This article is not about blind faith but practical ways ONLY our Original African knowledge bank can save us. Ifa is not a religion but includes religion among every other human endeavor and philosophy that defines our civilization. Ifa-Afa-Iha-Eha-Fa or other names, is the knowledge bank of the ancestors of all Niger Congo ethnolinguistic groups across South and Middlbelt Nigeria.
The ignorant African parading to be Europeanized or Arabic enlightened, modernized, believes Ifa is ancient dead and redundant knowledge, only useful for diabolical, fetish practices constantly seen in films. Abrahamic dogma and popular media constant stereotyping of our knowledge bank as evil and designed by the devil scares us from understanding that it includes all aspects of life – from medicine to politics, philosophy, mathematics, metallurgy and every other knowledge gained through observation and experimentation. Knowledge accumulated since the beginning of the Orunmila civilization 12,000yrs ago, and probably since we and pgymies first diverged 87,000yrs ago in Southern Nigeria as yam cultivators and wild yam gatherers.
Far from being ancient outdated knowledge, basically we can’t rise as a modern industrialized people unless we look at our foundational knowledge bank. You can only update your knowledge, there are no brain transplants. The Original African can’t be free in any democratic setting until he understands and unites with all those whose ancestors started their advanced social organization with the 16 sector knowledge bank.
We have to advance from a tribal state of mind to a civilizational state of mind that knows the full extent of his Niger Kongo ethnolinguistic family cultural linkages of nearly a billion people, 70% of Nigerians and 70% of Black Africans from Gambia to South Africa.
Before going into politics, let’s examine the contribution of Ifa to global contemporary knowledge. Ifas dualistic binary perception still trumps the Western linearity approach. We believe everything from the smallest atom to Almighty God has good and bad, evil and good. We see things with a balance and cyclical while Western philosophy confines the issue of cyclic trends and dualism to certain subjects. History is a good example whereby studying it as a cyclical function is the only way you can understand and learn from it to deal with the future. .
We might not write medical periodicals and books but the first book on systematic science in America was the 1721 book, Christian Philosopher, written when Soponna and African medicinal practices were analyzed and adopted by Cotton Maher, of Harvard and Yale universities. Our medicine was based on Soponna (vaccination that extended to antibiotics) and Osanyin (chemicals derived from herbs to cure ailments but modernized into pharmaceutical drugs). Majority of Western medicine is roughly divided into two divisions – vaccinations/antibiotics to develop antibodies to fight ailments and pharmaceutical drugs.
Ifa medical knowledge on herbs is still relevant to our major ailments. Blood boosting herbs like Ugu for the treatment of sickle cell anemia more useful than the Western approach of morphine and painkillers. Afato and Ale is more effective with less side effects than Viagra. The treatment of fibroids is better with herbs that melt them away than cutting them off by Western medicine, only to regrow. Herbs that washes off cataracts. We believe that it is better to regulate the chemical imbalances that lead to cancerous growths than to cut them off or killing them with chemotherapy. The same herbal philosophy applies to the treatment of diabetes. Ultimately, Western medicines attack the symptoms, having started with Soponna, but not the holistic Ifa approach to correct the imbalances like Osanyin. .
From medical sciences to physical sciences and technology, Original Africans were the first to smelt Iron around 1900BC in Lejja Nsukka in the Eastern region. It was a process usually carried out by naked women covered with a special substance that allowed them to survive temperatures in the region of 4000 degrees. Some say it was done only by women because the heat will destroy semen in a man’s scrotum. Till today we still don’t have a complete steel complex because we fail to research and adapt our traditional methodologies .
For information collection and arrangement, Ifa is an excellent Original African Information Retrieval system for its ability to store and keep itself refreshed over so long a period. Ifa ultimately has the ability to combine the use of electromagnetic waves and DNA to retrieve information. Ifa 256 Odus emit electromagnetic pulses which was the basis of the modern computer, the 256 Clifford notherboard. Just like Ifa can multiply to infinite, the computer technology has slowly moved from 256 to 512 to 1024 and still working on 2048. We can go unto Quantum physics but let’s move from natural to social science.
Next, is what contribution has Ifa brought to our sociopolitical organization. Our political systems were more matured to separate the office of the chief executive (Oba) from that of the commander in chief (Balogun/Bashorun), USA that combines both offices has been at war every single day since its creation. We had a political system that gave more equity than present day. USA and UK have better legal system in the White world because of the large African population that fought the issue of selective justice.
Our legal system was not based on the Western gladiator adversary system that is unaffordable to the common man. For us to accept foreigners as far back as 1480 and respect their right of association, goes a long way. There was freedom of expression and worship. Women had equal representation through the Iyalode while men were led politically by the Bashorun, and it took the two roles to deposed the king . In the currently adopted governance system, whereby we have less than 20% female participation and corruption, we would be better off learning from Ifas approach
Ifa usefulness to our advanced sociopolitical arrangement is not a thing of the past but the key to our present political advancement. Only Ifa-Afa-Iha-Eha-Fa can save Original Africans from political, cultural and economic slavery.
Unfortunately, some of the political elite have been cultural misguided in their futile attempt to cut and paste tribal parts of the Original African civilization to Afroasiatic and/or European civilization to gain true political power. However, they will always be useful idiots used and dumped after fulfilling the interests of other civilizations but not their Original African collective aspirations.
