Today makes it exactly 10 years that Oba Kehinde Olugbenle (Asade Agunloye IV) ascended the throne as Olu of Ilaro and Paramount ruler of Yewaland in Ogun State. In this interview with KUNLE AKINRINADE and LAWRENCE OLADOTUN, the first class monarch speaks about his experience on the throne and the development of Yewa communities, among other issues.
The experience in the last ten years has been divine; God has been faithful. I was a prince before I became a pastor. As a prince, there was no serious tutelage for me because I didn’t grow up in the palace. I didn’t have the privilege of being taught about the code of conduct on what to do as a monarch while I was still a prince, which I could have transferred to the throne when I became a monarch.
Even at the Ipebi (traditional seclusion or retreat), which is mandatory for all monarch-elect to observe before enthronement, most of what goes around there revolve around meeting people that matter in the society – kingmakers, warriors, hunters, and religious leaders, and others who come around to pay their obeisance to one and some of them would come to pray with you as monarch.
So, if you are not a prince and you find yourself on the throne, the gap could be there. I know that I got here by the grace of God and then I ask myself how come ten years on the throne clocked so fast. Some of my senior colleagues do ask me how come I find it easy on the throne because when I was coming to the throne. What I was hearing from people was that the throne was too big for a young person to occupy, but then I was 45 when I became the king and I wondered what age would I be old enough to occupy a royal stool? So, I just laughed inside of me because that was just to scare young people like me away, to make way for older people to occupy the throne. So, spending ten years so far on the throne has been by God’s grace and His grace has been sufficient for me; it’s a double grace I am enjoying – the grace of being a prince and also being a pastor that is why I called it a double grace.
In fact, there is a book I will be presenting in May during my 10 years anniversary, and the book is entitled Double Grace and I will be presenting it to the public. There is so much on my head about my journey so far that I can still remember now and I feel that it’s better I put them down (in a book) for generations to come to share my experience in life so that some people can learn from it in future and that is why I have taken the pains to write a book on what has happened to me when I was young, how I hawked on the streets and played street soccer and to let people know that most kings have a humble background.
Major challenges confronting Yewaland
The major problem facing Yewaland today is unity. We have people from diverse tribes compared to Egbaland. In Remo and Ijebu area where my mother comes from, they greet one another saying Eweso in one accord. In Egbaland, whether you are from Ake, Oke-Ona, Gbagura, the people from Abeokuta are united by the salutary Baawa. But in Yewaland (Ogun West), there are some languages of my people that I don’t understand. In Ipokia Local Government, you can talk of Egun, Anago, and Eyo. In Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area, comprising Igbesa and Agbara, you have the core Awori people. In the Yewa South axis, you have core people who migrated from Oyo and in Yewa North, you have the Ketus who have their roots in Ketou, Republic of Benin, where you have Alaketu of Ketu and they speak the same dialect as the Ketu people in the Benin Republic and also Ohori, who people most times have accused of wanting to hold their Oro festival when their kith and kin in the neighbouring country are doing their Oro festival.
This diverse background has really affected our unity and that has really cost us so much in the sense that after almost 45 years since the creation of Ogun State, we have not had the privilege to be governor of the state, not because we don’t have children who had aspired to become governor but because these diverse ethnic backgrounds have affected the fabric of our unity in this part of the state. Hence, those outside of Yewaland have been exploiting the loopholes to deny us of the office and what they normally do is to pick someone from Ipokia and Imeko where they know they are not of the same dialectical leanings to pick candidates. And I have always been saying that the moment you pick two candidates of Yewa descent, you have already divided Yewaland, not to talk of bringing ten or more candidates like it happened during the last election, thereby dividing our votes along Awori, Yewa South, and Yewa North(Ketu) lines, despite our huge population.
And that is why today we are the most underdeveloped and neglected area in Ogun State based on my little experience in the last ten years. The long years of neglect have made the infrastructural gap in this part of the state to be wide and it keeps getting wider and wider as most of the major roads here have been abandoned such that even if any Yewa man gets there tomorrow, he can only try; he cannot totally fill the infrastructural gap.
Mobilising indigenes’ interest in the socio-economic development of Yewaland
In 2012 when I came on board, one of the very first foreign trips I made was to the United Kingdom and Ireland where I inaugurated the Yewa Descendants Union in UK and Ireland and I charged them to be good ambassadors of Yewaland. Since then, they have been organising Yewa Day biannually. The same thing applies to the United States of America where we also have the Yewa Descendants Union (North America chapter), which I also visited and I encouraged them to come together under one umbrella, irrespective of where they all come from (in Yewaland). I urge them to first see themselves as indigenes of Yewa before seeing themselves as indigenes of Ilaro or Igbogila or any other parts of Yewaland because that’s the only thing that connects all us together. Thank God, we have changed our name from Egbado to Yewa because when you say Egba-Egbado, we are not the same culturally.
