Made conspicuous probably by its location, though few people are aware that Onipepeiye, a village in Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State, South-West Nigeria, is queer in many respects. EMMANUEL ADENIYI and EBENEZER ADUROKIYA visited the village and wrote about its people, its rich cultural patrimony and the village’s aversion to chickens.
IT is a village of many parts. A settlement hemmed in by thick luxuriant forest with many oddities. Apart from deriving its name from ducks, that is a place where ducks are reared, Onipepeiye, a village located off Abeokuta-Sagamu express way in Ogun State, is also a queer settlement with unquenchable aversion to rearing of chickens.
Onipepeiye is a few kilometers away from Abeokuta, Ogun State capital city. The winding, untarred road leading to the village is replete with potholes gaping at vehicles as if ready to swallow them in a gulp. To get there, you need to keep trailing the road that snakes into the village and have your vehicle jostled by every pebble it steps on as you negotiate its twisting and rough surface.
The first sign of life and perhaps the only trace of civilization in the village is a block industry owned by a native of the village. Located a few meters away from the industry is a forlorn looking mosque and a 42-year-old Christ Apostolic Church, built among a few residential houses in the village. The only primary school in Onipepeiye is a giant wreck, begging for repairs.
It is a community of tradition. A place that is still in touch with the cultural patrimony of its forebears. It is also a village of contrast. One thing is forbidden and another is allowed. You dare not rear chickens in the village! It is a taboo, whereas ducks are treated like kings.
Piqued by the news of incessant ghastly motor accidents that had claimed lives at the entrance of the village and the queer report often heard about the community, Sunday Tribune went there and spoke with some people about the village, its origin and inhabitants.
Baring his mind to Sunday Tribune on the reason chickens are forbidden in the village, Baale Onipepeiye, Chief Adekunle Diyaolu, said it was Ifa oracle that prohibited the birds from the village. He disclosed that the founder of the town, Laademo and some other people, who assisted in founding the village about 500 years ago, never for once reared chickens.
“The founders of the village, our fore-fathers, said no chickens must be seen in the village. It is a taboo. Ifa oracle forbids it. If anyone buys it, it must be slaughtered that day and must not be allowed to live till the following day. If it cackles, it will be seized and sacrificed to Esu Abule.
"Not that we hate chickens, we do buy and eat them. They are our delicacy, but we don’t allow them to move around in the village, let alone for them to cackle. It is forbidden,” Chief Diyaolu added.
The Baale said the repercussion of having chickens stray in the village was damning. “If chickens appear in the village lives will be lost. Children and women will die like fowls. We must never break this law. The consequences are too great to bear.
"You don’t say the mouths of elders are dirty or stinking. We know the consequences and we will never go against the will of the gods. When you are warned not to do anything, it is better one obliges. We are Yorubas, and this is what our elders warned us against. The practice of forbidding chickens here is as old as the village itself.”
Asked why the village was named after ducks, he revealed that their forefathers gave it that name. Baale Diyaolu disclosed that there was a reservoir of water in the village where the ducks often hibernate, saying the water of the reservoir is used as medicine for the people of the village.
“The water is given to the newly born babies and our pregnant women. It is called Ogodo or Koto Abalaye. When taken, our pregnant women would deliver easily. The newly born would also become healthy with no traces of illness. There is no child born in this village that does not drink from Ogodo. When we are sick, we drink from the water and the sickness would vanish.
“The ducks are reared in this reservoir. Ogodo is a place where all rain waters in the village are collected. Ducks play in the water inside it and add potency to it,” he noted.
Though no ducks were seen in Ogodo when Sunday Tribune visited the village as the reservoir was completely dry, the Baale said, the ducks, which are reared and sold by villagers, had been taken to nearby village because of the scarcity of water due to prolonged dry season. He said the village where the ducks were taken to had access to fresh water, noting that ducks are aquatic animals that need water that can sustain them.
Speaking on festivals celebrated in the village, Chief Diyaolu declared that the inhabitants of the village are Muslims and Christians, adding that they always perform some sacrifices to Esu Abule and Alale Abule.
“We often sacrifice a ram to Alale and pour a libation of schnapps to it. It is our guiding spirit. It protects and saves us from calamity and danger. If any war breaks out or there is a crisis coming to the village, it is Alale that will fight for us and defeat the enemy. As small as we are, no enemy can conquer us because our guiding spirit will take up the battle for us.
“Esu Abule often accepts a cock from us at every festival we hold. Esu is also a guardian of the community. It collaborates with Alale to ensure the general well-being of the community.
"Both guardians are powerful. They always appear to citizens of Onipepeiye anywhere in the world and protect them. If our children abroad are having any problem, they will appear to them and ask them to offer sacrifices. If they offer the sacrifices, that will be the end of the problem.
“Apart from these festivals which hold in July, we don’t celebrate other festivals, except general ones like Christmas and Eid-el-Fitri. We are a caring and hospitable people. Strangers live among us, and some of them have even been integrated that you will think they are natives,” he said.
Baale Diyaolu debunked the allegation that the junction leading to the village has served as a spot where many lives have been lost to motor accidents. He said there was nothing fetish or preternatural about the junction, adding that some people only want to smear the image of the village and its people by portraying them as being fetish.
He told Sunday Tribune that most accidents that occurred along Abeokuta-Sagamu expressway are always erroneously linked to Onipepeiye junction.
“The motor accident that claimed the life of a nollywood actor and a few others recently, some people claimed, occurred at the junction of our village. That is not true.
"When accidents occur at Iyana Asu and Kobape, which are miles away from here, people would cunningly put the location as Onipepeiye. It is wrong. Though we often give sacrifices at the junction, they are meant to protect the inhabitants of the community and not to harm anybody,” he disclosed.
Commenting on the orthography of the village’s name, Onipepeiye, and why it does not agree with Yoruba spelling system that forbids the use of two vowel letters in a word, Baale Diyaolu said that was how their forefathers handed it over to them. He noted that it would be wrong for anybody to spell it "Onipepeye", instead of Onipepeiye.
He said the Ogun State Government and Obafemi Owode Local Government had not done anything to better the lives of people in the village. He decried the bad shape of the road leading to the village, saying it equally has no potable water.
“We go as far as Owode to buy water at N30 per liter. The road you see here was graded four years ago. Our primary school is in a state of disrepair.
"What we do is to contribute money to repair it, but there is limitation to our communal efforts. Our children trek about two and half kilometers daily to go to school at Kobape. There is no clinic here.
"We go to Kobape for such things. Yet, the government claimed it had delivered dividends of democracy to its people, we are completely left out. There is no dividend here. As you can see, there is nothing to show for it in the village. We have no representative in government and they keep fooling us about democracy,” he lamented.
Chief Oloruntoyin Soneye, the owner of the blockmaking industry in the village, said he had always been supplying the community with water from his tank, noting that scarcity of drinkable water is one of the greatest problems that people of the village grapple with. He, therefore, appealed to the state government to assist in changing the situation.
Nothing, in the real sense, can disprove it that Onipepeiye, the land of ducks, is an Ogun community in search of water and civilisation. Afterall, water brings life and refreshes tired souls.
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