To the wonderful Yoruba interior which can be as captivating as it is bewitching in its pristine essence, this past Saturday and Sunday to reconnect with the soul of a storied people. Some of our Lagos-based urban sophisticate friends and cosmopolitan deracinѐ often dismiss these constant retreats as a satanic shuttle in the occult crypt; a gathering of wizened witches and samurai sorcerers in the heartland of juju and dark metaphysics. One of them even located the Talmudic tavern as somewhere between the impossibly named villages of Akiriboto and Majeroku which are actually about three miles apart. But it is an anti-native lie from the pit of hell; a continuation of the class war between the city-dwellers and the denizens of the interior.
Till date, Lagosian urbanites often dismiss people from the interior as country bumpkins. To hear the surviving aristocratic dinosaurs among them pronounce the word with a particular upper class inflection is a source of wicked hilarity. The putdown is redolent of cave-dwelling and its attendant incivilities, to put it with diplomatic reticence. Yet having been taught a hard lesson in political marksmanship, economic gamesmanship and spiritual hay-making by these selfsame yokels, our coastal aristos have refused to take heed. In seventeenth and eighteenth century England, city people fleeing from the ravages and disorientation of rapid industrialization in all their alienating necessities often headed for the countryside for solace and relief. Till date in western societies, living in the leafy suburban far away from the chaos and disorder of the inner city is seen to be “cool” and cultivated. Anybody who wants to find out how the heroism and hardiness of the people survive in hard times; and how a nation embroiled in postcolonial turmoil in all its devastating ramifications manages to trump them all, needs an unguided visit to the interior and its rugged and redoubtable interstices.
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Modernity, modernization and their concomitant incubus of globalization have not been kind to Africa and its postcolonial nations, particularly a multi-ethnic behemoth like Nigeria. It has led to a further centralization of political and economic power in the old metropolitan centres and an intensification of the marginalization of the margins or the peripheralization of the traditional peripheries. Only countries with the requisite culture, national philosophy and resourceful politics have been able to claw something back. In the old peripheries, a new margin has emerged; a periphery of peripheries such as can be seen in their rural hell-holes, their inner cities with violence, struggle for scarce land and inter-ethnic conflicts fuelling food insecurity, threat of famine and an apocalyptic meltdown.
The bigger the head, the bigger the headache, as they say. The institutional ravages of modernity and globalization have been quite unkind to a country like Nigeria. None of its precolonial institutions has been spared the disorientation of their invasive and disruptive momentum. Old certitudes and certainties have been smashed up in the collision of altars with nothing passable to replace them. Worse hit perhaps is its old traditional institution and its rampart and regnant royalty. But even among casualties, there are often more remarkable casualties. In death, there is also class formation. Ask William Shakespeare, because when beggars die, there are no comets seen. The worst hit traditional institution in contemporary Nigeria is the Yoruba Obaship system probably because of its centuries old glory and grandeur and its stellar antecedents.
But in recent years, particularly in the last two decades, royal rectitude and regal comportment appear to have gone out of the window. To be sure, there remain stellar royal exemplars and shining symbols of the old order. However, in the main, the Yoruba Obaship institution has become a site of outlandish crime and a scene of disgrace and dishonour to the entire race. The condemnation has come in a torrent and they have been as unsparing as they are unstinting. Reading through some of them makes one wilt in tears and regrets. For a race justly celebrated for its feudal deference to traditional authority and worship of royalty, this is quite a landmark development which must be monitored closely.
For their lust and avarice, our royal fathers have lost their illustrious lustre and sacred nobility. The disrespect and disregard is frank and frantic. There is an open campaign for scrapping the entire institution. It may yet come in a revolutionary upheaval which will upend the entire polity. But for now and for strategic and security reasons, it is not advisable to throw away the baby with the bath water. What the Obaship system needs is rigorous reform and stern reevaluation. But for globalization which has brought the world together in the centre, what will an Apetu be doing moonlighting and stealing in America while pretending to be ruling his people from abroad?
These are some of the questions one intended to put to the newly ennobled Soun of Ogbomosho, Oba Afolabi Olaoye, as we intended to pay him an unscheduled royal homage in his storied homestead. The Soun was not the principal reason for our visit to Ogbomosho. Rather, it was to honour the memory of our late father in-law, Chief Christopher Adepoju Adeyanju, businessman, hotelier and entrepreneur on the tenth anniversary of his departure. He was a childhood friend of the late Soun and both of them had journeyed to Jos to make their fortune with Adeyanju eventually departing for Mubi in the old Adamawa Province where he established himself as a major retailer and industrial force.
