By Suyi Ayodele
“Generally, any of my children or wives can have access to my grave site to pray and or seek spiritual assistance.” This is the last paragraph of the Will of the late grandfather of human rights activism in Nigeria, Chief Gani Fawehinmi. The Will was dated December 19, 2008.
The late lawyer, a devout Muslim in his lifetime, believed that the dead can commune with the living. Hence, in his Will, he granted permission for his children and wives to seek spiritual assistance at his grave side. Modern-day religionists would call him names. But the man called Gani would not bulge. The paragraph preceding the quoted one has a curse embedded in it. Hear Fawehinmi again:
“I plead with all my children and wives not to resort to any form of court litigation over my Will. They should resolve amicably any dispute or controversy with themselves…. I have had enough of painful struggles and controversies in my lifetime, I should be allowed to rest in peace. If any child or wife breaches this passionate plea, he or she will reap my displeasure and wrath.”
Fawehinmi died on September 5, 2009, barely a year after he deposed to the Will. It has been over 15 years since the great man passed on. Nobody has heard about any rumble in his family over the Will. The people he left behind are aware of the efficacy of the curse the man imposed on any would-be ‘troubler of Israel’ in his family. They knew how fiery the man was when alive. They can then understand how terrible his “wrath” would be should anyone go against his last wish. That is a good example of a man who never forgot his tradition!
We are heavily metaphysical as Africans, and more importantly, as Yoruba. We have however, lost our sense of originality to Western culture. I am an advocate for cultural renaissance, any day. And my calling as a Christian remains unimpaired.
A senior pastor in my church once accused me of “venerating Ifa above Jesus.” He made the comment after reading one of my pieces on this page where I volunteered to be a diviner for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. I responded by asking him to allow Jesus, the ‘Author and Finisher of our faith’, to be the ultimate judge. No man holds the keys to the City of David in his hands. A lot of intimidation takes place in the name of the Gospel. Yet, the ones who brought the new religion to us hold on to their culture, undiluted!
We have abandoned what our forebears handed over to us. If all we do as Africans in terms of worship is all for the Devil, what is the fate of those who left this planet before Christianity and Islam were introduced to us? My family progenitor, the famous Baba Alaajole, the inimitable Òbomolè Bo Ogun (The one who worships deities, worships amulets, and venerates charms), was an acclaimed traditional paediatrician (Aremo). Many children were saved by what he had in his medicine pots! Is he in heaven or hell now because he did not know anything about Jesus? Or would he be covered by the “period of Grace”? Phew!
I watched the funeral rites for the late Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. General Taoreed Abiodun Lagbaja, on the television last Friday. It was a colourful ceremony. The military razzmatazz was heavy. General Lagbaja deserved all the encomiums and military rites of passage accorded him. He died on November 5, 2024, at a very tender aga of 56. But he was buried like a nonagenarian. He should be happy where he is now. General Lagbaja’s funeral was a good one except that he was denied what would have made the event better, or the best for him. That is pitiful and sad!
A man is a product of his people, or his family. The late General Lagbaja was not an exception. He came from somewhere. He was a member of a family, a community and a society. His people in Ilobu town, Osun State, never believed and will never believe that the late military officer died a natural death. I don’t blame them. That is how we are wired as a people.
Age 56 is nothing among our people. A 56-year-old man is still a child. My older sister, Anti mi Idowu, called me her “kid brother” the other time. I smiled. I am closer to 60 than 50 but I am still a “kid brother” to her! Yes. It is true; a child is never old in the eyes of the parents. Anti mi Idowu, I was told, broke the rules in her Modern School to rush home to carry me hours after I arrived on this side of the planet. So, I remain her “kid brother” till Thy Kingdom come!
