Re: Yoruba Affairs - Murderous Extremism Emerges in Nigerian Isese, Traditional Yoruba Spirituality Community in Nigeria, as Ayobami Ogedengbe Advocates for the Execution of Isese Reformer Moyo Okediji
Toyin Falola
Can a private conversation between two people be made public in this manner?
Is permission not needed to post his conversation with you?
From:
yoruba...@googlegroups.com <yoruba...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 4:13 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>, Yoruba Affairs <Yoruba...@googlegroups.com>, comp...@googlegroups.com <comp...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Yoruba Affairs - Murderous Extremism Emerges in Nigerian Isese, Traditional Yoruba Spirituality Community in Nigeria, as Ayobami Ogedengbe Advocates for the Execution of Isese Reformer Moyo Okediji
Murderous Extremism Emerges in Nigerian Isese
Traditional Yoruba Spirituality Community in Nigeria
as
Ayobami Ogedengbe Advocates for the Execution of Isese Reformer Moyo Okediji
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
See transcript and screenshots below from post by
Pere Omo'Lolu Omo Osifila on 25th January 2025, University of Ifa Facebook group founded and run my Moyo Okediji.
I will later provide the fuller context, including the underlying theological argument alluded to in the dialogue.
Comments by Ayobami Ogedengbe and Rejoinders by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
''Ayobami Ogedengbe
If there is a Yoruba sharia, the Yoruba elder scholar will be summarily e*ecuted!!
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ayobami Ogedengbe are you intolerant? Why should a person be killed for having a contrary opinion in religion?
Ayobami Ogedengbe
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, you call it intolerant, I call it setting boundaries. When you get to the creator, you might present your moral case.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ayobami Ogedengbe, very sad.
So why do you think a person should be killed for having and sharing views about a religion different from that of the majority?
Ayobami Ogedengbe
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, context is key. if you call my father a rapist, you can expect any reaction. You shouldn't care since you have descended that low, you can as well enjoy six feet below. But that's not necessarily going to be my reaction, but if it does happen, I don't think you should mind if you are willing to go to the extent of destroying my image.
If you seek to destroy my image, do you think it is wrong for me to prevent you from doing such?
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ayobami Ogedengbe, nothing Moyo Okediji has done can be equated to the claims you are making.
Moyo presented ese ifa [Ifa literature] in which Orunmila [ the central Ifa deity, male ] was depicted as having sex with Osun [ a female deity] without her permission.
He did not compose the ese ifa.
Is there any other way to describe Orunmila's action apart from rape?
Ayobami Ogedengbe
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, let him keep describing it the way he feels... When whatever befalls him befalls him and his ilks, you can make your case to whoever cares to hear. For now, keep enjoying the privilege of your smartphone and your data.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ayobami Ogedengbe, clearly you don't understand the gravity of the way you are letting your emotions and typing finger run away with you.
You are an embarrassment to Isese.
Ayobami Ogedengbe
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, you are a non-entity.
Further Discussion Between Ayobami Ogedengbe and Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju on the Same Thread
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ayobami Ogedengbe, thank God extremists like you calling for people to be executed for their views have no power in Isese.
You would drown the spirituality in evil blood.
Ayobami Ogedengbe
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju lol.. Don't be scared, and be scared too.''
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju Christianity and Islam, which you claim have sidelined Ìṣẹ̀ṣe in Nigeria did not live by tolerance.
Do you not think the "tolerance" of Ìṣẹ̀ṣe is the reason for the marginalization.
If perhaps, Ònísẹ̀ṣe sets boundaries in their own homeland concerning their sacred practice like it is done in Saudi Arabia, you and your ilks will choose more constructive words...
For you, I have not seen you use any derogatory remarks on Ìṣẹ̀ṣe. But I have seen several done by the Prof.. [Professor Moyo Okediji]
As a politically conscious being, knowing the implications of your actions, it's like a farmer seeing a weed growing in his farm, he has two options, let the weed grow and stunt the growth of his own crop or remove the weed...
But the enemy will subtly cajole for "allowing both to grow", under the guise of "freedom of speech"..
That game is well-known, only a naive farmer will fall for that, I don't wish weeds well. It will never be well with weeds. They will be pulled out of the ground, bound up and burnt to ashes. They will become manure..
You can play emotional games with that, every one who joins you in that hypocrisy will suffer the same fate as the weed.
It's nothing personal, it's survival.
