Iyan Ogun Odun: Acknowledgement and Reckoning. Should Nigerians mourn or mount? Part (1)

Across many North American universities, there is always a statement of reckoning and acknowledgement of indigenous owners of the lands on which universities were built who were displaced and dispossessed for the university to be built. Although reading history and observing events can sometimes lead one to believe that the reckoning with the past and acknowledgment of wrongs are merely performative, I believe that such steps are among the many necessary actions required to address a wrong that continues to manifest in various forms and mutations today (here I am nodding to Christina Sharpe). As part of the work of reckoning, the Southern Baptist denomination apologized for its support of slavery in June of 1995. Following in the same direction, the Catholic Church apologized to the Jewish people for its silence during the Holocaust. Their reckoning and acknowledgment do not exempt them or us from continually referencing the pain and atrocities of the church.

In the field of gynecology in the United States, there is a persistent call for reckoning with unethical medical practices and abuse of Black enslaved women whose violated bodies contributed to the development of the field of gynecology. It is this reckoning that made a group of medical students protest against a statue in honor of James Marion Simms, regarded as the father of American gynecology, at Central Park in New York, and its subsequent relocation elsewhere. Simms performed surgery on several enslaved Black women without anesthesia, and his findings became foundational to modern gynecology as a subfield in medicine. Let's not talk about Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer cell was taken without consent, or Black women of Mississippi in the "Mississippi appendectomy" scandal who were sterilized without their consent, including Fannie Lou Hammer.

I wonder if in Nigeria, we can talk honestly about the past without people throwing tantrums. Can we talk about the violence of colonialism, from the violence against women in the war of 1929 who were gunned down to the Enugu colliery shooting where police shot workers who were demanding fair wages and even the violence against nature and non-humans, without someone accusing us of performing victimhood and living in the past? In postcolonial Nigeria, can we talk about the lingering ghost and the wounds of the first coup in 1966, the civil war, and other atrocious incidents from Odi and Zaki-Bam, and most recently the Lekki Tollgate Massacre and other instances of state abuse of power without our patriotism being put into question.

Since Buhari passed away a few days ago, some people want to mourn, while others want to seize the moment. Mourn as in grief, mount as in ride on the wave to gloat, berate, reckon, and acknowledge past wrongs.

could this be why the Yoruba wisdom saying suggests, "Iyan ogun odun...". Please complete the statement if you are familiar with it.