I also recall here that my father, Baba Daniel Falade, passed on at age 87 in January 1987. The news was broken to one of his great cousins, Yeye Ifábonmí Ipindogan, popularly known as Yeye Alaro (she was into tie and dye), was told, she reported: “this . The old woman, on hearing the news, said: “This child” eventually died of this emere (ogbanje) spirit that had afflicted him from birth! Yeye Alaro was right. Baba Falade was a child at 87 because the old woman’s first child, Baba Akinwumi, was almost the same age as Baba Falade! This is why Yeye Alaro believed that it was the Ogbanje spirit that ‘killed’ her cousin at 87!
If Ilobu people believe that General Lagbaja died too young at 56, they are right. If they hold the belief that Lagbaja’s death was not natural, nobody can fault them. That is why I believe that the Federal Government should have yielded to their demand to have the late General buried in Ilobu with all the traditional rites for a man suspected to have been cut short in life, performed!
It doesn’t matter anyone’s view, particularly, the ‘saint’ Christians and Muslims, who hold the belief that such practice is ‘fetish’. We must first get this right; every funeral ceremony is a rite, a ritual, if we all get the definitions of rite and ritual right. And, if the question is if I believe in traditional rites for a departed soul under the circumstances of the late General Lagbaja, my answer is an emphatic YES!
I was a freelance reporter with the defunct Sunday Diet Newspaper in 1997, when the late General Oladipo Diya and other top Yoruba Military officers were arrested by the expired Head of State, General Sani Abacha, for coup plotting. At our editorial meeting of December 22, 1997, conveyed by our Editor, Sheddy Ozoene, his deputy and head of our features desk, Ikechukwu Amaechi, was assigned to coordinate the magazine report of the arrests. I was assigned to cover General Diya while Yinka Oyebode, the current spokesman to Ekiti State governor, was assigned to cover General Tajudeen Olanrewaju.
I arrived at Odogbolu very late in the night. I was fortunate to find a small drinking party at a joint. I joined the party despite their suspicion of me as a security agent. My head could manage a bottle or two then. I ordered a beer and sent three bottles of the brand they were managing to the table of a three ‘friendly’-looking party across. They looked at me and gestured thank you.
After a while, I moved to their table and explained my mission. I showed them.my identity card, a note on the letterhead of Diet Newspaper and my passport photograph. The life of a freelance journalist! Not enviable in any way! They believed me and helped me to secure accommodation in one dingy hotel, with a promise that one of them would come to take me round the town the following day.
The day broke and my friend showed up. We walked around the town. The first things I noticed were various pots of ritual items and palm fronds. I asked what happened just to be sure. My contact said they were rituals for the release of General Diya. Then I noticed four bigger ritual spots. What distinguished them was the presence of pèrègún shrubs. That must have been a big ritual based on my little knowledge of pèrègun and its uses. It is not a common element of your daily rituals!
My contact took me to the Alaye of Odogbolu. Kabiyesi was not willing to talk. But he, nevertheless, mentioned that Diya would come out alive. I was taken to the Anglican priest in town, then to one of the General’s classmates. We visited the General’s uncle, a blacksmith. He wore a melancholic posture. He told me nothing would happen to his nephew. He exuded confidence as he intoned that the kolanut will always be buried by the leaves (ewé ni ó ma si obì) and added that the gourd will break first before the water inside will spill (kèrègbè má fó kí omi iní è tó dànù). I understood him.
My contact finally took me to an old Baba’s house, where I saw what my people called èrù (fear). My contact told me in the English Language that the old man was behind all the rituals I saw earlier. I asked the old man if he believed in the efficacy of the rituals. He affirmed that. Then curiosity took over me. I pointed out that I saw pèrègún shrubs in town. The old man kept a straight face. I prodded further. Why pèrègún? The old man looked at me and asked if I knew what people used pèrègún for. I explained to him the little knowledge I had.
The old man said that the little I knew should guide me. Then he uttered the familiar words peculiar to pèrègún. He said: pèrègún will always outlive the deity (Pèrègún ló ma réhìn imalè)). He emphasised that General Diya would outlive all his traducers in the matter. The session closed. I thanked my contact and headed back to Lagos.
