Memoir, Memory, and Mnemonic Device: The Yoruba in Toyin Falola’s A Mouth

Sweeter than Salt: An African Memoir

Memory: Similarities and Differences

An excellent work of scholarship is often compared to the “Good book” because

it inspires or provokes new ways of looking at the same reality. Toyin Falola’s A Mouth

Sweeter than Salt: An African Memoir (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004)

is an example of that category of work, which, of necessity, must be so many things to so

many people. Falola's memoir is a great literary work on the nuances of Yoruba culture—

a well-researched anthropology monograph on the transition from the chaos of nineteenth

century Yoruba wars to the more organized chaos of twentieth century colonial rule.

However, it is also a superb autobiography in which the protagonist is the narrator,

guiding us through the labyrinth of the new structures of urbanism.. The benefits of Pax

Britannica were manifested in luxuries like railway transportation; postal services;

adequate hospital care at birth or in sickness; being able to study in schools with

standardized education (be they Catholic, Muslim, Protestants, or African Traditional

Religionists); and going to the Odeon Cinema, as well as the provision of pipe borne

water, which dried off completely in most communities three years after independence.

Together with the instruments of law and order, these accoutrements of British

colonialism had significant a impact on all Nigerian cultures, including Yoruba ideas,

institutions, and material technology.

The increasing spread of infrastructures, free but good education, and the efficient

imposition of the rule of law were the benefits of colonialism, and the brief period from

1945 to 1953 was the golden age of colonialism. That makes those Nigerians who were

born at this period quite lucky. The youngest of them would have, by 1960, reached the

age of reason and would have been able to make comparisons between what life was

before and after independence. October 1, 1960, was Nigeria’s date of independence

from Britain. I was born on January 1, 1950. Toyin Falola was born on January 1, 1953.

A generational connection, both of the same period and the coincidence of date, is the

first preface of this work.

The second personal reason for undertaking this review is that, by some historical

accident, I left Imeko, now in Imeko/Afon Local Government Area of Ogun State, to

begin the long and tedious journey to Catholic priesthood at St. Theresa’s Minor

Seminary, Oke Are Ibadan. Reading Toyin Falola’s’ A Mouth Sweeter than Salt has

provided me considerable information, from what ethnographers call the “emic”

perspective, to illuminate the many unanswered questions about the same people, places,

and painful moments in history that I had from the “etic,” or outsider’s, perspective. I

was admitted into the boarding school at Oke-Are in 1963, and I was there when the first

military coup took the lives of Tafawa Balewa, Sadauna Sokoto, and Samuel Oladoke

Akintola, unleashing a virus from which Nigeria has not, and may not fully recover—

military rule. I was there when the second coup, whose theater of action was Ibadan, took

the lives of Aguiyi Ironsi and Roland Fatuyi, then the Governor of Western Region. I

was also in Ibadan when Oba Asanike served as the King of Ibadan. alola not only

alludes to the coups but provides in-depth analyses of Ibadan notions of diplomacy, as

exemplified in Oba Asanike’s use of traditional chieftaincy titles—as a carrot with which

to exhort resources from the ambitious egotistic Ibadan young aspirants to political power

(49–52).

Upon the completion of my junior studies at Oke- Are Minor Seminary, Ibadan in

1967, I went to Saints Peter and Paul’s Major Seminary, Bodija, Ibadan in 1968 to

continue my studies for the priesthood. I became a priest in 1974 and was sent back to

Oke Are to teach at my alma mater until 1977. Falola’s insights into the political climate

of Ibadan during those fourteen years have not only jogged my memory, they have forced

me to rethink my outsider’s perspective on issues that troubled me during those years.

Strangely enough, therefore, this period in our lives, unbeknownst to each other, provides

a template for cross-checking historical experiences that effectively shaped the lives of

our 'lucky' generation.

If I have pointed to similarities above, the differences are equally present.

An essential difference in our perspective, besides the ethnographic methodological

differences of the etic and the emic, is the rural versus the urban divide in Yoruba culture.

This divide considerably altered our interpretations about cultural expectations, allowed

practices, and the environment, as well as the rules in child-parent relationships. A few

cases will suffice for examples. In the rural areas, by virtue of the obligations of farming

and teaching, the child was often in the custody of adults. In this situation, he was

expected to be seen but not heard. If the child did not want to be the recipient of

discipline, which was the right of anyone older to impose, he ne had to keep quiet and be

sensitive to his environment. Therefore, what bored me, a rural child, stiff about those

few Ibadan students that I had as classmates, as well as their “Lagosian” counterparts,

was their inability to stop talking and bragging. While the urban student was mostly on

his own after school, and had to think of ways to spend his/her time by manufacturing

tales and pranks, the rural child was often in the vicinity of adult control. Unfortunately,

the quietness of the rural student in the urban classroom was often interpreted as dullness,

in the same way that some teachers interpret the silence of immigrant children in some

American classrooms. This is, however, until the examination period, when the 'rural' or

'immigrant' completely out-performs the urban or 'American' talkative student.

