Nigerian America based cultural promoter, Otunba Bobaselu Babajide Oladipupo. Aka Oblaq Of Africa tasks Yorubas to appreciate their culture
In a bid to sustain African culture and her heritage, Nigerian, America based cultural promoter, Otunba Bobaselu Babajide, of Impeccable African Image has called on Nigerians, especially the Yorubas to appreciate what they have as tradition, customs and culture if they want the continent to grow.
The Impeccable Image Boss, said, “Today, what we see is the great value our people have placed on things that are of western world. We want to speak like them, we want to dress like them, eat, dress and do so many things like the foreigners while our most valuable culture suffers.
“Embracing the ways of the western world has really taken so much from us and this includes our beautiful names. The Yoruba have deviated from their cultural values, and what we see today is consequences. The traditional ways of installing a new king has been wished away and today, stories of a kidnapped king, a palace being robbed.
“Meanwhile, the palace is a sacred place and the king himself is an authority that is seen and considered as the second in command to the Creator back then. Today, king makers, politicians and others in their ranks have bastardized our system and the decorum we used to enjoy in the land has gone away.”
O’ Black as he is well known stressed further that, “The irony of the whole thing is that the Yoruba culture we do not value here is what the western world cherishes and wants to know everything about. Our own ways that we considered too local and barbaric are those in the western world craved to know and have in their domain.
“For the past decades, the Yorubas have been promoting western culture even in their jurisdiction, our names have been changed, our dressing and music too are nothing to us anymore. This will affect the future and the future is right here. We need to change our ways and develop what God has given us. Our culture sells more overseas, the western world wants it; they wanted to feel it, while we the custodians never see good in it.”
He said, our moral value is gone while what is left with us is just the garb, our dressing.
“Only what is left for us now is the Aso-ebi and the beautiful ways we dress. Also, our royal fathers need to appreciate all our custodians of Yoruba culture and those that are promoting the culture both home and abroad. We need appreciation not condemnation, this will revamp the dying culture and our children would have cultural value to see and appreciate.
Moral value is gone, what we are passing to our children today is not the right thing we got from our forbears back then. We need to go back to the root, let’s imbibe Yoruba moral value in our children, lets value the great culture God has blessed us with. No matter how you act or speak like a white man you can never become one. You are black and you will remain a black man and the best anybody can do is to project what he or she has gotten and people should stop being ungrateful to their Creator.” Otunba Bobaselu posited.
Source : Opera News