Oba Akanbi was in Tribune House in June 2016, six months after he became Oluwo. He showed passion and uncommon energy and zeal to do what he thought his mission was.\u00a0 I remember he told us several things about his unusualness and hinted on why he was breaking some myths of obaship and why he would break more. He was already in the news. He did what no oba had done, putting a crown on his wife\u2019s head \u2013 publicly! He wondered why anyone would complain that he wore his crown atop a pair of jeans trousers. If there were jeans wears in the days of the ancestors, he said, they would wear them. I heard him and wondered whether the kingmakers did not tell him at Ipebi that among the Yoruba, the king\u2019s aso (cloth), his dress, embroidery and b\u00e0t\u00e0 \u00ecl\u00e8k\u00e8 (beaded shoes), and, indeed, his all, speak to the totality of the people\u2019s cultural existence. Is dress no longer a major window to what a scholar describes as \u201cthe Yorubas\u2019 positive qualities of their individuality?\u201d An oba has no discretion to express here on what he wears and how he dresses; he must conform to the codes he swore to at the beginning of the journey. I knew this but I couldn\u2019t tell Oluwo that he was wrong. Reporters are plebeians; they cannot intrude into an oba\u2019s supreme mind and presence \u2013 and wardrobe. Oluwo said so many other things, some of those things very progressive, some others very alarmingly iconoclastic. He said he would \u201cuse Aso \u00f2k\u00e8 to make suits\u201d and that \u201cit is too late to insist that the Yoruba youth wear agb\u00e1d\u00e1 with the old fabrics.\u201d<\/p>\n
While he talked, my interest was focused on his account of the pre-installation seclusion, the instructions on the dos and don\u2019ts of the burden he was about to put on his head, and what he would do with the orders he got. The oba said he was, among other things, tutored to be deliberately slow in his strides. A sprinter could become an oba, but an oba must not be a sprinter. A king must walk slowly \u2013 and steadily. \u201cI heard them, but where I am going is very far,\u201d he told us, \u201cso they (his chiefs) have now learnt to catch up with me.\u201d We laughed. Again, I wished I could tell him that he was wrong, that his age notwithstanding, the day he was crowned oba was the day he became the oldest man in his kingdom. And an elder must take it easy, literally, metaphorically. He must walk the land very carefully such that the ground would not cave in under his weight. I could not tell him anything on this; that assignment was for those who prepared him for the throne of his fathers. Those ones must now do a self-assessment on how well they discharged their duties to their king who has now taken his kingship journey in a dash to somewhere far from the sacred seat his people gave him. But then, I am too illiterate in ancestral things to understand where else a man could be rushing to after becoming oba.<\/p>\n
The Yoruba oba is not allowed to be a sceptic who questions universal truths and attacks the culture and tradition he swore to protect. Oluwo says he is \u00c0r\u00f3l\u00e9 Ol\u00f3d\u00f9mar\u00e8. An \u00c0r\u00f3l\u00e9 is the one who holds the fort for the departed. But Ol\u00f3d\u00f9mar\u00e8 is God, and needs no introduction as the Eternal, the Almighty who goes nowhere and therefore needs no \u00c0r\u00f3l\u00e9. Every Yoruba king is subject to the commands of the divine. They say oba is \u00eckej\u00ec \u00f2r\u00ecs\u00e0 \u2013 second to divinity. But the Oluwo salutes himself as Al\u00e1se l\u2019\u00f3r\u00ed \u00d2r\u00ecs\u00e0 \u2013 commander of the divine. That is difficult for me to understand; it is alien to the worldview of the Yoruba. Again, every oba in Yoruba land, including Oluwo, is an omo Oduduwa. On this fact, the Oluwo has also gone a step ahead of all others. He got a son and named him Oduduwa. So, with this king, the trinity is complete: His Majesty, the king, is the son and the father of Oduduwa and also the commander dishing out orders to the realm of the spirits (al\u00e1se l\u2019\u00f3r\u00ed \u00d2r\u00ecs\u00e0).<\/p>\n
In character and comportment, a king is not allowed to roam freely; he must not struggle with the leash imposed by his culture. Where a king breaks loose, the land bleeds in shock, angst and revulsion. A king is no more than the principal trustee to his people\u2019s past and present \u2014 and a bridge to the future. A man has no private, personal journeys once he becomes an oba. The decision to lead from the traditional realm is a voluntary immolation of personal courses and causes. An oba must move shoulder-to-shoulder with his people in destination and destiny. The elaborate seen and unseen rituals and rites of installation, including the wearable apparels, particularly the crowns, cement the fusion of destinies. The late \u00d2r\u00e0ng\u00fan of Ila, Oba Williams Adetona Ayeni, put it in a more elegant way: He told a researcher on July 29, 1977 in his palace that when a man becomes an oba and receives the ancient crown on his head, \u201cthe ori (destiny) of the crown and the ori of the man are brought together. Then the \u00e0se of the crown is bound to the head of the man.\u201d He said it was at this point that the man becomes an oba and must obey all the rules of the realm (see John Pemberton in Sandra Barnes, ed: 1997 at page 128).<\/p>\n
The he-beat-me-I-didn\u2019t-beat-him events of the last one month have exposed the institution of obaship to plebeian scrutiny. The horrendous happenings have torn the mask, showing clearly to the uninitiated street that the idol is actually a naked doll.
