Why Yoruba People Are Suffering Today.

Why Yoruba People Are Suffering Today.

ByMoyo Okediji

In 1999, I boarded a plane from New York to Syracuse. It was in December, and the weather was freezing cold. I was happy that the weather forecast indicated it was not going to snow, though I knew that the temperature in Syracuse was going to be well below zero, even colder than the weather in New York where I boarded the plane.

I was going to the University of Syracuse for a job interview. The advertised job was going to almost double my salary, if I got it.

a picture showing moyo okediji poised for the camera

They have discovered that they gain nothing from being part of Nigeria.

ByMoyo Okediji

The Yoruba people are agitating to be free from Nigeria.

They have discovered that they gain nothing from being part of Nigeria, but they lose a lot by remaining in Nigeria.

I ask, “Why do they want to move away from Nigeria?”

They say they are concerned that northerners are invading their villages, abducting their women and children, polluting their rivers with illegal mining, driving cattle through their farmlands—and making legislation (with the assistance of the few Omo Aale among them), to strip their lands to build the north.

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part twenty-Six)

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part twenty-Six)

ByMoyo Okediji

“I just discovered a river!” Steve announced, breathless, as he ran into the sitting room with enthusiasm. “And it’s just fifteen minutes from here.”

I said, “Mungo Park.”

Rufus, spreading out on the sofa, said, “Where is it?”

“Hidden in plain sight!” Steve said. “I was driving down Ekenwan Street, and there was this dirt road by the side. I decided to explore it.”

“What’s the name of the street?” I asked.

“No signboard,” Steve said.

“There is no Benin street without a signboard,” Rufus said. “Benin people are good with signboards. Even narrow paths have signboards.”

a post showing Moyo OKediji art piece

Hahahaha! Look at his Johnny Walker!

ByMoyo Okediji

Yesterday I made this funny painting. Hahahaha! Look at his Johnny Walker!

I sampled the painting from a wood panel sculptured by Dada Arowoogun, a Yoruba artist whose work narrates Yoruba life during the 19th century.

The work is relevant because Yoruba people are still doing what we used to call “two-fighting.” In our primary school days, when the teacher forbade speaking in vernacular, and all the English we knew were three words: “Two fighting” were two crucial words of the three.

a picture showing moyo okediji granddaughter

The Hausa did not name us Yorùbá.

ByMoyo Okediji

The Hausa did not name us Yorùbá.

The Hausa cannot even pronounce Yorùbá.

They say they pejoratively called us Yarubawa and we creatively changed it to Yorùbá. Rárá o. It’s the other way round.

We call ourselves Yorùbá and they pejoratively call us Yarubawa.

To be able to pronounce Yorùba correctly, you must understand the nuances of our triptych intonation.

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Twenty-five)

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Twenty-five)

ByMoyo Okediji

Oyinbo drove us home from the burial ceremony.

Rufus and Felicia sat in the middle row of the bus. I sat all by myself at the back row. Nobody said a word as Steve drove slowly and solemnly through the city, negotiating the traffic with the dexterity of a spider moving through its tightly woven web.

When he was new, Steve found it difficult to drive through the city, because in Britain, they drive on the left side of the road, but in Nigeria people drive on the right side. Also, Steve found the drivers on the roads of Benin City extremely rough for his temperament.

a picture showing moyo okediji poised for the camera

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Twenty-four)

ByMoyo Okediji

The burial ceremony was brief.

There were many more people than I expected. It was the first burial ceremony I ever attended in my entire life. Scores of nurses from the school of nursing were in attendance. All of them wore dark glasses and white uniforms. They looked like angels. I didn’t know many men were in the nursing profession. They stood together in the blazing son, men and women, some wiping their faces with handkerchief, others lifting up their glasses and dabbing up tears.

a picture showing moyo okediji poised for the camera

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (PART Twenty-four)

ByMoyo Okediji

Rufus could tell something was wrong when he opened the door and saw me. All he needed to do was to take one look into my eyes and he could read me like a book. First, I had been gone all day. All I went do was to drop off Josephine and Gina. He expected that I would be back within an hour, maybe two maximum. The hospital was not that far, maybe fifteen minutes. I left before 8 am, and it was 6 pm when I came back.

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Twenty-Three)

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Twenty-Three)

ByMoyo Okediji

Josephine was embarrassed when I informed her that her white uniform was soaked with blood at the back.

She immediately opened the door and jumped into the bus. As she entered the bus, she realized that the seat from which she got up was already soaked in blood also. She became confused. She didn’t know whether to sit on the bloody seat, but as she hesitated, I gently led her down to the seat. Just as her uniform, the seat was already stained. No further damage could be done. What was most important at that point was her health.

Rufus Orisayomi with my friend, in 1981,

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY (Part Twenty-two)

ByMoyo Okediji

I almost lost control of the steering wheel when Gina told me that the woman sitting patiently by the door of the buka was her mom. Her back was turned to us, and it was not until the bus jerked forward noisily that she turned towards our direction.

“She is gorgeous,” Josephine said.

Gina, with a scared look on her face, did not want to step down. She was sitting next to me in front of the bus, and her mother looked directly at us with some suspicion.

a picture showing moyo okediji poised for the camera

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Twenty-two)

ByMoyo Okediji

“You’re kidding me, right?” I asked Steve when he said that Gina was probably in my room. He extended his bottle of beer to Rufus who yanked off the top with his teeth and handed it back.

“Why sounding so alarmed?” Steve asked. “If you asked me, I’d say let’s swap places.”

“What!” I said, alarmed at his suggestion.

“You can stay in my cold room tonight,” Steve, “and I can use your warm room.”

“Is that British custom?” I asked sarcastically.

Did he wink? I couldn’t quite tell in the dark. He said, “The British have no custom. Only Africans have customs.”

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Twenty-One)

ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Twenty-One)

ByMoyo Okediji

When Steve offered us a cigarette, I took one out of the pack he extended.

It was from one of the packs he brought from Britain a couple of months earlier.

I was not good with cigarettes. But I was also not good at saying no to cigarette offers. All my friends smoked. And I loved to hold a stick of cigarette stylishly and watch the smoke rise from the tip of the ashes.

We sat there in the dark, watching the moon, smoking, silent. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning crashed across the sky, followed by a ripping sound of thunder. Instantly, the moon and the stars disappeared, and the sky was an endless black canvas coughing out intermittent flashes of jagged lights filled with throbs of thunder.