Young and talkative, Obara promised while drunk that he would expose the killers of the king's sons, and he was sentenced to death if he failed. His mother, bathing in the river, got the plotters to confess one by one — and her son exposed them before the whole court.
Obara Meyi was born to a father who had only his left hand and a mother who was blind in one eye; from the womb he showed them dangers in dreams. He grew into a bright, talkative boy who stole the attention at the elders' meetings. Every seventeen days the priests met at the palace of the king of Ifé and, after the game of Ayó, one of the king's sons usually died. At one meeting, Obara drank too much and boasted that he would reveal the names of those responsible — or be put to death.
The plotters planned to kill him with a pit of iron hooks under the seat they would save for him. But his mother, advised by Ifá, took pounded yam and soup to the river bank and started bathing. One by one three travellers came by — Okpolo the frog, Obuko the goat and Agbo the ram —, ate her food and, not knowing who she was, confessed the whole plot to her: the trap, the impostor who would take the throne, and the way to be saved.
Obara came to the meeting with his dog, threw pieces of bread under the marked seat and the dog fell into the pit, uncovering the trap. He ordered the impostor down from the throne and his rightful father seated on it, and he ordered the goat sacrificed to Eshú, the ram to the ancestors and the frog to the earth: they were guilty of the deaths. The people carried him on their shoulders. That is why they say it was his mother who saved him from the cold hands of death.