"Omo": The Subtitle To Modern Nigeria
Drawing lines that trace how "omo" became the Nigerian's first response
Highlights:
“Omo x 100”
“Omo” — Yoruba Cosmology
“Omo” — The Prefix
“Omoge” — Age of Afrobeats
“Omo” — Popular Culture
Footnotes
“Omo x 100”
It's 2:10 am. There's no light, and the moon is hiding too. Everywhere is pitch dark and pin-drop silent. I slept all day, so I will be awake till I have to start begging God for sleep, as usual. I'm hyperactive at this point, opening all the doors in the house, going from the kitchen to the front yard tap. My brother is sleeping in the next room, and he wakes up to say I'm disturbing him with my constant pacing. Xri bou dah1, bro.
Also, I just bought data. The orange and white bank with the new female CEO sends me a debit alert, via text and email. I check my account balance. Irritated, I mutter a silent “omo”. In my ears, Badoo and Reminisce are playing ping-pong with hip-hop. These days Baddo is as laid back as a granny's chair. On this track, he maintains the same demeanour, except that he is also going from fast to slow, carefully mumbling “omo, omo, omo” over a stripped-down drum beat. In a second, Alhaji Remilekun Safaru interjects, laying it neatly; “mid-life crises about to set in I don't even know”, amidst a pile of other crisp lines about how he is scared of sending his children to school because of Nigeria's unending insecurity issues.
Almost instantaneously, I remove my earphone and come to the stark realization: all Nigerians are the same or almost the same. Our existential struggles are real, but we keep going. And each time we fall or get high, the first thing we say is the same, all of us — “omo”.
Indeed, it won't be far from the truth if we say “omo” is the average young Nigerian's immediate reply to the excitement, anger, worry, despair, anxiety, wonder and any other thing that hits close to the heart.
Artwork of Reminisce and Olamide's rap single “Omo x 100”
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“Omo” — Yoruba Cosmology
General Prince Adekunle's 1975 song “Omo n’iyì omo nide”
“Omo” is a word that translates to “child” in both Yoruba and Edo languages in Nigeria.
But, for the Yorubas, perhaps nothing best captures the importance of a child the way General Prince Adekunle did in the song “Omo Niyì Omo Nide” off his 1975 album, “Àwòdì Nfò Ferere”. There, Prince Adekunle, a maestro of Juju miliki, described matter of factly:
Omo ni’yì, omo ni’de, omo là sèìndè tó bá da lé…á kì’n ró’mo lójà ba se n rí’su rà lójà, orí fún wa ló’mo Àmín…tó’n bá rí e lóde won ò ní bèrè aso, won ò ní bèrè owó, won á ní aya rè n kó, won á ní omo rè n kó…omo lèrè ayé wa sé’mò, sé’gbó…eni tó ló’wó ló’wó tí ko bí’mo kádàrá ti è ni…
In English, he was saying:
A child is honourable, a child is like bronze, a child returns to you in old age…a child cannot be bought like yams in the market, God give us children, Amen…when people see you at social functions, they won’t ask you for money, rather they will ask about your wife and kids…children are the gift of life hope you know…the person who has money but has no child has met his destiny…
The singer was singing home a vital cosmological point: having a child is central to the Yoruba sense of worth, and to the Yorubas, no amount of wealth can override the dignity that a child brings to their parent.
And Prince Adekunle is not alone. King Sunny Ade, another musician who belongs to the pantheon of Juju music legends, concurs. In “Omo Wunmi”, a track off his 1990 album “King Sunny Ade & His African Beats”, the Grammy award nominee sang in his princely Ondo voice:
Omó wùnmí, omó yemí, omó ya ilé mi, Èdùmàré fún wa ló’mo ògá ògo…
Literally:
I desire a child, I am worthy of a child, I pray a child comes to my house. God give us children as the king of glory...
The track continues with other sultry epigrams about how you can’t send another person’s child on an errand and how children are the ones who fittingly bury their parents.
Thus, from the sayings in songs from some of the most iconic Yoruba musicians, it is patently clear that children are very, very precious to the Yorubas and they are central to the Yoruba view of communal and personal success. Little wonder the word “omo” is a popular prefix in many Yoruba names, making up profound names like “omoloro”2, “omobolanle”3, “omowunmi”4, “omolola”5, “omorinsola”6, “omotanwa”7, “omotayo”8, “omosalewa”9, “omolara”10, “omotolani”11 etc.
“Omo” — The Prefix
Granted, children are precious to the Yorubas, but over the years, “omo” has grown to accommodate the description of children not only in the practical sense but also in the figurative sense. Birth, or origin, refers to anything that comes from another thing, and the Yoruba word “omo” perfectly encapsulates this.
For instance, Nigeria is called a “motherland”, but Nigeria didn’t need to go into any labour room to deliver all 200 million Nigerians. Nigeria is our “motherland” because our ancestral ties trace back to predominant cultures in the Nigerian area in one way or another.
Using the same logic, the word “omo” also accommodates many situations that inextricably tie to another. To the Yorubas, if you’re Igbo you’re an “omo Igbo”. If you have traditional occupancy of land you’re an “omo onile”. If you’re fair-skinned, you’re an “omo pupa”, and if you’re a beautiful woman (or your make-up is on fleek), you’re an “omo oge” or “omoge”.
