A few years ago, a man was rushed to the family pharmacy. It was late at night. He had contracted the Yoruba’s response to promiscuity, Mágùn, known in the modern parlance as thunderbolt.
About four elderly men brought the ‘patient’ in a very bad shape. He was said to have started exhibiting the symptoms earlier in the day. But those around thought it was something else until one ‘wise’ elder ‘diagnosed’ Mágùn.
Yours sincerely was asked to administer the ‘prescribed’ dosage of the antidote. After about one hour, the ‘patient’ became stable. He was asked where he went, and he mentioned the woman involved. You can as well guess: she happened to be the wife of a stranger who had come to the community to farm.
I whispered to one of the elders that that would be the third time the ‘patient’, a familiar face, would be requiring the family pharmacy’s services. The elders exchanged glances. After the ‘patient’ had fully recovered, one of the elders, a diviner of course, narrated a story from the Ifa Corpus.
I will tell the story presently. But its moral lesson reverberated as I penned this piece.
What a man knows how to eat most is likely to be his undoing, the narrator summarised the story. It is a lesson in cautious philandering.
This is not the finest of times for the Minister of Works, David Umahi.
The former governor of Ebonyi State and controversy are like the proverbial Òdú vegetable (Black Nightshade), which our elders say is not a stranger to the farmer. The stories around him in the last couple of months have indicated that the man and controversy are like Siamese twins.
The thing about Òdú is that it a sprout anywhere in the farm, looks greener than any other vegetable; more nutritious; easy to uproot and very delicious when used to accompany èko, especially the Òyó type known as ori.
Like Òdú, Minister Umahi has his own peculiarities with controversy. Whenever his name is mentioned in the negative form, the object of discourse must be a beautiful woman. In the last five months, the minister has had his name mentioned in the negative over his erotic dealings with the daughters of Eve.
The women in the Umahi’s scripts are most times neither innocent nor ordinary. They, most often than not, have made claims of past phallic relationships with the former governor, whom many of the ladies alleged, is fast at tying towels round his rotund body whenever a female with a good figure appears in the horizon.
Umahi has survived many controversies with women. Some of his female accusers had had to come to recant on the amorous attempts they alleged he made on them. Nigerians, their doubts about such second stories notwithstanding, would eventually believe the minister’s version and move on.
The wise men of my place say the weeds the goat likes best will eventually kill it one day (koríko tó dùn mó eran níí pa eran). The truthfulness of the axiomatic submission appears to be coming home to roost in the case of David Umahi and the 26-year-old Kaduna physiotherapist cum nurse, Mary Habila, who was found dead (some reports also say naked) in the Ebonyi home of the former governor.
Yet another woman in Umahi’s life! Why him? Why women? Those are some of the questions Nigerians are asking. And I ask further: Why not him? If not him, who else? And if not a woman, which sex should it be?
These questions and many more will not go away easily. I hope Minister Umahi knows that. I do also hope he knows that even if he renames Nigeria itself after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, nothing will divert attention from the death of Habila, her mission(s) in his house and the ‘why’ of her nakedness at the point of death like a lady delivering the ‘happy-ending’ icing at a spa!
This is why, since the news broke about the lady, her naked form and nature of her ‘work’ in the minister’s house, Umahi has engaged in what we say in our street lingo: e go explain tire! The only problem here is that the explanations are not adding up for many Nigerians.
The more Minister Umahi explains, the more questions are left unanswered. Even when he claimed that the deceased was ‘more like my daughter’, skeptical Nigerians still asked: ‘and she was found dead naked?’
Someone asked why Nigerians doubt the minister’s explanations. My simple response is in the saying of those before us: Bò se ún se kii jé kí a mo ojó ikú adákú (the reputation of the child with fainting spells will not allow people to know the day he will eventually die).
Umahi sure needs a senior advocate to present his case to Nigerians. I have one I can recommend; a sure banker in matters of this nature.
His name is Èsù! Yes, you read that correctly; Èsù, the trickster deity. He alone can explain Maria’s death satisfactorily and in a believable manner.
Èsù did it several times before. He can do it again. When? You asked. I will tell you just one instance in the aforementioned story as narrated below.
From time immemorial, the female folks have always been the hubris of mighty men. The wise one, Òrúnmìlà, was not an exception.
At a time in his life, Baba Àgbónirègún was almost a philanderer. Ifá, for reasons best known to him, started lifting ladies’ skirts indiscriminately. He was reckless at it that parents stopped sending, or, if you like, ‘seconding’ their daughters to Òrúnmìlà’s house to serve the sage.
But one beautiful thing about the strange lifestyle of the one many looked up to for leadership is that Òrúnmìlà would always consult the Oracle to know what the days held for him.
Repeatedly, he was warned to be wary of the opposite sex. On one particular day, Ifá asked Òrúnmìlà not to go to the market. The Oracle added that if he must go to the market, Òrúnmìlà must refrain from making advances at any strange woman. And if he must put his philandering skills into action, he was cautioned to first inquire about her family background.
When he asked what he should do in case he came across a woman he liked in the market, Ifá told him to make a sacrifice. Several items were listed. If he failed, the woman, Ifá further warned, would bring him distress. Òrúnmìlà simply laughed it off.
When a man becomes wiser than his ìpònrí (destiny), my people say the end is near. Òrúnmìlà looked down on his diviners. He told them to keep their counsel to themselves. He had seen more underpants than any man of his era. No strange woman was capable of causing him trouble.
Off to the market, Òrúnmìlà went. He needed to buy certain items to make sacrifices for his numerous clients. The first woman he saw was the most beautiful he had ever seen in his life. Òrúnmìlà forgot his mission to the market; Àgbónirègún went after beauty.
Within minutes, the woman agreed to be Òrúnmìlà’s woman. She parked her wares and followed Ifá home. Neighbours asked who she was. Òrúnmìlà said she was an obìrin òkè òhún (the woman from afar off). A woman in the harem wanted to ask if Òrúnmìlà knew the strange woman’s family members, Òrúnmìlà looked at her as if she was badly created by Obàtâlá. She kept quiet, concentrating on the melons she was breaking.
The new wife became the favourite. She moved straight to Òrúnmìlà’s room as the ààyò (favourite wife). She was the only one cooking for Ifá. Before cockcrow, Òrúnmìlà’s breakfast was ready. Paga! Baba Ifá exclaimed. ‘So, this is the woman I would have missed’, Òrúnmìlà told no one in particular.
