Àyànmọ́ mi láti ọwọ́ Olúwa ni
Ẹ̀dá ayé kan kò lè ṣí mi nípò padà
Ẹ̀lẹ̀dá mi yé mo bẹ̀bẹ̀ yé
Ẹ̀lẹ̀dá mi gbé mi lékè ayé.
This piece is from a famous track of the legendary Juju maestro, Ebenezer Obey. Roughly translated, the stanza says:
My destiny is from God
No human can change my destiny
Oh, my Head (Creator), I plead
My Creator, help me to be victorious over evil people.
The notion of destiny is quite central to Yoruba metaphysics. So central is this notion that whenever a baby is born, the parents will seek out ifá priests to tell them what destiny the baby has; destiny is believed to affect every phase of a human’s life. It is also believed that such knowledge of what destiny a child possesses is critical to parenting. Several descriptive terms, often taken as synonyms, are employed in describing different aspects of destiny: Àyànmọ́ (that which is allotted to one), Àkúnlẹ̀yàn (that which one chooses from a kneeling position), Orí (literally means “head” but here refers to an inner, spiritual or cosmological entity, not a physical one), Àkúnlẹ̀gbà (that which is received while in a kneeling position), Ìpín Orí (literally, allotted head), Àkọsílẹ̀ (that which was pre-written; a prophecy), Àkọsẹ̀jayẹ́ (what was written before coming to earth), and kádàrá (likely a corruption of the Arabic word, qadar which means destiny). The various descriptions of destiny are woven together in the Yoruba account of creation, which we shall get into soon.
When Ebenezer Obey wrote the above song, colonization had already thoroughly permeated the land. So, it is safe to assume that Obey’s rendition of destiny may not be faithful to the original. It should be said that Ebenezer Obey is not alone in professing this good-only notion of destiny. Almost all contemporary Yoruba musicians who have said something about destiny—including King Sunny Ade, Sir Shina Peters, Shefiu Alao, Salawa Abeni, Rowland Olomola, Shola Allyson, and Tope Alabi—all have, at least, one thing in common: that their individual destiny is inherently good. One of my goals in this writing is to investigate whether such an assurance can be derived from Yoruba metaphysics. Ultimately, I shall argue that there is no coherent conception of destiny among Yoruba people; hence, there is no such thing as destiny.
Yoruba Religious Thought and Creation Account
Polytheism does not quite accurately describe Yoruba religious thought. They recognize several gods in their cosmological synthesis, but this is also true about the Judeo-Christian worldview, which is renowned for its monotheistic ideas. In principle, Yoruba people do not worship these various gods as ends in themselves; instead, they worship the supreme deity, Olódùmarè, through the lesser deities. There is no question whatsoever that Yoruba cosmology recognizes one Supreme Being, even if people worship lesser deities as household gods in practice.
There are various versions of the Yoruba creation story differing in some details. One version has it that in the creation of humans, Òrìṣàńlá moulds the human body from the sand. Shortly afterwards, Olódùmarè then breathes into the moulded lifeless body so that it becomes a living thing. In one version, the human then proceeds to Àjàlá Alámọ̀’s house, the deity who makes Orí, to choose an Orí; another version claims that it is Olódùmarè who confers destiny on humans, perhaps this version recognizes Olódùmarè as the ultimate source of destiny. Differences in details continue as a version claims that one selects an Orí kneeling, which explains why Orí is also called Àkúnlẹ̀yàn; another version claims that one receives an Orí while kneeling, explaining why Orí is also called Àkúnlẹ̀gbà. Invariably, Òrúnmìlà is present every time a human being chooses an Orí which is why Òrúnmìlà is called Ẹlẹ́rìí Ìpín, one who witnesses to the act of getting an Orí.