The second irritant was the tendency to create an artificial taxonomy in the two categories

of 'good' and 'bad,’ and then to arrange under 'good' terms like 'modern,' 'urban,'

'superior,' 'functional,' and 'appropriate.' Of course the next column of categories in this

bipolar taxonomic exercise was 'rural,' 'ancient,' 'inferior,' 'decrepit,' and 'inappropriate'

under the category of 'bad.' Many a fight occurred between me and my urban colleagues

by the mere implication that my relatively well-to-do cocoa farming father was,

according to any measurement or even insinuation, inferior to those fathers who worked

in the urban environment in the new professions. These new professions and

opportunities were seen as superior to traditional professions such as farming, even when

the latter pertains to the farming of cash crops, which integrates the farmer more quickly

and directly into the modern global economic system ruled by market forces. This urban

superiority complex is piquantly obvious in Falola’s work when he notes in relation to his

father’s occupation: “To remove English from the full description of his job would be to

insult him. After all, he was not trained to make Yoruba attire, which any of the illiterates

in town could do, as his uncle used to boast about him with unmistakable arrogance; but

even if some of his jobs appeared simple, they were 'English' enough to be

complicated”( 4).

In addition to the rural/urban divide is a second dichotomy, even more rigid than

the first. . It is based on the perspectives and comparative child-rearing practices of a

Catholic cocoa farmer’s son versus those of a Protestant descendant of the modern

professions. The category of this latter difference was a product of the accident of the

sudden death of the protagonist’s father before he was born, an event over which he had

no control. Like the Yoruba political icons, who quite a few Yorubas love to hate,

Obafemi Awolowo reiterated in his autobiography that the passing away of a parent,

particularly a father in a patriarchal society, fundamentally alters the prospects of the

individual. In fact, this circumstance of posthumous birth was still so traumatic, even for

the unborn child, that Falola, fifty-one years later, blamed the circumstance of his birth

for depriving him the chance of giving his deceased father befitting funerary rights, as

dictated by Yoruba culture, as the cause of his problems in life:

Then came May. Another loud noise, this time of mourning. Adesina died.

He never lived to realize all the prayers, certainly not that of long life. I

was still a baby who did not know that he was dead. By not being able to

bury him, entertain all my relatives and friends, show off my abundance, I

broke the first promise I had made to Ibadan, which was sealed in prayer. I

broke the promise rather early, the first in a series of Ibadan’s mandates

that I would break, of manners that I would forsake. As I have broken each

mandate, the city has been cruel and unforgiving in seeking its revenge.

Toyin Falola started life by staying close to a river and abusing the

crocodile… Each time I remember the leap into the future, following

1953, I take Ibadan, Adesina and the crocodile with me. (56-57)

That Catholic-Protestant inference is quite remarkable in its effects. For an unborn

child to mark himself with the stigma of an unfulfilled duty, to a beloved who died before

he was born, is too severe and psychologically damaging. Its severity is reminiscent of

ancient Catholicism that specified that a child who died before it was baptized could not

be admitted to the presence of God, but needed a period of cleansing in purgatory

(limbo). Not only was this view pushed aside by the Second Vatican Council, a

functional way of seeking release for the psychologically sensitive Catholic was to

unburden it in the sacrament of penance, which enacts in the confessional rite the

forgiving mercy of God. This element of psychological sensitivity in Falola's memoir will

be perused further later. Suffice is it to note here that Emile Durkheim’s classic book,

Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1951: 155-166), attributes a high suicide rate to cultures

that off-load heavy psychological burdens on individuals without providing rituals for

seeking release from this stress. Hence, Durkheim notes that the frequency of suicide is

less in Catholic and Jewish societies because they have stronger cohesion. This translates

into greater opportunities to relieve stress.

Cultural Assonance

Although the rural environment supports the reinforcement of values, norms, and

rules of good behavior because the child is constantly under adult supervision and has

few distractions, one of the over-powering elements of our generation’s up-bringing in

the 1950s, whether rural or urban, was a remarkable cultural assonance in the lessons

received at home, in school, and in places of worship. These themes invariably were

work hard; have respect for God, your parents, and your elders; be loyal to your country;

and do not steal and thus bring shame to the name of your family. At the time, the end did

not justify the means. In songs at home and in school plays, evil met with punishment,

the unexplained and sudden arrival of wealth was met with a leveling cultural mechanism

that decried rather than lionized their owners. A clear sense of shame or honor followed

the actions of children in relation to their family. The good behavior of children brought

honor to their ancestral name while bad behavior brought shame that could effectively

seal-off the prospects of the family to pursue its own progress in the community. Perhaps

it was the severe austerity measures at work during 1939 to 1945 that forced many people

to do so much with so little for so many people. Again, in the home, the school, or the

house of worship, habits of sharing what one has with others and doing so much with so

little were identified as acts of godliness, which pointed to a sound spiritual foundation.

This cultural assonance was national and not just ethnic. The rule of law and the

determination for success through education meant that all ethnicities came to live in the

urban centers where one could work in new trades to earn, as well as make a sacrifice for

one’s children to excel. Coming from the Nigerian-Benin (Dahomey) Border area with

few amenities, my father’s cemented house with corrugated iron sheets, thanks to money

earned from cocoa cash crop housed our nuclear Catholic family, relations from the

extended family, and Mr. Linus Onyemekpu, the Igbo Headmaster of St. Augustine’s

Catholic school plus his retinue of ten souls. Therefore, I grew up, played with, and was

taught by people from different ethnicities. One of the most popular pastimes for us

children was enacting the annual Igbo masquerade dance ritual to the applause of all

grown-ups—irrespective of faith, ethnicity, or gender. In the boarding school in Ibadan, I

met Igbo people who were born in northern Nigeria. They spoke Hausa and Igbo fluently,

and by the time we got to our final year in high school, they added flawless Ibadan

Yoruba to their list of languages. Falola’s narration has provided me with some much

awaited catharsis. It has brought back to the mind, like watching a video of long lost

familiar old footage, memories that unleash a rush of nostalgia for the old days, before

“memory and money were becoming mixed”( 11), perhaps too mixed for our collective

sanity. While in boarding school, I was surprised to find out that my school mates—be

they Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Ibibio, Esan, Afehmai, or Bini—had learnt the same songs

about the importance of farming to our country.

