By Festus Adedayo
“Why should I bother myself with what is done to my body when I die? Oyomesi (the council of seven high-ranking chiefs in the Oyo Empire) knows what to do with my body!” That was what immediate past Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III, told me in his palace, a few weeks before he journeyed to Ibara – where Oyo buries its kings. He was furious with Ogun State traditional rulers. His grouse was with the Obas and Chiefs Law of 2021. That law has aberrant stipulations that are repugnant to tradition and customs. One of them is the provision stipulating that traditional rulers can be buried according to their religious dispositions.
First presented at the Ogun State legislature in early 2020, it was named, “State Traditional Rulers (Installation and Burial Rites) Bill 2020.” The Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, who recently passed, initiated it. The bill sought to make “a law to provide for the Preservation, Protection and Exercise by Traditional Rulers of their fundamental rights to be installed and buried according to their religions or beliefs and for other related matters.” In 2022, Governor Dapo Abiodun became the pall-bearer of this sacred, even if mythical, ritual of traditional burial of kings transmitted from our forebears.
To fortify institutions and systems that they revered, our forebears curated a number of taboos, myths, wise-sayings and social mores which served to make them distinct in everyday relations. An ancient saying that explains the secrecy of their kings’ burial is, “it is a taboo (èèwò) to bury the initiate the same way you bury a non-initiate.” It is one of Yoruba’s ancient aphorisms which escaped into the modern time. Though modernity has afforded us opportunity to see those inherited myths as mere decorative palm fronds (màrìwò) on a masquerade, they are the pillars upon which Yoruba traditional institution stands. The Orò cult myth is one of such. Those days, as the cult’s ceremonies were conducted, most times at nocturnes, a fearful, ululating flute whistled through the night. When women whom the system forbids from seeing its rituals hear the flute, a chill runs through their spines. It was a symbol of the dominance of male chauvinism.
An Ifa corpus poetic chant gives a short narration of a king called Olufimo Akoko. He did what no one ever did and got a recompense that was unexampled. His offence? He brought his youngest wife into the sacred grove. The wife had pestered her king husband to let her into the secret of the Oro cult. After ceaseless prodding, Olufimo caved in to her demand. So he hid his curious wife inside the Àpèrè, the king’s stool. As the ceremony was afoot, every of the initiation process hit a dud end. Thus goes the Ifa poetic chant about the dilemma the initiates faced: “A pe Ifá, Ifá ò jé o, a p’Orò, Orò ò mì tìtì o”.
Troubled on what could have gone amiss, someone suggested that the Kabiyesi’s Àpèrè be searched. When they found the pretty woman carefully tucked inside the stool, they decided to do the needful. In order to continue to reify the myth of what goes on in the Orò cult, both the Olufimo and his damsel were instantly beheaded.