Adebola Ekanola, professor of philosophy at the University of Ibadan, notes three crucial features of the act of choosing an Orí: First, the process of choosing is free; that is, the individual is free to choose from any Orí in Àjàlá’s house. However, this freedom to choose is constrained by the number of available Orí. Secondly, “the Ori selected determines, finally and irreversibly, the life course and personality of its possessor on earth. Third, each individual is unaware of the content or quality of the chosen Ori, that is, the person making the choice does not know if the destiny embedded in an Ori is good or bad” (Ekanola, 1). Orí is given an exalted place in Yoruba thought. Orí is so exalted that it is often considered a personal god worthier of sacrifices than the other deities. In fact, Orí is sometimes described as one’s creator, making it an extension of Olódùmarè. Here are two Yoruba sayings:
Orí ẹni ni Ẹ̀lẹ̀dá ẹni (Ori is one’s creator)
Orí ni à bá bọ, à bá fi òrìṣà silẹ (we ought to offer our sacrifices to Orí instead of the deities)
It is instructive and pivotal to my goal to pause here to discuss the striking resemblances and differences between the Yoruba creation account and the Judeo-Christian Story. In both accounts, the Supreme Being breathes into moulded human bodies to make living things. Interestingly, however, whereas the Judeo-Christian Story states that God made the first humans here on earth, the Yoruba Story teaches that Olódùmarè makes humans in his realm. In other words, Yoruba religious thought teaches that human beings exist in heaven, the realm of the gods, before journeying to the earth. It should be noted that humans are not incarnated; they are made in heaven as humans and then sent to the earth. Another crucial detail to observe is that whereas the Judeo-Christian worldview teaches that God made the first humans and they make other humans, Yoruba religious thought teaches that Olódùmarè makes each human in heaven; this is necessarily so partly because each human must choose an Orí. In fact, Ènìyàn, the Yoruba word for “human being,” literally means “one who chooses.”
After one has chosen and received an Orí, the individual proceeds to Oníbodè, the keeper of the gate between heaven and earth. In one account, one here declares the content of the Orí chosen, and this content is doubly sealed by Oníbodè. Departing heaven and going through Ibodè ọ̀run, the gate between heaven and earth, one passes through the water of forgetfulness so that nobody remembers the content of his or her Orí on earth. On the way to Earth, spirits or deities of wickedness may adulterate a good destiny. The most notorious among these deities is Èṣù. Enaikele and Adeleke write that Èṣù is one of the closest deities to Olódùmarè and that he can be invoked to remedy an undesirable destiny as well as to harm an otherwise good destiny (Enaikele and Adeleke, 13). So, he is quite non-discriminatory. He is the deity “that tempts human beings, afflicts them with ailments, and makes life miserable for them—especially when they have sinned against the Supreme Being” (Enaikele & Adeleke, 13). If this sounds familiar, it may be because there is a historical point here to be made. When scholars were translating the Bible into the Yoruba language, they wanted to give Satan a name that would be immediately familiar. Èṣù had no competitor, and Satan was christened Èṣù. In other words, Èṣù in traditional Yoruba belief is not the same as the New Testament Satan, though they share labels in the Yoruba Bible. (See our treatment of the subject here.)
On earth, Ifá priests are believed to be able to consult with Òrúnmìlà, the spiritual Ifá head, to find out what an individual’s Orí is and what factors are mitigating against destiny. In cases of adulterated good destinies, it is believed that sacrifices can be done to appease the spiritual forces of wickedness frustrating a person’s destiny. However, it is also commonly held that no sacrifice can change a bad destiny to a good one and vice versa. Chief Wande Abimbola writes, “indeed, the gods are not in a position to alter a man’s destiny.” Besides, this fact is distilled in several Yoruba sayings including the following:
Àyànmọ́ ò gbógùn, orí ni
ẹlẹ́jọ́
(Sacrifices cannot alter destiny, destiny is the judge)
Àyànmọ́ kò gba ẹbọ bẹni kò
gba ògún
(Destiny is not appeasable by sacrifice or charms)
Ohun orí ma ṣe kò nì ṣ’alai ṣe
(That which Ori will do, it cannot fail to do)
Ayé kò lè pa kádàrá dà wọn kàn le yi ago sẹ́yìn ni
(Sorcerers cannot change destiny; they may only delay the time of manifestation.)