Traditionally, we don’t have any link anywhere because our roots are different, despite being Yoruba. What I am saying, in essence, is that we need to build on that name and associate with that name whether you are Awori or Egun or Ketu, the same way indigenes of Abeokuta and Remo identify first with their sub-ethnic group before their communities. Go to Ekiti State today, and you will find out that the communities attached Ekiti to their names such as Igede-Ekiti, and Ado-Ekiti; so everything about the communities there is first Ekiti. So, this is one of the visions I shared with the people when I came on board and today the communities are beginning to attach Yewa to their names. For example, my own kingdom, Ilaro is now written and identified as Ilaro-Yewa, and Ipokia is now identified as Ipokia-Yewa.
Incessant clashes between farmers/herdsmen and confrontations between smugglers/customs men in various parts of Yewaland
These are people that have been with us for so many years now and have lived with our parents and married our children. There is a place called Sabo in Ilaro where these people live in large numbers. And I don’t know where we got it wrong such that they suddenly changed and feel they own the land. We have lived together and where the orientation now becomes we are the owner of the land is what I don’t know. Some of them will arrogantly say that the land belongs to the country and not the indigenes and that they can graze anywhere, and I think that the National Orientation Agency needs to work on the orientation of these people. Let’s go back to the basic when we used to live together as one because it is unfortunate where we find ourselves now as a country. But we are doing everything to ensure that all of us live together in peace like before and the situation appears to have calmed down for now; even the issue of kidnapping has subsided.
That we are at the border with the neighbouring Republic of Benin shouldn’t be a crime, but a blessing to us, because this is an international border with another country and not states in Nigeria and that is why Ogun State is called the Gateway State because our area shares a border with the Benin Republic. But the only challenge we have now is the closure of the border, which has not really helped. Yes, if you have a porous border, it’s like you have an unsecured house and the best thing to do is to fortify your door with burglar-proof. We don’t have a border because our border doesn’t meet international standards. I have been privileged to travel across the world and I understand geography very well; so what we have across the country is no border at all because there is no visible delineation between our country and neighbouring countries. You will see serious barricades at borders in developed countries and at times you will see deep tranches that will prevent you from driving into another country. But here in Yewaland, there are hundreds of cars that drive through different communities to other parts of other countries. One part of the building is in Nigeria and the other part is in the Benin Republic; a case in point is the recent face-off between Igbokofi community around here and the Benin Republic authorities’ over their encroachment into Nigerian territory.
However, no smugglers will enter Nigeria if the border is adequately fortified and locked. We don’t even have drones that can monitor the border and the truth is that the border should be reopened because it has been closed for too long. Some people depend on the border to eke a living; the villagers, clearing agents, and other people that come there to work. You close a border just because of one product (rice) at the expense of the livelihood of so many people who can no longer do anything again and they cannot feed their families. That means while the government is trying to solve one problem, they are creating another problem. Rice is a staple food and as long as the supply of rice in the country is inadequate, something must make up for the shortfall. We need to help the farmers grow rice and subsidise it to make it cheaper and affordable because once the local rice is cheap, it will definitely reduce the demand for foreign rice. So, when we grow enough rice in this country, smuggling of rice will naturally stop.
Sacrifices as an Oba
My freedom has been taken away. I am not free again. When you came to me 10 years ago, I was free but not anymore. Royal fathers are not meant to be seen everywhere or show off anyhow by taking bales of money and spraying people all over the place. When you go to the northern part of the country, you will see aides shielding kings when they want to clean their mouths because they are not meant to be seen anyhow in the public. There are certain places royal fathers should not be seen at all, but these days some royal fathers go to nightclubs. The way some of our colleagues conduct themselves in the public nowadays is uncultured and these are some of the challenges. So, my freedom, my bonding with my children even though as at the time you came some of the were around, but now it’s only me and Olori (my wife). ; except I want to have more children but I am tired but not retired. Also, even my friends have to call me if they want to visit me, but before they can come here anytime and these are some if the things that being an Oba has taken away from me. I love family life and I love taking my children out to notable eateries, but that is no more and I miss that a lot; I only communicate with them most times on the phone through video calls. However, I have no regrets at all because I believe that these are some of the sacrifices one has to make for being a monarch.