I looked into the middle of the Opon Ifa and what did I see?

In 2016, I looked into the middle of the Opon Ifa and what did I see?

I saw women, simple, rural, agrarian women carrying automatic weapons on their way to their farmlands.

Some of them were pregnant, some carrying loads on their heads, some with their children, some walking alone, some hiking in groups, all moving from one point to another.

I sat up abruptly. What was this I was seeing?

To say I was surprised at this sight would be an understatement.

I did not understand what I saw.

But I did not question the vision.

Without hesitation, I simply began to draw this vision in a series of black and white images, that, when finally harvested, numbered about forty.

It is now, four years later, that the drawings are making any sense.

The Fulani herdsmen had not visibly invaded our farms in Yorubaland at that time.

Now they are there.

The elders, the learned and wise men who are supposed to save us, are distracted with infighting, as they scramble and position themselves to seize power, titles and offices in the Yorubaland envisioned as a new nation.

The women, therefore, secure the way and are leading us the people out of the land of suffering, to our promised land.

Will the women pull the Yoruba people out of the tyranny of oppression, destitution and insecurity of the colonial trap that Britain set up for us as Nigeria?

Agboniregun, the only one that reads the future,

–only the palm-tree is tall enough to climb

and provide a birds-eye view.

The picture shows the paintings I am now making from the 2016 drawings.