The Fake Atheism of Prof. Wole Soyinka, Yoruba Orisa, IFA Divination, My Philosophy and Christianity

Famous Nigerian Nobel Laureate, Prof . Wole Soyinka, has stated that he does not believe in the God of either Christianity or Islam, describing himself instead as an atheist with strong spiritual awareness.

He made the remark during an interview with Larry Madowo on CNN, where he spoke about his personal beliefs and religious background.

https://www.nairaland.com/8653352/islamic-christian-god-not-belief#

I wrote the following in response:

Dear Prof. Wole Soyinka,
You are not an atheist if you believe in Orisa like Ogun and Sango or any spiritual core.
Except you are confused.

Atheists do not believe in God. Atheism is defined by a lack of belief in any gods or deities, or the rejection of the assertion that they exist. It is not a belief system, religion, or a shared set of doctrines, but rather a lack of belief.

The so called atheists in Africa are fake atheists like the first black Nobel Laureate of Literature, Prof. Wole Soyinka who says he does not believe in God, but believes in the Yoruba Orisa gods and goddesses.

Like saying you don't believe in the existence of God, but you believe in the existence of demons and spirits.

Africans reject atheism, because it is a a contradiction of African belief in the existence of the origin of humans on earth.

Not believing that God exists does not mean He does not exist.

It only means you are ignorant of His existence within the scope of your knowledge.

I believe in the Almighty God, because to doubt the existence of God is to doubt your existence.

If God does not exist, then we cannot exist.

We are the evidence of the existence of God.

My belief in God is based on personal conviction from logical analysis of both traditional Yoruba beliefs in IFA from my father who was both a Babalawo and Ogun priest and a certificated metaphysician.

He wrote his IFA Divination on notebooks like mathematics.

Believe it or not, he had powers and spoke in the strange tongue of marine spirits and my mother testified of seeing a mermaid once.

My elder sister confirmed the existence.

A female friend confirmed their existence.

IFA Divination is more than 2,500 years old before the birth of JESUS Christ.

And IFA did not deny the existence of God and JESUS Christ.

The mathematics of Ifá is a sophisticated, ancient West African system of combinatorics and binary logic used in divination to navigate probability and decision-making. It consists of 256 fundamental patterns (Odu) generated through 4-bit binary variation—a 16x16 system of single or double marks that pre-dates European binary logic. This system forms a closed, exact logical universe mapping 16 major Odu and 240 derivative Odu.

Like computer algorithms, Ifá uses data encoding and retrieval, showing parallels to the computer science concept of 4-bit and 8-bit systems.

Obi Abata (Cola acuminata) is a four-lobed kola nut native to West Africa, crucial to Yoruba culture, tradition, and Ifá spirituality. It is used in prayers, offerings to Orisha/Ancestors, and divination, generally symbolizing hospitality, friendship, and the balance of masculine and feminine energies.

The number 4 is significant in both geometry and symmetry of mathematics in art and science and religion.

In physics, In physics, the number 4 is foundational, appearing prominently as the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear, weak nuclear), the four dimensions of spacetime (

space +
time), and the four quantum numbers used to fully define an electron's state in an atom. 

Coming to Christian religion.

How can anyone explain how Prophet Isaiah who was a real historical person, widely believed by scholars to be a prophet who lived and ministered in Jerusalem during the 8th century BCE (approximately 742 BCE) accurately prophesied the birth, place of birth and death of JESUS Christ over 400 years before JESUS was born?" And the family tree of JESUS Christ is a historical fact.

The Binary Systems of AFA, IFA and EPHA Divinations and Computer Science

#God

#revelation

AFA Divination System of the Igbos of south east region of Nigeria, IFA Divination System of the Yorubas of south west region and Epha Divination System of the Urhobos of the mid-west region have the same origins of the binary system used in computer science.

Coincidence?

Nope. 

Origins? Between the first and third millennium BCE.

Of course I can do further research on the historical origins, but I don't want to. 

The Great Commission is my mission on earth. Finis.

But why do I have deeper revelations of the origins of the Igbos, Yorubas and Urhobos?  Because they have been revealed to me for a higher knowledge of the universe.

When I say you don't know who I am if you have not read my books, I am not joking. And only fools will lie that they know who they don't know the origins.

Only Almighty God knows who I am. 

Those who have the intellectual and spiritual insights to read between the lines of what I have been publishing in prose and verse on Instagram and my blogs will understand me thoroughly.

How can you traverse the universe,

When you have chosen not to see beyond your nose?

- Ekeyerengozi MichaeI Chima, 

Author of "The Prophet Lied" and other books distributed by Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other booksellers worldwide.

Viva Riva, Beyond the Nollywood Fever and Palaver

Viva Riva, Beyond the Nollywood Fever and Palaver


This weekend as the Congolese gangster thriller Viva Riva opens in theatres in Los Angeles, U.S.A, it should be a wakeup call to Nollywood that what matters most is not the quantity of your movies, but the quality in Art and craft of filmmaking beyond the get-rich-quick syndrome of churning out cheap home videos of Nigerian comedies and tragedies from Idumota to Onitsha.

