Who Taught Nigerian Christians to Fear Ìṣẹ̀ṣe?

Most Nigerian Christians first encountered Ìṣẹ̀ṣe as a warning and something to fear.

For them, Ìṣẹ̀ṣe was behind every family problem. Any visit to the village required spiritual caution, supported by fasting and prayers.

Fuelling the fears are several motifs that sit in people’s imagination. One is a shrine draped in white and red cloth. It was where a traditional priest prepared a sacrifice, or, as Nollywood has convinced people, where a rich man with poor morals went to secure what he wanted. Sacred objects get destroyed. Ifáṣeun becomes Olúwaṣeun; Ògúnlówò turns into Jésùlówò.

Nigerians have repeated this across generations. Before Pentecostalism, missionaries and colonial structures already laid much of the groundwork. Yoruba converts also played major roles since they were the one that translated the Bible and wrote hymns. As Christianity became infused into Yoruba, contempt for Ìṣẹ̀ṣe grew as well.

No better example than the treatment of Èṣù.

The popular view is that Samuel Àjàyí Crowther translated Satan as Èṣù in Bíbélì Mímọ́, a seed with far-reaching consequence. Dr Tunde Adegbola, a Christian apologist, analysed the text and counted 56 occurrences of Satan in the English Bible and found Sàtánì in 55 of them. Psalm 109:6 was rendered olùfisùn, the accuser. The Greek diabolos typically rendered “the devil” in English became Èṣù in the Yoruba New Testament.

Crowther clearly had transliteration available to him because he used it elsewhere, without the nuance, and so Èṣù became Satan, the Devil and the name behind every demonic force. The consequence has loomed large since then.

In the Yoruba imagination, Èṣù is a messenger and custodian of consequence. The crossroads are its station. But he is not the same as the rebel of Christian theology, that one that stands against God as Satan does. This raises a basic question: what, exactly, was being condemned when Christians sing that Èṣù has been defeated? Whatever it is, Èṣù is far different from what a child imagines bearing horns.

How about Ifá? How is the corpus of Yoruba belief system diabolical? Its 256 odù contains conducts, prescriptions, philosophy, jokes, etc. A babaláwo learns it orally over many years even though nobody claims to know all of it. Professor Wándé Abímbọ́lá published parts of the corpus while serving as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ifẹ̀. That alone should have made it harder to dismiss Ifá as the preserve of the uneducated or whatever voodoo or juju are in popular notions. And Sophie Olúwọlé spent her final book placing Ọ̀rúnmìlà, the deity of wisdom, beside Socrates.

The Yoruba way is expressed in its political heritage too. In Ọ̀yọ́, the Aláàfin ruled alongside the Ọ̀yọ́ Mèsì. It is a system of divided authority and a mechanism for removing a ruler long before European constitutionalism came.

And there is oríkì, the Yoruba poetry of invoking heritage and presence before churches directed the method towards Jesus.

What do Yoruba Christians call God? The missionaries adopted Olódùmarè and Ọlọ́run. These are names appropriated from Yoruba thought.

Enter music. The talking drum, gángan, is a useful case. Some early missionaries rejected the instrument because of its association with traditional worship. Over time, gángan graduated to leading praise and worship in churches where people pray against ancestral covenants. The rationale is that the drum no longer carries its old religious and primitive meaning. Toh!

Vernacular translation is one of Christianity's distinctive strengths. It remakes itself in every language it enters. From this position, the church only redeemed and repurposed the talking drum for God.

Christianity also had strong institutions behind it, including mission schools and the printing press technology. It wielded them, successfully, for its subjugating mission. The same gángan that was heathen in the grove became holy in the nave.

Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, for instance, publishes prayers against marine spirits, ancestral evil holds, foundational bondage, and attacks upon destiny: the core of its spiritual universe.

That last category is particularly revealing. Destiny relates to one’s head. Head, in Yoruba, is orí. In Yoruba thought, it is more than anatomy. Orí inú, the inner head, concerns one’s spiritual individuality. A person chooses a destiny before entering the world. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, or Paul do not give the head this precise spiritual function. The Bible contains no comparable idea carrying a destiny that requires spiritual maintenance. Prayers for guidance and the deliverance of the head are common with Yoruba Pentecostalism. Marine spirits are similarly difficult to locate in scripture.

There is also the structural difference between African tradition and the European import. Ìṣẹ̀ṣe practices were often organised through towns and lineages. There were no central council, binding creed or canon. Yoruba wars were fought by people who consulted Ifá and dedicated victories to Ògún. The wars were never contests to impose one creed upon unbelievers.

Exclusive monotheism of Abrahamic religions works differently. If there is one God, another one is considered a rival and therefore false. The thinking is that if any rival system appears to have power, that power must come from somewhere illegitimate. That, dear reader, is the logic that Èṣù and all the òrìsàs suffer from.

It also produces double standards and selective scrutiny. During the 2026 Ọ̀ṣun Òṣogbo Festival, the selection of a 10-year-old girl as Arugba prompted an argument over child welfare. On the one hand, the argument is important. But the public language around indigenous religion often intensifies harder than it does around Christianity.

Some years before, a footage circulated widely showing Bishop David Oyedepo slapping a young female congregant during a church service. He later defended the act. A suit brought over the incident was dismissed because the applicant had not identified the woman.

Both incidents invite questions about children and religious power. But they rarely receive the same treatments. Ìṣẹ̀ṣe is already accused of barbarism before any reasonable investigation. For a bishop, he gets congregational pride. This is simply hypocrisy.

Ìṣẹ̀ṣe still has its own challenges. It does not need to validate itself, but it is accountable for correcting erroneous interpretations of its ethos and beliefs. With technology and channels to distribute knowledge, it has no excuse, and it cannot continue to play the reactionary game when far more equipped forces are controlling its narratives.

For most of Nigerian history, somebody else explained Ìṣẹ̀ṣe to the public. Living in Bondage set a pattern that Nollywood repeated for decades: occultism, ritual wealth, afflictions, torments, until Christian rescue.

But these days, the cameras have begun to move differently.

The Yoruba epic films, including Anikulapo and Jagun Jagun, depict Yoruba cosmology as a world with its own internal logic. These films proudly showcase diviners, medicines, kingship and sacrifice to exist inside the story instead of waiting for a pastor to explain them.

That matters because a person can now hear that Èṣù is Satan, reach for a streaming platform and encounter a corrected account. At the time of writing this, it is now common to see practitioners explain Èṣù on Instagram and TikTok in ways that dispel the damage done by churches. Hallelujah!

None of this means the new representation is pure. Of course! Ìṣẹ̀ṣe also has serious questions to answer about fraud, animal welfare, opaque fees and harm to children. Like other religions, there are bad eggs that sometimes ruin the basket. The Pentecostal believes the òrìṣà are inherently dangerous.

Much of Europe turned its gods into culture. Odin got Wagner and then Marvel. A Lagos schoolboy can study Greek mythology without anyone suspecting his spirit may have been contaminated in the process. The Yoruba gods never receive clean treatments. They remain in active service as the enemy from village-people.

A god you are still fighting every Friday is a god you have not stopped believing in.

Somewhere tonight, a congregation will bind Èṣù and cast him out. They will do it again next Friday.