We are now ready to critically engage with all these data and explore scholarly attempts to situate the Yoruba conception of destiny in a coherent metaphysical system.
The Incoherence of a Mutable Destiny
At face value, the Yoruba creation narrative embraces pre-determinism, the view that all events in an individual’s life have already been pre-ordained. Determinism is another view that will come up often in the following discussion. Determinism is the view that all events are inevitable consequences of antecedent sufficient causes. Rephrased, this view asserts that every event results from some prior causes, and if we were to know these causes, we could know the future with certainty. Determinism is best championed in the physical sciences, especially physics, where everything is explained by causal relations. A philosophical problem resulting from pre-determinism and determinism doctrines is the denial of free will. If all events are rigidly pre-ordained, this implies that individuals can do nothing to change any detail of an event. If people cannot do something about life’s pre-ordained events, it would seem like they cannot be justly praised or blamed for anything. However, the Yoruba worldview affirms that people can be praised or blamed for their actions; it also seems to teach predestination. These two views are quite contradictory.
The Yoruba creation Story presents some difficulties that have proven intractable for scholars. On the one hand, there is an inconsistency that arises with Yoruba’s belief in destiny as “what must happen and cannot be changed or controlled” (Ekanola, 43) and their belief that they can do something about an undesirable destiny—and not just where an otherwise good destiny is being messed with by spiritual forces. Almost every scholar who has written on this subject has tried to situate the Yoruba worldview within a metaphysical framework that will resolve the glaring incompatibilities. I believe this incompatibility and contradictions reflect a real tension between the metaphysical and the fleshy existential aspects of human lives. Looking at the world, it would seem like most people have chosen bad destinies, considering that the evil that befalls humans outweighs the good. Some sources have it that at Àjàlá’s house, there are way more bad Ori than good ones (Balogun, 121). The creation myth seems inadequate to explain some data outside of its metaphysical reach. Let us begin with the latter.
There appears to be a significant body of data that the prenatal choosing at Àjàlá’s house does not explain upon a literal reading of the Creation Story. For instance, Ekanola (42) observes a case of people with bodily disabilities. He writes: “A cripple, for instance, can never aspire to be the world’s fastest sprinter, the world’s best swimmer, or the world’s number one footballer.” The difficulty raised is that the creation myth portrays human bodies as fully formed before going to Àjàlá’s house to choose an Orí that is supposed to dictate how one’s entire life would play out. But, with the bodily challenged, the difficulties that limit life options exist before choosing a destiny. “Hence, it seems unacceptable to attribute at least some of the aspects of the destiny of a cripple to a prenatal choice of Ori,” Ekanola concludes (42). Sometimes, therefore, Ori does not have the exhaustive explanatory power that is often accorded to it among Yoruba people, for they insist “that the prenatal choice of Ori determines, finally, the destiny and personality of man (used generically) on earth” (Ekanola, 43).
Much exists in the literature on the degree of freedom humans have in influencing their destinies. As Ekanola pointed out, there are some key features of choosing an Ori at Àjàlá’s house. The individual making the choice does not know the content of the Ori; it is reasonable to suppose that if humans had known, they would have preferred a good Ori to a bad one. The Story presupposes humans to be moral beings capable of distinguishing between a good and a bad Ori. Choosing loses much of its meaning if humans were not morally capable in this way. This raises another question. Considering that Olódùmarè and Àjàlá know the contents of the available Ori and do not reveal this knowledge to humans before choosing, it raises the question of whether humans can be justly blamed (or praised) for the Ori they have chosen. An analogy might be the classic options that armed robbers offer on the streets of Lagos at gunpoint: your money or your life. True, one has a choice of some sort, as one can either part with the cash in one’s possession or allow the robbers to take one’s life. But, crucially, one cannot choose outside these two options. Some of us would like to respond to the robbers’ offer this way: neither, but this is precisely the unavailable choice. Similarly, choosing an Ori at Àjàlá’s abode limits human free will in some fundamental ways. Several attempts have been made to situate the Yoruba worldview in a metaphysical framework that will make sense of the various aspects.