If
you can share your opinion about my sacred path, you should magnanimously also
receive my opinion on what should be your fate after sharing your
opinion. 
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Its not a private conversation.Its an open discussion on a public Facebook group which even non-members of the group may read, hence I provided a link to the post where the interaction took place so anyone may verify it for themselves.The conversation has also expanded beyond the previous respondent and I through responses of others to this discussion after I posted it on my own Facebook wall, which is open to the public.Some of these respondents, fellow Isese adherents, defended the action of the person calling for the execution of Moyo Okediji while the person who made the threat has tried to walk back from his stark declaration.This is is the second threat emerging from responses to the Isese debate ignited on Facebook by Okediji's creative but reformative initiatives, supported by others such as myself.The first threat was directed at me through an Ifa priest whom I knew as my friend as a neighbor at Ikeja and who claimed to be delivering a message from a comprehensive gathering of Isese practitioners.Dangerous developments in the Isese community.Great thanksToyin Adepoju
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,
Consider :
Tehillim 8 / Psalm 8 ( “what is man that You should remember him, and the son of man that You should be mindful of him?”)
According to The laws of blasphemy in Judaism , the blasphemy deserving the death penalty is limited to blasphemy of the Almighty !
Are you not perilously close to blaspheming Olodumare, the one and only Almighty of the Yoruba People?
I have just visited the facebook page of Babalawo Ojekunle Ifagbemi in which he says that “Only people that wear white cloths go near Obatala. Obatala is the greatest , most powerful ,the father and the supreme of all the Orisas.”
I suppose that some brilliant, uninitiated upstart may want to depart from tradition by recommending that for this and that Black Power reason, people dressed in Black should also be permitted etc
Is there anything that you read in Soyinka’s Myth, Literature and the African World that has caused you to embark on this reformist trajectory, or are you slightly inspired or instigated by Moyosore B. Okediji and feeling comfortable with the idea that in conjunction with him, at least, you are not alone in this quest?
Clearly, the open or veiled threat is supposed to be a deterrent. No one wants to cut you down in cold blood, without any prior warning/s; but if you insist on throwing discretion to the winds, then by all means ,please feel free to go ahead …
Maybe, it’s because you’re not living in e.g. the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that you feel free to want to change centuries old practices of your ancestors in the name of some articles of faith in
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which Nigeria is a signatory?
Please listen to this carefully, for your own good, if you love yourself more than the happy or not so happy end-ing that is liable to come your way in a very abrupt manner if you persist in your folly, out there in what you believe to be the jungle / bush of ghosts
In my understanding, that’s the whole thrust of K Noel Amherd ‘s profound contribution to the conversation: In my view, it is one of the effects of colonialism still rolling on, reverberating endlessly in what you believe to be your post-enlightenment “reformist” attitude, perhaps unfairly generated by the likes of your mentor Dion Fortune ( and may the Almighty deliver us all from contempt)
We’ve got to be sensitive to the sensitivities of others and their cherished beliefs and traditions which they hold sacred, and not go charging around like a mad bull wreaking havoc in a China shop, the China shop of precious porcelain in this case being traditional Yoruba Religion left in a vulnerable state when there are no able gatekeepers and watchers such as our Venerable, Heroic Ayobami Ogedengbe , and in the absence of an empowered Yoruba type Sharia, in Nigeria - empowered to deal harshly with any arrogant, deviant miscreants who want to destabilise Yoruba Society - with impunity - want to knowingly desecrate and piss on the holy ground of the illustrious ancestors…
What you have chosen to interpret as a “rape” is not merely some explicit poetry such as Leda and the Swan
When I was in Nigeria, I heard similar heretic and iconoclastic interpretations of Jesus' Virgin birth. I vividly remember the headmaster of a primary school in Bakana jokingly asking me how could the Holy Spirit have “ crossed” Mary ? He then hastily went on to admonish the Christian Missionaries, that with regard to polygamy, “they should not interfere with our culture “
Me, I’m biased as hell. As biased, ignorant, feckless, and poorly educated, as any wannabe motorcade poet who knows nothing about poetry, and has never been to Jerusalem, New York, Mumbai, Alexandria, but wants to pontificate about what a wonderful son of a bitch he is because AI told him so, told him that he is one in 8,231,613,070
Here are some more latest interesting, not so funny developments in the post-colonial East :
Why the Igbo Tribe Believes It's a Lost Tribe of Israel: They are "not like US"
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Moyo Okediji is in a similar position to that in which Martin Luther was when the German priest initiated the Protestant Reformation.
