Ifa : Some Notable Theses for Application in Contemporary Socio-Political Parlances

We assert in this paper that Ifa mainly represents the 'philosophical words of wisdom' that developed from the Yoruba people of West Africa, and that also has religious and divinational applications. This assertion derives from a cross examination of both oral and written literature along with three Odu Ifa (Ifa theses) - using what the paper calls 'bilingual content analysis'- to extract relevant philosophical interpretations as explanatory tools for some sociopolitical phenomena. The assertion challenges the dominant position in the literature that Ifa is a religion, and thus has to, by implication, characteristically run in rivalry to other religions of the world. We clearly assert that Ifa is African Philosophy, and with this we join other Afro-revisionist scholars in setting a new agenda for exploring indigenous and autochthonous African knowledge towards explaining several socio-political issues that confront Africa in contemporary times.