Festus Adedayo
Late Afrobeat superstar, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, in his early musical ensemble days as Africa ‘70, recalibrated a folklore that told the story of food shortage and hunger. The folklore, which Fela entitled Alujanjankijan brims with the motif of greed and its implications. The hunger folktale goes thus: Long time ago, a very severe famine hit the animal kingdom, leading to intense food crisis. As against the predictions of diviners called to seek the face of divinities for solution, hunger continued to ravage the land, so much that the kingdom’s silos were completely depleted. Lion, the king of the jungle and the monarch of the kingdom, called a meeting of all known animals. After all, don’t the elders say, though “eat” and “become” are rendered same way in Yoruba lingual representation, what to eat occupies a higher hierarchical ladder than what we want to become? (Ohun t’a o je l’agba ohun t’a o je). With hunger pelting their bellies, all the animals literally crawled to the central square. Lion, with his hitherto luxuriant but now withered mane, cleared his throat and spoke. There was no gainsaying that the food crisis in the kingdom would prove fatal, leading to animals dying in droves, he said. Except urgent and quick remedy was procured, Lion underscored the calamity ahead. A drastic action was agreed, to wit, every mother of each animal must be offered in martyrdom to ensure a continuation of the animal race. The agreed modus operandi was that each of those mothers must be brought to the square and mutually devoured, for the sustenance of the race.