I don't, know, however, how far Moyo intends to go with his formation of Ifa Tuntun, New Ifa, embodying his vision of what he thinks Ifa should be, in keeping with what he understands is it's original vision, as different from distortions introduced across time.
He is laying textual and philosophical foundations, reinforced by the efforts of his supporters, who are creating their own original textual and ideological summations and adding what they have produced before now to the corpus associated with his initiative.
Yoruba spirituality is Moyo's constituency, and has been for decades since his co founding of the Ona movement in Southwest Nigeria which focused on the artistic adaptation of classical Yoruba culture, building upon his upbringing in Ile Ife, the spiritual centre of the Yoruba and attending and later teaching at the then University of Ife, at a time when it's African Studies Centre was brimming with those scholars who in effect created what is now known worldwide as Yoruba Studies.
His engagement with Ifa, the central Yoruba knowledge system, embraces its visual and verbal arts, as demonstrated by his use of the ese ifa, Ifa literary structure, in probing contemporary Nigerian affairs, his visual reworking in various media, of the odu ifa, the organizational structures of Ifa and his ongoing expansion of those mathematical structures in terms of the idea of infinity, controversial mathematical and verbal adventures, expanding the boundaries of the creative scope of the system, even as he has created wIfa Tuntun, New Ifa, an effort to develop a new approach to Ifa representing his understanding of its creative essence, free of distortions.
Among those who are inspired by his initiative and are giving active support are Ọlọbẹ Yoyọn, one of Moyo's fellow innovators, who has named the new orientation Neo -Ifa, has distinguished himself in terms of broad ranging examination on Facebook of various aspects of Yoruba culture and thought, from science to philosophy and spirituality, developing stories and essays advancing the idea of a new approach to Ifa emphasizing opended creativity within intellectual and artistic explorations free of dogma.
Another is Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, myself, have long been developing what I describe as Do-It-Yourself Ifa, centred in an individualistic approach to Ifa, employing ritual, prayer and intellectual and aesthetic creativity in developing a structure of knowledge advancing the existing corpus of knowledge, scientific, artistic, philosophical and spiritual, currently composing the Ifa system, approaches at times controversial but expanding the boundaries of the system, in explorations rooted in broader studies of Yoruba thought and history, in dialogue with a global, multi-disciplinary network of knowledge.
So, the people who are suggesting new orientations in Yoruba thought and spirituality are neither outsiders nor newcomers to the system, but people whose lives are defined by their life long embedding in these systems of knowledge.
thanks Cornelius.ill get back to you. im working on my compilation of the debate
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Hopefully, the Supreme Deity is not going to be angry with you…
Re - The what else that you have said in this thread about the wannabe reformers, “the people who are suggesting new orientations in Yoruba thought and spirituality” - I notice that you have not mentioned e.g. Susanne Wenger and Ulli Beier’s The return of the gods
According to an Islamic Hadith the Jews eventually got divided into 71 or 72 sects ,the Christians into the same number of sects and the Islamic community would be divided into 73 sects of which only one of the sects would be saved.