Facing our Mortality with Some Reservations

What Falola has done in a remarkable way in his memoir is to put into static form

for posterity the anxieties surrounding a tingling sense of failure, a big hole in that now

traumatized psyche of our generation—those regarded at the beginning of this essay as

lucky inheritors of the colonial fruits. What sincere Nigerian can say that Nigeria has

done better under Nigerian leadership than under the British colonial rule? What most

Nigerians abroad, in the age bracket of those regarded as 'lucky,' do, whenever they meet,

particularly at the burial ceremonies of their age mates, is to agonize over their failure for

not having done better with the prospects of their fatherland. Confronted, I suppose, by

their mortality, they are digging back into that unique period of eight years, after which

everything began to go into decline. In those groups, Nigerians, in general, reminisce

about three questions. First, what happened to that disciplined, accountable, caring, and

sharing country in which we grew up—the Nigeria that was made sacred, in Tertullian

theological terminology, by the blood of the martyrs (our deceased parents and loved

ones who gave so much from so little to see us become what we are today)? Second, why

is Nigeria dying slowly before our very eyes from having too much rather than having

too little? Third, what can we abroad do about our ancestral homeland, which we

continue to keep afloat by giving our hard earned remittances to our ungrateful,

entitlement-driven, disloyal, and unkind living relatives out of loyalty to the dead?

After all, as the Yoruba saying goes, Omo Ale niifi owo osin juwe ile baba re (It is

only the bastard child who points out his father’s house tentatively with his left hand). I

think Falola did a superb job unearthing and analyzing information for the first two

questions at the deep structural level so that we may understand their effects at the

surface of our compromised prostrate national psyche. In doing so, since the work of

social engineering is not one person’s job, Falola has challenged us to find solutions to

the third question before we have to answer before our collective ancestors of all

ethnicities.

Mnemonic Device: Ibadan as a Template

A mnemonic device in educational pedagogy is a concept embedded into the

teaching and learning process to remind the learner what ought not be forgotten.

The point of our departure for Falola is Ibadan, which he fondly calls “my city” many

times. This is apropos as it fulfills one of the foundation proverbs on the principle of

'ascription' among the Yoruba, on which the concept of loyalty is built: Ile lati nmu eso

rode ("charity begins at home.”) One will not quarrel with the unrepresentative nature of

Ibadan as a template in Yoruba urbanism since, like Abeokuta, it is a war camp with the

uniqueness that that brings to the table. No one quarreled with the use of Abeokuta in

Saburi Biobaku’s influential monograph or Oyo in Johnson’s earlier work, even though

he was so fond of Ibadan . To use the modality of Marcel Mauss in his classic The Gift

(1954), the symbolic prestation of the 200 hundred snails—which forebear the destiny of

the new city, Ibadan—to the babalawo, the fortune teller, who then releases them in a

circle, as counter-prestation, speak to the ominous prediction that Ibadan will continue to

expand and survive forever (56).

Our preoccupation with this topic in America speaks to the fulfillment of that

prediction. Thus, Ibadan is like New York, Paris, Johannesburg, Chicago, or Houston,

arising out of the ashes of lesser communities, destroyed either as an act of war or the

result of new technologies or resources to exploit. Symbolically, therefore, Ibadan

becomes the prototype of all huge urban centers attesting to the universal applicability of

Ifa omniscience. But most changes in Yoruba culture—ideas, institutions, and material

technology—brought about by European colonialism, are not just cosmetic. They are

structurally different with lasting impact.

Absolute Time versus Contingent Time

In the intellectually supple and versatile hands of Falola—the historian who is

also an erudite anthropologist and an astute political philosopher of traditional political

institutions—the impact of social change comes home to roost in, of all things, the

reckoning of time, both absolute and contingent. Contingent time, understood as

encapsulated in events, clashes with absolute time. For example, time understood in the

naturalistic activities of farming clashes with the concept of time in which every moment

matters and gives finality to the rightness or wrongness of an event linked to privileges

and deprivations in the new order. What Babatunde said about the Ketu concept of time is

applicable to other Yoruba. He noted that

The Ketu idea of time may be classified in two ways: absolute time and

contingent time. Absolute time records the eternal rising and setting of the

sun and the passing of every minute in the day. ..Contingent time is real

time to the Ketu. It is made up of events and reckoned in two ways;

ecological system and structural system. The Ketu ecological system is

reckoned by annual cyclical rhythm of the season. The seasons control

human activities and regulate the occurrence of social activities (1998:39).

