Every time I reflected on the passage of the 50thOoni
of Ife, Oba OkunadeSijuwadeOlubuse 11 while his demise remained
unconfirmed in deference to tradition and after it was affirmed that the
great King of the Yorubas had joined his ancestors;my thoughts centred
on tensions between ancient traditions and modernity that Oba Sijuwade,
the chiefs and people of Ile-Ife, Yorubaland and the world continuously
grappled with. The phrase “ancient and modern”
lurked in the inner recesses of my sub-conscious and I needed a burst
of mental energy to bring it forth. “Ancient and Modern” is a popular
hymnal in the Church of England (in Nigeria, Anglican Church) introduced
in 1861 through the so-called “Oxford Movement”, an ecclesiastical
reform movement that sought to recover ancient Christian Hymns as well
as write new ones, hence “Hymns Ancient and Modern”.
I was born and educated within Anglican and Methodist traditions
accounting for the phrase’s residence in my remote memory. Oba
OkunadeSijuwade’s early upbringing and education at Igbein School,
Abeokuta and Abeokuta Grammar School were within a CMS-Church Missionary
Society (Anglican) context.
