RIWO-RIWO-YO-O YO-O

Did you watch those videos!

Seriously, something consequential is transpiring as we speak.

I saw a couple of videos today, and I asked myself, “Doesn’t it look like Yorubaland is under confrontation condition? Hasn’t the west lit it up again?”

If an uprising starts in Ibadan, as it already has, not only will it reverberate through Yorubaland, it will touch every corner of every village in Nigeria.

Those who remember operation wetie would know what I mean.

The moment such a katakata opens in Ibadan, they will pass the relay baton to the Ekiti. If it reaches the hand of Ekiti, nobody can quench the fire again.

The Ekiti and the Ijeṣa axis, the descendants of Ogedengbe Agbogungboro, Adigaga doju ogun–these are offspring of folks who think such conflagrations are mere child play that comes with sing-song nursery rhymes.

The nursery rhymes, though, are dreadful to hear. An Oyo Yoruba like me, (the true nigbati-nigbati), who only understand verbosity but can’t touch a fly, may frown when one hears a song like:

Ogun Oyo kerekekan o!

Riwo-riwo-yo-o-yo-o!!!!

Ogun Oyo kerekan o!

It is the second line, Riwo-riwo-yo-o-yo-o that is frightening.

It doesn’t mean anything, so on the one hand it is silly.

But the eye-bulging expression of the singer is what makes the entire spectacle look bizarre because it might suggest that the guy is actually silly enough to think nothing of letting all the darn hell loose.

We the Oyo people are totally flabbergasted by the agidi of those mountain folks.

Please don’t annoy them.

They are not like the Oyo who want to talk things out.

It’s like poking your head into a beehive if you push them.

Once you push them, they will hear “Go,” but they won’t hear “Stop” nor will they return unless they push matters to the logical conclusion.

If the Oyo are postmodernist “everything-depends-on-something-else-beyond-anybody’s-control” kind of people, the Ekiti-Ijeṣa are modernists with clear distinctions between right and wrong.

My friend Moyo Ogundipe, aka “The first Ekiti freak,” of glorious memory, would tell me, “Look Moyo, ma paja lobo fun mi o. Oyo buruku.”

If those folks feel wronged, I don’t want to be around.

Once the Ibadan Mesiogo, dwellers of the House of Oluyole–dare I say their ancestors were …hush..thieves; daylight robbers; wild-west gangsters who would make El Capone look like a kindergarten student–Ni ibi ole n gbe jare olohun–once they light the fire, as they seem to have done today–emi o si nibe o.

My hand is not there patapata.

Because, straight from the Ijesa-Ibadan front, you won’t even know that the baton has already exchanged hands to the Ondo, Ilaje, area, where it will fork both north and south at the same time.

Forget it at that point. It has gone nationally viral.

Sometimes what seems so meek may mask its very opposite. This is why it was too risky to go and provoke that mister whose name sounds like the day you go to church, lodged as he was among these kids from Ibadan.

You would never believe that the Ibadan people are in fact immigrants from the Igboho area, because before migrating south to share (share sa!) the land of the Egba people, the Ibadan crossed the borders of Saki, Iganna, Kisi, Ogbomoso, and other cities whose names have disappeared with the slave trade.

These Oke iho diasporas seem to have returned to their fadaland which they think is under siege by invaders. If the video that I saw reports the truth, a couple of buildings have been torched.

Emi o si mbe o!

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