Thus, it is not just important to know who one is senior to in birth order. It is important

that the minute, hour, day, month, and year of birth are facts that may open up the

copious largess of government or cut the same down to a meager amount. So the truth

about the precise facts of the hour, day, month, and year becomes useful or is relevant

only when it services the interest of the official who is a member of the community.

When it does not, affidavits reconstruct new birth facts so as to maximize the benefits

from the government.

This shifting relevance of time becomes the game changer in the life of the

protagonist who moves from the iconic scholar to the haunted person. A special treatment

in recognition of excellence makes a chairperson,move out of his own original office,

which he transferred to the bright young scholar who is regarded as the star that will lead

the Department into the future. The scholar pleads with his Chair and his male

Departmental Secretary (the good friend of the Chair!) to remove all the scraps of paper

left on the notice board in his new office. The young scholar pleaded time and again,

week in and week out, for this simple act of professional courtesy to be dispensed. He

was told that what was left in his office was trash. Finally, in line with est practices, the

protagonist who, as an historian, understood the documentary value of 'scraps' and 'trash'

in the context of time and need, puts every scrap of the unclaimed 'trash' in a box and

leaves it on the table of the male Secretary. The old way of reckoning time was

immediately used as relevant to judging the action of the protagonist. Since the Secretary

is older in age to the scholar, the act of putting 'trash' on the table of the former was

interpreted as an act of disrespect and deviance to the Secretary, even though according

to the new ways of reckoning the male Secretary was lower in status to the young

Scholar. The Departmental Chair supports his friend, the Secretary, against the Scholar

who is cast in opprobrious light before his students and colleagues. Humiliated, the

Scholar apologizes for his perfectly normal actions, takes the trash box, and does what he

was asked to do—throw away the trash. As Falola notes succinctly, “the process that

created the need for birth certificates also created the need to invent dates, to alter dates,

to associate events and stories with dates. Time and seasons were shifted and adjusted to

accommodate dates and their accommodation”(10).

The following morning, government policy of retirement shifted in favor of those

with a longer period of time than the Chair had in order to have a huge increase in their

retirement benefits package. So the old trash left in the Scholar’s room, which was

eventually thrown away with the blessing of the Chair and the Secretary after so much

humiliation, acquired a new significance. To manufacture a new set of affidavits, facts

must be fine-tuned with the old. It was important to find the box that had been thrown

away. However, the janitors had disposed of the trash. So the furor of the Chair and his

male Secretary friend descended yet again on the Scholar for doing what he was asked to

do. Damned if you do not and double damned if you do! Ignoring the truth of the matter,

the Chair tells anybody who would listen that the protagonist threw away his documents.

Birth certificates and affidavits were being fabricated and refabricated to meet the needs

of individuals as they respond to the new ways of doing things. As Falola notes pungently

again, "There is no difference between the man who steals and the person who watches

for him while he steals. Even if the officer knew that something was wrong with the birth

certificate, he would remember his own past and his own steps and perhaps muse in his

mind that a tree does not disapprove of itself because one of its branches is cut off" (11).

All of this high-wired tension was being off-loaded on a most sacred time in the

life of the protagonist. This unkind cut of all is dealt on the young Scholar on the day that

Yoruba culture identifies as the most sacred in his life—the day of the birth of his first

son. The agony of the protagonist truculently shines through in spite of his outward

appearance of calm and humility in the presence of the Chair when he compared the

decency of the janitors to one another with the ‘dog-eat-dog’ attitude of his fellow

professors. He notes caustically, “I never knew that they had a guild. I never knew that

they had camaraderie. If anyone came looking for me, knowing well that I was probably

in trouble, my colleagues would betray me rather quickly, and even if that gave my

enemies more evidence with which to destroy me.”(15).

A little deconstruction of the power variables at work here might assist the non-

Yoruba mind to appreciate the intense psychological stress that the scenario on the trash

box constituted. The Chair, the Secretary, and the protagonist’s colleagues are the

contestants for power. The Secretary was also the friend of the Chair, and, to quote the

protagonist, “As both were men, we cannot accuse them of adultery”( 13). The Chair, in

doing an honor to the bright Scholar by not only identifying him as the future leader of

the Department but by giving the Scholar the use of his original office, not only exposed

the protagonist to the jealousy of his fellow colleagues, he unleashed the anger of the

Secretary upon the protagonist who had now superseded the Secretary in the affection of

the Chair. Since in Weberian terminology power is defined as the “ability to impose your

influence on others who are competing against you,” one possible Yoruba traditional

response was for each party fighting for the spoils of power to consult traditional sources

of power to protect his interest by destroying the good feeling/friendship between the

Chair and the protagonist. The other options were for the colleagues to gang up against

the protagonist, as well as for each colleague to consult traditional sources of power to

undo the protagonist so that the field for playing the game of power became open to the

mediocre. But the more damaging instrument at the hands of detractors at that moment of

compressed and intense psychological stress was to make caustic jokes or resurrect

pungent proverbs, both oblique and direct, to 'celebrate' the demise of good relations

between the Chair and his anointed replacement. Put all these fragments of concatenated

stress together and one will begin to understand the intensity of the stress on the young

Scholar. When these events occur on the day that the mostly patrilineal Yoruba culture

identifies as the most sacred day in the life of the protagonist, the day on which his first

son was born, things become compounded.