One of the definitions of ”religious fundamentalism” is the desire to return to an earlier, pristine form of the religion, as it was, in the beginning before being corrupted or eroded by modernity
In Jewish History too, there are and have been Jewish religious reformers
In Islam ,everybody knows about Ibn Taymiyya
I was at the community House (in a front row, within an arm's-length of his beard) when Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger visited Sweden in 2004, soon after his appointment, more or less to introduce and present himself; one of the takeaways of that meeting was that one of the speakers (perhaps Stockholm’s Conservative/ Masorti Rabbi at the time) invoked an incident which at the time struck me as being remarkable: According to him, the Prophet Moses was passing by, so many millennia after the Exodus and couldn’t recognise the “Judaism” that was being practised by his people. Of course, that kind of thrust would be consistent with Reform Judaism ideology, be it Conservative/Masorti or Reconstructionist
But the fact remains that from time to time there have arisen people like Rabbi Akiva , Baal Shem Tov , and Rabbi Nachman
Cornelius Hamelberg
Just for the record, your compilation and subsequent updates and editions should make for interesting reading for those interested in the subject and for later generations. But be careful, I’m not superstitious, but remember, these are your own words about some spirit attacks on you because of a certain book that you’re writing - which suggests to me that you have been forewarned :
“As I worked on the book, unknown to me, my efforts were activating a negative spirit which would otherwise have remained latent. When the spirit was sufficiently galvanized it came after me. Realizing the danger, I ran, finding I was in my aunties house in England, where I had lived for a time. The spirit was manifest as a line of bluish light with something like a frontal protuberance like a head. The entity finally caught up with me and I tried to cry out the name of Jesus, which I normally do when I have bad dreams, upon which the dream would dissipate and I would wake up, but this time, calling out the name was so difficult, as if my lips were weighted and my whole body seemed trapped in a cocoon making movement almost impossible. Since invoking the name of Jesus was proving difficult, I then began to sing a Christian worship song as the insubstantial but frightening entity advanced.” (From Oluwatoyin Adepoju’s Strange Dreams While Sleeping in My Living Room)
About you latest in this thread ( that I am responding to) there are many sympathisers here who could say ”You made my day” - when you say that “Moyo Okediji is in a similar position to that in which Martin Luther was when the German priest initiated the Protestant Reformation”, just as there are even more mortified, transfixed and transmogrified Catholics who could place what you say as another item in the dark night of the soul. As For Cornelius Ignoramus, he’s smiling as he recalls the sweet and succinct, unforgettable twenty-minute lecture he received from Rev. Fr. Damian Eze, MSP on Martin Luther the Lutheran Reformer; it was at a Zebra crossing on Götgatan, a few years ago - we had arrived at the edge of the crossing shortly after the lecture began and he was so deep into what he was saying that we stayed on our side of the road and it was a good twenty minutes later when the lights turned green for the nth time that we crossed over to the other side of the road here in Stockholm, Sweden, indeed Martin Luther Country with The Swedish Lutheran Church as the official state church / religion of Sweden. Prior to Father Damian’s lecture and apart from the history of the Reformation, what I mostly knew about Martin Luther was his antisemitism.
Indeed, Nigeria where people also enjoy in freedom, whatever religious or non-religious way of life that they choose, I don’t suppose that it’s lawful to stifle religious dissent although it should be problematic if e.g. Moyo Okediji or Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju were to take upon themselves the arduous task of wanting to reform Islam which is not a secret society or the Catholic Church , so it would be superfluous - and dangerous to ascribe to yourselves a position similar to Martin Luther versus the Church of Rome.
Really, what can you “reform” when it comes to the mystical?
Since your background is so eclectic you’re probably getting some inspiration from
Religious Reformers in Hinduism and even the Buddha who did away with Hinduism's caste system
Could also come in handy in expanding your theoretical foundations:
Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers by Dan Cohn-Sherbok , the author of Modern Judaism ( a must read)
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Thanks for mentioning one of my heroes Nahman of Bratslav. He shares with Ifa the use of highly inventive short narratives as a means of linking materiality and spirit, like the much shorter forms of Zen Buddhism and the Sufi stories presented by Idries Shah.
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Oluwatoyin
An aside :
Among the Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers by Dan Cohn-Sherbok I’m sure that Salomon Maimon should interest you since he spent a lot of mental energy wrestling with the guy you have so much in common with, namely Immanuel Kant.
Interestingly enough Cohn-Sherbok's two page entry (pages 84-86) about Salomon Maimon starts ,
” Born in Sukoviboeg , Poland in 1753, Salomon Maimon married at the age of eleven , becoming a father three years later. At first he supported his family by serving as a tutor locally. Alongside his rabbinic studies, he concentrated on Jewish philosophy and mysticism. Because of his veneration of Maimonides , he adopted the name ”Maimon”. By attempting to illustrate that kabbalistic teaching is based on philosophic principles he was regarded as a sceptic by the early Hasidim among whom he associated. Subsequently Maimon travelled to Berlin where he intended to devote himself to secular learning. When he arrived at the gates of the city, however, he was turned away by officials of the Jewish community , and he went to Posen ( now Poznan) where he received assistance from Rabbi Zvi Hirsch ben Abraham. For two years he taught there, but eventually became disenchanted with the religious conservatism of the religious establishment. He then returned to Berlin where he was permitted to enter the city.
In Berlin Maimon became a disciple of Moses Mendelssohn, yet several years later he was abandoned by his patron because of his wayward lifestyle. In consequence he moved to Hamburg where he sought to convert to Christianity despite his inability to accept the central doctrines of the faith. When this request was rejected …..
https://www.posenlibrary.com/entry/solomon-maimon-autobiography