Marxism and Yoruba Ifa

By Prof Moyo Okediji

“Much of what is theorized as Marxism is already in Ifa,” Baba D8 told me. D8—“Dẹ̀jọ̀,” short for his full name, Ọládẹ̀jọ Okediji—was my father.

As an undergraduate at the University of Ife, whenever I was excited by something new I had learned, I would keep it in my left hand until the weekend, when I went home to collect my stipend and relate everything to my father.

But when Dr. Makinde, the philosophy professor, gave a talk about Marx and Engels and their explanation of capitalism, I was so energized that I did not wait until the weekend.

I ran straight home after the lecture to tell him about the most fascinating theories of social organization and economics.

I found him, as usual, by his typewriter at home, alone, pounding the keys. He would be writing a story, poem, play, or just rhetoric, a bottle of beer by his side.

I can’t handle alcohol. It spoils my mood. I developed a dislike for it quite early. At about age four, I saw my father drinking his beer jẹ́jẹ́—gently—and I begged him for a drink.

He poured it into a cup and offered me a sip.

I loved the bubbly golden foam of cold Star Lager!

Then I tasted it.

It was so bitter that the moment my tongue came in contact with it, the bitterness ran through my entire system and I couldn’t swallow it.

“Don’t spit it out,” my father said. “You begged for it. You can’t waste my beer.”

That was the last day I craved beer.

I concluded nobody in their right mind should go near it.

But my father drank it like it wasn’t bitter, even smacking his lips.

In the evening, my mother would join him, but she drank a small bottle of Guinness stout—which I discovered was even worse in taste than beer.

My understanding at age four was that men drank beer, women drank stout, and I drank water.

So, when I ran home that afternoon to inform my father about Marx and Engels—their theories of the inevitable collapse of capitalism because of its inherent contradictions—he listened without interrupting me.

He waited for me to finish.

“Are you done?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Capitalism will never collapse,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Because it is nothing new, in various ways, since the beginning of time,” he said. “Kò sí ohun tuntun lábẹ́ ọ̀run—under the sun, there is nothing new; not even Marxism.”

“We Yoruba people didn’t have Marxism,” I corrected him.

I learned early to speak up. He instructed me that Àìlè lanu sọ̀rọ̀ ni ìbẹ̀rẹ̀ orí burúkú: your inability to speak up brings nothing but misfortune.

I am very shy, but not when it comes to speaking.

Nowadays I don’t speak much any longer—I’m old—but as a young man, try me.

“There is nothing in Marxism that Ifa has not defined,” my father said. “Ifa, unfortunately, is shrouded in mysticism and performance art.”

“How does Ifa speak about Marxism?”

“That there are two ethnicities in the world: Olówó and Òtòṣì (the wealthy and the poor).” Baba D8 explained. Olówó ń sọ̀rẹ́ olówó; Òtòṣì ń sọ̀rẹ́ òtòṣì: the rich keep company with the rich, the poor with their kind.

“But that’s a proverb,” I reminded him.

“All proverbs are abstracted from Ifa,” he said. “You may not know the exact verse from which it came, because many Ifa verses are extinct; as diviners transition, many take with them their best verses. Even more verses have been distorted or updated, because Ifa is a living archive anchored in the changing ways of the people. There is nothing ‘tuntun’ under the sun: the past is a mirror of the present, which reflects the future.”

“Then what does tuntun mean?” I pressed him. “If it has no use, why invent the word?”

He sipped his beer.

“Tuntun is onomatopoeic,” he said. “Something that vibrates, flashes, flickers—tun-tun. The more you repeat it, the more it vibrates. You could say ‘tuntun tuntun.’ You take something old, reinterpret it to fit the present, and it becomes more alive; it is reborn. That is tuntun.”

We were drifting from Marx; you never wanted Baba D8 going off too far on a tangent. Kò ní fi ìkan pe méjì.

“The two ethnicities in Nigeria are not Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Kanuri, or any of the languages spoken on the radio,” Baba said. “They are the rich and the poor. The rich hang out with the rich, the poor with the poor—and never shall the two meet.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he affirmed. “And never shall the two mix. Ifa says Àìjẹun sùn ẹkùn, kò ní ṣojú ajá: if there’s nothing for the rich to eat, they snack on the poor.”

“Ha!” I exclaimed.

“All the rich people have places where they meet and decide the fate of the poor: Awolowo, Akintola, Sardauna, Ahmadu Bello, Enahoro—they are members of the same ethnic group. You and I belong to another ethnic group.”

“But when you explain it like that,” I remarked, “it makes more sense to me. Why are they not teaching Ifa to us like that at the university? My Ifa classes are just about memorizing verses and reciting them. Marxism, when I read it, is so abstract, and the language so inaccessible.”

“You need Ifa Tuntun to do that,” Baba said. “Ifa that could illuminate your new world, with new insights. Otherwise, what already exists in your culture would be presented to you as something new. The typical babalawo doesn’t know Marxism. Marx and Engels don’t know Ifa. They are saying the same thing, but in different ways. Take the literature of Ifa—Abimbola has published several texts—and take the writing of Karl Marx. Extrapolate meaning from both, and you have Ifa Tuntun.”

When Baba Abimbola later said there is no Ifa Tuntun, tears almost streaked down my face as I recalled the words of Baba D8.

Poof! Another African library went up in flames, and only the smoke is left to waft in the air.

That is, for me, one of the origins of Ifa Tuntun.

This picture, which I completed yesterday, is titled Èjì Ogbè.
Acrylic on canvas.
January 2026
24’ x 36.

If you understand the code of Ifa, you would see the Eji Ogbe codes marked on the Bàǹtẹ́ of the Babaláwo in the center of the painting.