Prof. Joseph Omosade Awolalu: The Reverend Canon Who Had Strong Fraternal Bond With African SpiRITUALity and Cultural Heritage

For the past three weeks, and still counting, we have been very busy, expediting strides on Centre for the Propagation of Ilaje Cultural Heritage-CEPICH  and Aderibigbe Olomola  maiden publication. Despite the Founder/Director Amb. Stephen Ajimisan 's busy schedules, he makes it a priority to deliver at least three profiles or pictorial. Interestingly, many of my messages seeking clarity, requesting new information or direction meet Ambassador on transit or amidst the busiest day. For me, I work into the nights. At times, until 3 or 4 a.m., because after surfing/collating, I still need to work on our upcoming film. I have barely had time to visit the Editor’s studio, and I have had to adjust several schedules to ensure that we meet CEPICH and CEPETH project delivery. Hectic it has been. However, equally insightful and creatively illuminating.

In the course of this work, I have come across Ilaje personalities with multiple identities yet with gargantua impact on the sands of time. Real legends who gave their all to humanity and apparently, were still staunchly committed and connected to God. Among such towering personalities is late Prof. Joseph Omosade Awolalu (1929-2024).

Prof. Joseph Omosade Awolalu, a truly lustrous personality and whose life was a bond/a nexus between dual worlds - academic and spiritual/traditional and Christian. Late Prof. Joseph Omosade Awolalu's bond with these worlds was not merely mystifying but profoundly illuminating and thought-provoking. 

Oh, I see you are batting eyes at such contrast? Prof. Joseph Omosade Awolalu was born on October 30, 1929 in Igbo-Egunrin in Ilaje Local Government.  He studied Religious Studies/African Traditional Religion (ATR) and also became a Professor of lofty academic ranking and impeccability, who served as Head of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Ibadan. He was also a respectable Clergy - a Reverend Canon and this should apparently bring to your subconsciousness two salient worlds and his eventual ascension into the metaphysical state makes for an inquisitive excursion. 

Guess what. Chill first.

While surfing the cyber space for Prof. Awolalu’s pictures (a task still ongoing), I came across a plethora of highly instructive and intellectually engaging publications. Prof. Joseph Omosade Awolalu was one personality who must have had countless peregrinations into the worlds of Irunmoles, the Orisa, and the metaphysical imaginations of sorcerers and witches, yet must have remained strongly devoted  to Olodumare. Don't doubt it!

Prof. Joseph Awolalu consistently wrote on Yoruba traditional, and by extension African traditional religion, culture, and heritage with undoubted impeccability, scholarly articulacy and lustrous accuracy. In fact, from an insider's perspective and not Eurospective. He wielded that rare aura and mastery that make one wonders of he was Sheku, sheye. But his authenticity and Impeccability are felt right on the pages of his books and immediately you dispel such thought.

Some of his publications include; Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites, West African Traditional Religion, and Religion and Moral Instruction. One of his notable articles is, "Sin and its Removal in African Traditional Religion". This article published in 1976 explores the concept of sin and atonement from an indigenous African perspective/purview.

Away from writings, Prof. Joseph Omosade Awolalu played the harmonium and piano. This perhaps was more than a moment of musical soothing and gratification. It must have been his soulful connection to Eledumare and invoking the extra-terrestrial for inspiration and insightful writings.

Prof. Joseph Omosade Awolalu was an academic principality, a reservoir of indigenous knowledge and an authority in western religion.

Trained/acquired diverse certificates in/from Nigeria, Ghana, New York, and London, Prof. Awolalu never abandoned the African SpiRITUALity or worldview. He can rightly be described as a principality of African SpiRITUALity, a true oracle of Olodumare and a poignant link between dual worlds.

If a scholar of his caliber and ranking, highly read, globalized, and ordained into the PRIESTHOOD spoke and wrote extensively on African traditional religion/SpiRITUALity, heritage, and rites without painting them as evil, why then do many contemporary missionaries, many of which are not even vast in indigenous knowledge, African spiRITUALity and worldview continue to paint them as wholly retrogressive, demonic, or destructive?

Today, doesn't it amaze you that the same West or white folks, who once made conscious and dastardly vile strides to destroy African traditional religion, expunge indigenous knowledge, and take-over African lands during colonial expeditions, that also stole genuine African oracles and artpieces/artifacts and are today safeguarding those stolen oracles and artpieces/artifacts in their museums?

Again, isn't it funny that quite an impressive numbers of the West or White folks who once described African Traditional Religion and practices as barbaric, evil and retrogressive, are embracing African spiRITUALity as enthusiasts and adherents. Apparently, unless we value our own (cultural heritage), other people will snatch it from us. They will even go as far as redefining them, make money from them and invest the returns in their economy.

Look around the world today, you would observe in scholarship, especially in the diaspora that there is a resurgence of interest in African worldviews and indigenous knowledge. This ranges from medicine, history, and economy to politics, magic, and sorcery. Yet, religious institutions and clergymen in Africa are funnily still bent on destroying Ogwa (traditional temples) in their villages, frank at suggestions to establish Centres for African Indigenous Medicine and Traditional Rites but would quickly pick stones and join the mob to kill an innocent child accused of witchcraft or a wife accused of infidelity. In fact, many African clergymen today self-righteously and ecstatically define God/the Creator/Orisa Nla only in the Islamic and Christian Religion perspective and anyone who doesn't worship God/Orisa Nla in tandem to their definition or what their Holy Books prescribed is a pagan and condemned to eternal damnation/hellfire.

If Africa must witness holistic progress and catch up with the developed worlds, then, knowledge must be decolonized, de-radicalized and a monolithic look through only the lens of Western religion must be halted. There must be a fusion of both indigenous and western, science and witchcraft, medicine and technology, humanity and divinity, spirituality without facade, and the kind of spirituality that understand the reality, and will readily allow science, technology and sound African philosophy to roll into one for holistic human and infrastructural development is what we need. Anything contrary is hypocrisy.

© Ikuemonisan Bababo Major

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