CONFLICT IS INEVITABLE, VIOLENT IS OPTIONAL

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands

The word “submit” is translated from the Greekword hupotasso. which basically means under order. The implication is that of a chain of command that is ordained by Olodumare. When used in relationsembraces that  him, the meaning is absolute in that there is no one higher in the chain-of-command than Olodumare. Secondly, He will never ask us to do anything that He will not enable us to do or anything contrary to righteousness.

The husband is second in the chain-of command. The facts that are true and consistent about Olodumare are not always true of husbands. Husbands often expect wives to do things that the husband has not enabled the wife to do. 

For instance;  A husband should not expect his wife to provide nutritious and delectable delights for his meals when all he has provided is a paltry budget for food.

 He should not expect his wife to keep an orderly home when he is the primary source of its disorder.

 A husband has no right to demand that his wife submit to him in anything that Olodumare has forbidden. 

A wife is not obligated to obey unrighteous commands. 

E.T.C....

The first criterion for a young woman to carefully consider is the character of the person she intends to marry. The very nature of a person’s external priorities reveals vast quantities of facts about his character. Find a man who have Iwa Pele  first and foremost and you will not have to spend the first few years of your marriage relationship praying for a miracle of transformation in his life. Selfish people will destroy everything they dominate. They manipulate and desecrate. They do not edify. Do not let desperation or lust determine who you will marry. When choosing a husband or wife, do not trade loneliness for misery.

A father that does not know how to love his wife and daughters will create disparate women who reach out for any semblance of affection from anybody that comes along their pathway. Fathers are forced to watch in horror as some degenerate monster seduces his daughter away, and sometimes even his wife. Men put too much emphasis on the submission of their wives. They would solve the dilemma they create if they would be more concerned about being a husband trustworthy of his wife’s gift of submission.

Do not confuse the gift of submission with forced submission. Forced submission will eventually seek to escape from the person doing the forcing. It is not difficult to gift submission to a husband who manifests both the principle of omoluabi and Iwa pele both in words and actions. If a man has married a good and spiritually cultured woman and a woman has married a good and spiritually cultured man, neither will find it difficult to fulfill their roles in their marriage relationship. It will not be difficult to submit to your husband  if your husband is living a disciplined life. 

However, if your husband lives like the monster and acts like a bull dog, expect to find great difficulty living with him and submitting to his decisions.The wife in relationship to her husband is the primary model that shapes a culture in that it shapes the lives of her children.

 

Husbands, love your wives

Our physical natures seek to dominate by bullying and anger. The word “dominance” will send a shiver up the spine of most women, and so it should. No one wants to be dominated in any part of their life. When the term is applied to marriage, it becomes even scarier.Women have been considered inferior for centuries. you look at history and women are sold, abused and even traded and all kinds other stuff. Things like that will most likely never change. The thing is some women don't do anything about it, they don't express their feelings and they let men walk all over them. it's because women let men walk all over them that the dominant thing passes on to the children and they grow up to think that's right. These are merely lecherous methods of manipulation to control. An abusive, unloving, husband, who lack discipline and iwa pele, will do more to destroy the influence of the children than anything else. Poor spiritual leadership in the home is the culprit that destroys families and ultimately destroys the cultures in which those families exist. Rebellion begins in the home.

The wife’s rebellion is equally destructive to a culture. This is the outcome of the Feminist Movement.  Osun was the first deiety to start women's liberation. Granted, ungodly husbands are the primary cause of rebellion in the lives of their wives. Feminism is a reaction against a cultural aberration created in most part by men abusing the leadership roles in the home. The Feminist Movement helped women escape from abusive homes on numerous levels. In some cases, it is difficult to criticize due to the extreme abuse that exists in many homes. 

 It is easy to see the cascading nature of cultural aberrations when wives and husbands fail as godly role models. Cultural failure is like a rock-slide that begins when one rock begins to slide and becomes more destructive as the slide becomes magnified in each succeeding generation.

The primary definition of a man loving his wife is selflessness. Imagine what our children’s’ lives might be like if fathers could model and reproduce this character in their children. What is the single most annoying character flaw that manifests gross and discussing immaturity in anyone’s life? What are the two word’s that communicate this single most annoying character flaw manifesting gross and disgusting immaturity in anyone’s life?

1.       Me

2.       Mine

Love is a gift given of grace. Love is not a gift given because it is deserved.  love is always selfless and sacrificial. This is the way a husband is to love his wife. This is the model of loving that the father teaches his children.

A selfish person refuses to recognize his selfishness. Therefore, a selfish person will never confess he has been selfish to his wife or children. The first avenue of correcting being unloving is to admit . The second avenue of correction is to confess it to your wife and children. The third avenue of correction is to stop living selfishly and begin living selflessly. Take away the impatient, harsh, and critical words and replace them with tenderness, understanding, and nurturing patience.

