Opinion
On Pele’s Warri Ancestry
Published
2 years agoon
By Tony Afejuku
Today in an un-peculiar sense I want to halt infuriating my wondrous readers’ patience by admitting them into a little knowledge of the recently late King Pele’s Warri ancestry. Since I hinted what I hinted in this regard two Fridays ago, running to last Friday as a matter of fact, I had inevitably (but not surprisingly so) received more than numerous calls and messages from diverse readers and customary and uncustomary followers of this column. For their sake I am amputating several matters in my thoughts in order not to delay further their collective curiosity. Thus, I am offering now only what may amount to a slice of Pele’s Warri ancestry or descent.
Before my thoughts go to the subject earnestly, let me provide two pertinent species as follows:
“What we know is a droplet. What we don’t know is as the ocean” (Albert Einstein).
And:
“I am not a teacher but a fellow traveller of whom you ask the way. I pointed ahead, of you as well as of myself” (George Bernard Shaw).
Jacob Akindele, a top pen pusher and a welcome judge of this column, drew my valuable and measured attention to the quotations uttered respectively by two white- blooded intellectual giants of universal renown named above. The import of each quotation is germane to at least a lump of this undertaking. I shall begin with a spiritual exposition which involves the columnist who will try as best as he can to pay heed to the “death of the author” in the telling of the spiritual tale as it involves Pele, and his Warri lineage. The tale has as well socio-historical dimension and tendency.
I discovered Pele’s Warri ancestry in 1981 in an unusual sort of way. But at that time I didn’t give much thought to it. In fact, I was not the only one who discovered it – although I was the only one by intellectual and academic training who could give it invariably scholarly reflection and contemplation – spiritually, historically, politically and otherwise at the material time. The year was 1981 – early 1981 to be exact. And it was after the Africa Nations’ Cup which Nigeria hosted and won. My younger brother, the dreaded magical left-winger Prince Afejuku of Bendel Insurance of the glorious years, was among three or so members of the inaugural Junior Eagles who were invited to the Green Eagles to be part of the senior team. The others were Sylvanus Okpella and Henry Nwosu. But he sustained a spiritual-induced knee injury in camp before D-Day, and consequently was eventually not included in the team. After the Nations’ Cup which the Green Eagles won, he won an athletic scholarship offered by a university in the US. In fact, two US universities offered him two athletic scholarships: North Carolina State University and Appalachian State University, the late Thompson Usiyan’s (former pre-1980 Green Eagles great centre-forward) University. He chose the former (Frank Moniedafe’s University) against my wish and advice. Before then plans were on for him to be admitted by Ahmadu Bello University (where I was then lecturing) on athletic scholarship as well.
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On the eve of his setting forth to the US, an elderly cousin of mine, a civil engineer, still resident in Sapele in advanced age, advised and insisted that we subject his journey and quest to divine interpretation and guidance. Out of curiosity I gave him the nod – although as at that time I was thoroughly perplexed by what I quietly called his idealistic thought and belief, that is, his conception of being (essence) rather than that of engineering, a realistic product of science of becoming (praxis). Three of us in a quiet dry evening in Sapele visited three diviners – two of whom were female Christian prophetesses while the third and last was a traditional Itsekiri male diviner. I admired our elderly cousin for being completely immersed in Itsekirio-Christian culture. Of the three diviners it was the traditional diviner we visited last at sun-down that won our admiration (and mine in particular). Like the female Christian diviners, he was meeting my brother and I for the very first time (and final time as well). With his first throw of his divination cowries in a traditional white chalked-circle that housed two equally white diagrams of triangles and seven straight lines, also drawn in white chalk, on the floor of his sitting-room, he knew correctly the reason why we were before him. Without a word from any of us, after exchange of pleasantries he pin-pointed everything that was related to my brother and his impending journey and the challenges that he would be beset with. He offered a simple solution of little monetary value when our cousin asked what could be done for my brother to overcome the challenges that would confront him in America. But this was after he said that my brother should have instead gone to Appalachian State University.
