The terror of Nigeria’s North-West is a man called Bello Turji. As strong as he is for everyone, including Abuja, he is not half of the man in my story here. This man once terrorised his community so terribly that everyone became his slave.
To be spared, many people adopted the strongman’s surname, abandoning their ancestry. Those who refused to do so because of family values fled the town. Many were forced into slavery, working without pay on the man’s farmlands. And he had many of them!
The man of power, the legend says, became so powerful that he felt that nothing untoward would ever happen to him. He told his courtiers that he was not scared of anything; not even death! What a mistake.
In that same town remained a few other men who neither joined the bandwagon nor fled when the heat was much. Those few men of courage just held their posts, doing everything possible to outsmart the man of power. They consulted different diviners. Each prescribed a sacrifice that must be placed on the farm path of the powerful man.
But all the attempts failed. The sacrifices were placed on the path as directed and all the ingredients required provided. Rather than the man of power coming down, he waxed stronger each day. Then his adversaries returned to their diviners. They were short of calling the Babalawos fake, when a child suggested a solution.
The boy said that he suspected that something was missing from the pots of sacrifice. He asked the elders to place the usual sacrifice on the farm path and wait in ambush for the powerful man. Probably, out of arrogance or infallibility, the boy reasoned, the man of power might mention the missing item(s). Omodé gbón, àgbà gbón, ni a fi dá Ilè Ifè (the wisdom of both the young and the old is at the root of the creation of Ilè Ifè), is a saying among the elders of my place.
The elders took counsel and did as the little boy suggested. On the appointed day, the powerful man got to the spot where the sacrifice was placed. He looked at the items in the pot, using his walking stick, to touch every item. Then he laughed derisively.
“These people are foolish sha”, he said aloud. “So, you think that this is what will scare me?” He asked no one in particular. Then he laughed one more time and announced: “Come to think of it o; if they had added just a male lizard to these items, these people would have gotten rid of me o.” He upturned the pot, chanted some terrible invocations (Àyájó), and headed home.
Pronto, those in hiding emerged. They congratulated one another. The next day, they returned with a fresh sacrifice. Of course, an agama lizard was on top, dripping in palm oil. The powerful man finished his daily farm work. On his way home, he stumbled on the sacrifice. His first words were: kí lè yí (What is this)? He needed no confirmation.
“Págà, àwon ará ibí mú mi” (Wow, these people finally got me), he lamented. He tried all the sorceries in his arsenal. He chanted Ògèdè (incantation); he recited ofò (evocation), none worked. He resorted to Àyájó (invocations), all to no avail. Within minutes, he felt feverish. His legs wobbled, and then he collapsed.
Those in hiding rushed out. They made jest of him to no end. As it is said by the elders, the corpse of the wicked is carried home in broad daylight (Òsán gangan làá ru òkú ìkà wá’lé); they carried his lifeless body home to be buried by his family. The whole community made a show of his downfall. As usual, derisive dirges accompanied the corpse home. The town became liberated and everyone began to answer his or her father’s name again.
This legend, the narrator said, happened around the throne of the ancient On’tagi Olele, the traditional ruler known in present-day as Onitaji of Itaji in the modern-day Ekiti North. That was the period the terror held Itaji, Umojo and their environs hostage.
The collective will of the few men of courage saw to his end because there is no champion for life. Only the swaddling cloth of the community can strangle a man and not the other way round. Every powerful man is scared of something. When a man tells you, ‘I am not scared’, just know that he is already dead with scare! How do I know this?
The generation that listened to folktales under the tree in bright moonlight is wise. The one that studied Classics is blessed. Yet, the one that listened to tales and went ahead to study Classics is the most fortunate.
What does this generation know? How much of Classics do our leaders have in them? How often did they listen to folktales, growing up? Is there a correlation between our parlous state and the lack of ancient wisdom in our rulers? I answer these posers with a short voyage to Ancient Greece.
There is a god among the numerous Greek gods known as Ares. He is regarded as a god of war. One account says of Ares thus: “Ares often represents the physical or violent and untamed aspect of war and is the personification of sheer brutality and bloodlust (“overwhelming, insatiable in battle, destructive, and man-slaughtering”, as Burkert puts it). Burkert here refers to Walter Burkert (February 2, 1931-March 11, 2015), the German professor of Classics with specialisation in Greek mythology and cult at University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Strong as he was in battles, Ares is also regarded “as a ‘coward’ or a god who shrinks from direct, equal competition when faced with superior strength or strategic prowess.” Though an inimitable bully, it is also said the Ares “whines or flees when injured or outmatched, such as when he was wounded by the mortal Diomedes with Athena’s help, leading him to flee from the battlefield.”
Cowardice is not the only negative side of Ares. Different accounts interrogate his paternity until he was finally regarded, in Homer’s Iliad, as being “established as the son of the chief god, Zeus, and Hera, his consort.” Many ancient Greek mythology scholars, especially Burkert, believe the character disorderliness in Ares could be traced to “…. a personification of the violent strife often present in their (Zeus and Hera). tumultuous marriage.”
In the battlefield at Troy, as recorded in Iliad, Zeus is recorded to have expressed disdain for the cowardly nature of Ares, such that when he returned wounded and began his usual whining, Zeus poetically says: “…. Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar/To me you are the most hateful of all gods who hold Olympus/Forever quarrelling is dear to your heart, wars and battles…/But were you born of some other god and proved ruinous/long since you would have been dropped beneath the gods of the bright sky/”
When a father expresses reservations about the character of a child he sired, it speaks volumes. This is further reinforced by the account that in his lifetime, the Greeks associated Ares “with Thracians, whom they regarded as a barbarous and warlike people.” (Iliad V 13.301).
