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There are two insects in Yoruba cosmology that are similar, yet very distinct.
One is Oyin (bee), while the other is agbon (wasp).
Both equally sting in their unique ways.
A bee, for instance, is less aggressive and stings only when it is threatened, while a wasp is very aggressive, territorial, domineering and controls its space.
While a bee and a wasp live in almost similar nests (with a bee’s own a bit concealed), a wasp openly displays its abode, daring anyone to come near it.
Now, when these two insects set out to fight, a bee usually stings and leaves marks of the attack on its victims.
However, that is not the way of a wasp. A wasp deposits its poison in its nest and when it wants to use it, it goes back to the nest, uses its buttock to collect the poison and deposits the toxic material into the bloodstream of its victims.
Victims of wasp stings live in pain for days.
Again, Yoruba describes such a fighting strategy in a proverb: “Ile ni Agbon ma nko idi si ko to ta, this implies that the wasp goes back to its nest before it stings.
A wasp’s nest is its ultimate strength.
The Yoruba worldview is mythical. Nothing happens to that race by happenstance.
Generally, Africans are esoteric, but the Yoruba people are in a class of their own.
An average Yoruba person places a premium on their home. There is a Yoruba proverb that says Ile ni abo simi oko, this implies that every man retires home after the day’s work on the farm.
Home (Ile) is literal and metaphoric in this sense.
Whenever a man draws strength from his cultural background, the Yoruba people would say “o pada sile” (he has gone back home).
More often than not, when a man has troubles navigating the turbulence of this world, he goes back home.
There is a saying that captures that: “Ode ma nle ómó pada sile” – the outside world chases a child back home.
When it is tough outside, the Yoruba people encourage the child to go back home.
Why are they giving such counsel?
Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC), went back home last week.
If I were him, I would have started my presidential campaign rally in Abeokuta, Ogun state capital, with a proper Ijuba (reverence).
I would have chanted: Baba mi Oloyeloogun okun o (Greetings to my fathers who double as wizards and sorcerers).
I would have called them their names as: Osoogun sule, soogun saja (He who keeps his sorcery at home and in the ceiling).
I would have told the crowd why my forefathers behaved that way – k’Oso ule ba mu tule, ko mu toke aja a gbe omo re (so that if the wizards within take hold of the charms in the house, you use the ones in the ceiling to avenge your child).
I would have told my forebears why I embarked on the Ijuba by reporting my traducers to them thus: Oso ule tii hi kesiri omo re (the wizards at home are already troubling your child), Aje ule tii hi kesiri omo re (the witches at home are already pummeling your child).
I would follow that with an Ofo (Invocation) that those sages taught me, to wit: Hin wi ki mi ba ti ri han (You said that when I see them – wizards and witches).
Then, a little Ogede (Incantation), declaring the impossibility of their gang up against me would follow.
I would have told my political enemies, within and without, that: Ha mu agada muni duro de Erin (Nobody holds the short sword to await an Elephant).
If you like, take that to mean the hoarded petrol; Han mu kumo sona hi de Efon (Nobody holds the cudgel to confront a buffalo- the redesigned Naira), Han mu obe usijele dani de Ekun (Nobody holds the blunt common knife to fight the leopard – BVAS and other reforms in the electoral process).
Having done those ones, I would then call my sidekick and minstrel, K1 De Ultimate, Wasiu Ayinde Barrister, to go esoteric by chanting Ayajo (evocation) on those who have determined to truncate my presidential ambition.
The last act would have been for K1 to sing Orin Ote (Rebellion songs laced with proverbs).
Whenever there is a discord, every song becomes a proverb (Ija de; orin di owe), according to Yoruba elders.
Then, finally, I would address the people, in their own language, irrespective of the presence of those who don’t speak Yoruba language.
This because a masquerade is addressed by the language he understands.
I will tell my people my pains and let them know that I belong to them the way the rag belongs to the dunghill (t’eni ni t’eni, t’akisa ni t’aatan).
The matter at hand requires the support of my people. Tinubu did virtually everything I said here except the Ijuba, Ofo, and Ogede.
And truth be told, Tinubu’s travails in the hands of his ‘friends’ have gotten to a level that the cosmic must be invited.
I appreciate that during his presidential campaign rally in Ogun state.
For the first time, and by my reckoning, Tinubu acted like a proper Yoruba man.
His goat has been pushed to the wall, Tinubu must turn back and bite.
Ahmed Tinubu did exactly what a wasp does last Wednesday.
The APC presidential candidate is a man that this era will not forget in a hurry.
I am beginning to pay more than passing attention to his political trajectory, especially as his life-long presidential ambition is concerned.
Between June 2022 and Wednesday, January 25, Tinubu has brought to the fore the relevance of home in the Yoruba configuration, more than anything else.
“Ile ni Ile nje”, this implies that home will always be home, and this is the message that I am getting from the former governor of Lagos State.
At the heat of the APC presidential primary last year, I had a discussion with an elderly friend.