 

Atete se oogun

Omo kekere

To ba gbo iburu

Yi o dide

A yi ile

A tamora

A si gba apo oogun bo orun

Adifa fun osolake

Nijo ngbogun lo ilubirin

Sun mo o mi

Ogun ni obirin

Po gege mo o lorun

Ogun obinrin ni

 First to strike is first to win

At first alarm the young warrior dashes into his armoury

Don his battle –dress replete with amulets and charms and attacks the enemy

Thus declared Ifa Oracle to Osalase on his way to besiege that fortress which woman hide and defend from intrepid male assault

In this peculiar battle

Caresses and embraces

Are weapon of offence

Best calculated for victory.

Ifa categorically spell it out in odu Osemosa, that caresses and embraces are the weapon to win a war with women not violent. Why dont you caresses and embraces your woman today just as Olodumare has specify.

Parents; the governing spiritual principles model.

The relationship between the husband and wife, is the practicum for parenting. A husband and wife who cannot live within the parameters of Olodumare definition for governing their relationship will never produce a culture for nourishing spiritual growth.

Parents,  you will reproduce yourselves in the personality and character of your children's lives. The fact is that most of us do not have a clue about our own character weakness and personality glaws. The truth is that most of us, if not all of us, think of ourselves more highly than we ought. 

Your character and personality are the seeds you are planting in the garden of your children's lives. Until you can honestly evaluate your own character weakness and your own personality flaws, how do you expect to be transparent with your children?
How do you expect them to comport themselves and  to see there self worth in you, when they see there role model always in outburst of anger, pride and unwillingness to change.

Think your child is selfish?
Although children are selfish by nature,  their selfishness is reinforced and sanctioned by selfish fathers.  Mothers who refuse to offer gift of submission to their husbands will most probably produced rebellious children.  However,  fathers who failed to sacrificially love their wives will undoubtedly produce selfish children naturally accompanied by their rebellion. 

Failing to teach children how to love is gross. Every outcome of such failure will be the grossest child abuse actually resulting in a criminal mindset that controls and cannot even consider that another person's right might supersede their own.

The point of emphasis here is that everything produces after its own kind.
Those things that we teach to our children as governing spiritual principles must be shown to be viable and valuable enough to us that we are willing to generate a culture in which they might grow.

Omoluabi: The Way Of Human Being.

            “Omoluabi: the way of human being.”

 Omoluabi connotes respect for self and others. An Omoluabi is a person of honor who believes in hard work, respects the rights of others, and gives to the community in deeds and in action. Above all, an Omoluabi is a person of personal integrity.

     In Yoruba lingua structure, as olu-iwa could denote a dignified parent with excellent character. However, olu-iwa may create an exemplar of character or a baby as a person of dignity; yet, there is no guarantee that the baby would remain an exemplar of character like the creator of the biological father. And the ambivalence can also be seen in possibility that the child may turn out to be an

Omoluwabi while not born by someone with good character.

        This combination thus gives us a good picture of Omoluabi in Yoruba culture wherein a person is given a deep knowledge, wisdom, and therefore be trained to be self discipline and to develop a sense of responsibility that shows in private and public actions which earns individuals social integrity, and personality in Yoruba society.

 Among the Yoruba of Western Nigeria, the education of a child begins at the “naming ceremony,” seven days after birth. During this process, the baby is introduced to the ancestors, family, friends and community, and various food items such as salt and honey are dabbed on the tongue of the newborn, thus its education in becoming Omoluabi begins.

         The principles of Yoruba (African) traditional education, according to Akinyemi and Awoniyi, are based on the concept of Omoluabi. In other words, the product of Yoruba traditional education is to make an individual an Omoluabi. In essence, the main idea of Yoruba traditional education has always been to foster good character in the individual and to make the child a useful member of the community. 

     Therefore, traditional education embraces character building as well as the development of both physical and mental aptitude. Education in Yoruba culture is a life-long process and the whole society is the school.

       As far as African societies are concerned, personhood is something at which individuals could fail, at which they could be incompetent or ineffective, better or worse.

      Wande Abimbola makes it clear that omoluwabi is a function of exhibiting and demonstrating the inherent virtue and value of iwapele. Thus, Iwapele via Abimbola tells us is “good or gentle character” and it is ultimately the basis of moral conduct in Yoruba culture and a core defining attribute of omoluwabi, set as a integrated principles of moral conduct demonstrated by an omoluwabi with the most fundamental of these principles include: oro siso,(spoken word), 

iteriba (respect), 

inu rere (having good mind to others),

otito (truth), 

iwa (character), 

akinkanju (bravery), 

ise (hard work) and opolo pipe (intelligence)

It is instructive to note that iwa (i.e. good character) adds to the quality of appraisal that an individual garners; yet, it does not solely determine the humanity of the person in question, and for this reason, we can say that all human persons are human beings, but not all human beings are human persons (understood in the sense of omoluwabi).

