Renowned historian and professor of African studies Toyin Falola has called on the National Assembly to include invocations of Yoruba deities Sango and Ogun in the oath of office sworn by Nigerian public officials, arguing that fear of spiritual consequences could achieve what decades of constitutional reform have failed to deliver.
Falola made the proposal on Tuesday while delivering the keynote address at the inauguration of the Alaafin Institute of Yoruba Studies at Emmanuel Alayande University of Education in Oyo. The lecture was titled “Yorùbá Mythologies and Their Relevance Today.”
The professor questioned why Nigeria’s extensive legal framework has not deterred corrupt officials and said drawing from indigenous African political traditions could reinforce the moral foundations of governance.
Falola Challenges NASS on Yoruba Deities and Public Accountability
“To decolonize corruption, impunity, and abuse of office, what prevents our National Assembly from incorporating the nemesis of Sango into the Oath of Office for all, regardless of their religious faith?” Falola said at the event.
He added that he doubted any Nigerian politician could face the wrath of Ogun and Sango with the same impunity they routinely show toward Western laws.
Falola was direct in clarifying his position. He said his proposal was not a call to restore pre-colonial political systems. He argued instead that policymakers should engage seriously with Indigenous African political philosophy when designing governance frameworks for modern Nigeria.
His argument rests on the concept of legitimacy. He said institutions only function when citizens regard political authority as morally valid. Without that foundation, constitutional structures remain hollow regardless of how well they are designed on paper.
“The prescription constantly fails to address the issue of legitimacy. Institutions are functional only to the extent that the people subject to them regard their power as legitimate,” he said.
Yoruba Political Philosophy and the Concept of Àṣẹ in Modern Governance
Falola drew extensively from Yoruba political philosophy, centring his analysis on the concept of àṣẹ, the spiritual and moral authority that, in traditional Yoruba thought, validates a leader’s right to govern.
He explained that a ruler who acts without the character required of someone bearing divine authority loses àṣẹ, and with it, the moral foundation of power. He said this framework treats power without moral grounding not as authority but as coercion.
“It’s a political philosophy that argues power without a moral basis is not authority but coercion; that communities have both the right and the need to withdraw their respect from leaders who show that they lack real āṣẹ,” he said.
Falola noted that traditional Yoruba institutions embedded accountability into governance long before contemporary democracy emerged. He cited the Ọọ̀ni, the Aláàfin, and other traditional rulers as historical examples of leaders who operated within frameworks of conditional authority.
He also referenced a practice in which a council could invite a king to “open the calabash,” a ritualized signal that the ruler’s time had ended when communal welfare required it. He described these as imperfect systems that nonetheless carried a clear understanding of the link between power and responsibility, one that Nigeria’s post-colonial state has failed to institutionalize.
Falola argued that Western constitutional democracy, which underpins Nigeria’s current governance model, is not culturally neutral. He said its intellectual foundations, social contract theory, natural rights, and liberal individualism emerged from specific European historical conditions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and do not translate seamlessly into societies with different assumptions about community, individuality, and authority.
He acknowledged that institutional reform, stronger legal frameworks, and greater transparency remain necessary. But he was clear that those measures alone are not sufficient.
“The conventional prescription is to reinforce formal institutions, develop legal frameworks based on Western constitutional democracy, and improve transparency. It must happen. All of it. None of it is enough,” Falola said.
He called on Nigeria’s policymakers to go beyond constitutional amendments and engage with the values of responsibility, reciprocity, and moral leadership that run through indigenous African political thought and to test whether those values can be made to operate within modern institutional systems.
Falola said that engagement must move beyond ceremonial recognition of traditional rulers at state events. It must involve a genuine reckoning with the ethical demands that indigenous political traditions place on those who hold power.
