Edi Festival in Ile-Ife: Gender, Violence and Participation in the Age of Social Media

In Ile-Ife, the city of 201 Gods, as coined by Jacob Olupona (2011), there is a power contestation between the chief priest (Chief Yekere), chief priestess (Chief Eri) and Amuru Moremi (Amuru) over who will emerge as the face and custodian of Moremi. Moremi is an Ife orisha-heroine who is honoured and celebrated in the annual Edi Festival, one of the major festivals in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. From September to November 2024, I conducted ethnographic research on Edi Festival in which I got to witness this power contestation and also interviewed Chief Yekere, Chief Eri and Amuru. Chief Eri has conceded the physical space of the shrine to an all-male priestly class led by Chief Yekere, which she acknowledges is due to patriarchy and the weaponisation of violence against her. In one of my interviews with Chief Eri, she lamented, “you know a woman does not have power like a man, so I have left the shrine for them.” On the other hand, a much younger, Amuru has turned to the digital space for religious performance, participation, influence and relevance. In this paper, I will critically engage with how Amuru is strategically and creatively utilising the social media space of Facebook and Youtube to expand and create new opportunities for gender equality, religious freedom, and innovation within Orisha ritual performances and practices. Through these various platforms, she has in effect taken the place of Chief Eri by positioning herself as the “living progenitor of Moremi” which is not too dissimilar to how Chief Eri was previously known and described.

In an interview which Amuru granted a Youtuber in 2024, she inserts a new narrative to the story of Moremi in such a way that broke from the “traditional” narratives to justify her emerging and innovative ritual performances in the service of Yeye Orisha Moremi. In this same interview, Amuru exclaimed that her practice of Ifa is an “innate ability which differs from acquired abilities […] nobody can claim that he taught me […] This is the grace I received from my family’s lineage. I practice erindinlogun. But it is not yet time for me to begin using Opele; when the time comes, I will begin using Opele because I am a brave soul.” On one hand, Amuru challenges and disrupts priestly authority, power dynamics and control. Whilst on the other hand, she rejects the formal training that a Babalawo (Ifa priest) must rigorously undergo. Beyond these, she uses social media to create new opportunities for religious performance and redefine religious freedom whilst sidestepping patriarchal and violent barriers and the policing that exists within the male priestly class of Moremi.

An interesting question that emerges from all of this is how did Amuru enter the conflict and contestation to be the face of Moremi? Historically, there has always been an ostensible and playful conflict between whoever is the Chief Yekere and Chief Eri over who owns Edi Festival which is represented in the festival songs such as “Yekere Otu lo I’ Edi” (“Yekere is the owner of Edi”) and “Eri lo l’Edi, Eri lo I’Edi” (Eri is the owner of Edi). Amuru is the niece of the current Chief Yekere who was initially brought in to assume the role of the chief priestess as the shrine faced a crisis of legitimacy and representation. How can a female orisha be visibly served and represented by an all-male priestly class headed by a male chief priest? However, both Amuru and Chief Yekere are also in a fierce dispute particularly around her practice of Ifa divination. 

According to Michael Walsh’s account of Edi Festival in 1947-1948, he observed that a new tradition had developed that created space for non-Ife indigenes to take part in the celebration of Edi. These invited individuals were known as Eluro, who were young girls. These young girls would usually parade, sing and dance around the town collecting money from observers and all of this happens on the third day of Edi. It is interesting to note the stark similarities between Amuru and the young girls that escorted her to the festival and Walsh’s account of the young Eluro. Additionally, Amuru’s other title is “Iya Gbogbo Elere Omo Isenbaye of Ile-Ife” which means, the mother of the entire spirit-children in the world (Elere as Walsh misspelled as Eluro). If, as Olori Aderonke Ademiluyi-Ogunwusi, one of the wives of the Ooni of Ife (king of Ife), and the ambassador of the Queen Moremi Initiative and Beauty pageant claimed that Amuru was formerly a position reserved for a very young girl, it begs the question, why would a woman in her early 40s assume and take this position and title now. As a result, I will put forward the thesis that the commercialisation of Orisha festivals (Hackett, 2022) by the Ooni has exacerbated these conflicts and competition over the physical and digital space. As one of my interlocuters asserted, “they are all concerned with what they can chop (money).”  

Therefore, this paper will contribute to the discourses around the globalisation of Orisha worship (Olupona and Rey, 2008) the role of women in Ifa (Ogunnike, 2018; Abimbola, 2016), the commercialisation of Orisha worship, and Orisha performance in the digital space.