Less than six months later, General Abacha expired on June 8, 1998. He was said to be doing the thing after eating an Adamic apple, when he answered ‘present sir’ before his maker! General Diya and others were released. The Odogbolu-born General passed on on March 26, 2023, in a way my people described as peaceful death (Ó fowó rorí kú). His people believed in the power of rituals. They performed rites before the various gods of the town. All the deities were given what they relish best. And General Diya survived the executioners’ bullets. How I wished they had allowed Ilobu to do the same for Lagbaja.
This is why the funeral of General Lagbaja without the input of his townsmen remains painful. God owns life. He alone determines when to take it. Nobody is contesting that. However, the Scripture also tells us that we should not be unmindful of the wiles of the devil because we wrestle against power and principalities, rulers of the darkness of this age and spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:11-12),
This is the belief Ilobu people have. That is why they requested that the late General Lagbaja be given to them to bury their own way. I don’t think that was too much of a request. The Federal Government and the Nigerian Army could still have had their colourful ceremony for the departed General in Ilobu as they did in Abuja.
A man belongs to his community. Lagbaja belonged to the Ilobu town. His placenta was buried in the town. They are his source; they know his origin. This is a case of the ancient divination, Ogbè Móhunfólóhun (Give unto a man what belongs to him). If indeed Lagbaja’s life was cut short by the wicked, his people had been denied the opportunity to call on the owners of the land to rise and avenge them. The sermon of ‘from-sand-we-come-and-unto-sand-we -return’ would not suffice here.
We need to have a reorientation about our culture, norms and world outlook. It is unfortunate that while those who brought Christianity to us never abandoned their own culture, we the converts threw away everything that is our heritage. The British brought the ancient throne from Edinburgh for the coronation of King Charles III. But in Ogbomosho of all ancient towns, we made the traditional ruler kneel before a pastor who placed his hand on the Oba’s head. Ogbomosho has in the last one year been moving from one needless crisis to the over the Imam of the town; a matter that should not concern the Oba! Unfortunately, nobody is asking what went wrong.
Take the case of Ikú Bàbá Yèyé, the late Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III, for instance. Over two years after the passing of the foremost Yoruba traditional ruler, the throne has been empty! That is not just an embarrassment to the Oyo Alaafin people but the entire Yoruba Race and Black Africa. Why is the throne of Oranmiyan vacant? Why are the Oyo princes at one another’s throats? Why are we finding it difficult to do it the way it ought to be done so that it can be the way it should be?
Daily, we lose the last vestiges of the things our forebears left for us. Our women kneel completely to venerate their ‘daddies-in-the Lord but can hardly genuflect to greet their husbands. Pastors, Imams and other ‘spiritual godfathers’ keep brainwashing us and nobody is paying attention.
When I told some people that there are some altar calls, I would not respond to, they said I was not ‘broken’. How on earth would I allow any pastor to tell me to “use your two hands to hold your head and say, ‘my head, reject evil'”, and I would do so when I had witnessed that countless times at Baba Falade’s divination sessions?
What is the difference between a pastor asking me to touch the ground and touch my head and my late father asking his divination clients to touch the ground and touch their head and thank their destiny (Orí)?
Going by the tributes at General Lagbaja’s funeral, one can easily conclude that he was a great soldier, and a nice guy. I join my voice to thousands of others in wishing his family the fortitude to bear the loss.
But, more importantly to me, I wish Ilobu people home and in the Diaspora, divine vengeance on those they suspected were responsible for the demise of their kinsman. Even if cancer was the harbinger of that death, it must die. This should be its last act of heartlessness.
And for the departed soul, General Lagbaja, before you rest in peace, if indeed someone or a group of people were responsible for your ‘untimely’ departure, visit them in anger. When they walk in the day, let them be afraid. At night, let them hear footsteps. When they eat, may they not be satisfied and when they drink water, let their thirst not be assuaged. After that, Rest in Peace, Soldier Man!
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