\nThe Oluwo is not the only oba with chickens of controversy pecking at his royal robe. He is just the one in the news because of the sumptuous meals of controversy he serves daily. I watched the video clip of another oba from a part of Lagos State being beaten up at a building site where he had gone to fight over a piece of land. An oba is not crowned to be controversial; kingship in all realms is a preservative, conservative system. Persons who desire to be free from rules and mores or whose passion is to break laws have no room in the ancestral space of Yoruba kings. That is why the Yorubas are (or used to be) very choosy in picking their oba. There are general criteria for appointing an oba which cut across kingdoms. There are also specific, restrictive, sacred, irrefutable rules and laws \u201csanctified by ancestors long departed\u201d which guide the choice of an oba.<\/p>\n
Writing on conflict resolution in the traditional Yoruba political system, Anthony Ojigbo in a 1973 article cited Lloyd (1960) at page 227 on this process in an Ekiti community called Oke Ewi. There, he says, it is the law, among other general criteria, that \u201ca king should symbolise all that is good, virtuous and pleasant to behold, and thus, he himself must be free of any physical handicaps or limitations.\u201d A prospective oba in this town satisfied all the conditions, but he was still \u201crejected because he was too tall.\u201d You would think that impressive height should be an all-time, all-culture asset \u2014 ladies love them. But it was a No in this case. The argument was that with his imposing height, the candidate would be \u201clooking down literally and symbolically on his people. And that is what a Yoruba king or chief must never do.\u201d<\/p>\n
About a hundred years ago (May 1920) in Osogbo, capital of Osun State, the town was going through the process of picking a king and all candidates had to go through the processing mill. The chiefs had very interesting reasons for rejecting the candidates who lost. One prince who was \u201ca great farmer who pays for service\u201d was found to have a family which \u201creigned a long time ago\u201d and \u201chad an evil reputation when it did reign.\u201d Another candidate who was the son of an oba who restored order to the town after a previous oba\u2019s \u201cmalpractices\u201d lost because he was \u201ccredited with having served a term of imprisonment for receiving stolen goods while other worse crimes were allegedly traced to him.\u201d His brother who would have been chosen in his stead was found to be \u201can invalid.\u201d Yet, another candidate was rejected because of the history of his family\u2019s \u201cslave dealing propensities,\u201d (see Akinlade, M.O. 2017; Osogbo, the Melting Pot, at pages 118 and 119). Every kingdom in Yorubaland has a history of rigorous screening, rejection and\/or approval of obaship candidates. But do they still take these ennobling steps?<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s kingmakers sell thrones to create obas who poach sacred groves and sell communal lands to landless terrorists from the desert \u2013 and damn the consequences. It is strictly a matter of cash. But a king writes the history of his lineage every day. You would see from the Osogbo samples how the sour grapes eaten by some people\u2019s ancestors set the teeth of their descendants on edge. In a certain town in Osun State, there is an annual festival during which long dead kings are mentioned one after the other with the gains of their reigns celebrated in a ritual of serial drumbeats. They call it \u00e8k\u00e0 (the count). There is this particular ex-oba on the king-list who is cursed repeatedly for destroying his people\u2019s goodly heritage, their iy\u00f9n (cora beads) he buried in a carefully planned revenge action against his people. This oba is remembered publicly every year with bolts of curses fired at his afterlife: \u201c\u2019Lagbaja\u2019 who threw away valuable assets into the bush\/if he died well, he will compulsorily not sleep well\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
It is because of harsh judgements of history like this that kings are tutored to behave well and rule well. The oba whose reign brings peace won\u2019t be forgotten. The one who brings chaos too won\u2019t be forgotten. History has a carefully kept book of life; it also keeps very well a lake of fire. The choice is our kings\u2019 to make.
\nAuthor : Lasisi Olagunju
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ictnetworldltd.com\/newvor\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/lasisi-olagunju-300x275-1.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cOluwo says he is \u00c0r\u00f3l\u00e9 Ol\u00f3d\u00f9mar\u00e8 \u2026 Again, every oba in Yoruba land, including Oluwo, is an omo Oduduwa. He got a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[737],"tags":[128],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-the-trial-of-yoruba-kings"],"yoast_head":"\n