In short, “omo” is the Yoruba prefix that best describes ancestry, and anything that links to another thing, no matter how slight, can accommodate an “omo” in front of it.
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“(Omo)ge”: Age of Afrobeats
Psquare, a music group of two brothers, singing their hearts out after suffering heartbreak from an “omoge”
If the word “omo” has smoothly evolved from the Yoruba name of a much sought-after baby to the prefix of any word that links to another, then perhaps no other Yoruba word boasts of a more popular “omo” prefix than the word “omoge”.
“Omoge” is a Yoruba word that describes a beautiful lady, and it literally means “child of beauty”. And you know that iconic Burger King sandwich of Yoruba men, sweet words, and beautiful women, right?
But seriously, it is not just Yoruba men who carelessly throw around the word “omoge” — everyone does and did. Since as far back as the 90s when afrobeats was only in its teething stages, you could find the words “omo” and “omoge” in the predominant songs of the time. In “Sade”, the first track off “Peace Nigeria”, the debut music album from the dynamic duo “Remedies”, which were bankrolled by Kenny Ogungbe’s “Kennis Music”, there was an “omo”, neatly tucked into the chorus.
In Tony Tetuila’s “Only You”, off the 2001 album “My Car”, the Yoruba singer embraces the genealogical player in him and sings “je ká’lo o, ká lo se’ró omo”12, in one of the songs that portray how burgeoning afrobeats artists of the time, eager to sing songs that gained popular appeal, viewed the word “omo” as a central part of describing the women they were conveying their emotions to.
And it doesn’t end. Even in Azadus’ smash hit of 2000 “You Is The One”, there is an “omoge” sneakily serving as a descriptive marker for a love interest, if you care to listen carefully.
And it goes on. To hear more “omoge” and “omo” in songs, you simply have to go to your preferred music streaming platform and listen to some of your favourite afrobeats songs, including Eedris Abdulkareem’s “Ololufe”, Psquare's “omoge mi”, Solidstar’s “Omotena”, Mohbad and Naira Marley's “Komajensun” and so many more.
Not to forget the uber-popular Yoruba movie “Omoge campus” by veteran actress Aisha Abimbola.
“Omo” — Popular Culture
Documenting anything is hard in Nigeria, but properly archiving “omo”, an ‘ordinary’ slang, is nearly impossible.
Perhaps this is why it is only by looking at the pop culture of different times that anyone can somehow trace how “omo” became a national slang. By looking at popular music and movies, we can at least have a sense of what people were crazy about at the time and the way they expressed it.
But this piece has not finally nailed how “omo” became slang. And this is why it must return to popular culture if it wants to try to paint how “omo” got viral.
Again, music and movies best explain moments, cultures and history. But social media does it even better.
While it is hard to exactly pinpoint when Nigerians stopped using “omo” predominantly as a prefix but as a standalone expression for desperate situations, a rough picture can be sketched: musicians most likely kept on saying “omoge” and “omo”, and the latter then took a life of its own and became the reply for any exaggerated situation.
After all, music is said to be a universal language, and musicians who were singing about girls were also exaggerating.
Rapper and pop star, Olamide, in the 2019 song “Oil and Gas
And we shouldn't be far from the truth. Mono-syllabic words, in particular, tend to 'mutate' and become many different things multiple times over while gaining massive popularity in the process.
Even more, the more a word expresses a heightened emotion the more its chances of becoming immensely popular.
“Fuck”, for instance, does not have an early history that means what anyone currently thinks it means. Rather, it has Germanic roots which mean “to strike” or hit and “shit” has Scandinavian roots to mean a cattle's diarrhoea.
But if we experience a terrible situation today, we don't remember any cattle's diarrhoea. We say “shit”.
All of which to say words change their meaning. And words that express emotions change meanings even faster.
Over the years, “Omo” has moved from referring to a child to becoming a prefix to standing as a conversation starter, a programmed reply and an emotion marker.
And it can only get more popular. Because…”omo”.
Yarns
Bimpe, bimpe, bimpe, how many times did I call you? Please share this post, I'm on my knees. 🙏🏼
I found this Zikoko interview of small chops immensely hilarious.
Dear kings, don't forget to test her on your wedding day:
Send me quirky news, opportunities and interesting stuff, like your favorite “omo" songs, at peter.doyinsola@gmail.com. Cheers!
Short-form texting for “sorry about that”
A Yoruba word that means “A child is my wealth”
A Yoruba word that means “A child has met wealth at home”
A Yoruba word that means “I desire a child”
A Yoruba word that means “A child is a wealth”
A Yoruba word that means “A child has walked into wealth”
A Yoruba word that means “The child we have been searching for”
A Yoruba word that means “A child is worth rejoicing for”
A Yoruba word that means “A child has carefully picked the home to arrive at”
A Yoruba word that means “A child is a family”
A Yoruba word that means “A child makes aspiring for wealth worth it”
A Yoruba statement that means “Let’s go…baby, let’s go and play”
Omo Olagunjux 1000
Omo Wetin I wan comment like this. 😂🤣Omo this is good