Published 25th Aug, 2023

By Ifaseesin Ifagbemi

As reported by Punch on August 15, 2023, the International Council for Ifa Religion announced its decision to suspend the planned Isese festival in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.

The popular Isese festival is an annual event carried out by the indigenous Yorùbá people all over the world. Ilorin is an ancient town of the Yorùbá people and it is populated by indigenes across religious
lines. Against this fact, there exists a reasonable number of people who are adherents of the Isese religion in the city.

However, it came as a shock when on the instructions of the Emir of
Ilorin, Ibrahim Kolapo Sulu Gambari Dan Bawa CFR, the Isese festival celebration could not go on as planned by the adherents of the traditional religion. According to the Emir, the land of Ilorin will not accommodate the religion that stands the oldest in the cultural history of the city.

It is no longer news that Ilorin, the ancient capital city of Kwara State, has a history of religious fiasco. In recent weeks, we have seen news about how traditional religious worshippers have been deprived of their right to worship in the city.

A few weeks ago, a video went viral on social media. In the video recording, two women who were barefooted — clad in their white ìró and bùbá, with their upwardly protruded hair, laced with white beads, and their wrists bangled with ornaments made from the same white beads. They were there to worship a river in the area named Yemoja. But as they were making for the river, they were ambushed by the bank of the river by an agitated man who was speaking in a vitriolic tone to the women. He spoke in the Yorùbá language and was resisting these women from proceeding with their worship.

According to him, the women had no right to worship the river because, in Ilorin, such was not allowed. He even threatened to pelt the two gentlewomen with stones if they did not stop going further in their bid to do their worship. This threat, he later carried out due to the resistance of the women. These women, notwithstanding the provocation, held their ground and confronted this bully with words and defiance, rather than violence and stoning. To them, I say thank you for standing up and I hope history records these women as heroes — even if unsung.

Yemoja is a goddess of the ancient Yoruba people. Yemọja is also a mother spirit; patron spirit of women, especially pregnant women. She is the patron deity of the Ogun River (Odò Ògùn) but she has other rivers that are dedicated to her throughout Yorùbáland. So, it was not unexpected that a river named Yemoja was being worshipped by these women in Ilorin.

I intend to write about the law and the legality of what is happening in Ilorin, but I cannot do this without deviating and bringing your focus on other things. The law is designed to order humans and help us in navigating this chaos called life. But the law isn’t just as it is written down in the Constitution and other legislations which find tandem within our Constitution; the fons et origo.

To fully appreciate the law, it is not just important to know it, but to see its trail and know from which stream its reasons are sourced. This way, we do not just know the law but also know why the law is and why it is good for us as it is, subject to our decision to change it in accordance with the legal dynamism. This school of thought is where I belong and it is this school of thought democracy incorporates.

The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999) as amended is the mother of every law in this country. It is the grundnorm and without full compliance with its letters and its spirits no law will have validity. The power the Constitution wields can be traced directly to the people, pursuant to section 14 (2) (a) of the same Constitution. Therefore, this Constitution must be controlled by the people and their rights under it must be sacrosanct and inalienable.

This Constitution exhausts a whole chapter to define our fundamental rights and the exceptions under which they could be lawfully excused. One of these rights is the right to worship subsumed under section 38 of the Constitution:

“Every person shall be entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including the freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom (either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private) to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”

The same Constitution provides in section 10 that the Government of the Federation or a State shall not adopt any religion as State Religion. This confirms our Constitutional secularism. However, this law has been flagrantly abused by the Muslims in Ilorin who have refused to
accord the people of other religions their right to worship. Their acts have confirmed without a doubt that they are intolerant, non-law-abiding and uncharitable.

Nigeria has endured too many upheavals economically and politically in recent times. Our inflation rate is at its highest in history. Data from independent sources tell of our economic woes and predict a gloomy future. Insecurity is rife. The political system is still messy and we
are at the mercy of those who we call our leaders. It is possible that the country continues to wobble despite our travail, but religious invitation to religious crisis will cause a seismic shift which could take the country decades to recover from.

The Emir who should be a custodian of unity and tolerance has imposed upon himself the garb of Draco. He has carved out Ilorin from the Constitution and set a different jurisdiction for himself to govern. The Nigerian Police Force in their usual response have come out to side with
the oppressor. A statement released by the police reads:

“Vigilante, local hunters, community policing members, and the leadership of the traditional worshippers in Kwara, along with some of their leaders from adjoining states, have also been dialogued with and made to understand that the intelligence available to the Police Command does not favour the kind of celebrations being planned by one of the religious sects in the state; they have been advised to relocate their celebration to another state pending a favourable security situation in the state.”

I read this statement with a sharp pain in my heart. What constitutional insolence by those who are reposed with the duty of law enforcement! What an abomination! How could it happen that the Islamic fundamentalists in Ilorin will use the issue of Ọrẹ̀ to worship Ọrẹ̀?!

The Nigeria Police Force is a direct offspring of the Constitution and, to it, it owes its existence and accountability, not to the Emir of Ilorin; not the Governor of Ilorin and not even to the President of Nigeria.

I am happy Professor Wole Soyinka has waded in and personally addressed the monarchy to cease and desist. Many writers of conscience too have written to condemn the travesty.

As a concerned citizen and a disciple of law, I have to make my voice heard in a similar pattern. If our voices against injustice won’t affect contrition, it will at least be on record that good people were not silent.

Ifaseesin Ifagbemi writes from the Nigerian Law School in Lagos.

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