First Scholarly Approach: Weakening the Reach of Orí
One attempt at making sense of the Yoruba worldview is to vitiate what the creation account appears to say Orí is, often by redefining it. In fairness to the scholars who take this approach, the Yoruba literary corpus has instances that appear to weaken Ori as an unalterable, all-pervading force that governs humans’ lives. For instance, consider the following Yoruba saying:
Ayé ò le pa kádàrá da wọ́n kàn le fa ọwọ́ ago ṣẹ́yìn ni
(Evil forces cannot change destiny; they may only delay its fulfilment.)
If we understand “destiny” as determining every detail of an individual’s life, then the concession that something else can delay its fulfilment is troublesome. Suppose, for instance, that Taye’s Ori dictates that she will get married at 22 years of age. (In the Yoruba worldview, marriage is a key element of a successful life.) Further, suppose that some village witches could know this and work to prevent this from happening. If they changed the timing to even, say, 23 years of age, it would be the case that this crucial event in Taye’s life did not happen per her destiny. Now, suppose that in Àjàlá’s house, there was another Orí that is almost the same as the one Taye chose (and embodies a different destiny), with the only difference being that Taye would get married at 23 years of age instead of 22 years. In what sense are the real-time events in Taye’s life better explained by her chosen Orí than the other Orí that she did not choose? The Orí she did not choose perfectly explains her life, whereas the chosen Orí does not. In other words, if anything can change destiny in the tiniest details, it has changed completely! So, the Yoruba doctrine that destinies can be delayed only makes sense if “destiny” is not an unalterable thing that determines people’s life courses with finality. However, if the concept of destiny is weakened in this way, the creation account that teaches that Oníbodè doubly seals a chosen Orí becomes otiose, for the act of doubly sealing an Orí at the gate of heaven seems to indicate precisely that the content of an Orí is permanently sealed and unalterable.
Babatunde Lawal, a Yoruba art historian and scholar, is a proponent of Orí as a potentiality. He writes: “The choice of a good or bad Orí is no more than a potentiality for success or failure. To achieve anything in life, a person must struggle” (Lawal, 101). Moses Makinde is another philosopher who attempts to situate the Yoruba worldview within a coherent framework by defining Orí as a potentiality. Potentiality describes the inherent capacity of something to come into existence. As opposed to an actuality, a potentiality may never, in fact, come into being. So, the conception of Orí as a potentiality amounts to the realization that the prenatal trip to Àjàlá’s house may be an exercise in futility since the Orí one chose, good or bad, may never come to fruition. The motivation for scholars’ weakening of Ori in this way partly comes from the fact that Yoruba believe certain personality traits are necessary to bring destiny to fulfilment. For instance, Yoruba people believe that a man who would become wealthy would be hardworking, honest, and patient. Such a person is called Ọmọlúàbí. So, Orí as potentiality is conceived of as explaining a portion, while ọmọlúàbí traits explain the rest of someone’s life course. It can, however, be argued to the contrary that one’s good Orí and the destiny it entails could include factors and details that will ensure the development of those characteristics in life. Ekanola writes in response to Makinde:
When an individual works hard or consults with Òrúnmìlà before he is successful in life, he is merely following the path of destiny. He would not have worked hard or consulted with Òrúnmìlà if it were not so preordained. Hence, the actions and inactions, which Makinde classifies as acts of free will in his effort to make the Yoruba belief in predestination coherent, should be classified as part of what has been pre-determined (Ekanola, 44).
Consistent predestination, as the creation myth seems to teach, can explain the development of personality traits required to fulfill destiny. Scholars typically link human personality with chosen Orí, including proponents of Orí as potentiality, like Babatunde Lawal (91).