The old man expressed the wish that Tinubu would drop his presidential ambition for a younger Yoruba man (he mentioned three names).
He asked for my opinion on that wish. My answer was simple. You don’t advise a man not to aspire to take his ancestral chieftaincy title.
In June 2022, Tinubu uttered that statement which was pregnant with an entitlement mentality to wit: E gbé kinni yi wa, èmi lókán (bring the thing, it is my turn), I called my elderly friend to remind him of our discussion.
Tinubu chose Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun state to utter the quoted words.
It was at a time when the threat to his ambition was at its highest decibel. He was strident in doing that.
He ensured that Abdullahi Ganduje, the governor of Kano state was present.
Tinubu spoke in Yoruba language, and Ganduje, a Fulani, could only look on.
That is called “figure it out”, and Aso Rock people eventually got the message.
The APC presidential primary’ field was left ‘plain’ thereafter. Tinubu won the crown.
But will he ascend the throne?
Now the real election is around the corner, but Tinubu has been running around like the candidate of the opposition party.
He gets little or no support from his ‘friends’ he helped to power.
Just as Tinubu said in June 2022, if not for him, President Muhammadu Buhari would not have been president.
The former governor of Lagos state assembled the most vicious arsenal against former president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
From outright lies to propaganda, intimidation to blackmail, Tinubu and his gang railroaded Jonathan out of Aso Rock Villa to his Otuoke waterside country home.
The Izon man went philosophical and said that, “My ambition is not worth the blood of any Nigerian”.
Even when the card reader could not recognise his thumb during the voting, Jonathan did nothing.
Jonathan eventually voted and ‘lost’ the election eventually, too.
One of the greatest weapons the Tinubu Mafia used to undermine the Jonathan-led administration was artificial petrol scarcity.
The agonies Nigerians went through to buy the commodity before the 2015 elections were such that anybody else could have defeated the then PDP.
Little wonder that Tinubu became agitated when he started seeing queues at filling stations across the country, weeks to his own election.
A man who kills by the sword does not like anyone to take a sheath near his neck.
It is therefore not out of place for Tinubu to have labelled those behind the current fuel shortage as enemies of his ambition.
Tinubu knows them to be the thieves within.
However, the fuel issue is not the only worry of the lord of Lagos.
Like any normal human being, Tinubu could not understand why the government of Buhari would choose an election year to change the colour of the highest denominations of the nation’s currency.
The man was upset such that he described the naira redesigning as mere painting.
He added that he was coming with a revolution.
Baba Bisi Akande, former governor of Osun state, tried to caution him, but Tinubu asked the crowd in Ogun state to tell the elderly ones around him on the podium to allow him to speak his mind.
And in speaking his mind, Tinubu told his ‘enemies’ that even if they changed the “ink” on the naira, or, if they liked, they could spend and become bankrupt, he would win the election.
The use of “ink” is deliberate. Nothing fundamental was changed in the so-called redesigned naira note.
The inability of Nigerians to swap their old currency notes with the new ones is a hungry monkey that only the Buhari-APC led government can find enough bananas to feed.
Tinubu knows that he has vicious enemies within the APC.
How do you reconcile the fact that out of the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the president and leader of his party, Buhari, would only feature in only 10 states!
That is outlandish. Out of the 10 states, Buhari was scheduled to be in Ilorin, Kwara State, but he chose to go for a ‘peace award’ in Mauritania.
He was billed to be in Abeokuta last Wednesday, but Buhari left Lagos for Dakar, Senegal.
Buhari accompanied Tinubu to Bauchi on January 23, but he said nothing. Why? They said that the sound system went bad.
Phew! Sunday, January 29 was for Sokoto, but that did not hold, probably due to a change in the timetable.
January 30 was the turn of Akwa Ibom State, but President Buhari was nowhere near the venue of the rally to canvass votes for his candidate.
Ask again, how many states has the APC national chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, gone to with his presidential candidate?
Is this how to reward a man, who approached Buhari and said that, “Weep no more, we will support you and you will win”, and made you him win the presidency after three unsuccessful attempts?
The coming weeks and days are going to be very interesting.
Tinubu, like a sniffer dog, can sniff conspiracy miles away.
The Yoruba elders who warned the man called Jagaban, not to venture into the unholy political matrimony with the feudal lords can only wait and see what happens next.
Tinubu will need more than ayajo nla if he wants to win the coming election.
He must report his enemies to his mothers before they kill his ambition. He needs his mothers, who eat the heart from the liver, and the head from the arm.
If his enemies are not relenting, Tinubu may need to go to Oduduwa shrine in Ile-|ife, and the Sango shrine at Koso, Oyo for a rain of fire (ojo ina) to fall on them.
Those against him are not mere men. He knows this and that is why he has taken the initiative by going back ‘home’, like the wasp, to ask for ayajo nla.
Tinubu should ask his people at home to give him what they call “apeta (call and die), B’ojowo (die as the sun sets) and Olugbohun (approve as I decree).
Please don’t ask me for details of those invocations.
Written by Suyi Ayodele.
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