Ifa prescription of the Iyalode role to rally women power and the Oya spiritual essence as the agent of revolutionary change is still very valid. The overly paternalistic Abrahamic culture has compromised and stifled this revolutionary trait. Once the market women that rose against colonial imperialism were defeated, they gradually faded from our political discourse and space. Their roles were denigrated and demonized as the other leg of the Black Race was bent permanently in prayerful submission. While Ifa prescribed the two gender leadership roles to be independent, Tinubu has compromised the role by awarding it to his daughter, thus stifling the balancing voice and making Yorubas limp on one foot.
Chief Awolowo, the first Yoruba leader in the Nigeria setting, understanding cultural nationalism, started with Egbe Oduduwa and his strongest backer was the Ooni of Ife, Oba Aderemi. Starting from Yoruba and Ooni, he identified the cultural heartland of the Middlebelt and North to the Jukuns and Gongola. His understanding of Original African cultural sphere was impressive and nobody has been able to beat the traditional approach to power. Just like Tsu, Awolowo knew how to advance in the power game. He understood the Fulani Afroasiatic civilization and knew he needed his civilization to challenge them.
Unfortunately the army interventions prevented Awolowos cultural nationalism to advance to a point where it and Nnamdi Azikwe geographic Pan Africanism united in realization that we had to widen our perspective from tribal to civilizational, while reducing Azikwes geographic Pan Africanism to cultural Pan Africanism, knowing that the African continent was divided between Original Africans (Niger-Congo ethnolinguistic family) and Afroasians.
Unfortunately due to the arrest of our political development, Southerners and Middlebelters are stuck to the 1st stage of cultural nationalism (Pan tribalism), unable to move from Egbe Oduduwa to Egbe Orunmila, which encompasses all Niger Congo groups whose ancestors set up their society with the knowledge bank of Ifa-Afa-Iha-Eha-Fa etc. The South and Middlebelt leadership forum is breaking new grounds and hopefully will build a strong alliance.
However for us to be able to strike strategic alliances with all those whose ancestors built their societies on Ifa, we must appreciate and accentuate it across the South and Middlebelt. This is the only way to build a truly Original African powerbase to achieve restructuring and other collective aspirations. Otherwise, we would remain slaves and house Negroes on other civilizational platforms.
I have written copiously about how to understand the historical cycles, especially 250 year trends linked to Oya/Pluto. About 1750, around the time the Cotton Mathers were breaking down Soponna and other Ifa subjects into science, a West African Francois Mackandal an Ifa priest spread the knowledge of poisons among fellow Blacks to kill their wicked White slave masters. At the time, Haiti was the richest European slave colony, providing three quarters of French global income, under the most brutal regime ever used against West Africans which was based on Catholic rules known as Code Noir (Black Codes).
Eventually Francois was caught and burned alive but not before he had started a network of Ifa priests that eventually grew to launch the Haitian Ogun Revolution that sent shivers down Whites and brought the beginning of the end of Black African slavery. Hundreds of Ifa priests now led by Dutty Boukman and Cecile Fatima gathered at Kwa Cayman from the 14th to the 21st of August 1791 for the Ogun festival, at the end of which Cecile sacrificed a pig to Oya to spark the winds of revolutionary change that swept through Haiti as they burned down over 2000 slave plantations, in the only ever slave revolution that became a nation, the first contemporary Black African nationstate.
Not only was this a stellar of example of how Ifa freed Black people, but also the importance attached to women as revolutionary agents. Even after the deaths of the leading men, Dutty Boukman, Toussaint and Dessalines, the women continued as Fatimas sister Marie-Louise Coidavid from 1811 to 1820 became the first Queen and wife of Henri Christophe, one of the Revolutionary Generals while Fatima herself that lived to 112yrs old became the first Lady in 1845 married to Jean-Louis Pierrot, another Revolutionary General.
In this present and final battle for the freedom of the Original African civilization and peoples, and a 2000yr global Black ascendancy, we must realize that only Ifa-Afa-Iha-Eha-Fa can save us. Haiti became culturally disoriented and neocolonized by the French through the help of the Mulatto, like our Fulani Afroasians in Nigeria, and Abrahamic dogma through Roman Catholicism.
There is nothing fantastic about Abrahamic or Western civilizations over Original African civilization and we should stop falling for repackaging. It is accepted that Europeans had no production technology superior to Africans until the 1800s improvement on the cotton spinning by Eli Whitney, and the steam engine. I don’t intend to downplay European advances but they are all driven by war and the quest for domination. Our consumer goods today are war products converted into peace dividends like cars, radio, television, computer technology and drones. They are all tied to Ogun, just one of our Ifa pantheon.
The Chinese have caught up with the West not by thrashing their own civilization but by updating it and using Osun philosophy. We have the whole spectrum but will use Shango – digital business and cultural and economic Justice for global Black ascendancy. We all have different collective Ori/destiny. You can’t transplant the brain, you have to upgrade it.
There is only one God, Eledunmare, Allah or whatever you call him, and he won’t personally come down to free us. Only the first and oldest Original African knowledge bank that he gave our ancestors, Ifa-Afa-Iha-Eha-Fa can save us. It’s medicine will save us from medical slavery to capitalist pharmaceutical companies, it’s computer can interpret DNA, its political setting will empower us, politically and economically. And yeah, it’s spirituality based on natural laws of retributive justice, Esan, Ofu n Ogo will ensure you always do good, knowing whatever you send out comes back in multiples.
‘We have been to a higher mountain top than Dr Kings, and seen the promised land of 2000yrs of Black ascendancy, our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Age of Enlightenment, Justice and Prosperity. So Yes, only Ifa-Afa-Iha-Eha-Fa can save us!