It is interesting to observe that African Christian preachers, especially the Yoruba ones, seem to assent to this conception of destiny as a potentiality. When speaking of destiny, their speeches convey Gnosticism, where they appear to have certain inside knowledge of something (about people’s destinies) that others do not have. They encourage the parishioners to do things that will help fulfill their (good) destinies. As I will argue, however, this doctrine of destiny as potentiality is certainly not biblically informed. If the Bible teaches a doctrine of destiny, it would be in a thoroughgoing deterministic sense where an individual can do nothing about an allotted destiny. Every attempt to improve upon one’s destiny by prayer, fasting, money, or gift-giving would be part of the details scripted into the fulfillment of destiny.
Second Scholarly Approach: Non-Literalist Understanding
Ekanola seems to have invoked naturalism to make sense of the Yoruba worldview, claiming that “there seems to be no good reason supporting the Yoruba prenatal thesis” (48). He invites us to understand the creation story in a non-literal, allegorized sense. He builds up his position by observing that absolute freedom (of the will) is an illusion since hereditary and environmental factors shape humans and predispose them to act in some ways (46). He further explores how people may be said to be free in decision-making and actions, providing a legitimate means of praising or blaming people for their actions. He writes:
A more plausible sense in which individuals may be said to be free, consistent with the Yoruba concept of Orí, is that each person has the power to introduce a new energy or to make an effort of the will to transcend environmental or hereditary factors that may want to constrain, compel, or predispose him or her to do or not do certain things” (47).
He notes, as an example, that even though war times typically make people selfish and violent, there have been instances of people being pacifist (47). These are people exercising the power of the will to transcend the boundaries of genetics and environment. He concludes, regarding the Yoruba practice of praising or blaming individuals that it is how an individual exercises his free will, made manifest in his various free choices and free actions, which determines his character; each person’s character (iwa) is formed by his past acts of free choice, and it is in recognition of this that the Yoruba praise and blame people for their good and evil characters (48).
As opposed to a chosen Orí determining someone’s character, Ekanola argues that it is the repeated pattern of closely related decisions and acts over a sufficient period that forms a character. “For instance,” he continues, “a habitual thief may be blamed for his stealing habits because it has formed part of his character through his past acts of theft” (48). Ekanola reasons that, “Rather than maintain that there is a prenatal choice of Orí which determines one’s destiny, personality, and entire life course, I argue that the idea of a chosen Orí is no more than a combination of all the various acts of free choice made by an individual up until any specified time in his life” (48). He continues, character is what “determines the destiny of persons” (48). He concludes that the Yoruba use Orí in conversation in two very different senses. One use is to refer to what Ekanola has now identified as “character;” the other use is as an ever-ready explanation for what the Yoruba cannot otherwise explain (50). The “concept of Ori,” he writes, “is meaningful only in a retrospective sense. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can plausibly say that an individual is predestined to be one thing or the other” (49).
Is Ekanola’s thesis successful? Ekanola does not so much solve the problem of situating the Yoruba worldview in a coherent metaphysical framework as he dissolves it with the acid of naturalism. In equating the prenatal choice—which is supposed to take away an individual’s life course and destiny from her control—with pre-birth hereditary and environmental factors that an individual cannot control (48), Ekanola immediately raises questions regarding the realism of the deities mentioned in the creation myth. In replacing the deities with natural forces, Ekanola implies that those deities and personalities do not exist. But if these deities do not exist, the ubiquitous Yoruba practice of offering sacrifices to deities and the entire practice of Ifá divination would seem irrational since these practices assume that deities exist and can help to improve human conditions.