Therefore, Iwa character plays an important role in the making and passing of rights, and in the integrity of individuals because a human being without good character, though human, but is no less than eranko, an animal.

    The import of the above is that it is not the case that it is only ori (the guardian soul symbolic of destiny) that is solely responsible for what personality a person eventually becomes in life. Rather, it is man’s character that aids man’s destiny. Therefore, in knowing one’s personality,whether of repute or disrepute, and the ‘how’ factors that are quintessential to developing human personality, the elements of good character are imperative.

Ogbe Ogunda, which says:

Iwa nikan lo soro o,

Iwa nikan lo soro;

Ori kan kii buru lotu Ife,

Iwa nikan lo soro

Character is all that is requisite,

Character is all that is requisite;

There is no destiny (Ori) to be called unhappy in Ife city.

Character is all that is requisite.

BI OSUN ( LIKE OSUN)

In the beginning

Olodumare sent forth the Orisa on a mission to create the world and all other living and non-living structures. On getting to the world, one of them was left out of the process of creation. However, they could not get to do their mission without the problem of the witches‟ disruptions. This gave them a lot of concern and forced to return to Olodumare, who consulted with Ifa on their behalf. Moreover, there was revelation that they had left out one of the entourage for the mission. They however claimed not to have left anybody, except a woman. It was decided there and then to go back and beg the woman Orisa who had by then, employed the wrath of the Eleye (owner of birds) to destroy any thing that she did not sanction. It was after the appeasement and propitiation that the mission of the Orisa is accomplished.

Osun is a symbol of a mother who is capable of loving passionately and a symbol of an assertive woman, who can take a decision on her own. Before a person is made a patron or matron in Yoruba culture, he or she must have contributed meaningfully well to the cultural, spiritual, political and economic life of the people. . In considering her domestic role as a mother, her adherents believe strongly that she had cared and nursed her “children” with love, so that water taken from her river cures all forms of infirmities. 

       

  Significantly, woman’s role in the family cannot be overshadowed by any measure. Women are better known as builders and keepers of home. They oversee and ensure that peace and tranquility reign supreme in the family.

 

In the traditional Yoruba society, the people envisioned their world in two halves – masculine and feminine. Their Orisa both male and female worked together to keep a balance of power. When a male and female were balanced, there was harmony in the world. When they were unbalanced, there was chaos. 

Awon Obinrin ni iyo aye,

Awon kan naa ni so iyo di obu.

Ko see ni, ko se e fe ku ni won.

Bi won ba huwa apanimoyoda lonii,

won a se gege bi agbani lojo to buru lola.

obinrin nii sekun derin.

Awon kan naa nii so Oyin di iwo.

Amoko rerin, amuorogun wugbo.

Ibi ti won ba nlo ni won ko ipako si.

Won ko soro koo,

sugbon won soro o ya fun.

(Women are the salt of Earth, the same ones

that make salt to loose its taste. Silent killer of

today, timely saviour of tomorrow women

turn sadness to joy. They also turn honey to

poison she gladdens her mate to jealousy. She

faces where she is not going. Easy to come by

but difficult to part with).

Women are the bridge builder; the builder of home and the society, without them, the life in the society is not complete. This is so because we have to procreate as nature demands and as well in line with our cultural preservation. Much as bad and undisciplined, as women still, the society cannot do without them. It is only in togetherness that a virile and steadfast society can be built; hence, what we need is to correct, re-dedicate and re-shape our focus to make the society a better and worthy place to live. A decent and disciplined society is clearly an abode of peace, progress and unity.

ABIKU ( A child born to die)

I received a sad news yesterday, one of my ex class girl from school passed away. She got married of recent, just had her first child few weeks ago and passed away yesterday. Well, the baby lives.

  Also, during my internship program at the Broadcasting Corporation of  Oyo  State in Ibadan, a woman died my first week there, I was told she just had her first child, she have been trying to conceive for over 15 years, she finally got pregnant, delivered safely and died some two months later. The child lives

My last year in the University as an undergraduate, one of my course mate got married , his wife died few days after having her first child. The baby yet lives. 

 I was touched and bemused as what could be the cause. Is it complication from childbirth, is it as a result of evil force or perhaps it is destiny. But how will someone share an awful fate? Why will death deny an innocent child the joy of having a mother? All this and many more runs through my mind.

