forebears, theologians, African elders and even Western philosophy, apprehensive to assume that the life they lived hundreds of years ago would suffer inexplicable cessation if it all ended here on earth, theorized life after death to rescue themselves from the void that would later follow. But, could it not be a ruse afterall that there is life after death? Claims of living wraiths or transmigrated souls which Yoruba call Àkúdàáyà further problematize the concept of life after death. Theologians, especially cannot stand Àkúdàáyà. Doesn’t the holy writ say after death is judgement?
To demonstrate their belief in life after death, my people submit that memorializing of a parent by their children is an eternal assignment. They believe that even among the dead, ones who leave offspring behind get dotted upon by them in the spirit world. This they express in their saying that “òkú ol’ómo kìí sùn l’órun”. Olagunju tells me that 20 years after, his mother still communes with him. The death of the rich, they say is for seven months, that of the poor, six years but one who lives behind children is eternal memorialization.
Prof Adelakun, to my mind, could be excused for memorializing her mother, who departed in a ghastly road accident 25 years ago when she was just 18 years old. How do I explain Olagunju’s, whose mother lived above 80? Perhaps due to the power of the umbilical cord, attachment to mothers is often lifelong. However, I agree that we must define the precinct of our memorials. For some, it could be recreating their memories in daily life, to others, it is in rituals and to some others, public celebration. As my people say, no one can claim to know Òsó than her mother.
In any case, if there are no memorials, why do we exhort valiant heroes who departed this world even centuries ago? While Muslims memorialise Prophet Muhammed every year, Christians do Jesus Christ. In the next four days, it will be time for another memorial.
Happy Christmas ahead to all Christian faithful.
This brings me to a raging but silent tiff among Yoruba topmost traditional rulers, the Alaafin of Oyo and the Ooni of Ife. While they recently waged the war on pages of newspapers, their recent recourse is to semiotics. A couple of weeks ago, the Ooni conferred on the renown industrialist, Engr Dotun Sanusi, the revered chieftaincy title of the Okanlomo of Oodua. Earlier, upon its announcement, the Alaafin couldn’t hide his indignation at this and called on the Ooni to reverse the title as he alone was historically and constitutionally bound to so do. Ooni went ahead on December 15 nevertheless. Last week, a piece of news dropped out of the Oyo ancient palace that the Alaafin would be conferring same Okanlomo title on Seyi Tinubu, son of the Nigerian president.
Between October 1983 and June 1984, the in-fighting between the palaces became so embarrassingly intense. It got to a point that the military government of the State had to intervene. Before then, on October 1, 1983, the tussle became irreconcilable, so much that, when at his swearing-in as the newly elected governor of the state, Olunloyo had to promise both parties that his administration would find lasting solution to it. He could not.
After the passage of Oba Adesoji Aderemi, who brought a great visibility to the Ooni throne, the throne was taken a notch higher by his predecessor, Oba Okunade Sijuade and the in-fighting continued. The passage of Oba Olubuse and the recent transition of Oba Lamidi Adeyemi were expected to douse this tension but it still has not. Their successors, Oba Enitan Ogunwusi and Oba Abimbola Owoade, have carried on the battle in line with their predecessors’ struggle for supremacy in Yoruba Obaship.
The Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Rashidi Ladoja, has a workable, sensible way out of this tiff by the holders of both stools. Oba Ladoja said recently that he was only Olubadan over the eleven local governments under him. It is archaic, unrealistic and I daresay, illogical for any of the two warring monarchs to claim to be Oba of Yorubaland when none of them can make any proclamation in their domains and expect it to be adhered to by all Yoruba nation. The empires they superintended over have collapsed and they should wake up to the reality of modernity. To “even score” by appointing the son of the president as Okanlomo, to me, is a childhood tantrum that holds no water. It is like playing with the Ido, an ancient childhood fantasy. Each of the kings is under a mere council chairman who can depose them, so why do they want to carve a world for themselves that does not exist?
Come to think of it, why did Alaafin choose Seyi Tinubu for that chieftaincy title? What are his contributions to Yorubaland that have made him a numero-uno child (Okanlomo)? I have written copiously on this young man, upon whom I earlier conferred the àkébàjé (spoilt brat) title. I think that should suffice a title from anyone, if at all, who thinks such a character is worthy of a title.
Last week, we were faced with another tantrum from a grown-up. The tragedy for many public commentators is that they villainize heroes and heroise villains. Due to reasons beyond commentators’ prism, our judgements of persons in the public sphere are based on public comments and newspaper reports. How were we to know that, beyond the drapes and façade of public veils, we have made unfair transpositioning? One person I think we are guilty of conferring heroism upon when in fact he is not, is Siminalayi Fubara, the governor of Rivers State. I recall how Nigerians oscillated round him during his travails, villainizing his traducer, Nyesom Wike, while making hero of a straw man we should have known he was.
The only court case against federal decision to suspend Siminalayi for six months came from the PDP. Last week, after porting to the APC, Fubara smelled like a filthy rag to all men of good conscience when, in his usual loquacious manner, he told the press that he had never really been a member of the PDP. This reversibility shows that Fubara does not really merit the leadership balls that people wore upon him. Yes, he is fighting the battle of his life, but he could do so without being mean and exhibiting this huge ingratitude to the party that he climbed to the top. He should learn from a colleague like Peter Mbah of Enugu State. Mbah moved to APC with no recriminations but gratitude for the political party that he climbed to the top. It is such stuffs that great men are made of.
Those are my submissions this week. I rise.
•Opinions, positions or thoughts expressed here are personal and strictly of the writer/author and do not represent the views of The Daily Crucible.
