ESU ELEGBARA, SATAN AND AL-SHAYTAN: DECOLONISING THE IDENTITY AND GOD-HEAD OF A YORUBA-MORPHIC DIVINITY - S. OLA AJIMISAN

Henry Louis Gates Jr wrote a lot about Esu Elegbara which I fondly praise as Esu of the hydra-shaped buttocks. The Yoruba's Esu is not the theological Satan in the Bible or Al-Shaytan in Islam. The Yoruba's Esu, in Yoru-theology or Afro-theology is a deity of Jekyll and Hyde character. He is benevolent, running errands for both humans and other divinities. He was and is still a jolly good fellow who has never, at any time, been involved in supremacist rumble with Edumare, the supreme architect and creator of the universe. He has always been a loyal minister to Edumare who created, appointed and gave him his ministerial portfolio. His temple is characteristically situated at the crossroads believed to be the meeting point of the living and the dead, the seen and the unseen forces. This explains the spiRITUAL significance of crossroads in the Yoruba belief system and Yoru-theology. That also explains why the "terrestrial elders" converge at crossroads to do and undo many surreptitious spiRITUALity. The crossroads is believed to be the theatre of life and death; and like the Biblical Bethel in the story of Jacob, the crossroads is the centre of or gateway to life and death; the meeting point of both union and disunity. Every community, in the pre-colonial period, had at least, the central place of worship of Esu. Some families have their separate shrines of Esu. The Shrine of Esu at Ode-Etikan, the traditional headquarters of Ilaje-Etikan, is located near the crossroads that leads to Ebute, into the town towards Oba Okunfeyiwa's house and the other route leading to the Anglican Church Road. That of Isale-Eko is located in the present-day Ojuelegba (Oju Elegbara). During the Eyo Adamuorisa Festival, the first spiRITUAL supplication, propitiation and sacrifice are observed there. How then did Esu, the benevolent Elegbara become the demon, Satan? It was the aftermath of Bishop Ajayi Crowder's translation of the Holy Bible from English into Yoruba Language. His translation of the Biblical Satan as Esu was sequel to colonial indoctrination or colonial subjugation of facts purported to paint African divinities as demonic principalities eternally deserving of exorcism. The indoctrination of Crowder to translate Esu as Satan is another area of study under Colonisation of Divinities. Bishop Crowder wrote what the European or colonial sponsors and publishers who wanted to sponsor his project wanted to hear and read about Africans and their divinities. This is revelatory of the facts that the Bible and Qur'an are replete with a catalogue of several other deliberate insertions, erroneous translations, misrepresentation and distortions to suit colonisation and demonisation of African Heritage and divinities. Several other parts of the holy books of the imported faiths are products of deliberate transplantation of the foreign culture into those books. Some of these acts are nothing but sheer glorification of foreign stuff above the indigenous. The Yoruba Esu is not the Biblical Satan or the Islamic Al-Shaytan. The god-head of Esu and those of other divinities can only be understood through the Yoru-theological, Yoru-epiphany or Yoru-canonical scriptures and texts.