The so-called ‘Yoruba’  calendar: just another distortion of the Yoruba story

Two authors have published what they claim to be the Yoruba ‘calendar’. Lt. Col. Ellis in his 1894 book claims that the Yoruba operated a 5-day week, 6-week month (lunar) calendar. The first day of the week was ‘a Sabbath’ or day of rest. Subsequent days were named after the deities of Ifa, Ogun, Sango, and Obatala, in that order. Remi Niyi-Alaran in his 2021 ‘Kojoda’ iteration describes a 4-day week, 7-week month (lunar) calendar. The days were named after a variety of deities led respectively by Obatala, Orunmila, Ogun, and Sango, in that order. Neither of these calendars was original, however. 

Both these calendars were adapted (or plagiarised) from the Ancient Greek (Athenian) calendar including the 13-month year claimed in the Kojoda calendar. Simply naming a day after a deity is not ‘calendar’ particularly as only a tiny fraction of the Yoruba follow deities. A calendar is a work-time reminder. Neither the Ellis nor the Niyi-Alaran so-called calendar related to the working pattern of the ancient Yoruba farmer, who in practice worked every single day, or to the opening cycles of the local markets (Oja), which was most commonly every two or three days. 

Ulli Beier in 1959 claimed that the priests of Orisa Oko (the farm-god) kept and fixed the calendar on the basis of cycles of the sacred festivals. According to him, the priests tracked the month by storing in a sacred calabash the head of a pigeon that they had sacrificed at the appearance of the new moon; the new year apparently coincided with the Ifa festival. Beier constructed this fiction from his ‘experience’ in one Yoruba town. Ellis wrote about the farm-god in his book, he did not include time-keeping in its list of duties. The lack of agreement about function has arisen because the farm-god is the product of European imagination; it never existed in the Yoruba reality.

The ancient Yoruba in their daily lives used time-related words. The day came in 3 time periods: Aaro (morning), Osan (afternoon), and Ale (night). The days came in 3 time bites: Oni (today), Ola (tomorrow), and Otunla (day after). The seasons came in 3 time zones: Ojo (Rains), Oye (Harmattan), and Ogbe (Dry). Time, day, and year all had a rhythm of 3. A Yoruba ‘calendar’ or timesheet (Asiko), if there had been one, would not be related to the appearance of the moon instead, it would more likely be related to the seasons, which were constant. The Yoruba were seasonal people who worked according to the season not on the basis of some arbitrary appearance in the sky. The year reset for the ancient Yoruba began with the harvests at the end of the rains, and they had festivities (Odun) to mark it including the Egungun festivals. In truth, the Yoruba year comprised of a variable number of days, beginning and ending with the rains. Compared with the Athenian calendar, there was no separation into weeks and months.

Baasegun (Dr) Olusola Oni, Leader  of the Yoruba Party in the UK (YPUK, www.yorubapartyuk.org