The high rate of maternal mortality in Nigeria may prevent us from looking at the spiritual aspect of childbirth. There are some children whose mission on earth is to end the life of their mother. Also there are some women who have pledged to die right after having children, or during childbirth. Some women need adequate spiritual attention and care during the course of their pregnancy to avoid death or serious complication due to the fact that they are either Abiku or Emere.

Abiku is a word in Yoruba. The word is derived from Yoruba: (abiku) "predestined to death", which is from (abi) "that which possesses" and (iku) "death". Abiku refers to the spirits of children who die before reaching puberty; a child who dies before twelve years of age being called an Abiku, and the spirit, or spirits, who caused the death being also called Abiku.

 Abiku literally means "one who is born, dies"--though the compact "born to die," with its implication of a fated or deliberately planned death.

Abi to give birth or to be born, ku is to die.

They are children who sometimes want to see their parent suffer, they rejoice in the tears people shed when they die. They are Children who have secret plans to die at a certain time in their upbringing, and leave at the expiration of the chosen time.

I look into the world of motherhood and felt sorry for so many woman out there and parents. It’s a taboo for a parent to bury their child. When this type of ill-fated occurrences strikes the Yoruba people will say 'Omi lodanu, agbe ko fo', the water was lost but the calabash isn’t broken. The calabash here is the vessel in essence the mother, the water is use to represent the child. Meaning the child died but the mother lives.

They are often sick, and drain there parent money on medical and spiritual bills. Only to be born again soon afterwards, repeating this itinerary of death and birth until they are spiritually tied down on earth by their parents and forced to stay in the world. That is while some people are told not to have big or loud celebration. Whatever they want to do should be low key as their Ori do not want noise.

Hence, why pregnant women in Yoruba are forbid to go out in the sun from 1pm to pm and also at midnight, because it is believed that is when the spirit moves around and mostly looking for host and can peradventure change the child in the womb to Abiku. Abiku can be inherited; it can go on for generation to generation if proper spiritual work is not done.

Healing an Abiku child is intensive, some parent use a charm called Gbekude to tie an Abiku child on earth. Gbekude is mostly worn around the neck, to prevent the Abiku spirit from claiming the child till the child is fully grown. Some give them mark on the face. Some attaches anklet with bells around the child leg, or chains round his neck. The jingling of the iron and the tinkling of the bells is supposed to keep the Abiku at a distance, hence the number of children that are to be seen with their feet weighed down with iron ornaments. Coupled with sacrificed and offering.

Abiku children are given name like;

Molomo: Don't go again

kukoyi: death reject this one

Durojaiye: stay and enjoy life

Motunrayo; I have found joy again

Abiku child are mostly buried wearing rags, on dump site, outskirt of town or in the bush without any befitting burial rite. The parents are advice not to show pity for the child, not to shed tears. Sometimes their corpse will be burnt or marked on their body to identify the child if it’s however return again. All this are down to discourage the Abiku spirit from returning. However, we have heard of cases where some children over time reborn to the same mother with the previous look, sex, complexion and structure and makings. An Abiku child can go and come back as many times as they want till the parent can finally tie them down on earth.

Abiku is not restricted to infant child or a particular sex alone, there is Abiku Agba. These people grown and mature into adult but sometimes die untimely or almost at the prime time of their success. Sometimes success is so fast for these people, they will graduate school, get the best job, have children but when it is time for their parent or family to enjoy them, they passed away. They can die without any sign of illness or use something to attach their death to. Some die untimely without living any offspring's behind.

Ogun yi o wu ke fi wo Abiku

bo pe boya omo o rele re lojokan

However which medicine you use to cure an Abiku child

The child will return to his home eventually.

Again
You have come,
Visitor
That never overstays.

I laugh at your cries;
An echo of the first time
You rented
My now weary womb.

Do you see tears
In my eyes?
No, the wells therein
Are drier than the desert sand.

This time, I pour no libation,
For the gods
Are drunk from my river
Of prayer gin.

I hold a lamp in my hands,
The snake at the door
Shall be crushed
Before it strikes my heels.

I shall pair your cry with a cackle;
For the child that says
His mother shall not sleep
Must not his eyelids close.

Poem by kukogbo I. Samson

Note

Ohun gbogbo lowo ori, everything that happens to us is dependent on our Ori, Our beginning and also the end. Of all the things that Olodumare gave to human only death is certain, death is the only thing that all human will get to experience. We all can't be rich, not everyone will build house, buy a car or even have children.

 There are some people who do not chose children from heaven but when they get to earth they want it and go extra mile to make this happen, this have claimed lives. Maybe you wanted something today and you have been praying hard to get it and still nothing, do not make it happen by force. You never know what Olodumare is keeping it away from you from. It may be to safe your live.