Incantation and the Yoruba Art of Speaking Reality into Being Opening Ọ̀rọ̀ tí a bá sọ, a kì í fà á padà (the word once spoken cannot be pulled back). A Yoruba elder does not say this the way an English speaker says “you can’t unring a bell.” The English version is a warning about consequence: be careful, your words […]
Yoruba praise poetry, lineage memory, and the art of being called by name CHAPTER ONE The Sound of Your Own Name Ilé la ń wò, ká tó sọ ọmọ lórúkọ. We look at the home before we give the child a name. Somewhere tonight a grandmother is holding a restless child and chanting over it. She is not singing a […]
Nigeria does not need to choose between democracy and dictatorship. It needs to remember that it once had something else. In old Ọ̀yọ́, the most powerful man in the empire could be removed with a gift. When the Aláàfin abused his office, the council of the Ọ̀yọ́ Mèsì did not raise an army or rig a vote. They sent him […]
If you’re still using “Third World” to describe countries in 2026, one of two things is true. You don’t know the history of the phrase. Or you do, and you’re comfortable with the hierarchy it carries. Neither is a good look. This isn’t political correctness. It’s accuracy. The term is factually obsolete, analytically useless, and encodes a set of assumptions […]