By Babafemi OJUDU
There is a Yoruba saying: “Adìyẹ ìrànà kì í ṣe ohun àjẹ́ gbé.” The adìyẹ ìrànà is not a chicken carried away by witches; rather, it is the symbolic fowl used to accompany the dead on their final journey.
I first encountered this practice many years ago as a secondary school student when I read about it in one of our Yoruba textbooks, Asa Ati Òrìṣà Ilẹ̀ Yorùbá by Olu Daramola and Adebayo Jeje. At the time, it was simply an interesting aspect of our culture. Like many young people, I read about it with curiosity but without fully grasping its deeper meaning. Age, however, has a way of revealing truths that youth cannot yet perceive.
In traditional Yoruba society, as a corpse was being taken for burial, a live chicken was held before it and plucked of all its feathers as dirges are sung. The bird, known as the adìyẹ ìrànà, was believed to symbolically clear the path for the departed into eternity. After the burial, it was cooked and shared among those present.
The meal itself carried a profound lesson. As everyone ate, they were reminded, in quiet sobriety, that the journey they had just witnessed was one that awaited every one of them. No one escapes it. Death is the great equaliser.
When we are young, death often seems distant. It is usually grandparents, elderly neighbours, or people we scarcely know who pass away. But with age, the circle gradually closes in. Increasingly, it is classmates, colleagues, friends, siblings, and contemporaries whose names appear in obituaries. Each passing is no longer just another funeral; it becomes a gentle but unmistakable reminder that our own generation has entered that season of life when mortality can no longer be regarded as an abstraction.
Perhaps that is the enduring wisdom behind the adìyẹ ìrànà. It was never merely a ritual. It was a lesson in humility; a call to live purposefully, to cherish those we love, to do good while we still have the opportunity, and to remember that the journey we accompany others on today is one that, in God’s own time, each of us shall also make.
I was reminded of this truth by the recent passing of my dear friend and brother, Senator Tony Adeniyi, SAN. Never, even in my wildest imagination, did I think of him as someone who could die so soon. He was ebullient, full of life, endlessly cheerful, and a delight to be with. Among our circle of senators, we fondly called him Babalawo, and he was immensely popular with us all. The news of his death came as a profound shock. It was one of those moments that compel the living to pause, reflect, and remember the brevity of life.
May Almighty God grant Senator Tony Adeniyi, SAN, eternal rest, comfort his family, and strengthen all of us—his friends, colleagues, and compatriots—as we mourn the loss of a truly remarkable man.
*Ojudu, a veteran journalist, was a Senator of the Federal Republic