Interrogating the Ibadan Yoruba Template

In the Chapter titled “Blood and Mouth,” the reader encounters Ibadan through

what a non-urban Yoruba like me would call the boisterous and warlike elements of the

Ibadan sub-ethnic culture. Like the protagonist, I remember fondly the spectacle of over

two hundred students dressed up in immaculate white shirts and shorts, in files of two,

trekking for over five miles to take part in state celebrations at the Liberty Stadium, Oke-

Ibadan all the way from Oke Are near Mapo and Bower Tower. Falola narrates this

chapter in the triumphant language of an Ibadan man who is a descendant of warriors. As

exciting as his narration is, other facts that he provides actually show, as D. D. Laitin, in

his Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change among the Yoruba

(1986),reiterated—that the Yoruba culture of tolerance for diversity has provided the glue

that has kept the Nigerian national fabric together in spite of its many self-inflicted

wounds.

The most telling example in this respect is the sad story of Yusuf, who lost one

eye from a meaningless fight that ensued between the grossly overwhelmed and

outnumbered boy, a Muslim, and two kinds of Christians, one named Isola, the other

Philip. Yusuf, in spite of his mortal injury, protected his friends and their families from

settling the dispute occasioned by the loss of his eye by a free for all fight that could have

led to more fatalities. In today’s age of religious fanaticism, it may be useful to remember

that Yoruba religious pluralism is built on the principle of maximization of spiritual

profit. In the Yoruba family, the individual is free to worship any deity provided the

individual has the common sense of enlisting the blessings of his or her deity to improve

the lot of all members of the extended Yoruba family, whatever their religion. Every

Yoruba family has a relative that was either going to Mecca or becoming a Catholic or

Protestant priest. The Christians in the family contributes to the transportation and

upkeep of their relations in Mecca as much, if not more, than the Muslims contribute to

the expenses for the ordination of their relatives as a Protestant or Catholic priest.

The story of the “war boy” provided another opportunity for the Ibadan template

of Yorubaness to be interrogated. The “war boy” was caught stealing an antelope and had

to spin the essence of the story from theft to bravery. This spin speaks to a stereotype

about the fast talking Ibadan (urban?) man who was more concerned with how to

bamboozle his way out of the crisis, rather than accepting responsibility for committing a

crime. Falola describes this tendency magnificently when on the etymology of Mesiogo,

he notes “In combination, Mesiogo communicates an ability to reply quickly to a fool,

with actions and words that will communicate or disguise intentions. By joining the

words, the meaning is hidden, the intentions are further compounded" (42). Every culture

allows for some dissembling or omission if the truth can cause grave and permanent

damage. Theology identifies a genre of permissible lies as “officious lies.” However, no

culture sees the practice of dissembling as a permanent instrument of moral discourse,

because to do this is to make truthfulness irrelevant. The “war boy” was caught stealing

an antelope. The warlike history of Ibadan cannot and must not justify the breach of

moral code. The story of the proverbial quest of Pasitor Elepo and Isola reiterate this

point clearly much later, when the spiritual mentor and his protégé embark on the

proverbial search to find just one modern Ibadan political figure. They could not find one.

Polygyny: Feminism Deconstructed

The most rewarding methodological break-through in Falola’s work came in the

deconstruction of polygyny, the practice that allows one man to marry two or more

wives. In this, he turns feminist interpretations on their head. Polygyny is supposed to be

the bane of women. It set one against the other and makes them compete against each

other for scarce resources—be it food,sex, or power within the polygynous unit. In this

original analysis on the politics of sex and power in polygyny, Falola—who did his

ethnographic study firsthand in his intense polygynous household, negotiating between

the different wives of Baba Olopa—turns theory upside down. Baba Olopa, whose real

name was S. O. Adediran, was the cousin of Falola with whom Falola lived in Ode Aje.

He had at least ten wives and was a Sergeant in the Nigerian Police Force. His method of

relating to his multiple spouses produced the first of the three models that Falola studied

and writes about with such clarity.

Falola demonstrates that there are three models of polygyny, and not just one.

Specifically, the Baba Olopa authoritarian model represents the narrow ethnic insularity

of patriarchy. A man controls the purse strings, owns the house and the car, and

distributes resources according to his idiosyncratic preferences. He also does not stand in

the way of any of his wives taking her children and going off. The authoritarian model

divides up the women so that they compete against each other, in the time hallowed

practice known as ‘divide and rule.’ Only the man—the 'policeman' who is in-charge of

law and order, so much hated in Nigeria—saw the practice of this model as empowering

him. The protagonist pre-empted discourse by explaining that the Nigerian Police is

much hated. Why is the Nigerian Police so hated? A cautionary analytical digression will

throw light on this question before our other two models of polygyny are discussed.

Opinion is divided as to why it is virtually impossible for a Nigeria policeman to

be a clean law enforcement officer. Some say that the corruptibility of the Nigerian police

is a function of who the individual is and what his choices are. Others suggest that it is

the environment that he operates in that transforms the individual policemen into one

who violates the rules that are supposed to be enforced. Those in the former school of

thought point to three facts: the low level of education of the entry qualification, the poor

salary of the police, and the stress entailed by the constant and rapid transfer of the police

from one theater of action to another. The Nigerian police is transferred, on average,

every eighteen months to ensure that he has not created a parallel criminal source of

remuneration. The interrogators, who identified the environment as the source of the

Nigerian Police corruption, also point to his lack of discipline in two important areas of

comportment. The first is the tendency of the police to accumulate a set of new wives

where he is transferred to. The second is the intense desire of Nigerians, no matter what

his endeavor or status, to seek to short-circuit the legal process by paying bribes to the

police. The Chief who went to Elepo village from the city with a load of armed

policemen and used the police to plant contraband in the house of Jakobu is a case in

point. In order for the chief to win by sheer power, he had to use the police, who had

sworn to uphold the law to contravene it so that the innocent man contesting with the

chief may be left to die in jail (258). Pasitor leads the young protagonist to seek help for

the unjustly imprisoned but finds that the rich city power brokers—the Ajobos, the

Akinloyes, and the Ajibolas—have cultivated the tastes of the poor who settle for

satisfying their basic instincts rather than engaging in collective redemptive action. The

protagonist notes, “As Pasitor took me about to seek a solution, the assembly of two

hundred was everywhere we went, eating and showing respect to the chiefs. It was not

Pasitor who told me this but some members of the two hundred. From an alternative

perspective, they saw nothing wrong in accepting the food and water offered by the

chief" (258-59).

To return to our analysis on models, of polygyny, the Baba Olopa’s model is the

most messy, emotionally costly, and un-liberating of the three models. The second model

of patriarchy, the independent model of patriarchal polygyny, is demonstrated by the

example of the first Alhaji. Rather than marry as many wives as his concupiscence will

allow, he sticks to the injunction of marrying four wives. He sets up business for all of

them by providing them with the initial capital. This marriage gives his wives multiple

meanings—as wives, reputable child-bearers (mothers), and traders. He does not see the

success of his wives as a threat to himself because when they succeede, he benefits. Each

wife who wants to be independent of the Alhaji’s immediate control can find money and

resources to marry a younger, new wife to the Alhaji, until he reaches four wives. If

Alhaji becomes too overbearing, the wife who has, on account of her success in business,

built her own house, can refund the initial capital to her husband and stay alone, and as

Falola notes, allow “character and memory to sustain the relationship” (128.).

The third model of polygyny is semi-independent patriarchal polygyny. It is also

personified by the practice of another Alhaji, referred to as the Second Alhaji. The

control in this model is sophisticated but certainly there. The Alhaji co-opts all his wives

to serve as managers of his six stores. In an age in which male relations cannot be trusted

with money and property, the wife as mother of one’s children re-circulates any stolen

money to take care of their children (owo ati dukia-). Thus, the money is kept in the

family. Mushod Abiola, who was elected Nigerian President but prevented by the

military from serving, is the most visible proponent of this model. Of the three models of

polygyny, the more progressive, tolerant, and liberating models are those mediated

through Islamic prism. They lead to varying degrees of empowerment and freedom

contrary to popular opinion.

The ease of Falola’s story telling made what had been forgotten to rush back

resiliently with a wave of nostalgia. Education was so priced that whether you were

Catholic, Muslim, Protestant, or African Traditional Religionist, you went to the

Babalawo before the Primary Six School Leaving Examination to fortify your chances of

success through the taking of isoye.. During my Seminary days in Ibadan, we could not

go out on Oke-Ibadan festivals. However, had we been permitted to go and witness the

rituals, I would not have gone. Much later, during my anthropological studies, I came

across ceremonies of role-reversal such as carnivals. They draw attention to those things

that must not be done normally throughout the year, but at carnival, by setting a day or a

short period aside, one can do them in the extreme. After that day or period, local

morality is reinforced and society is reset in terms of its sense of right and wrong. The

proverbial search by Pasitor and Isola to find just one upright politician of repute in

Ibadan failed dismally. The outcome of that search eventually led to the famous

Agbekoya, riot—where farmers refused to be cheated—that led to civil insurrection and

subsequently to the introduction of the military into governance in 1966. These forgotten

aspects of our generation’s lived experience are reinforced the powerful impact of

Falola's memoir as a mnemonic device indeed.

The Gaping Hole in the Analysis of Yoruba Culture

A gaping hole in the sophisticated analysis of Yoruba culture in Falola’s A Mouth

Sweeter than Salt is the absence of the celebration of motherhood. If the key to

unraveling the complicated aspects of Yoruba culture is the family, the Yoruba father is

its gate as well as its exterior appearance.. The mother, on the other hand, is the key to the

heart of the family. She is the thermostat that regulates the temperature of the home and

the quality of homeliness. The homeliness of the house is not a function of size but of the

incarnated warmth, affection, and the level of comfort that is present in the family,

exemplified by the Yoruba proverb, bife ba wa, yara sokoti lee gbeyan merila ("where

there is love, a small room can accommodate fourteen people"). In the book, I followed

Falola to sing familiar but forgotten lyrics in praise of farming and hard work, as well as

Oriki lyrics in praise of the father’s ancestral achievement.

However, I waited in vain for the most popular lyric of all in Yorubaland, Iya ni

wura iyebiye ti akole fowo ra ("mother is precious gold that money can never buy")

(Babatunde & Setiloane 2010). I waited in vain for that song in praise of motherhood.

However, I then knew I had to review the interaction between the protagonist and his

mother. In most cultures, the bonding between mother and child is the foundation of

wholesomeness and holiness. That bonding is expressed in the tenderness of

breastfeeding; it is also found in the warmth of being carried by the mother on her back,

of wiping tears from the face of a crying child. That bonding is found in the

encouragement of the mother, urging her frightened child to stand up to the bully once

and for all. Specifically in polygyny, when access to resources is a function of the

mother’s energetic resourcefulness, bonding with the mother becomes a child’s only

reliable passage into the future.

The first reference to the mother by the protagonist was, “my mother married very

young, I never understood the rush for a child. Later on in the 1980s I did" (28). Fifty

nine pages later, we are introduced to many mothers: "Other mamas visited from time to

time, and I knew their names as Mama Bayo, Mama Pupa, and Mama Yemi. They used

to live in the house, as I was told, but left after the death of their husband. I did not know

why they were visiting, but they always expected me to greet them properly and treat

them with some respect. I did not care about any of them" (89). What is unusual when we

are introduced to the mothers, we identify each mother who has left to marry outside the

family but has a child by teknonymic appellation in which the word for mother, "mama,"

is added as a prefix to the name of their child. This leaves out a woman, Mama Pupa,

who is identified not by the name of her child but by the lightness of her skin color.

These mothers on visit often brought presents like cloths, but they often complained so

much about the cleanliness of the children that their visit was more of an irritation than an

opportunity to bond with their child. It is this strained kind of relationship that is

observed until when suddenly we are told by the protagonist that:

My mother was Mama Pupa. I learned of my real mother at the age of ten!

The first time that we slept under the same roof was when she visited my

wife and me in 1981 to congratulate us on the birth of our first child.

Thereafter, she came for temporary visits until her death in the 1980s…

She left Agbokojo to remarry when I was too young to understand her

transition. By the time I could see and understand, I saw her only as a

visitor to the house, not as a mother but as one of the big mamas (107).

The circumstance of posthumous birth of a child, any child, into a family whose

parents are young is traumatic for the child and the mother. As Falola asserts, the rule of

Yoruba paternity prevents the mother from taking and raising up the child of a deceased

spouse in another lineage. This interpretation is an urban Yoruba exception to the rule. It

is an act of compromise for the rapid changes that need to be accommodated in the urban

center. The traditional Yoruba expectation is tied to bridewealth, which confers the two

rights of women: as a mother, rights ad genetricem, and as a home-maker, rights ad

uxorem, to the family of the husband and not to the spouse individually. To leave no

doubt in the mind of the members that these rights are vested in the extend family, a

bridewealth is not paid by a single person, no matter how rich. Rather, it is paid by the

contribution of all the members of the extended family who are adults. If as it happened,

Adesina Isola died before Toyin Isola Falola was born, a male adjudged deserving in the

extended family would inherit Mama Pupa and become the pater, that is, the socially

recognized father of the child Toyin. This change in paternal arrangement in the city

probably occurred because the earlier provision was adjudged ‘backward.’

Be that as it may, there is no subterfuge but the simple truth in the narrative that

there is something missing in the mother/child relationship. Of course, Iya Pupa brought

presents on her occasional visits—she brought more than most to Isola. But I wanted to

hear Iya Pupa protest when she visits Adesina’s compound and while Isola is around, that

she ought to be called Iya Toyin rather than Iya Pupa. I wanted Iya Toyin, on one of those

visitations, to take Toyin alone to Ogunpa market and spoil him with buka food with

plenty of meat after she discussed with him their true relationship to each other. I wanted

Iya Pupa, again and again during those visits, to tell Toyin that she was proud of him and

that his curiosity, which some have problem with, is the foundation of knowledge and

that he will be a very great person in the future. I did not see any of this. All I saw was

complaint about a smelling mouth and dirty appearance. Most Yoruba mothers, however,

do not believe in parenting by remote control, whatever the circumstance of the family of

origin of their child.

In the context of the foregoing analysis of a series of unfulfilled needs in infancy

—such as the absence of the father, the coolness of the mother/child relationship, and the

rapid relocation of the protagonist from one family group to another—the traumas that

these needs constitute in the development of children would have derailed most children.

The protagonist on the other hand thrived magnificently showing that he is an epitome of

resilience. This unbelievable feat has transformed his life into a template of what to

emulate.

The Protagonist as a Template

A major strength in the analytical power of the protagonist whose life is a

template for understanding the changes that are took place around him is his curiosity.

The minute detail with which the protagonist explains aspects of behavior, values, and

practices of Yoruba culture reflect the intensity of positive curiosity. Positive curiosity is

the foundation of precociousness as the history of invention reiterate. There is no doubt

that the protagonist was very observant and he pushed his curiosity about his

environments to the limit. He did this with ease. Those of us from the rural areas would

never attempt many of his feats because our parents would literally kill us. What child the

age of nine, seeing a train, would not wish to travel in it? However, the protagonist did

not stop in the realm of wishful thinking: he boarded the train. As if it the train that he

deliberately boarder overpowered him and took him away against his will, he writes,

“The train moved. People waived inside and outside. Some even wept for reasons that I

did not know. I was happy. The train moved slowly at first, passing places in the city that

I did not recognize. Then it picked up speed, moving through the forest and over the

hills… Everything that I saw excited me, the people inside the train, those outside the

train” (63). That adventure landed him his first job as a “stick boy.” The experience of

stealing away in the train to Ilorin was responsible in regarding him as Emere with the

copious negative attention that it brought to him. Thanks to the organizational skills of

the often over-derided colonialism, with its railway trains, policemen, efficient postal

services, impartial courts, and the caring vigilance of ‘parents away from home,’ Isola

was discovered and shipped back to Ibadan.

