Tomi Falade’s dramatic historicisation of female agency, Ondo founding in ‘Ọlọ́bùn’
By Anote Ajeluorou
FOUNDING and founders of villages, towns and cities and the origins of a people are usually traced to the male folks who are naturally adventurous in making names for themselves and creating historical pathways. But sometimes history has a cynical, if deviant, aspect to it that confounds and even inspires and conspires. Ondo town could be associated with such historical subversion with its founding attributable to a woman of royal blood from the ancient Oyo empire. But history is not a lineal affair; it has tributaries that diverge from noble intersection, as Tomi Falade’s historical play Ọlọ́bùn (Kiyesola Media, Lagos; 2024) sets out to tell the world. It has as subtitle ‘Matriarch of Ondo, Mother lof Legacy’.
The fate of newborn twins to ancient Alaafin Oluaso of Oyo triggers a series of terrible events that would culminate in the founding of Ondo by a woman. And to better understand this piece of historical subversion of a female town founding, the playwright puts the feminist affirmative words in the mouth of the fertility river goddess Osun in her interaction with the maverick war god Ogun as she asserts:
“The truth is that men forget that women are a deliberate creation. That is why the strength of a women goes beyond her ability to bear pain in silence; it is her ability to evolve into who is needed at every point in history: a warrior, a mother, a friend, a lover, a healer, a leader or even a monarch. In the end, she becomes stronger and unafraid to fight for her happiness. But must she suffer to become all this?”
And Ogun deftly parries her with his own clever repost: “I see you are getting passionate. It is a matter for another day. Let us focus on rescuing Olobun. I am sure that as man evolves, so will his understanding.”
Osun and Ogun’s encounter provides one sure fire romantic moment in the play that Falade titillates the readers with, as the gods work together to save the infant princess from the hands of assassins bent on undoing her at all cost, and retire to Osun’s inner chamber to work out their own intimate magic!
When the seer Fagboro pays the childless and bickering Fola and Aduke couple a visit on a stormy night, the stage is set for an ominous beginning for this nondescript husband and wife. But they do not know it yet until the visit while having dinner. For Aduke to have a chance at motherhood, she must step out of her house at the dead of night to a point in the village to make her supplications before the powers-that-be. She is instructed to bring back whatever she sees as she makes her way slowly home. Aduke is hesitant, but her childless state becomes the burden and sole motivation: every woman cherishes the joys of holding their child in their own arms!
But when she returns with a baby girl in a basket with visible scarification and royal beads, even the seer is confused and does not know what to make of Aduke’s weird find. But he has the presence of mind to advise them to leave town immediately before tongues start wagging over a mysterious child finding its way into childless Aduke’s arms. Years later when they return with their own child Omowamiri in tow, the seer Fagboro is still puzzled at how the grown girl Iyun’s new obsession with a former Alaafin Oranyan and her connection to Ile Oluyi; Alaafin Oranyan has been talking to her about her royal ancestry, and going as far as revealing her real name to her: Olobun. As her guardian and guide, Fola and Aduke must accompany Iyun on her journey and quest to discover the mystical Ile Oluyi village, her place of inheritance and link to her ancestry.
And like it happened in Calabar centuries ago; twins must be killed to avert the anger of the gods on Oyo. When Alaafin Oluaso’s favourite wife Olu is delivered of Olaude and Iyun as twins, tradition demands that they be killed. But the Alaafin is torn between duty to tradition and love to his beloved wife. But he finds small reprieve after consultation with the gods and is advised to send the twins out of Oyo city to the fringe to live as prince and princess without royalty in a place called Ile Oluyi. But some diehard traditionalists like Alaafin Oluaso’s courtier Alapini and Oyo priest Awokoya will not allow such abomination to taint the kingdom without challenging it.
Having been humiliated and imprisoned on account of Alaafin Oluaso’s new stance on the twins that negates tradition, they take matters into their own hands. They trace mother and twins on their journey and ambush them, and succeed in killing the boy Oluade, but are unable to lay their hands on Iyunola (Iyun). Not satisfied, the conspiring duo send assassins after the baby girl who kill the twins’ mother and Alaafin Oluaso’s wife but are still unable to find the baby. The mother’s trusted maid is able to hide the baby and sets her on a basket to float away in a river, but she doesn’t survive the attack. That is how Osun and Ogun intervene in the unfolding human drama; the baby survives the treachery from Alaafin Oluaso’s palace. When Princess Iyunola (now Ọlọ́bùn) and Alaafin Oluaso reunite amidst court intrigues that would have upended Olobun’s inheritance in Ile Iluyi and the unending court bickering, parents who give birth to twins get final reprieve, as Alaafin Oluaso proscribes the killing of twins in all of Oyo Kingdom.
Falade’s briliant historical dramatic offering on the founding of Ondo by a woman of royal descent is an instructive one that challenges the norm, and is therefore an example of the resilience women are capable in leadership positions. Iyunola is a child of destiny who almost lost out in the power struggles men instigate to usurp powers. But Alaafin Oluaso is a man of vision who saw beyond his time and recognised the female agency as a potent one capable of excelling just as the male. He would not yield Olobun’s regency to Obade to unjustly profit some of his palace courtiers even when the pressure from them is high. Alaafin Oluaso holds his women dear to heart and is ready to give them their due, not minding their sex. That is how he gifts his daughter Ọlọ́bùn Ile Iluyi as her inheritance, thus setting an unprecedented example in making a woman monarch, perhaps the first such monarchy in Yorubaland.
Falade’s play Ọlọ́bùn is not just a testament to female resilience but a tribute to the progressive ethos of a monarch who saw beyond his era. Falade’s dramatic offering is a reinforcement of how to nurture the female agency in power dynamics. In the realisation of Ọlọ́bùn’s claim to matriarchy and the monarchy, several women play roles towards her ascension. There is childless Aduke who claims an orphaned child in a night of uncertainty and thereby effectively opens her womb to receive children (Omowamiri); there is also the goddess Osun who works in concert with Ogun to thwart the evil machinations out to snuff life out of the baby princess, because she’s a twin. There’s Alaafin Oluaso’s only female courtier Iyaloja who stands resolute against the evil plots of fellow courtiers like Alapini and Bashorun. And of course, the seer Baba Fagboro and Fola (foster father) who guide Iyunola towards recovering her real name and purpose as Ọlọ́bùn, matriarch of Ondo, mother of legacy!
Olobun, a classic court drama written by a lifestyle, culture journalist and playwright Falade, provides rewarding read, and when put on stage will yield great dramatic experience for audiences. Her power of dramatic interplay of mystery and court palava is uniquely profound with the strands deftly woven to a dramatic resolution.
