This morning I was waiting for my boss at a bus stop when a tricycle driver called out to me. He wanted to know — was I a Christian or a Muslim? What followed was one of the most unexpected, most necessary conversations I've had in a long time.

He had been telling his fellow driver that I looked like his nephew — and probably a Muslim too. When I told him I practiced Ifá, he went quiet for a second. That pause said everything. I was used to it.

He asked for my name and I told him "Ariyo", after which he said that was the first time he would see a young man who practices Ifá. I told him we are much, but we do not just get to a gathering and announce that we are Ifá practitioners. There is a certain quietness to how we carry our tradition, not out of shame, but out of a dignity that doesn't need to shout.

The Colonial Shadow: Èṣù vs. Shaitan

He invited me to join him in the tricycle which I did to avoid the scorching sun. He told me to preach to him about Ifá and I didn't even know where to start from, So I started at the beginning — that after the creation of the earth, Ifá was the knowledge given to humans to navigate their lives.

Things got interesting quickly.

His partner soon joined in, narrating the Quranic account of creation—the Garden, the Fall, and the story of how Èṣù (as they called him) refused to serve God and was cast down to tempt mankind. I stopped them there.

"That wasn't Èṣù," I said. "That was Shaitan."

They argued they were the same, but I challenged the logic: Why give Prophet Adam a foreign name, yet insist on giving the "devil" a Yorùbá one?

But Èṣù is not Shaitan, I continued. Èṣù is a divine messenger. He is the enforcer of Ọrúnmìlà's word. He carries prayers between humans and the heavens. He does not deceive — he reveals. The conflation was not theology. It was a colonial translation error that has caused our own people to fear a part of themselves.

The Logic of the Teacher and the Father

He then threw a question at me that goes like this: "If your father sent you to school, your teacher thought you well, and you later became successful, would you thank your father or your teacher?" I replied saying you should thank both of them.

He later went on to ask if praising the teacher without the father is good and I said 'no'. Finally he asked why then do we (Ifá practitioners) praise Ifá instead of Olodumare? I answered with a question, asking him why he assumed we do not.

He said 'Saheed Osupa' sang a song a few days prior, saying whenever he wakes up, he greets his Ifá first.

He asked me how we praised Olódùmarè, and I went on to explain the divinity hierarchy to him, telling him the irúmọlès are intermediaries between the heavens and earth (Olódùmarè and humans) so whenever we ask for something from them, we are asking them to tell Olódùmarè what we need and when he provides, we go back to Ifá to thank Him (Olódùmarè) for granting our request, we also praise Olódùmarè in our songs and prayers.

Reimagining Service: The Concept of Ìsìn

He asked one final question: if we do not serve Olódùmarè, when then do we offer sacrifice?

I walked him through the concept of Ìsìn. The word is rooted in sìn — to serve. But service in the Yorùbá sense is not submission to a demanding authority. It is a function of assistance. In our tradition, Olódùmarè does not demand service from us — he provides it. He gives us food, clothing, shelter. He meets our needs when we go to him through the intermediaries.

I told him communications are done in the Yorùbá tradition through the intermediaries, he nodded along, while adding that that just the same way the Christian pray in Jesus name and Muslims invoke the prophet.

Reflection

I wish we could discuss more, but my boss arrived at this point, so he just said he would love to listen to me tell him more later, after which I left to work

I couldn't help but reflect on the irony of our discussion. Here was a man of my own blood, speaking my own tongue, yet viewing his ancestral spiritual technology through a lens polished by foreign translations. The moment he equated the mischievous but divine messenger Èṣù with the biblical or quranic Shaitan, the gap between our understanding felt miles wide, but as our discussion came to a sudden end, it provides the very language we need to navigate the world, one "preach" at a time, unlearning the errors of the past to find the truth of the present.

The Tricycle Theology: A Morning Dialogue on Ifá

Share this post