When a European made a discovery, they usually named it after him. But when a Yoruba made a discovery, they usually claim it was a divine gift, an Orisa from the Supreme Being, apparently nothing to do with human ingenuity and intelligence. Ifa is a case in point. Ifa was a man employed as Chief of Staff to an Oba; likely to be of Ile Ife. His role as court staff was to collect community data and use it to assist the Oba with governance. Ifa recorded the data as Beni:Beko (It is:It isn’t); a concept now known as Binary or Probability mathematics. To cope with the large volume of data involved, and to interpret that data, Ifa invented a computing device that he called Opele (‘Ope’ meaning ‘puzzle’ and ‘le’ meaning ‘to replenish’) together with its own inputer (4-eyed nuts) and a special language to enable him to store as well as retrieve the stored data (Odu). Ifa also was a teacher. The Oba at Ife instructed him to travel the length and breath of Yorubaland to teach his methods from court to court to other Chiefs of Staff; there were no schools or colleges in those halcyon days. European writers brought Ifa’s invention to the attention of the world but not as the invention of a Yoruba man because they could not bring themselves to countenance the possibility of the African brain being capable of creating such a complex machine. It is our duty as Yoruba descendants to make sure that history finally attributed to Ifa his invention of binary mathematics and computer science.
Baasegun (Dr) Olusola Oni, Leader of the Yoruba Party in the UK (YPUK, www.yorubapartyuk.org