The African Sociocultural Harmony and Enlightenment (ASHE) Foundation think tank created by paramount Southern and Middlebelt cultural custodians, have raised alarm that the call for Sharia in Yorubaland goes beyond religious or tribal issues. In a statement released by ASHE Foundation President, Prince Justice Faloye stated that the calls backed by the Sultan Of Sokoto, Muhammadu Abubakar, head of the Afro-Arabic civilization, was outright patronizing civilizational imperialism and ploy to destabilize Southwest towards 2027 elections.
The patronizing superiority is Abrahamic (both Islamic and Christian) in nature, made possible with the derailing of the Ifa-Afa-Iha-Fa-Efa Original African civilization, which makes indigenous African groups appear they never had a bonafide civilization before Abrahamists came. Like monkeys with no societal rules and social organization. A civilization (way of life) are shared genetic and cultural origins and values among tribes, often shaped by their environment. The world is divided into four main civilizations – Western Christian, Afroasiatic Islamic, Asiatic Buddhist and Indigneous African. Religions are the templates of shared civilizational values.
Slavery and especially colonization decivilized Africans from identifying their own civilization in comparison to other civilizations. The Indigenous African civilization, being the world’s oldest, created before writing, and evolution of Whites, encoded its history, science and philosophy in a sixteen sector knowledge bank, known as the African Information Retrieval System – Ifa (Yoruba), Afa (Igbo), Iha (Edo), Fa (Igala and Middlebelt) etc, based on Binary Complementarity philosophies, as opposed to Abrahamic civilizations based on Binary Opposition philosophies.
While Indigenous Africans believe that God is both good and evil, since scientifically you can’t separate positive from negative that form a whole, Abrahamists separate good and evil into God and Devil. Africans have no shrines for an Almighty God – Eledunmare or Chukwu, but practise African spiritual Sciences that identify and utilize spiritual and philosophical essences called Orisas/Alusi. A key philosophical difference is while Africans regard Compromise and Hybridity as strengthening, more of the Universe, Asiatics regard them as weakening corruptions, a perspective that induces extremism and imperialism in the name of redemption for God.
The call for Sharia in Yorubaland is not a quest for democratic religious freedom, but civilizational imperialism. Due to the scientification of God by identifying spiritual essences as universal, the Indigenous African civilizations are naturally religiously tolerant and don’t force others to accept God in their own definitions. However, the redemptive nature of Abrahamic religions make them imperialistic tools that if allowed into public law of other civilizations, it will ultimately lead to civilizational domination and annihilation. There are already Sharia courts for family and civil matters, but they always want more until they overwhelm and annihilate.
Rather than the misguided focus on tribes and religion, like Fulani and Islam, ASHE has civilizational perspectives, which the Nigerian state also recognizes by making Sultan of Sokoto and Ooni of Ife, the co-chairmen of the Nigerian Traditional Council. Islam is the tradition of the Afroasiatic civilization, while Ifa-Afa-Iha-Fa-Efa is the tradition of the Original African civilization. Just like the Judeo-Christian civilization has evolved through different tribal regimes stating from the Romans to Portuguese, French, British and now Americans, all using Christian dogma as their civilizational imperialistic weapon, so has the Afroasiatic civilization evolved from Bornu to the Fulani using Islam as their own civilizational weapon.
The Islamists hounded Boori traditionalists out of Northern cities into the outskirts, so it is patronizing for the Sultan to demand Sharia to become public law in the homeland of the indigenous African civilization. Abrahamists infringe indigenous African civilizational centers and space by building imposing mosques and churches around Yoruba palaces, their members coveting thrones they don’t subscribe to its civilizational beliefs, while Ifa practitioners are not allowed such freedoms in Sokoto, Rome or Mecca. Though Yorubas are yet to carry out the decoloniality of power, knowledge, beings and economy, Yorubaland can’t become an uncivilized piss pot. Not fooled by the secularism claims of governance and sociopolitical space, with Abrahamic religious days made work-free, religious holidays and laws evolved from Western Abrahamic civilization, we won’t compound it with a more intolerant Abrahamic strain.
Unfortunately, this Abrahamic imperialism and coloniality has been carried out by Prebendalist psuedo elites externally empowered to flaunt money and power to sellout our civilization for too long. The miseducation of the multitude to forget their civilizational history and structures, is in order to make them feel that they were uncivilized instead of decivilized. Thankfully Afenifere have created a South and Middlebelt Leadership Forum along civilizational essences of freedom, however until there is decoloniality of knowledge especially history, the Black Race that is majority Indigenous African civilization will not be freed from mental and economic slavery.
For example, what is regarded as our two Civil Wars (Kiriji and Nigerian) were civilizational wars. The sixteen year Kiriji War, the longest Civil War ever, was a battle of last resistance by the Ekiti Parapo, the fountain of indigenous African civilizational knowledge, the origin of most Orisas (Orunmila, Osun, Esu etc. Following the 1837 Islamization of the Alaafin stool through Atiba, the 1849 Ibadan invasion of Ife, the source and headquarters of the Original African civilization, the Oyo-Ibadan aggression had to be stopped by Ekiti, otherwise Yoruba culture would have been lost, as our histories rewritten under a future Ibadan Emirate. The Nigerian Civil War occured after the Northern Afro-Arabic civilization conivved with Oyo politicians to remove Ooni of Ife as Governor and imprisoned Awolowo the political leader empowered by Ooni of Ife, which prompted young Yorubas and Igbos, the second largest Original African civilizational group, to overthrow and then attempted to secede to stop Afro-Arabic takeover. It is this imperialism rejected in the Kiriji and Civil wars that is now being pushed through the backdoor as Sharia.
Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde probably doesn’t know the magnitude of what he did with the Alaafin selection that switched back Oyo to its Ifa default setting. Especially if he and 99% can’t discern the 165 year cycles of leadership history, nor understand the civilizational structure of the world, starting from the 1835 Oyo Empire destruction and the 1837 Alaafin Atiba crowning as new Alaafin by Ilorin with new civilizational demands that he and his successors had to be Muslim. Unfortunately, Yorubas paid no attention to the civilizational change. When Oyo was part of the Ife Original African civilization, the Alaafin was an Ifa practitioner forbade to ever attack Ife, but with the civilizational change, Oyo/Ibadan advanced on Ife, while never attacking Ilorin to reclaim Yorubaland. This made the Alaafin begin to challenge Ooni of Ife for Yoruba leadership. Not only was Oyo used by the Afro-Arabic Islamic civilization, the British Western imperialists armed Oyo against the indigenous African civilization during the Ijaye War.
For the lack of knowledge, a people shall perish. The British created the Raj of India monarchy for the Hindus, because before the British arrived they had been colonized by the Afroasiatic Muslim civilization. While immediately after independence, the northern Indian Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh seceded due to their demographic disadvantage, the Northern Nigeria Afro-Arabic civilization has continued under the guise that they were indigenous African, aided by the British subjugation and adding of the Indigenous African peoples of Middlebelt to the Northern Protectorate to give them demographic strength to control the Nigerian polity.
Naturally, the indigenous African civilization is more welcoming of practitioners of other civilizations, they can’t allow opposing imperialistic civilizational values become public law. This is why Yorubas and Igbos advocate looser federations to enable the ethnic self determination of their laws and way of life, as against the Afro-Arabic inclination of centralized imperialistic control. Summarily, ASHE Foundation views these Sharia agitations as a plot to destabilize Yorubaland towards the 2027 presidential election, as well as a tool of imperialism.
Prince Justice J Faloye, President ASHE Foundation think tank.
