Olojo Festival 2021: Ooni Begins Seven Days Seclusion

By Yinka Kolawole

The Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, has kick-started this year’s Olojo festival in Ile-Ife, Osun State, with the traditional seven-day seclusion where he’s expected to commune with his ancestors for the people of Ile-Ife, all descendants of Oduduwa worldwide and Nigeria as a country.

Ogunwusi, while answering questions at his Ile-Oodua palace, Ile-Ife, before heading into the seven-day seclusion to commune with the gods ahead of the Olojo festival, pledged to pray to his ancestors and God to touch the heart of Nigerian politicians and changed them towards loving the people, saying Nigerian politicians are the same irrespective of their parties, challenging them to start serving the people genuinely and stop taking the country for granted.

The natural head of the Oduduwa race worldwide, who insisted there is no difference among Nigerian politicians, stated that they have all cross-carpeted from one major political party to another to protect their interests.

According to him, “We believe in the forces of nature for nature to conspire in our favour, but every other thing in our country is man-made. Our politicians will take credit for solving insecurity issue, but they are the ones that caused it. I will go again to seclusion for God to touch their hearts for them to stop playing all of us like game.

“They should be more sensitive about the people because it is one political movement. They are just crisscrossing from one political party to another in order to retain their positions. We have one political party in this country, same value, same character, and same politician. But I am going to go into seclusion for God to touch their hearts to stop playing games with the lives of Nigerians. It is about time for them to realise that they should serve us genuinely because we cannot continue this way.

“This time, it is a serious one; it is a request on behalf of the people, Oduduwa race and by extension our dear country Nigeria. I am going for God to touch their heart, and I am going to really pray to my ancestors. We are just deceiving ourselves that they (politicians) are different, they are the same. All of them have crossed to the major parties, but Nigeria is above them all.”

He added: “First of all I thank God Almighty and the spirit of our ancestors that have been guiding us thus far, God has really helped us with the pandemic issue because we won’t have been able to handle it if we compare the things we have been doing with other nations. We have every cause to be thankful to God.

“They said we are spiritual, but it is working for us in this country; so we have every cause to thank God Almighty,. We should not rest our oars. I am going into seclusion which is the sixth in my reign. I inherited the tradition from my ancestors thousands of years ago.”

To participate in this edition of the Olojo festival in Ile-Ife, foreigners from America and Brazil have started arriving the country, as many of them were sighted at the Ooni’s Palace to join in the procession accompanying the Ooni to the Ile Imole, venue of the seven-day seclusion location in the ancient town, which is the cradle and traditional headquarters of the Oduduwa race worldwide.