But why do we think Oba Olaoye is even in a position to answer these weighty posers? He was this columnist’s student at the fabled University of Ife and must have imbibed some of the intellectual rigour for which the old department of Literature in English became world famous. Despite the marked decline in the Obaship institution in recent years, there is still a lot of architecture in the ruins. The Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo, remains a consummate military intellectual, cultural icon and discerning political analyst. The Orangun of Oke Ila, Oba Adedokun Abolarin, is impeccably well-conducted and a shining symbol of the possibilities of transformative royal leadership in his domain. Our own sovereign monarch, the Olufi, Oba (Dr) Adetoyese Oyeniyi, Odugbemi1, remains a sober and solemn professor hiding under royal plumage and an implacable farmer. He once ushered yours sincerely into a room in the palace filled with huge yam tubers harvested from his farm in Mokore in the old Area Five. We have high hopes of the new Olubadan, Oba Rasheed Adewolu Ladoja, a sometime NADECO freedom fighter who as governor of Oyo State valiantly and vigorously resisted anti-democratic tyranny. There are many more.
The last time one spoke with the new Soun, it was to apologize for our inability to attend his upcoming coronation which was about two weeks away then. As soon as the monarch presumptive established the identity of the caller, the conversation took on a tone of rapture and respect. I told him I got his number from his friend and classmate at Ife, Oyewole son of the last Soun and former commissioner in Oyo State. “Sir, he is sitting in the car beside me”, the new Soun responded and we all chatted excitedly for a few more minutes. About thirty years earlier in the rugged and scenic town of Oke Mesi in 1993, yours sincerely had attended Oyewole’s colourful engagement ceremony to Bike, the medical doctor daughter of late Professor Toks Durotoye. It was the last snapshot of the great medical genius, Professor Kayode Osuntokun, who was to join the Triumphant Procession about a year after. It had all gone very quickly.
Not going very quickly was the hard, five-hour slog from the Oshogbo Junction to Ogbomosho later on Saturday afternoon through some of the most atrocious roads that ever perforated a mosaic of historic hamlets and fabled towns for which the Yoruba are justly famous. All the way from Lagos the previous day, it had been a gentle drizzle and now on Saturday, the harmless, half-hearted weeping continued, like the sulking of a miserable elf. It was not a question of cruel neglect as wayfarers on the axis would attest but of a lack of continuous maintenance. What was passable ten years earlier had become an impassable cul de sac.
Having attended a meeting of titled chiefs on the Otun Line and having presided over the arbitration of a rancorous land dispute between two historic families, we were truly on our way. Land matters a lot in these climes. One of the warlike disputants muttered darkly that if the dispute did not end in victory it would surely end in death and heroic folklore. But all that was soon forgotten as the Yoruba countryside opened up to a glorious spectacle of heroism and hardihood. From Gbaje Hills, to Ejemu village, Odeomu, Oogi, Sekona, Ede to the outskirts of Osogbo where a bustling market has mysteriously sprung up, the local people turned up in droves to sell their farm produce and to haggle about price despite the gentle drizzle. These people are simply incredible in their resilience and unyielding optimism.
It was from here that we made a detour to connect to Ilobu hugging the outer perimeter of Ofatedo the homestead of the Offa people after the crazed and sadistic Ilorin warlord, Balogun Karara, decapitated their chiefs. From Ilobu, it took some rough tackles from the road to get to the historic town of Oko. It was from here that the famed and tempestuous warlord, Balogun Kurunmi, erupted fighting and feuding his way to the ancient Egba town of Ijaye which he converted to an autocratic fiefdom before meeting his Waterloo in the hands of the Ibadan army in 1865. From Ilobu through the ever surging and commerce-minded town of Ejigbo, the ancient metropolis of Ogbomosho opened up in its sprawling and ungainly majesty.
All the way it was the same story of industrious and hardworking local people of this part of the country permanently on the go and indifferent to adversity while scraping together a living. If only we could understand and appreciate what a great natural work-force this heaving mass of people can constitute when properly tooled. It has been quite a run on the beautiful interior of old empire. May the reign of Soun Afolabi Oladunni OLaoye, Orumogege 111 be long, prosperous and scandal free.
