With the benefit of the renaissance, I reckon we need not be hemmed like it was in the colonial era and the epoch of the resistance in the new world where our special brothers, whom our forefathers had wronged inexpiably and we are vicariously indebted to, had endured humiliation, mustered the resistance for over 4 centuries.
And essentially ensured their self-preservation with the divinely inspired instinct for the hermetic substitution of the Elegua with Anthony of Padua; Sango with St. Barbara; Ogun with St. Peter,;Babalu-Aye with Lazarus; Yemoja with Our Lady of Regla; Osun or Oxum with Our Lady of Charity; and Oya with Our Lady of Candelabra, inter alia .
We should simply retain this transcendental character that had merely manifested as bodily in the earthly consciousness in the comity of our most revered pantheon, and declare him the 402nd of the major Orisas.
Perhaps, literalists should note that this duty should not just be for the council of Yoruba Obas in the entire West Africa and the Americas, or the leadership of the organized variants of the Orisha religion like the Ifa Agbaye, Lukumi or Santeria, but for all Karo ojire, regardless of leaning and beliefs, to mainstream in their collective psyche this important deification as the symbol for the reawakening of the comatose culture of knowledge craving. We might never be endowed with another Kongi.
Written By Olasunkanmi Olapeju