Stop harassment of Isese adherents, Soyinka tells Muslims

The respected playwright, who condemned recent developments in Kwara State over the proposed celebration of the Isese festival, said nothing will diminish the Isese tradition, which he said has come to stay.

Soyinka maintained that Isese had always been with humanity and would remain so for eternity.

The Nobel Laureate said these during his presentation at a public exchange held at Kongi’s Harvest Art Gallery, Freedom Way, Lagos State, on Friday, September 1, 2023.

Soyinka's remarks come on the back of recent controversies that trailed the proposed celebration of the Isese festival in Kwara State by an Osun priestess, Yeye Ajesikemi Olatunji.

Following her plan to host leaders of the traditional worshippers, who had designated Ilorin, Kwara's capital, as the venue for the 2023 World Isese Day, Olatunji came under verbal attacks from some Muslim clerics in the state.

Also, the Emir of Ilorin, Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari, and other Muslim adherents, asked the Osun devotee to desist from commemorating the day.

The Emir, through a statement by his spokesman, Mallam Abdulazeez Arowona, argued that there had never been a time in history when what he described as “idolatry activities” were carried out in the Ilorin Emirate.

In the same vein, a popular Ilorin Isese devotee and activist, Adegbola Abdulazeez, also known as Talolorun, was arrested and detained for alleged defamation following his campaign for the recognition of Isese in Kwara State.

Abdulazeez had since been charged to court for “insulting the Emir of Ilorin among other offences.”

Speaking at the public exchange, Soyinka condemned the arrest and detention of Talolorun, saying nobody deserved to be detained and put in a dungeon for issues bordering on belief.

The Nobel Laureate also said that the Muslim faithful had embarked on a smear campaign against Isese, warning them to desist from such a crusade.

“It transcends religion since it calls to what is innate to all sentient beings, those strange advocates of freedom who, paradoxically, nonetheless persist in fashioning chains for themselves and for their fellow beings.

“Isese liberates. It is an expression of the collective human spirit, its enveloping, compassionate accommodation of human experience, yet one that strives towards the seemingly inaccessible, intuitively felt as an elevating dimension of one’s material estate.

“Isese is a path, not a destination, a seizure yet a pursuit of what we experience as the inner quest for ultimate illumination. Isese does not conclude, and neither does it exclude. It does not diminish, rather, it enlarges. It teaches the community to embrace, explore, and adjust.

“Isese promotes, as foundational consciousness, gratitude for, and sanctity of human life. It repudiates the supremacist claim of any structure of spirituality over another. Content with the pursuit of inner serenity, which is the climax of, and extraction from celebration, Isese does not seek to exercise power. All true religions know that celebration is a prelude to community equilibrium,” the playwright said.