From the blues his cowries revealed that my brother was like Pele without initially mentioning Pele by name. He merely said in an off-hand manner that my brother was in the profession of our Potoki brother. It was then our cousin who was very proficient in Ifa divination pointedly pinned him down and committed him to dwell on Pele. Initially, I thought he was referring to Eusebio of Portugal when he talked of “Potoki brother.” When our cousin pinned him down, Ifa (Ife in Itsekiri) revealed Pele’s Warri (Itsekiri) ancestry. Pele’s ancestor, Ifa revealed, was a sojourner, a royal sojourner from Warri on earth, what one may liken to “homo viator.” His ancestor, as Ifa revealed, was an adept at recreative exercises of religious, that is, of Itsekiri traditional meditations and metaphysical matters. It was then I challenged the Ifa priest – although politely. I told him point-blank to revisit Pele’s roots beyond what he had said. He replied that he understood our doubt. But he insisted that Pele’s ancestor had our family’s that is, my ancestor’s royal blood. He did not stop there. He said Pele would live a long life but that he would pre-decease his mother. Not only that. Towards the end of his existence on this earthly plane he would be in and out of hospital until he would go back to the un-forbidden beyond. Furthermore, he would get a sky-burial – whatever that meant then when he uttered it. Everything the Ifa priest said now makes sense to me.
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But this is not the end of the revelations. For now let me say this: I raised this issue with the late Itsekiri historian, J.O.S. Ayomike. We needed archaeological as well as solid historical backings to back Ifa’s claim or revelation. This was one argument I tabled before the famed historian in the late 1990s. He agreed. But we had our hindrances. However, through my historical researches I was able to discover as follows:
Several Warri Princes, apart from the son of the reigning and ruling Olu, Don Domingos, journeyed to Portugal “to be instructed in sacerdotal duties.” This was in the sixteenth century. Pele’s ancestor from his own branch of the royal family, if the Ifa priest was right, probably went to Portugal at this time through Sao Tome en route to Portugal from where he probably ended up in Brazil. At this time in Warri Kingdom commerce and trade were not particularly and peculiarly buoyant thus Itsekiri business ethics and traditional economic philosophy were affected. But Itsekiri philosophy of living still thrived in the right direction. And the missionaries who visited the Kingdom were the envy of several royals who were imbued with the spirit of adventure and journeys to other lands, especially Europe. Let me side-step at this juncture this factual history and other archeological considerations in the form, for example, of royal correspondences of Kings of Warri to the King of Spain and the Pope to support our contention.
What titillates my imagination and creative consciousness with respect to Pele’s Warri ancestry is the Ifa priest’s religious and essentialist and dialectal revelation which Itsekiri socio-historical and political circumstances as at that time certainly did not disavow. And if I add here what the Ifa priest reveals about me, revelations which are exceedingly true about my being and genesis of being you cannot but endorse my contention. The notion of Roland Barthes’ theory of “the death of the author” precludes me from saying more than I should say. What you should know “is a droplet” from your “fellow traveller” in creation. By the way, the solution of little monetary value that the Ifa priest offered to counter my younger brother’s challenges in America was carelessly jettisoned. The offshoot of that is a sad, sad history. We better forget it. But it has since played a major role in my visionary universe.
READ ALSO: Pele: World King Of Football Had Warri Ancestry
Pele’s Warri ancestry is real. But what I have just tabled is a slice and a tip and a lump of a gem. My readings continue….
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
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By Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha
One of the interesting proverbs I picked up in our General African Studies (GAS 201) course with the late Professor Jabez Olowo Ojoade in the University of Jos in 1979 was ‘it is a bastard child that points at his homestead with his left hand! The Akan people of Ghana put it this way: a bastard child points to his father’s house with his left hand’. The Yoruba say that ‘a person who points to their homestead with the left hand is not a good person’, while the Luhya of Kenya say that ‘when pointing to your village, use your right hand’. It is in the Swahili language that a sort of generalised use of the left hand is concretised when it says ‘the left hand is for personal hygiene, not for pointing!
Bastard child! Homestead! Pointing with the left hand! These three constituents and functional parts of the proverb tickled my teenage imagination to no end. What is it about the left had that it should not be used to refer to one’s family? Why is this metaphor common across the continent? Indeed, there must be something about the family, about the homestead, about one’s origins that deserves respect no matter the circumstances.
By the way, some Nigerians in the diaspora also point to Nigeria with their left hand. ‘That country’, is often used to describe the place where some spent eighteen or thirty of their lives as they tried to find their feet. So, in a sense, Kemi is simply doing what some full-blooded Nigerians do in reaction to the anomie which currently rules the land. Kemi stands out because of her delicate and prominent position in the world. We all took offence when Bully Donald Trump referred to ours as ‘shithole countries! At that level, who said what becomes very important, that is, the message is given prominence because of the stature and calibre of the messenger.
The proverb, according to Wikipedia, is ‘often used to convey that someone who is not respectful or grateful to their roots or heritage will eventually be rejected or ostracised by their community! The left hand, we are told, is for personal hygiene. We don’t use it to give or receive gifts; we don’t use it to serve drinks or for traditionally important functions.
