Needless War In The House Of Oduduwa

By Kunle Somorin
Are Binis of today’s Edo of the Yoruba stock and what is the status of the Ijebu people in the Yoruba cosmogony?

These two-in-one questions posed will continue to dog Yoruba history. Despite the works of great historians like Samuel Johnson,  Ade Ajayi, Espie, Ayanleye and the rest, the questions remain open-ended.

The recent hot exchanges between the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona and the Alake of Egbalnd, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo, were avoidable and expand the hiatus among the Yoruba people and their neighbours.

The ranking of five foremost Yoruba Obas by Alake was the agent provocateur this time. Picking holes in the ranking, the Awujale faulted the 1903 gazette cited by the Alake on the categorisation of Obas. Not being a son of Oduduwa, it would have been better to just steer clear of colonial creations, which were done by the rule of thumb during  that period.

But, instead, Kabiyesi reached out to Oba of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, a self-confessed Bini man for validation. Oba Akiolu supported the Awujale. Since the two are not of Yoruba ancestry, it remained to be seen how ego would not take the place of logic.

Binis never considered themselves as of Yoruba stock. The house of Oduduwa considers it fallacious. With the Benin Kingdom countering that no Yoruba Oba was higher than the Oba of Benin, the political history of Yoruba got more suffused in mysticism rather than empiricism.

The Ijebus too, claimed to be superior to other Yorubas because, according to them, it was the fifth Awujale (king of Ijebu-Ode) that cured Oduduwa (the progenitors of the Yoruba race) of blindness. For them, if the father of all Yorubas was a beneficiary of their fifth ruler, it then meant that they had existed before the foundation of the Yoruba race or at least, before they got to Nigeria.

The first Awujale was said to have come from a place called Waddai, somewhere in present day Sudan. The people are different from their immediate neighbours in Ijebuland. Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the late political sage and a Remo man, sealed this a long time ago. Historically, people from that axis of Ijebu are from Iremo quarters in Ile-Ife and migrated to where they settled now near the Ijebu people. Hence they are called Ijebu-Remo. Most Ijebu towns towards Ondo and in Lagos States also claim their ancestry to Ile-Ife.

The myths and conundrum of these assertions may take eternity to decipher and made a mince meat of the royal diplomacy of 41-year-old Ooni Ogunwusi couched in oneness of the Yorubarace. His several visitations to those considered rivals to his predecessor, Oba Okunade Sijuwade may be a pipedream with the current verbal warfare.

Ooni, the Arole Oodua had gone to Alaafin of Oyo and Awujale in search of unity. Only last weekend, he took a wife from Benin kingdom, to underscore his quest to end the war of attrition tearing apart the house of Oduduwa as we know it.

Perhaps our royal fathers should be reminded that democracy has demystified claims embedded in orality and whittled down the influence of royal fathers who today exist at the mercy of council chairmen and state governments  who decide who and when to enthrone chief/Oba/Emir or depose. These discretions are embedded in law and not the native authority that have no force of enforcement under our present constitutional arrangements.

For most radically minded people, it was a needless argy-baggy for an endangered institution to fan the embers of disunity and expose itself to a predatory system that doesn’t discriminate between a slave and free-born.

Definitely, they have different motives. Some of them are doing it out of patriotism and love of their immediate source of origins; just wanting to project pride in their own roots. Some are doing this out of mischief.

It is clear the professorial chair endowed by Oba Adetona will see democracy as more relevant for scholarship than studies in traditional monarchy.