The Rebellion of a Renegade Son: The Struggles of Moyo Okediji 's Ifa Tuntun, New Ifa

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

      The Rebellion of a Renegade Son

      The Struggles of  Moyo Okediji 's  

                   Ifa Tuntun, New Ifa

           Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju 

                           Compcros

"There can be no such thing as Ifa Tuntun[ New Ifa]" declared Ifa potentate Wande Abimbola in Yoruba, speaking to Moyo Okediji, his former student of more than fifty years ago at the then University of Ife, referencing in passing how he had cared for Okediji when Okediji was a teenager and undergraduate and he a professor at that university.

In terms of the culture of respect for those older than one or even those enjoying any kind of social seniority, the Yoruba are adept.

They have developed subtle styles  of verbal address, even involving the use of a single vowel "e" to signal such respect.

The culture of full body gesture, in which a person prostrates fully, lying full length on the ground, facing the person they are thereby honouring; of partial prostration, from the waist alone or touching the ground with one's fingers, or even of kneeling, for women, is iconically Yoruba, a culture of respect even shaping the visual and verbal arts, as represented by the ubiquitous presence of the kneeling female motif in classical Yoruba art and the ironic address to the baboon in Adeboye Babalola's Content and Form of Yoruba Ijala ( Yoruba hunters poetry), " he from whom the hunter has not received a wife but who receives self prostration homage from the hunter", invoking the image of a man prostrating to his in laws at a wedding, as is the Yoruba custom, in depicting a hunter lying prostrate to take aim at the baboon, an ironic invocation meant to honour the baboon while recognizing its place as a target of human hunting for food, an example of Ijala's celebration of "relationships between living things" as described by Wole Soyinka.

Faced by the challenge from his mentor, in front of a global online, but largely Yoruba audience, gathered, at his request, for him to present his reformatory version of Ifa, the premier ancient Yoruba knowledge system, one of the most remarkable achievements of humanity in its multidisciplinary scope, from the humanities to mathematics, watching his mentor dismiss as worthless, without even entertaining a discussion,  his initiative, on which had expended so much creative efort, building on decades of exploration and expression in Yoruba culture and its diaspora, including writing  books  that  had got him  a professorship in a particularly prestigious  US university, the University of Texas, and creating art that made him a name of reference in Nigerian art, his teaching initiatives running from his time as an academic at the then University of Ife to innovative learning systems on the global social media platform Facebook, what does Okediji do?

Does he try to explain his vision to Abimbola? 

After all Abimbola is a leading scholar of Ifa, a former Vice-Chancellor of the then  University of Ife  and one of the sterling figures in the creation of Yoruba  Studies as an academic discipline achieved at that university  up till the 90s.

But was the Abimbola of that online meeting the same Abimbola of the rigorous and visionary scholarly culture of the University of Ife, incubating figures who built  internationally illustrious careers from the Ife platform?

To what degree was the Abimbola at that meeting the scholarly Abimbola who presided over the historic 1970s Yoruba Studie conference that launched the careers of eventually internationally prominent  Yoruba Studies scholars, the glamour of which  scholarly gathering had made the youthful Okediji vow he would become the art historian  scholar he eventually became?

Was this not a different Abimbola, the Awise Agbaye, the spokesman for Ifa, having remade himself as he moved away from his scholarly career, a captain of orthodoxy,  casting Ifa in monolithic  terms akin to the dogmatic face of the Abrahamic religions as they gained global dominance, depicting Ifa as a  gift to humanity from a  divine progenitor?

"There can be no new Ifa unless Orunmila [ the Divine Wisdom] comes again",  Abimbola declared at the meeting.

The assembled Ifa devotees who were either scandalized or threatened by Okediji's reformatory zeal must have been ecstatic.

 At last a supremely  authoritative voice had spoken  to quash the presumptuousness of the grey bearded upstart, a person who should  know  better claiming  he was reforming a tradition so ancient no one knew its beginnings, daring to preach against animal sacrifice, calling it barbaric?

Sharing an Ifa poem depicting Orunmila, the Lord of Wisdom and founder of Ifa as raping the goddess Osun?

 Who cares that he claimed to have got the poem from an Ifa priest and offered to play his recording of the priest chanting it? Who was he to presume to present such scandalous information about Ifa?

