#Festusadedayo

By Festus Adedayo Last week’s ascension to the Alaafin of Oyo throne by then Prince Abimbola Akeem Owoade courted tremendous ruckus in Yorubaland. Why would an unseen Ifa deity and its cloudy, ancient system of divination…

By Festus Adedayo In a viral video, Professor Wande Abimbola, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, and the Awise of Yorubaland - head of all Ifa oracle diviners - threw a bombshell.…

By Festus Adedayo In my piece of last week, I made a tangential reference to the place of African magic in modern matters. It was in the discussion of the calamity that befell Nigeria a few days to Christmas. Ibadan, the…

By Festus Adedayo The unnamed woman had just given birth to a baby five days before. Her body was still wet as Yoruba say of mothers who newly underwent the pangs of labour and delivery. Pains must still be ricocheting round…

By Festus Adedayo This past Monday, Nigeria’s Vice President, Kashim Shettima, held the fèèrè (flute) and blew it admirably. However, bystanders listening to the rhythm of his flute didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. Moyo…

By Festus Adedayo The question of whether the law of defamation is a hindrance to freedom of speech and a curtailment to democratic process confronted the Burkinabe, a few years ago. Lohe Issa Konaté was Burkina Faso, that…

By Festus Adedayo In 1992, Leon Mugesera, a senior politician in the then Rwanda ruling party, gathered a crowd of supporters at a rally held in the town of Kabaya. At the rally, Mugesera labeled the minority Tutsi…

By Festus Adedayo The Yoruba believe in the law of causation, a principle of philosophy which says that, every change in nature is produced by some cause. To buttress this, they posit authoritatively that a tree will never fall…

By Festus Adedayo The above was the question asked by Britons and the rest of the world in the afternoon of May 22, 2013. Close to the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, Southeast London, two young men of British-Nigerian…

By Festus Adedayo In a gripping but evergreen musical rendition of a Yoruba folklore, late Fuji music lord, Ayinde Barrister, once deployed the canvas of the forest to paint the inequality of the world. In his Fuji…