We will fondly miss Alaafin Lamidi Adeyemi that evolved to the next stage. He was a colossus on Yoruba and national sociopolitical stage, a very intelligent, warm and benevolent monarch. He was loved by many while infuriated some with his supremacy battles against the core of Yoruba civilization.
The current dynasty of Obas across Yorubaland is believed to be Olokun essence which is is measured and tied to the planetary orbit of planet Neptune. While the 28 day Moon cycle is tied to female fertility, the Earth’s 365 day orbit around the Sun is tied to planting seasons, Neptune 165yr orbit is tied to Olokun essence of current global leadership, spirituality, mystification, dogma, drugs, movies and everything about perceptions.
Alaafin Adeyemi the third is the last in the last Olokun 165year cycle that started with Alaafin Atiba, popularly known for moving Oyo royal court to the new Oyo after the destruction of Oyo Ile. It was under Alaafin Atiba that a new collective consciousness was born in 1856, the most popular of which was ending the killing of crown princes after his death in 1859 that led to the 1860 Kurunmi Ijaye War. After Alaafin Atiba died in 1859, Alaafin Adelu came to power from 1859 to 1875, before Alaafin Adeyemi the 1st came to power, during which the British colonized Oyo and he became the first vassal Alaafin of the British.
British coloniality of our political and sociocultural existence, which Adeyemi the 3rd was known to lean on for his supremacy claims actually started under Atiba, when the first Church was created in Abeokuta, Oyo territory. The most lasting element of British coloniality was the 1861 epistemicide committed by Ajayi Crowther that wrote the first Yoruba Bible demonizing Yoruba Epistemology as demonic by equating Esu, the most important pillar, to Abrahamic Satan, a concept that doesn’t exist in Yoruba or any other Original African epistemology.
It was in the same 1861 that Ajayi Crowther completed his Yoruba Bible to assault our knowledge bank and worldview that his British masters colonized the Lagos colony, starting not only our physical but mental and spiritual colonization.
Before the advent of Abrahamic civilizations in sub Saharan Africa, the Original African civilization was a continuum of dialects that spread from Southern Nigeria to Gambia and South Africa, who related as a loose federation of culturallly linked ethnicities based on the same philosophical and spiritual foundations. When the first Abrahamic imperialists arrived through Lake Chad, they regarded us just as people – Jukun, while we differentiate each other based on professions and geography since we were aware that we share the same genetic and cultural origins.
To the east of Ife and Benin, other groups were regarded as people of the forests/bushes named Igbo. Gradually, the Afroasiatic civilizational imperialists gave us different names based on trading posts like Oyo, so when their European Abrahamic cousins arrived they passed the divisive labelling to them.
It was the 1800s European colonists that were to institutionalize their own perception of our history, identity and worldview for their imperialistic objectives. They were to decivilize and tribalize us by choosing a single dialect out of the continuum of dialects to identify and imbued us with a Pan Tribalistic perspective. They labelled us Oyo Ruba, based on Afroasiatic labelling, creating a Yoruba tribe whose standard language was based on Oyo dialect, which they institutionalized and permanentized through their Church, having written a Yoruba Bible in Oyo dialect.
In addition they commissioned Ajayi Crowthers, cousin Samuel Johnson, also from the Christian Colonizing mission, to write a biased history, titled History of the Yoruba, which sought to place Oyo as the center and pivotal point of a new social construct called Yorubas.
This intellectual imperialism was replicated in Igboland where Ajayi Crowther used a single dialect to depict the new social construct of Igbos. Nowhere in our episteme of Ifa-Afa-Iha-Fa-Efa were we previously identified by the names Yoruba, Igbo or other new social constructs across colonial Africa.
