Festus Adedayo Ph.D
Fatalists haven’t yet returned from the market square. They had rushed there to parrot what they called the eerie signification of the news of pigeons that won’t fly at the National arcade on January 14. It was at the Nigerian fallen soldier heroes’ anniversary. According to them, there was a weird symbolism in President Muhammadu Buhari’s futile move to prod memorial pigeons to fly. Imo State governor, Hope Uzodinma, also encountered same futility in his quest to get the pigeons to fly. Over the years, this ceremonial action had traditionally got the pigeons flying into the sky. However, at the Armed Forces Remembrance event last week, Buhari and Uzodinma’s pigeons merely diffidently looked at them, I dare say, with bemused disdain.
In reality, what have stubborn or hesitant pigeons got to do with Buhari/Uzodinma or the current Nigerian situation? Shamanism and spiritism explain pigeons’ mannerism better. Shamanism is a religious practice which involves practitioners interacting with a spirit world through an altered state of consciousness, the most being through trance. According to it, pigeons, which are one of the first birds that man tamed and creatures that have lived as man’s companions for centuries, symbolize home and security. They equally symbolize love, peace and are thought to be messengers that deliver gifts of physical, emotional and mental healing to man. As spirit messengers, they are a channel of communication between the living and dead worlds. When they are released to fly into the sky on fallen soldiers’ anniversaries, they are a totem expected to be instruments of communication with the land of the dead, a national invocation of the spirits of the dead, if you like. This is in the mould of My Song Burst, a traditional poem of the Ghanaian Ewe tribe that has been around for a while.
In the above poem, the invocator of the spirits of the dead had chanted: My song bursts in the name of Toti with vòsa //Taking a regal step//Dare the hyena howl, let him howl//Let the watchdog thunder endlessly.//The God of song has descended on Ahòsuglo.//War has begun, says So-kple-So,//We shall ourselves adorn.//Master Singers, Choric Leaders//To you we kneel in homage, Announcing neither death nor sickness.
Not minding their unhygienic and slovenly nature, pigeons are complex as a phenomenon and have an intelligence that people seldom connect with. Their messenger assignment fascinates me. One of such was in a song entitled Ajiko’gba ede (Singer of two hundred songs) originally sung by late Yoruba Apala music legend, Ayinla Omowura, which was later redone by another legendary Fuji musician, Sikiru Ayinde Barrister. Therein, Ayinla claimed that the secret of his singing prodigy was from an encounter with a certain mystery Man With Two Hundred Songs who resides in a mystery land. He had sent the pigeon to the mystery man for a clone of his mystical singing gift. The pigeon flew away to deliver the musician’s message and emerged therefrom bearing a pod of songs on its beak. Like the benevolent hunter in another ancient Yoruba creation folktale who swallowed a snake which later became the worms in man’s belly till today, upon the pigeon’s arrival, the musician said he chanted some incantations that turned the pigeon and pod from the mystery Man With Two Hundred Songs into a phial. He then swallowed the phial and that became the origin of his prolific singing ability.
