When the gods contest for supremacy in Wale Talabi’s ‘Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon’

By Anote Ajeluorou
THE fight for supremacy in the supernatural cuts across. When Satan rose up against God in the Heavens, many angels who felt the need for liberty went along with him and were ousted from their otherwise exalted positions, and they came down to earth but with disastrous consequences for man. Naamah or Nneoma (who is anything but a good mother; in fact, she isn’t a mother at all) and her sister Lilith were among those who dared to be free. Lilith would fall in love with disastrous consequences that would cause a painful separation between sisters, with Nneoma bearing the scars of that separation all her life. Ironically, it’s this painful separation that brings her into collision with Shigidi and the Yoruba god pantheon, and Shango contesting for supremacy with Olorun who retired long ago, but is staging a comeback to counter Shango’s overbearing influence. How does this power play pan out in Wole Talabi’s Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (Masobe Books, Lagos; 2023)?
Like the Heavenly God of the Christians, Olorun had entrusted leadership of the Yoruba spirit company in the hands of Shango, who in turn becomes despotic, and is taking more than his fair share of the prayer offerings from worshippers, and giving handouts to smaller spirit entities like Shigidi, who is a nightmare god, a messenger of evil to willing human acolytes who desire death for their rivals. In Shigidi, Talabi equates spirit realms to company status. The Yoruba spirit company, like others all over the world, has taken a hit from the incursions of spirit companies from the Christian and Muslim worlds, with the result that their worshippers are dwindling, so too are the offerings coming in as against what these two foreign spirit companies are raking in. There’s a crisis of sorts and the gods are mulling their next line of action to rein in the decline in influence among their own people and the next generation of would-be worshippers.
Of course, modernity isn’t helping matters much either. Even the deployment of Nollywood films as a counter-measure falls flat on its face, as the gods. Since the invention of small pox vaccine, Sopono is starved to death for lack of offerings from parents of afflicted children. The same fate stares the other gods in the face. However, the confrontation between Olorun and Shango brings matters to a head. Olorun feels a weakening in his powers even as Shango has lost his fire-spitting arm to Shigidi in a contest Olorun takes sides. But Shango won’t give up so easily on the elevated position he has enjoyed; he’s ready to fight Olorun and possibly oust him forever and remain supreme. Olorun sees what the danger of losing power to Shango means, a remote possibility he can’t stomach. What does he do? He must retrieve the brass head of Obalufon, the third Ooni of Ife who Olorun helped secure his throne when Oranmiyan assassins cornered him. The powers Olorun gave him back then was also for safe-keeping awaiting when Olorun will need it, like now in his contest with Shango. But that power, buried with Obalufon in a totem fashioned in the form of his brass head and buried with him long ago, had been dug up and stolen, and is sitting pretty in the British Museum, the mother warehouse of all artefact ever stolen in history!

There are boundaries among spirit companies. Olorun cannot just waltz into the British Museum to stake a claim to what rightly belongs to him. Even among the spirit companies, diplomacy is in operation; you thread within your own boundary. The London spirit company counterpart will not allow it, not to mention the special branch of the spirit secret service that guards the museum. In one of Shigidi’s mission to claim a human life, as instructed by Eshu-Elegba in Lagos, Shigidi encounters a beautiful but powerful spirit entity who beats him to his task to claim the victim. What is worse, this female spirit beauty sets upon him and renders him powerless, not only to enable him fulfil his mission, he’s nettled such he is under her spell. In fact, Nneoma is already feasting on Shigidi’s target. The epic fight that renders Shigidi useless also brings him respite from the harsh conditions under which he works for Shango and his wife Oya who supervises his work of nightmare magic. Eventually, some accord is struck between the two feuding spirit entities, and they eventually enter into a partnership.
While the fight lasted, they both sensed in each other what they lacked. They aare both lonely. Shigidi is rendered an impish spirit with the most ugly feature unlike Nneoma who’s a radiant beauty. But she promises him an improved being if only he were to have sex with her; it would be his first time. It’s her weapon of conquest with men and women. Once she has sex with a human being, she gains more powers while the human being dies off; she feeds on their being. But sex with Shigidi who would experience it for the first time becomes his recreation from ugliness to the sort of handsomeness only dreamed of. Shigidi cannot believe his remarkable transformation and luck. A partnership is struck between him and Nneoma; they would fight together, make love, feed on human spirits together, and Shigidi is promised freedom from Shango and Oya’s influence. But Shango and his three wives are bidding their time to strike. When they do, Olorun intervenes and Shango’s hand is stuck in Shigidi’s body who would use it for Olorun’s supremacy battle against Shango.
By intervening in Shigidi and Shango’s fight, a deal is struck between Nneoma and Olorun that becomes a debt to be repaid in future. In Olorun’s eventual run in with Shango who controls the Yoruba spirit company, Olorun calls on Nneoma and Shigidi on the debt repayment that involves entering the British Museum to recover the brass head of Obalufon. This is certainly not a small assignment; it has the potential to either claim their lives or get them trapped in that spirit part of the world. But success will guarantee Shigidi a return to Yorubaland…
In this high stake heist of a spirit entity, Talabi weaves a tale of universal spiritual dimension that throws up ancient gods and powers and how they interact at spheres beyond the realms of man. Shigidi and Nneoma’s entry and exit at the British Museum is nothing but spectacularly thrilling storytelling. Even among the gods, there’s the refinement of love, and faith in love that energises Shigidi’s healing. Although created as an ugly god, Shigidi is part of Olorun’s power armour that completes Olorun’s power matrix particularly when Obalufon’s brass head merges with Shigidi’s body. Only his love for Nneoma becomes his redemption. Love, even among the gods, is a redeeming power.
Talabi’s Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon is Africa’s vintage science fiction, also sometimes called Africa futurism in its deployment of Africa’s supernatural elements – the gods and ancestors – in telling their story, their relationship with humans, how the gods operate and their place in man’s life. Talabi’s depiction of the Yoruba pantheon in a grand council to decide their own fate in the face of erosion of worship and offerings by the grandchildren of their once swooning acolytes is instructive of changing times and seasons in the affairs of men and gods. The gods present a pitiable aspect as they lament the absence of sacrifice enough to sustain them. Being starved of sacrifice or offering is the gods’ biggest nightmare. It’s no surprise that Shigidi jumps at Nneoma’s offer of freedom from the service of an overbearing Shango who appropriates all offerings to himself and his three corpulent wives.
Talabi’s Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon easily lends itself to cinematic possibilities. Its free-ranging, kaleidoscopic narrative verve will make for a good cinema. But will filmmakers look its way for its cinematic merit? The novel’s epic range of thought and god characters makes it a book to read. If anything, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon is a book for the future Talabi that has written, for the Yoruba never to forget their pantheon of gods and what it meant to be one in the days of yore!