Lee Thompson’s suicide linked to “practicing Yorùbá”.

A few days ago while routinely checking the news, I came across a report on the death of budding actor , Lee Thompson. The cause of the death was suicide- he had apparently shot himself in the head. I was overcome with sadness at the tragedy, he seemed like an immensely promising young man and suicide is never the answer.While following up on the developments after his death, I came across an E! Online article which said ,  “those close to Young noticed things “really changed” a few years ago when he began practicing Yorùbá, an Africa-based religion which has a saying, “iku ya j’esin”, meaning  “death is preferable to ignominy.” Some have questioned whether this means that suicide is an acceptable way to preserve personal or family honor in the face of public shame”I was immediately enraged and I’ll explain why. I am Yoruba and until then I had never heard Yoruba referred to as a religion. In an attempt to understand where E online was coming from, I decided to google “Yoruba Religion” and to my surprise I found websites of educational institutions and an extensive Wikipedia page elaborately detailing “Yoruba Religion” . I read them and what came up was familiar ; it was explain as a religious system in which lesser gods ( orisha, ogun, sango, esu, osun, obatala etc ) are used as intermediaries to a greater God (Eledumare). It was familiar to me in the sense that in primary and secondary in Lagos , Nigeria (A Yoruba region of Nigeria) , while learning about the history of Yoruba people, we were taught about these gods. They were the gods our ancestors worshiped collectively. Our grandparents and parents knew about these gods and some of ours surnames were associated with these gods of our ancestors. Names such as “Ogunbiyi”, “Ogunyemi”, “Esugbeyinde”, “Osunremi” etc. These surnames have been passed from generations and after the introduction of religions such as Christianity and Islam a large amount of people changed their names to ones more suitable to their new religion. Mine is such a family. My great great grand father, after embracing Christianity changed the prefix of his name from “Ogun” to “Oluwa”. Oluwa being God Almighty as opposed to ogun , the lesser god. However, I will clearly state that “Yoruba” in itself is NOT a religion. It is the LANGUAGE of YORUBA PEOPLE. The Yoruba people are a culturally rich and diverse people who originate from the West of Nigeria. They are diverse in the sense that there are different dialects spoken in the different geographic states where Yoruba people emanate from. For instance the Ijebu people speak in a different dialect of Yoruba than the Egbado people.As there is a linguistic diversity, there is also a diversity in the religions practiced. Some are Christian, some are Muslim , some are Traditionalists, some are Atheist. There is no specific religion practiced by the Yoruba people as a whole. This is typically found in the rest of the world; I don’t see the English practicing “English religion” even though the Church of England exists. It is in this vein that I desperately want to believe E! Online made a mix up by stating that Lee Thompson started to change after  “practicing Yoruba”. I will also go on to state that  Ignorance is no excuse. Their claim is very offensive to many Yoruba people the world over as suicide is not even encouraged in our culture and by insinuating this , they have painted a false picture of our morals and practices. Also, they said he “he visited a small village in Africa for something reportedly related to the religion” . There is a lot of arrogance in this statement because for one thing Africa is not a country in which you just drop and visit a village, it is made up of countries. More than fifty countries at that. The mixture of arrogance and ignorance shown in that article is sickening to say the very, very least. I must also note that it is saddening that because of this series of mistake made by E! , emphasis is being shifted from the tragic death of a promising young man. Other reports (and E! as well)  attribute his death to depression. While I urge people to educate others on their culture to avoid such an annoying mix up in the future, I urge people to also not deviate from the issue on ground ; the tragedy of suicide. Do not cast a blind to those around you inwardly suffering . Be an agent of change and get them the help they need without stigmatizing them. Ty Oni writes from Lagos, Nigeria.