When Djo Tunda Wa Munga’s "Viva Riva" beat the best Nollywood movies at the 2011 African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), many of the Nigerian filmmakers were humbled. But how many of them learnt the real lessons of the event? They preferred to rush back to their business as usual in Nollywood and having premieres of their amateurish flicks at the Silverbird Cinemas where their posing and posturing on the local red carpet is the best they have been able to achieve so far, while the man from the war torn Democratic Republic of the Congo has gone ahead of them to make history with his "Viva Riva" as the first Congolese feature to find distribution in the U.S. I wonder if any Nollywood flick has achieved that. And Congo where French is the main official language, plus four official indigenous languages: Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba from “400 different tribes with 400 different ways of thinking. And, there are more than 200 ‘living’ languages,” according to Munga, with no acting schools and no "Congowood". In fact for most members of the cast, it was their first film credit.


Chineze Anyaene

Is it not amazing that the best film from Nollywood is "IJÉ the Journey", a New York Film Academy thesis feature film by Chineze Anyaene who has won 12 awards, including the Golden Ace Award at Las Vegas International Film Festival and the Melvin Van Peeples Award at the San Francisco Black Film Festival. In fact she even claimed that "IJÉ the Journey is the first standard Nigerian made Hollywood film" and do you blame her when like most people Nollywood is being mistaken as the best we can boast of from the Nigerian film industry since majority of our youths and even journalists are ignorant of the history of filmmaking in Nigeria and never knew that "Palaver" was the first Nigerian film shot in Jos, Plateau State, in 1904. But "IJÉ the Journey" is just one of the best Hollywood standard features done by Nigerian filmmakers who were making fantastic world class films for the cinema in the 1970s and 1980s. From Dr. Ola Balogun to Afolabi Adesanya and other notable veterans of the Nigerian cinema now mistakenly erroneously and ambiguously dubbed “Nollywood”. And I have already addressed this in my previous articles on Nollywood, so there is no need to over flog it again.

The once popular cinema culture is gradually being revived by Ben Murray-Bruce through his expanding Silverbird Cinemas and others building new cinemas all over Nigeria. And the real filmmakers are now redefining Nollywood by taking up the challenge of making features that can compete with the best in the world.
Majority of them have gone through the New York Film Academy. Faruk Lasaki, Kunle Afolayan, Stephanie Okereke, Chineze Anyaene, Chika Anadu and others who are going to take Nigerian films to compete with the best at the Cannes, Oscars and other major centres of the film world. But we need to address the problem of intellectual ignorance and professional arrogance plaguing Nollywood.



Many of the stakeholders are doing more harm than good to Nollywood by engaging in activities questioning the dignity and leadership of the Nigerian film industry.
They have also dragged their associations into partisan politics and promoting cash-for-vote and cash-for-news coverage sharp practices with many of them rubbishing and tarnishing the public image of the Nigerian film industry.

Piracy is still rampant and counterfeiting is being practiced by notable Nollywood stars who have been accused of copyright infringements like the desperate but futile attempts by a faction of Nollywood producers to hijack the duly registered Eko International Film Festival with the unethical support of their accomplices in public office.

My personal experience is quite revealing in the case of the counterfeiting of Eko International Film Festival by the mercenaries in Nollywood who have been abusing and misusing their professional associations for their greed and ego trips. But I have dismissed them since they have been found wanting in facing the real business of filmmaking and raking up ethnic differences and tribalism in their primordial divide and rule tactics to cause north-south dichotomy and east-west dichotomy in Nollywood when what matters most is promoting what is best for the Nigerian film industry and giving the necessary cooperation and support to those with the best intentions for the advancement of Nollywood, no matter your state of origin, in fact no matter where the person comes from, even from the moon or mars.

Only backward and narrow-minded people would be banging their office desk and going round the bend over why an Igbo should be the owner of a film festival in Lagos with the Yoruba name of "Eko"?
Would they also go bananas that my popular pen name "Orikinla" is Yoruba, because I am Igbo or question why I created "Òmó Iya Osùn" the mystical girl in "Boy Adam Floats Headless In The Thames"? Of course they are ignorant of the fact that my father grew up among the Yoruba Ijebus of Ogun State in the western region of Nigeria, became a Babalawo versed in Ifa Divination, was also an Ogun priest with an Ogun shrine in Obalende on the Lagos Island and was a prominent member of the Ogboni society. And he brought me up with deep knowledge of the mythology and mysticism of the Yoruba culture and religion until he passed on. I knew enough to be the first Nigerian artist to mount an installation of Ogun shrine and Opon Ifa in an Art exhibition hosted by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung on the campus of the University of Lagos in 1992, based on my late father’s paraphernalia of Ogun worship and Prof. Wande Abimbola’s book on Ifa Divination.

The search for knowledge knows no boundaries.
Before Oduduwa there was Ifa. And before Adam, our lord Jesus Christ existed and still existing as explained in the book of John 1:1 of the Holy Bible.

Only ignorant, uneducated and uninformed people will question why two Igbo men should be the founder and owner of Eko International Film Festival in Lagos or anywhere else in the world. Anyone could have been the founder, owner or whatever. What matters is not who discovered or founded a property, but how beneficial it is to you and me, regardless of class, colour, creed, tribe or race.

In conclusion, may I advise all the stakeholders, aficionados and well wishers of the Nigerian film industry to look beyond their local competition in Nollywood, put aside their evil greed and foolish pride and let us do our best to support whatever will benefit Nigeria and the rest of the world.


~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima