Love in the Time of Elders

In the quiet hills of Ilesa, where tradition had a longer memory than men, the whispers of the past ruled the choices of the living. Every family bore a story etched in silence, and every silence carried a warning.

Aderemi was the village’s golden boy — brilliant, respectful, and freshly returned from Obafemi Awolowo University with a law degree. The elders admired him; the girls adored him. But Aderemi’s heart had long belonged to one person — Anike, the daughter of the old herbalist.

Anike was fire wrapped in grace. With skin like smooth bronze and eyes that held thunderstorms, she was both beauty and mystery. But her lineage was her curse. Her family had long been ostracised. Decades ago, her grandfather had dared challenge the village council over sacred land, and when a string of misfortunes followed, they branded him accursed. Since then, the name “Ajayi” has only been mentioned in hushed tones.

Aderemi didn’t care. Their love had grown over the years through stolen glances at the market, whispered conversations by the riverbank, and love letters slipped into the hollow of a baobab tree.

But when Aderemi declared his intention to marry Anike, all hell broke loose.

The elders summoned him to the Oro Hall — the place where destinies were redirected with cane and decree. They forbade the union. “She carries blood that has offended the gods,” said Baba Alagba, his own grandfather, his voice like dry leaves. “You will not marry her. Or you will no longer be our son.”

Aderemi’s father, Chief Olagunju, stood behind the elders, silent but stern. The lines on his face deepened, but he said nothing in his son’s defence. The silence was worse than rejection.

Anike, on her part, urged Aderemi to let her go. “I cannot let you choose me and lose your people. I am not worth your blood.”

But Aderemi was not the boy the elders thought he was. He had spent his years in Ife not just studying law, but digging into his village’s past. He had discovered something hidden: an old land deed, dusty and forgotten, showing that the so-called “sacred land” was rightfully owned by Anike’s family before the elders seized it under false rituals and superstition.

With evidence in hand, he did the unthinkable.

He called a public gathering during the Yam Festival — a day when the entire village would be present, including the most stubborn of elders. Standing in the square, in front of the masquerade and gods alike, he read the deed aloud. He spoke of injustice buried beneath ritual, of fear parading as tradition.

Gasps rippled through the crowd. Some elders protested, others sat stone-faced. But the people-the—the youth, the traders, the women who had quietly bought herbs from Anike’s father in secret—began to murmur. Some clapped. Others nodded. A few wept.

And then, the shocker.

Chief Olagunju stepped forward. He asked for the deed, read it slowly, and then — to everyone's astonishment — knelt before the herbalist’s daughter.

“I was there when they burned your grandfather’s hut,” he said quietly. “I have carried this shame for too long.”

The elders' silence cracked.

By the next moon, a council vote was held. The Ajayi family was restored. Anike’s father was made the village herbal consultant again. The cursed name became a healed one.

And under the canopy of Iroko trees, with the scent of roasted yam and hibiscus in the air, Aderemi and Anike were finally wed. Their union wasn’t just about love — it was rebellion, restoration, and a promise that the time of the elders was not over, but it must now walk beside the truth.

Even today, in Ilesa, old lovers tell their children, “If your heart is true and your hands are clean, even the stubborn gods will bow.”