Yoruba Proverbs as Messages from Ancestors to a Future That Did Not Listen

For the last few months, I have been thinking about a question that began with corruption but eventually became something much larger.

Like many Nigerians, I have watched conversations unfold around nepotism, favoritism, performative success, fraud, silence in the face of wrongdoing, and the tendency for institutions to be weakened from within. Initially, I wondered whether these were modern problems. Were they the result of contemporary politics, economic pressures, or globalization?

The deeper I looked, the more I began to suspect that I was asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking why these problems exist today, I started asking whether previous generations had already observed them.

And if they had, where would those observations be recorded?

In many societies, the answer might be found in books, legal documents, or philosophical texts. In Yoruba culture, however, much of that knowledge was preserved through oral tradition: proverbs, Ifá verses, songs, praise poetry, stories, and everyday speech.

A traditional Babalawo sits surrounded by sacred tools, adorned in vibrant attire and intricate jewelry, embodying the rich heritage of Yoruba spirituality.

What if proverbs are not merely expressions of wisdom?

What if they are an archive of unresolved social problems?

One proverb in particular has stayed with me:

Kòkòrò tó ń jẹ ẹ̀fọ́, inú ẹ̀fọ́ ló wà.

"The insect eating the vegetable lives inside the vegetable."

At first glance, the proverb appears simple. Yet beneath it lies an observation about betrayal, internal decay, and self-destruction. The greatest threat is often not external. It comes from within.

Another proverb continues to echo in my mind:

Àìlé sọ̀rọ̀ ni wájú orí burúkú.

A warning about silence in the presence of wrongdoing, poor leadership, or destructive behavior.

Not speaking can become a form of participation.

Then there is:

Ọ̀rọ̀ ló máa ń mú ọ̀rọ̀ wá.

Words bring more words.

Information spreads. Secrets travel. Truth emerges. Rumors grow. Speech creates social reality.

None of these proverbs explicitly discuss corruption. Yet all of them seem connected to the conditions that allow corruption, hypocrisy, false prestige, and institutional decline to flourish.

This realization shifted the focus of my research.

I am no longer interested solely in corruption.

I am interested in recurring human behaviors.

Greed.

Silence.

Flattery.

Internal betrayal.

The performance of success.

The tension between character and reputation.

The conflict between loyalty and truth.

What social failures appeared often enough that Yoruba thinkers felt compelled to encode them into language and pass them forward through generations?

What patterns were so persistent that they became proverbs?

The working hypothesis of this project is that Yoruba proverbs function as a historical record—not of events, but of recurring human problems.

They reveal the tensions, contradictions, and vulnerabilities that communities repeatedly encountered.

Perhaps the most fascinating possibility is that these proverbs were not celebrating such behaviors.

They were warning against them.

If that is true, then many of the social issues we consider contemporary may not be new at all. They may be part of a much longer conversation stretching back hundreds of years.

This research forms the foundation of a larger visual art project currently in development.

Its working title is:

Messages from Ancestors to a Future That Did Not Listen.

The project asks a simple question:

What happens when a society preserves warnings for generations, yet continues to repeat the same mistakes?

The next stage of this research will focus on collecting and analyzing Yoruba proverbs related to leadership, greed, reputation, betrayal, silence, status, and moral character.

I am less interested in what these proverbs say about the past than what they reveal about the present.

Perhaps the ancestors were not trying to tell us who we were.

Perhaps they were trying to tell us who we keep becoming.