After watching the viral video of several Ilorin, Kwara State old women, referred to as arugbo in Yorubaland, pleading with the Kwara State governor, Abdulrazaq Abdulrahman, not to demolish the Ile Arugbo (Old people’s home) built for them by the old Kwara political warhorse, late Dr. Olusola Saraki, and his eventual demolition of the property last Thursday, what leapt into my subconscious was the old folklore, Ti nba je koko arugbo (if I ate the old woman’s cocoyam) notoriously told at moonlight in Yoruba-speaking homes of the pre-colonial, up to the 1970s era. A three-member travelling…
Why did Governor AbdulRazaq eat Arugbo’s cocoyam? By Festus Adedayo