The two major institutions that united the old Nigeria were the railway lines and

the military. Both were put in place by the British. The railway—the engine of haulage in

more efficient modern economies—was killed slowly after Independence by the same

Ministers of Transportation who wanted to give undue advantage to their investment in

luxury buses in a country with no network of well-kept roads and a limited support

system for the repair of those buses. On the other hand, the military became, until

recently—when its consistent engagement in nation building military duties in West

Africa re-infused considerable professionalism into its ranks—a group of illiterate, power

hungry, unpatriotic individuals who could not even understand the simple concept that

only institutions who live by the principles of democracy can teach democratic principles

to its people. As the Latin proverb asserts, Nemo dat quod non habet (“No one gives what

he does not possess").

Although his journey to Ilorin and the accident of enabling Yusuf’s eye to be

punctured were important grievances that occurred at a tender age and necessitated

serious concerns about his person, they did not qualify to promote the protagonist to the

status of an Emere, or aberrant semi-human, semi-spirit evil beings. New groups of the

truly Emere were the new elite. This motley group of leaders, to paraphrase Antonio

Gramsci, had created a hegemony by constructing a reality that perpetuated their

dominant interest—the satisfaction of their basic instincts. The rapacious elite foisted that

reality on the rest of Nigerians as the plan most suited to promote the future development

of the country. In doing so, they created, in the Nigerian populace, a severe dose of false

consciousness. A new evil had been unleashed among a caring and resourceful people.

As the protagonist notes, this new elite just proceeded to use their education, traditional

office, and professional training to accumulate more power for their self-aggrandizement,

even though this torpedoed the development of the nation-state.

Instead, they enlisted their new powers to make themselves the new gods. The

Akinloyes, Ajibolas, Babangidas, Obasanjos, and their myriad of unpatriotic 'friends'

from all walks of life, joined hands to make the home front unlivable for talented

Nigerians who then had to emigrate. Falola provides an ominous glimpse into the

mindless kleptomaniac culture of the new elite in his discussion with one of the actors,

the Governor of his State,:

Irrespective of the occupation of a chief, nothing was more important than

serving in government. Chief Omololu Olunloyo—a professor of

Mathematics, a city mate, and an acquaintance- once told me, as the

governor of my state, that there was so much available to steal that it takes

only a day to steal what one needs for a lifetime. Olunloyo’s complaint

was that fellow politicians took many more days than one to steal. Never

shy of speaking his mind, even in language that would offend his critics,

Olunloyo pondered, “why not steal for one day and use the rest to work

for the people (255).

When a Governor, a mathematician by training, reduces the criminality of theft to the

fraction of what is stolen relative to the total sum available, instead of putting a system of

stopping the theft in place, then one can understand why the country has gone down a

slippery economic slope.

Falola's life as an intensely curious precocious scholar, however, provides

a useful template for our collective resurrection in many ways different from those

proffered by the rapacious elite. Strong and greedy cultures abound around the world, and

Africa, with its fair share of them, cannot leave any aspect of life in the society or in the

environment unclassified. As Mary Douglas reiterates in her classic Purity and Danger

(1979), using the Abominations of Leviticus as a case in point, anything unclassified into

clear and unambiguous categories by culture, anything that was anomalous was regarded

as dangerous (1954). Falola was born at a time of great transition when Yoruba culture

was reeling from the impact of European culture with its new technologies. The intensity

of the curiosity as well as the driven nature of the nine year old boy who boarded the train

to the great unknown was beyond the understanding of his custodians. Therefore, he was

consigned to the category of things that elude classification, Emere. Yet, it is the Emeres

in other cultures—such as Henry Louis Stevenson, Emmanuel Addison, and Alfred

Nobel, the inventors and creators who acted on their curiosity—who have led the world

to where it is today.

The narrative of Falola is focus on the family and the place of the individual in it.

By the shared accident of posthumous birth into a polygynous family of origin, Falola

had to pull himself up by his boot-straps, learn by experience what others are taught by

caring parents, look back with fear and longing, and look ahead with driven

determination. Falola has lived like an orphan, Omo Alainiya. As the Yoruba say, Eniti

koba niya, koma legbo ehin ("A motherless child should not have a sore on its back"). In

waxing strong, Falola has transcended the boundaries of family, ethnicity, and gender. He

has, by his sheer productivity, compared with anyone from any part of Africa, on any

topic worth researching, become the African scholar par excellence. That is why the

over-driven Falola has become the template of our collective resurrection as Africans.

One hopes that the contradictions in Yoruba culture—such as cronyism and

excessive double think, which leads to permanent dissembling, as well as an intense and

frivolous competition to be superior than others—can give way to a spirited cooperation

to put a system in place that can support the rule of law enforced by contract. Then

universal human rights will replace ethnic ones, which have constituted a barrier to the

transformation of Nigeria to a modern economy ruled by locally competent and globally

relevant bright people who submit to the rule of law. Then and only then can those of us

who were born between 1950-1953, who now have or are hitting 60 years of age, feel

confident to meet our maker and our collective ancestors and tell them that we have done

our part.

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