In a new video released online, a traditional religion priestess, Yeye Ajesikemi Olokun Omolara Olatunji, said she was threatened and warned not to hold any Isese festival in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.
Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka has urged the Emir of Ilorin, Alhaji Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari to encourage peaceful cohabitation and stop religious intolerance and the harassment of adherents of religions different from Islam in his domain.
In a new video released online, a traditional religion priestess, Yeye Ajesikemi Olokun Omolara Olatunji, said she was threatened and warned not to hold any Isese festival in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.
Omolara bemoaned the unfortunate situation and disclosed that her life was in danger.
Meanwhile, the Osun devotee had reportedly released fliers announcing a three-day traditional event aimed at celebrating certain Yoruba deities.
But members of a Muslim group, Majlisu Shabab li Ulamahu Society went to her house to warn her to desist from holding the planned Isese festival.
On Sunday, Mallam Abdulazeez Arowona, the spokesman for the Emir of Ilorin, said that the monarch and the palace were in support of the Islamic group.
Arowona said the monarch had made a public declaration against such events, which he described as ‘idolatry’.
He added that Muslims in the city would oppose the Isese festival.
However, Soyinka, the Akintalun of Egba, Giiwa of Ijebu-Remo and Akogun of Isara, in an open letter written to the Emir on Thursday, said that “it is sad to see the ancient city of Ilorin, a confluence of faiths and ethnic varieties, reduced to this level of bigotry and intolerance, manifested in the role of a presiding monarch”.
The letter titled ‘ISESE FESTIVAL: An Open Letter to Sulu Gambari, ’reads in part, “The truncation of a people’s traditional festival is a crime against the cultural heritage of all humanity. Year after year, the Ramadan has been celebrated in this nation as an inclusive gathering of humanity, irrespective of divergences of belief.
“Not once, in my entire span of existence, have I encountered pronouncements by followers of any faith that the slaughtering of rams on the streets and market places is an offence to their concept of godhead. Vegetarians hold their peace. Buddhists walk a different path. Prior to Ramadan, non-moslems routinely join in observing the preceding season of fasting as a spiritual exercise worthy of emulation.
“Perhaps this is another occasion for self-introduction. I currently teach courses in Abu Dhabi in the Emirates. That is the region of Origin, all others are mere appendages. I was there just before Christmas. I passed through again in the countdown to Ramadan.
“On both occasions, the streets, businesses, hotel lobbies and other public spaces were lit up with the same festive spirit. Only the symbols within the designs were different. The mood of celebration was equally pervasive and inclusive. Painfully, my mind could not help but travel back home, and some years past, recalling for instance how a procession of Corpus Christ was once attacked, some killed, by a brood of moslem fanatics, for daring to process along the streets of that same Ilorin. Needless to say, such abominations have become routine. Community is sacrificed to bigotry.
“It may interest you to know that, in Abu Dhabi, numerous programmes are pursued, at government expense, for the evolution of a humanized community based on religious tolerance and mutual respect. By contrast here, several tiers removed from Origin, must we turn the turban of enlightenment into a crown of bigotry? And in a society whose very constitution that supposedly governs us all guarantees freedom of belief, association and movement?
“Your Royal Highness, it is conduct like this that has bred Boko Haram, ISIS, ISWAP and other religious malformations that currently plague this nation, spreading grief and outrage across a once peaceful landscape, degrading my and your existence with their virulent brand of Islam.
“It is conduct like this that has turned, before our very eyes, a once ecumenical city like Kaduna into a blood stained mockery of cohabitation. It is conduct like this that makes it possible for a young student, Deborah, to be lynched in the very presence of armed police, on mere allegation of having belittled the image of a revered prophet.
“It is action of this nature, perpetrated in obscure as well as prominent outlets of the nation that turns a young generation into mindless monsters, ever ready to swarm out and kill, kill, kill. Simply kill for the thrill of it, but under presumption of religious immunity. It is conduct like this that then nerves one extremist to wake up one day in a Scandinavian country, publicly announce his intention, and proceed to make a bonfire of copies of the Qu’ran. Reprisals follow, equally mindless, trapping humanity in an ever-ascending spiral of costly but gleeful violence.”