In the African context, a bastard child is not one who was born out of wedlock or whose father is not known to the family. Bastard child represents a person who is disconnected from their family. Pointing to the family house with the left hand is indicative of disrespect.
These thoughts flooded my mind when I read recently elected leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, Kemi Badenoch, gave some hard and bad knocks to Nigeria, the Nigeria Police, and governance in her Nigeria, her ancestral home. To be sure, nobody who has encountered some men of the Nigeria Police in action can fault Kemi. Her chemistry of being brutally frank is what has taken Kemi to the heights in Conservative Party politics. Whether she can indeed lead the Party to victory in an election is a different kettle of fish. As the potential leader of the British government, all cards will count when push gets to shove. Which is why Kemi should remember that no well-trained child points to the family house with the left hand.
Nigeria is in process. It is a building site. And we started this project of disparate and different cultures fused together when the British pounced on our ancestors to create Nigeria. We look back to the years when a British monarch, King Henry VIII (1491 to 1547), who ate two of his six wives for breakfast and dinner. Wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were executed by beheading. Jane Seymour died under mysterious circumstances. Perhaps if Diana had emerged in the 15th century as wife to a British monarch, the reigning king would have sent her to the guillotine instead of the tunnel in Paris! Some British monarchs actively participated, supported, and profited from the transatlantic slave trade. British monarchs oversaw the colonisation of indigenous lands in Africa, North America, and Australia sometimes through genocide! No where in Africa, our dear left-handed and grandly insolent Kemi, would a Prime Minister allow his wife to remain in an adulterous relationship for decades as Harold Macmillan did with wife Lady Dorothy Macmillan did with the bisexual Bob Boothby in the 20th Britain!
We may need to remind Kemi that racism still dominated policing in Britain as it does in much of the Western world. Yet, we have not painted the entire police system as being racist. Indeed, Kemi, without officialdom around her can still be profiled by a police officer if she were found driving alone in some areas of London! Her skin colour, is not typically British, I dare say. Yet, we have not said that Britain is racist. The ‘how dark’ racist discussions which precipitated Harry and Meghan fleeing the British monarchy is still very fresh and raw in our consciousness; yet, Nigeria’s Vice President has not called the British monarchy a racist institution.
Time will fail me to discuss the Damilola Taylor case in year 2000 when the Metropolitan Police handling of Taylor’s murder was seen as slow and inadequate due to racial bias. By the way, Damilola was both British and Yoruba like our illustrious and petulant Kemi who believes in giving hard knocks! What about the Stephen Lawrence 1993 murder case which the Metropolitan Police badly handled owing to racial bias? In 1999, Roger Sylvester, a Black man, died in police custody and an inquest showed that the police used excessive force. In 2009, newspaper vendor Ian Tom died after being struck by a police officer during the G20 protests in London. The 1999 Macpherson Report, which investigated the Stephen Lawrence case, concluded that ‘the Metropolitan Police as institutionally racist! As late as 2017, the Lammy Review which was led David Lammy (MP) concluded that “black and minority ethnic individuals were more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested, and imprisoned than their white counterparts! Need I say more?
So, our dear daughter and bright star Kemi in the British firmament, we shall not point to you with our left hand, because in spite of you, you are our daughter. We can only say that the Nigeria Police is in good company of the Empire of the Police system which was created in 1820 by your progenitors from the other side! Colonial vestiges are not easy to shake off!
Opinion
Afe Babalola And Dele Farotimi: On Justice, A Just Society And The Nigerian State
Published
19 hours agoon
December 22, 2024By Tunji Olaopa
The feud between elder statesman, Chief Afe Babalola and civil rights activist, Mr. Dele Farotimi, is perhaps the most significant discourse that postcolonial Nigerian state has thrown up for the moment, one in a class of those grand defining disputations that surely will gather dust which will take some time to abate. And it is one case that is fraught with all sorts of legal, jurisprudential, moral and political traps and complexities that speak to more than the trivial interventions—leveraged around the David and Goliath motif—that are attending the matter. Those who have been able to go beyond the surface of the case will agree that it goes to the very foundation and founding of the Nigerian society, and the fundamental objective of crafting a good and just society for Nigerians. That the issue revolves around the dispensation of justice immediately alerts us to the deep insinuation about the idea of social justice itself, and how the conception of fairness could be written into the very fabric of the Nigerian society. And yet, the complexity of the case is what makes it a case that is too critical for a public servant like me to dabble in.
