Photo credit: BBC
What have we become?
In the past people respected themselves and things went on in an orderly manner. Money had value then.
How many young people know one Guinea? That is one pound one, that was the abbreviation for one pound one shilling in British currency. We usually heard it in bazaars that a prominent man had bought an item for one guinea!
What am I saying?
I forgot that majority of our children are now herded to Pentecostal churches. The orthodox churches where bazaars were held in those days have refused to be part of the ‘sinful’ actions.
If you ask them, they’ll say bazaars are not biblical. They would even cite the incident of Christ sending out sellers and buyers from the temple to back themselves up.
But they would never see anything wrong in pastors buying jets while parishioners are in need. They won’t see anything wrong with churches establishing universities with church money which church goers could not afford to send their wards to.
But what do we have now?
The erosion of what we uphold as values!
The Yoruba used to preach humility. However, the Yoruba are proud of their culture. The social system was such that it took care of everybody.
I’m yet to learn it in history of Yoruba men who were so poor that they resorted to begging. The Yoruba man would rather commit hara kiri. In fact, suicide was viewed in some cases as an act of chivalry.
But today, it’s not only some Yoruba men who beg, women and children are now engaging in the act. They do for the most obvious of reasons.
What to eat!
Simply put, our society is disjointed!!
Traditional rulers are revered. Even though our constitution has not really been fair to the royal fathers, we hold some of them in high esteem.
But then, do they respect the institution? I’m not aware of any law of Nigeria that imposes any appointment on whoever is unwilling to take up such an appointment.
That’s why the behaviour of Oluwo of Iwo is rather strange. He’s always in the news for the wrong reasons. The other time, he declared himself the only emir in Yorubaland.
For that, he hardly deserves any blame. Is history taught as a subject in our schools? But then, if the traditional institutions have not been corrupted, he should have learnt the dos and donts in the ipebi.
But then are ipebis still ipebi?
He has now gone further to show who he is. When Prince Charles of England visited recently, he did not put on a pair of jeans not to talk of tattered.
I don’t believe the Oluwo deserves to be a chief or baale not to talk of the traditional head of a popular town like Iwo.
I believe he prefers being a wannabe to a regal position of authority.
Gereje la bagba!!!
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