Okediji, now in his  70s and an accomplished academic, agreed with Abimbola's verdict that there  could be no such thing as Ifa Tuntun, New Ifa.

"Beeni", "it is so", he declared in agreement.

Okediji's defeat was complete. A historic effort to rework an ancient tradition, a supreme pride of Yoruba creativity, had been rightly quashed, never to rise again, was the message signaled by Okediji's unqualified agreement with the Awise Agbaye that he had erred. 

The child in knowledge who thought he could see farther than the elders had been put right.

 The non-initiate into sacred mysteries had been stripped of his borrowed robes as he sought to defile the sanctuary, poisoning the tender minds of those who took his folly as courage.  

Did he think his academic knowledge was of any consequence against the monument that is "awo", the esoteric knowledge that is darkness to the "ogberi", the layperson, while to those properly inducted into its embrace that darkness is light, the great mother who cradles the seeker in her womb as yam germinates in soil, nourishing the radiance within that is food?

Odu, wife of Ifa, we salute you!

Okediji's fellow travellers in infamy were of no consequence, even as they may have recoiled against the verdict given ex cathedra, from the throne of unassailable truth.

They did not have Okediji's professional heft nor his ethnic pedigree, as the son of a prominent Yoruba literature author and a well recognized Yoruba son, founder of Ifa University  Facebook group, a premier watering hole of the tradition, qualities making his despoilation of that tradition even more dangerous by shedding on them a false air of legitimacy deriving from his own social capital.

Victory was total. An announcement was later made on Facebook that a push would be initiated to make sure only initiates of traditional Yoruba religion were allowed to present anything on it or teach about it in educational institutions, so as to avoid distortions of the kind demonstrated by Okediji, an ethnic insider but an outsider to the system of sacred knowledge who had presumed to dismantle the building blocks of an edifice stretching to the beginning of time, to Orunmila's presence at the creation of the cosmos, gaining knowledge encoded in Ifa but to which only the initiated and properly trained can  gain access, not pretenders like the self deceiving professor.

But Okediji remained restive. Why did he post again on Facebook  another essay  

advancing his Ifa Tuntun heresy even after Abimbola had spoken decisively against it?

He was advised to desist from such folly, the elders have placed their stamp of condemnation  on that misadventure, he was warned.

There is a great essay by Olabiyi Yai, " The Concepts of 'Tradition' and 'Creativity' in the Transmission of Yoruba Artistry Over Time and Space" complemented by another from Yai, " Tradition and the Yoruba Artist", in which I understand Yai as arguing that the fudamental orientation in Yoruba art is depature, depature from the norm, a culture grounded in ori, the individuality that is the immortal esence of the human being,   "essence, attribute, and quintessence...the uniqueness of persons, animals, and things, their inner eye and ear, their sharpest point and their most alert guide as they navigate through this world and the one beyond", an individuality privileging the abandonment of  the familiar and the comfortable for new horizons, as suggested by the expression " I am more satisfied with being in the wilderness than at home."

It would seem  Okediji has entered the wilderness, the wilderness of rejection by many if not most of his fellow Yoruba identifiers with Ifa. 

Had he only diplomatically agreed with  Abimbola, the final weapon against him at that meeting by opponents some of whom had earlier used various techniques to stop him, even threats of violence, as issued  against his supporter Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju if he did not desist from supporting Okediji's campaign against animal sacrifice in Ifa, which Adepoju had been doing on Facebook?

Ori alone can follow its devotee on a distant journey without turning back, declares an ese ifa, an Ifa story translated by  Abimbola in his Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa.

Has  Okediji chosen to follow his ori where it is leading, where his innermost convictions are taking him?

It would seem so. 

"Asa" is a Yoruba term for innovation.

What kind of asa is  Okediji cultivating, a negative or  a positive one?

 Can  any system of knowledge remain static? 

Is Okediji's rebellion really so radical?

Are its roots not in long held dissaffections with Ifa, particularly outside Yorubaland, where adherents are more likely to feel exploited by demands from  Ifa authorities in Yorubaland and where animal sacrifice has no enduring cultural roots?

Have others not advanced similar ideas before Okediji and are they not doing so

still?

Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.