Furthermore, it is debatable that Ekanola’s naturalistic alternative successfully invokes character as the destiny-maker. For instance, perhaps a chosen bad Orí is why a thief would be born into an environment where he would grow up to develop the traits of a thief! The ultimate explanation of destiny could still be an allotted Ori, even if the mechanism of manifestation is naturalistic. Had the thief chosen a good Ori, he could have been born to different parents and grown up in a healthy environment that would have shaped his good traits. But for this counter-argument to succeed, one must assume the veracity of the creation myth that Ekanola has allegorized. I think, however, that Ekanola’s observation that humans have no means of knowing what an individual’s destiny is a priori is correct. As he does, I believe that “it is only with the benefit of hindsight” (49) that humans may fully appreciate an individual’s destiny. But this is not an argument against the existence of destiny. In fact, it is straightforwardly definitional and cannot be otherwise if we grant that “destiny” refers to a scripted master plan that will unfold over time. So, in summary, Ekanola’s naturalistic paradigm dissolves much of the worldview it is trying to explain. The associated costs seem to outweigh the benefit derived.
Third Scholarly Approach: Soft-Determinism
Soft determinism is another approach that scholars have taken to make sense of the Yoruba worldview through a metaphysical lens. Hard determinism (or determinism) is the view that all events are wholly determined by antecedent causes. This view holds that all things are in causal relations, so if we know sufficiently about a cause, we can know the future effect. It is commonly held that this view excludes freedom and that we cannot do other than we do. We are compelled to do what we do by factors beyond our control. Soft determinism argues to the contrary. Also known as compatibilism, soft determinism argues that determinism is compatible with freedom. The “freedom” in compatibilism is crucially different from what we usually mean by freedom. It is akin to the freedom of the example of armed robbers on Lagos streets discussed earlier.
One scholar who takes this approach is Oladele Balogun (2007). For Balogun, fatalism (and hard determinism) does not give a coherent interpretation of the Yoruba worldview when it posits that a chosen Ori determines every detail of an individual’s life, implying that humans have no free will or ability to change things. Crucially, Balogun asserts that “Ori is limited to issues of material success (i.e. things like wealth, riches and success in one’s profession). Ori has nothing to do with moral character. It does not affect all of human actions and/or inactions” (125). He gives a two-fold support for this proclamation. First, Balogun argues that “no where [sic] in any of the ancient Yoruba scriptures (i.e., the Ifa literary corpus, Ijala and Iwi, Egungun, and Esa Egungun) is there the claim that moral character can be pre-determined by one’s earlier choice of Ori” (125). Second, Balogun observes that Yoruba also believe in the doctrine of Àfọwọ́fà, self-caused calamities (126). Together, these two bits of support are strong. Àfọwọ́fà is meaningless in a world that is fated. Although Balogun seems to take the absence of explicit verses in Yoruba scriptures claiming that Ori can determine character as a definitive proof that Ori does not reach into the world of characters, there are verses in Ifá literary corpus, for instance, that seem to undermine the thrust of Ori such as the following (quoted by Ekanola, 49):
Iwa nikan l’osoro o
Iwa nikan l’osoro,
Ori kan ki buru n’ile ife
Iwa nikan l’osoro o
(Character is all that is requisite
Character is all that is requisite
There is no destiny to be called unhappy in Ife city
Character is all that is requisite)
This passage juxtaposes individual responsibility via character with destiny. One can easily extract the doctrine of Àfọwọ́fà from this passage. Last, Balogun claims that “It is only inexplicable traits of a person either towards evil or good that the Yoruba explain through appeal to destiny” (127).
Balogun’s soft determinism comes closest in meaningfully weaving together the relevant threads of thought in the Yoruba worldview while avoiding the problems of fatalism and naturalism. However, it too has some issues that should be spelled out. First, if soft determinism is true, the freedom it promises is much more restrained; it would not be libertarian freedom. It is arguable that though individuals have (what seems like) the freedom to choose, the Ori that they chose might still determine the eventual choices that humans would make; Olódùmarè (and possibly Àjàlá) also would a priori know these eventual choices too.
