Glory Belongs Only to God.

 “Ojo wo leda yio simi ogun?

Igba wo leda yio simi ote?

Ote nile.

Ote lode.

Ote re,

nibi gbogbo…”

 (When will people stop waging wars?

When will people stop treachery?

Treachery at home.

Treachery outside.

There is treachery everywhere…)

• The movie theme of Opa Aje, a middle-1980s depiction of the 19^th Century internecine wars among the Yoruba people in the western part of Nigeria.

This was the most tragic period in the lives of the Yoruba people. It was a very sad moment when brothers were at each other’s throats and sisters were stabbing each other in the backs. Nothing was spared in the various war fronts, from the use of dangerous charms to other metaphysical powers. The brutal wars also led to the procurement of the most sophisticated military weapons of that era in the African continent. The Yoruba used all these lethal weapons against each other.

 And the consequences were legions, top among which were:

1. The internecine wars weakened the Yoruba in their opposition to the British military invasions. In fact, the military defeat (at Imagbon) of Ijebu forces by the British colonial Army was the platform used in the eventual annexation of the rest of Yorubaland. If the Yoruba were united, the British would have thought twice before going into that war.


2. The Uthman Dan Fodio’s Jihad campaign made serious incursion into Yoruba land at Ilorin through the treachery of Aare Afonja, the then Field Marshall of the Oyo Empire. If not for the great, valiant Ibadan warriors that defeated them, the whole of Southern Nigeria would have come under the Fulani hegemony.


3. The European slave traders also took advantage of the situation to forcibly cart away millions of Yoruba individuals to Cuba, Trinidad & Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Venezuela and other parts of the World.

The sad irony though was that the crazy wars were fought merely to prove a point over who deserved the glory for the greatness and sustenance of the Yoruba race! This problem is not restricted to a race of people. Too many of us as individuals within marriages, families, churches, mosques, corporate establishments, neighborhoods and communities do also engage in glory-seeking battles.

And as it happened in Yoruba land, every quest for glory always leave bitterness, divisions and pains in its wake. Why so? Because glory belongs only to God!