Power or authority comes in different forms and is wrapped up in Yorùbá oral tradition to assert it, draw attention to it, or enforce it on other people, to make them do certain things, whether or not they are pleased with it. Those who assert and exert their authority do so because they feel they are powerful to make other people obey their commands or bear the brunt which befits people who show any resistance. Authority can also be used among Yorùbá in certain circumstances. The institution of ba, the kingship of the Yorùbá, is hereditary and connotes power or authority over a town or a city, with or without its subsidiaries. The traditional authority or power extends to chiefs, whose responsibility is to serve or
assist the king in different administrative capacities, such as physical, domestic, bilateral, and spiritual or religious territories that are peculiar to the Yorùbá tradition.
Besides kings, chiefs, warriors, and family leaders, exceptional and distinguished Yorùbá cherish the culture which elevates them and make them feel important. No wonder, this may be a reason why every being has a lineage oríkì which its members admires traditionally. In a way, internally, an average Yorùbá person likes to trace his or her family to a line of authority in any form which is politically, religiously, super-naturally or socially inclined.
To illustrate the feeling of power in the selected movies, Méjì provides several examples.When the king of a towninvites k làbà and Ológundúdú, the two major warriorsto his palace, to brief them about the flagrant refusal of the people of Olókòtó and Koteyeemu to pay their tributes when the king sent Chief tún to them to remind them of their responsibility, the king, who appears angry at the rudeness, starts his briefing somehow with this proverb after he has invited Ológundúdú and his friend to the palace:
e w n ní: Tibi k bá w , Tib k bá t ,
ni tá a bá níwájú ti tó baba fún ni. Translation:
They [people] say that if there is no misunderstanding in a family, If there is no face-off in a family,
Whoever that is older than us qualifies to be our father.
With the proverb, one can say that the king considers himself as the most powerful ruler in his territory and expects respects from the two villages which refuse to pay tributes. It also implies that the king uses the proverb to incite the warriors by making them see how belittled they, their townsmen, and their king
by the two villages. In other words, the expression is to show how important it is for the royal majesty and his competent, agile, and formidable warriors to use force to fix the rudeness and impenitent behavior of the villagers who should be obedient to the constituted authority in the territory. Ológundúdú, one of the warriors, confirms that king is the only one with an overwhelming power to control the territory; he uses the following extract from the Ifá chant below to deliver the idea: Àràbà ni bàbá. Àràbà ni bàbá. ni a bá n wá ti t baba ni e Dífá fún Àràrà, baba Eríwo; ni a bá níwájú ti tó baba, Kábíyèsí. Translation: Àràbà is the father. Àràbà is the father.
Whoever that is older than us qualifies to be our father Divined for Àràbà, the father of Eríwo.
Whoever that is older than us qualifies to be a father.
The oral tradition above implies that the king is the sole authority over other people and that the villagers are supposed to obey him if there is no abnormal situation.
In another movie, èkà, oral tradition is used to convey a feeling of power or authority. For example, when ná’s mother tries to persuade ná’s uncle to get him interested in the love relationship between eéní and Àìná; she wants the uncle to feel that he is important and has a final say on the relationship. In a way,
she concedes the power of ná’s father to him since ná’s father is no longer alive. The oral tradition that ná’s mother uses to invoke the feeling is the proverb below:
k fá’r l yìn olórí. Translation:
We don’t cut a person’s hair while he is away.
The import is that ná’s mother wants the uncle to feel that she cannot allow eéní to marry her daughter without the approval or blessing of the uncle. Yorùbá culture demands that a woman gives the power of making a final decision on children to the children’s fathers or the grown-up males in a family. In ná’s case, the uncle is the father-symbol who has the sole authority to approve or sanction the marriage proposal between the two young persons.
4.9. 7 Feeling of hope
ral tradition conveys people’s feelings of hope. In èkà, after eéní has been cheated by ná’s mother and ná, he hopes that nemesis will catch up with them, that there is an overseer who knows what has happened secretly regarding his re ection by ná’s mother. To show that he has hope for justice in the future, he says a proverb to signal a warning to ná’s mother who remains unperturbed:
y d bor t ta fà sókè, B’ ba ayé kò rí i,
ba run wò ó. Translation:
The one who shoots an arrow upward and rushes under a mortal for protection,
The heavenly god is looking at him.
e n ’s proverb captures ná’s mother who has been telling lies to defend her actions. He believes that truth will eventually come out one day, no matter how perfect ná’s mother is at hiding it.
In Méjì, the use of Ifá literary corpus to unravel the mystery in the life of ni- Ìtàn injects in her a sense of hope or freedom. Also, ina’s uncle uses the proverb “The child who knows how to wash his or her hand clean will eat in the same plate with an adult” to raise the hope that w eéní will be his good son-in- law.