Second, Balogun’s claim that Ori does not affect a person’s character but only the material wealth and well-being of individuals is also—at least practically—problematic. It is not clear how we might cleanly divorce the acquisition of wealth from (good) character in Yoruba thought. For instance, someone’s Ori may destine him for great wealth. But the Yoruba believe wealth often requires great traits like hard work, honesty, prudence, and patience. So, if an Ori for wealth does not cover character traits to bring the wealth into manifestation, there would be no guarantee that the individual will make wealth, since it would then be left to chance, through the instruments of heredity and environment, for the individual to develop the necessary character. And if Balogun were to grant that an Ori does not guarantee the manifestation of its content, in what real sense can we say that an Ori relates to destiny since by “destiny”—under soft determinism—we often mean what cannot but happen. So, it seems like a tough ask to divorce character from Ori under soft determinism.
Besides, Balogun’s claim that “It is only inexplicable traits of a person either towards evil or good that the Yoruba explain through appeal to destiny” is contradictory. He claims that “Ori has nothing to do with moral character” (125). But the claim that Yoruba explain “inexplicable” proclivity of a person towards evil or good would seem to contradict the earlier claim since “evil or good” is squarely in the realm of morality. If the Yoruba explain an unusually good person’s character by appealing to destiny, why can they not do the same for someone half as good? It would seem that soft determinism falls short of perfectly making sense of the Yoruba worldview.
The Yoruba Christian Preacher and Destiny
Ebenezer Obey epitomizes a prevalent view among African preachers; theirs is a Christianized view of destiny forged from an unholy syncretism of two worldviews, resulting in metaphysical adultery. (I say “unholy” because, as I have argued in my Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will series, the amalgamation does not work. If one wants to derive a doctrine of destiny from the Bible, it would be a fatalist-determinist kind. This implies that the African preacher has no justification for preaching on alterable destiny unless he supposes the potentiality approach. But as already mentioned, the Bible does not recognize such a view.) When the legendary musician asserts his destiny is good, he takes that supposition from a Christian view. It is highly doubtful that one can assuringly derive a good-only view of destiny from the Yorùbá worldview especially considering that, as several scholars have noted, it is only with the benefit of hindsight when one’s life is coming (or has come) to an end that we can declare with certainty what an individual’s destiny is. In contrast, at least, in principle, one can hold to a view of a personal good-destiny within the Christian view earlier in life. As Ebenezer Obey sings elsewhere,
rere l’Olúwa ń ṣe o,
rere l’Olúwa ń ṣe,
ma mi ‘kan.
(God only does good; do not waver.)
Undoubtedly, the Christian worldview informs this lyric. It is very plausible that a complete historical assessment of how Yorùbá people came to accept Christianity may reveal that Yorùbá ancestors saw how Christianity could answer questions that their metaphysical narrative was too pallid to address.
Works Cited
Abimbola, Wande. Ifá: An Exposition of Ifá Literary
Corpus. Ibadan: Oxford University Press Nigeria, 1976. Print.
Balogun, Oladele Abiodun. “The Concepts of Ori and Human Destiny in Traditional Yoruba Thought: A Soft-Deterministic Interpretation.” Nordic Journal of African Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 2007, pp. 116—130. JSTOR. Accessed 9 Sept. 2018.
Ekanola, Adebola Babatunde. “A Naturalistic Interpretation of the Concept of Ori.” Philosophia Africana, vol. 9, no. 1, 2006, pp. 41—52. JSTOR. Accessed 9 Sept. 2018.
Enaikele, M. D, and A. T. Adeleke. “Yorubas’ Ifa System and Human Destiny: An Oral Narrative Account.” Fourth World Journal. No issue info. 5—15. JSTOR. Accessed 9 Sept. 2018.
Lawal, Babatunde. “Orí: The Significance of the Head in Yoruba Sculpture.” Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 41, no. 1, 1985, pp. 91–103. JSTOR. www.jstor.org/stable/3630272. Accessed 15 Oct. 2018.
Makinde, Moses Akin. “An African Concept of Human Personality: The Yoruba Example.” Ultimate Reality and Meaning, vol. 7, no. 3, 1984, pp. 189-200. University of Toronto Press. https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/uram.7.3.189. Accessed 9 Sept. 2018.