(Un)fortunately, my intellectual maturation, my political science education and my professional endeavor in institutional reform advocacy have prepared me to intervene in this critical matter. I have always been involved with Nigeria, and with reflective thoughts about how to reconstitute her greatness. Three learning encounters with three world-historic icons configured my passion for wanting to see that Nigeria becomes a state we all can be proud of. The first came from my reading of Plato’s Republic. There is a reason that the entire treatise commenced with the question, what is justice? Justice was a fundamental issue in the decline of the ancient Athenian democracy that allowed Socrates to be judicially murdered. The second learning derived from Wole Soyinka’s dense prison memoir, The Man Died. And like most who have read it, Soyinka was troubled by the idea of justice: “For me, justice is the first condition of humanity.” By the time I would be coming to Thomas More’s Utopia, I was already apprised of the connections between my political science education, my professional endeavor as a public servant, and the key elements of institutional reform as a cogent framework for transforming Nigeria.
From Plato to Soyinka, we have a trajectory of political reflection that takes justice seriously as the basis for organizing a just society. This is part of the intellectual frameworks for my undergraduate and graduate studies at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. In one of those explosive seminar classes that played some fundamental role in my intellectual maturation in the graduate school, I had proposed an argument through a seminar paper titled: “Is a revolution an option to fix Nigeria?” The topic was meant to titillate the collective yearning for revolution that would serve as the ultimate mechanism for social change that would flush off all traces of corruption and degeneration in postcolonial Nigeria. Revolutions seem to possess some allure for the masses because they constitute a framework of justice that the constitutional justice mechanism might not be able to handle.
However, as Wole Soyinka, Thomas More, Martin Luther and even Galileo Galilei would realize, the need for radicalism is balanced by the force of establishment orthodoxy. The Nigerian predicament has, as a fundamental foundation, a lot to do with the connection between governance failure and injustice in terms of the persistent and protracted class strife between the haves and the have-nots, between the rich and the poor, indeed, in the final analysis between the government and the governed. And in the case between Afe Babalola and Dele Farotimi, the issues boil down to the administration of justice and the entire edifices and institutions of social justice and the rule of law in Nigeria. And so, in outlining the key issues involved in the matter, we must be careful enough to read between the lines and the noises of analysts who are eager to queue behind their favored protagonists.
First things first. Let us remove the surface debris. Indeed, and in this case, the debris points us in the direction to look for the rot within the matter. First, there is the matter of civil defamation and its legal ramifications. And second, there is the issue of the legal and moral protocols involved in dealing with the pursuit of redress by someone who knows and understands the law. Barrister Farotimi has a legal right to seek redress in court. Chief Babalola has a legal right to defend his reputation in court. In raising the specter of legal prosecution against defamation, I see Chief Babalola as being at the forefront of gatekeeping the legal establishment in terms of what is and is not permissible or possible under the law and its conservative tenets. If you are hurt or an injustice has been done to your person, then the best place to seek redress is not the court of public opinion but the constitutional legal establishment.
Unfortunately for him, Barrister Farotimi’s book, Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System, impugns the entire legal and judicial establishment up to its apex institution, the Nigerian Supreme Court. However, does radicalism preclude moral decency? A book could be written and allegations made without the complement of atrocious language. Or maybe the rot in the judicial system, and the need for a revolution preclude any niceties, especially with those who are allegedly at the forefront of perpetuating and protecting the rot. But then, how to prove what we all consider to be the norm in terms of legal prosecution of judicial corruption remains a hanging question.
No matter how we look at what we are calling the surface debris, we are redirected deeper and deeper into what lies beneath the surface. The ultimate question is that between Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi, what we are asked to contend with is the state of the Nigerian judiciary and the corrupt impediment of social justice, especially for an average Nigerian. What Barrister Dele Farotimi said about the Nigerian judicial system is not new. We are all familiar with the rot within the system. Indeed, this is not the first time an alarm would be raised about what we are all familiar with. Indeed, as far back as 1999, The News magazine carried a most unsalutary headline, “Crooks on the Bench: An Expose on the Rot in the Judiciary.” The magazine headlined the names of 47 judges indicted for judicial corruption. What is new is that Dele Farotimi dared to go so far as to mention specific names, and to confront the big players in the legal establishment. And he did this in a most scurrilous manner targeted at getting maximum traction and attention. It is as if Mr Farotimi, through the public sphere, is throwing the gauntlet to every Nigerian and challenging us on our collective responsibility to clean the Augean stable.