The citystates whose dialects were insitutionalized to be the flagbearers of the new tribes gleefully accepted them since they had been involved and were beneficiaries of the switch from the Original African civilizational philosophy of Osun to the arms for slaves Ogun philosophy of the Abrahamic civilizations of the Europeans and Afroasians. The Trans Atlantic arms race started in late 1400s by Prince Ogun, aka Oba Ewuare, to build empires based on war, instead of genetic and cultural origins, gave birth to the Bini Empire, just as the militarization of Oyo after it’s 1530 defeat and sacking by Nupe to Igboho, led to the mushrooming of the Oyo citystate to Oyo Empire, thereby weakening their umbilical cord to Ife, the source of Original African civilization. This was why the 1856 cycle of Colonizing our collective consciousness worked with them without opposition.
With the new collective consciousness brought by the Europeans in the mid 1800s, the Oyos saw it as an opportunity to spread and colonize other dialects in the new identity of Yoruba, but were resisted by those that had previously being closer to Edo and Ife spheres, the Ekiti Parapo. Being armed by different European colonists, those now known as Yorubas were to fight the longest civil war. To avoid any part of the new Yoruba social construct falling to other Europeans, the British moved to colonize the entire area as part of its Southern Protectorate.
For the long term sustainability of their colonial imperialism, the British moved to ensure that the Original African civilization could never unite to challenge their hegemony or that of the Northern Abrahamic Afroasiatic hegemony that they partnered. They ensured that they drove wedges between the Original African tribes, breaking up the African civilization into 3 parts – West and East regions, and the Middlebelt that they placed under Northern Afroasiatic control.
The colonially inspired tribal straitjackets were made permanent since they had effectively demonized our source of knowledge and identity with Esu is Satan misconceptualization, and commissioned Eurocentric Pan Tribalistic Scholars to further muddle our genetic and cultural history and linkages. This has continued over the last 165 years until the recent knowledge gleaned from genetic and linguistics anthropological evidence that showed all Original indigenous Africans are related.
While the Ooni of Ife stool never relented in reuniting the original African civilization, Eurocentric Pan Tribalistic Scholars were to ensure that there would be no conclusive unifying history. To help the colonial and neocolonal objective, the stool of the Alaafin of Oyo was to push a limited scope of history to claim supremacy.
The Alaafin of Oyo was known to always resort to European quotes and coloniality to butress his supermacy claims. He was to place a White Portuguese woman in charge of Orisas that went on to denigrate Ifa as mere geomancy from Afroasians, unknown to her that the 16 sector Original African Information Retrieval System aka Ifa-Afa-Iha-Fa-Efa had evolved before various groups left Ife thousands of years before Asiatics evolved.
In 2019, we at ASHE Foundation had to make a public appeal to him, when he publicly stated that the rest of the South were not part of the same Original African civilization, claiming we had only known the Northern Afroasiatic civilization, and had nothing to do with Igbos that shared the same Ifa until the advent of British colonization.
Now, with the death of Alaafin Adeyemi, as we enter a new Olokun 165yr cycle that started the week of his death, we must be geared to move to a higher sociopolitical evolution based on a civilizational perspective, especially as a new 2000yr global civilizational cycle starts next March in 2023. We must proactively hope that the new Alaafin of Oyo comes with a civilizational and not Pan Tribalistic perspective, to unite South and Middlebelt Original African civilization against the advancing Afroasiatic and European predatory civilizations.
In previous articles, we have shown how the 165yr Olokun cycles have affected the Edo kingdom since the advent of Oba Ewuare, leading to 7 prosperous kings and 7 nondescript kings, and rampant warring and killing of royal princes, advising the only long term sustainable option is to depart from the Ogun philosophy of military supremacy to our Original African civilization based on Osun brotherhood, creativity and fertility.
If we fail to realign our Original African civilization on an Osun and Shango philosophy this decade, with the dual opportunity of the new 165 year cycle of Olokun consciousness and the new 250yr cycle of Oya (revolutionary change agent) working for Shango (universal justice and Enlightenment, we might end up being culturally annihilated over the next 250yrs. Half a word is enough for the wise…