If Barrister Farotimi cannot prove his allegations in court, it would not mean that his charges are false. It might only imply that the system which is supposed to guarantee justice has become too corruptly dense to achieve its mandate. But there is also the chance that since the entire judicial system cannot be tarred so broadly with the same brush, Farotimi’s allegation might receive a dispassionate hearing that might deliver justice as we expect it. This might be a tall expectation. Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament has inevitable consequences on the capacity of the judicial system to facilitate the delivery of justice. And this failure also complicates the capacity of the Nigerian state to deliver on its social contract to Nigerians. This is what makes the Babalola-Farotimi case too complex to be decided either in the constitutional court or the court of public opinion. The burdens of postcolonial disruptions that the Nigerian judiciary system carries are enormous: judicial corruption, miscarriage of judgments, executive lawlessness, delayed trial due to insufficient infrastructure, financial dependence on the executive arm of government.
To outline the fundamental challenges of the judicial system in Nigeria this way is not to give in to cynicism and a deterministic mindset that we might be caught in a vice that is inescapable. It is simply to say that the ongoing uproar between the two dramatis personae demonstrates that the court has been given a chance to reflect on the role that (in)justice plays in the fundamental understanding of the Nigerian postcolonial predicament and the capacity of a democratic system to correct itself. When Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi are given their day in court, we will have no choice but to trust that same judicial system to deliver unbiased judgment no matter our misgivings about how objective and untainted that judgment could be. This is just a way of saying that though our judicial system is not perfect; it is still the best that we have.
The last words on this reflection on the connection between the ongoing feud between Babalola and Farotimi and Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament must be given to Haile Sellasie, former emperor of Ethiopia: “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”
Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission,Abuja, and Professor of Public Administration.
tolaopa2003@gmail.com
By Leo Igwe
The Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) is concerned over the reported arrest of two men accused of being ‘witchdoctors’ in Zambia. The arrest underscores the potency of witchcraft fears and the connection between occult anxieties and the country’s politics. These individuals were accused of trying to bewitch the Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema. The police claimed that they had charms. They planned to use the charms to harm the president. The report says the two persons have been charged under Zambia’s Witchcraft Act. The Act criminalizes “possession of charms”, “professing knowledge of witchcraft”, and “cruelty to wild animals”. The police found the two with assorted charms, including a live chameleon.
This development is utterly embarrassing and shows that the Zambian government is slowly losing its focus and bearing.The country has many socio-economic challenges. Suspicion of bewitchment or possession of charms should be the least of its worries at this time. There should be no place for witchcraft and possession of charms in modern politics because there is no evidence for these beliefs and practices. Zambian authorities should not weaponize the Witchcraft Act or use it to justify this incident. Zambian law does not recognize witchcraft. Zambia’s Witchcraft Act criminalizes naming or imputing witchcraft. It prohibits accusing or threatening to accuse any person of being a witch or a wizard. In this case, it is the police who are breaking the law.
Otherwise, how did they know the two individuals were ‘witchdoctors’? Did these persons identify as witch doctors? If not, the police are liable because they named and imputed witchcraft and have to prove that these individuals have witch-doctoring powers. The police claimed to have charged these individuals for possessing “assorted charms”, including a chameleon. Really?
The police in Zambia have questions to answer: What are charms? How did they know that what was in their possession were charms, not pets? Is a chameleon a form of charm? What makes possession of a chameleon possession of a charm? When and how does a chameleon become a charm? The police need to answer these questions and more before one takes them seriously.
Again, did the individuals describe what was in possession as ‘charms’? If they did, does confessing or designating something as a charm make it a charm? And if they did not, the police are liable because they need to prove how those possessions translated into charms.
In addition, the police claimed that the duo wanted to bewitch the president. What does that mean? How did they know? Are the police not contravening a provision under the Witchcraft Act by professing knowledge of witchcraft? Can one harm another person using a chameleon? They claimed that the two persons wanted to use the charms in their possession, including the chameleon to harm the president. How did they know that? What is the evidence for that?
The Advocacy for Alleged Witches calls for an end to this state-sponsored witch hunt. There is no evidence of harm through witchcraft or charms. The Zambian government should desist from witchcraft- related infractions and violations including arbitrary arrest, and detention of innocent citizens. These allegations are baseless and absurd. The arrest was politically motivated. This development demonstrates that Zambian authorities are out of sync with their duty and obligation to uphold the rule of law and protect accused persons.
Zambian authorities need to act in compliance with the 2021 UN resolution, which urged states to take measures to combat abuses linked to witchcraft beliefs and ritual attacks. End witchcraft allegations in Zambia. End witch hunts in Africa now!
Dr Igwe directs the Advocacy for Alleged Witches.
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