What can we do without our royalty? And how will the world as we know it be without kings? Kingdoms and empires seem to vanish, but kings and emperors have remained with us forever. Radical historians and other intellectual regicides view them as risible relics of a feudal past that is better forgotten. But the joke appears to be on the revolutionaries. In traditional societies transiting to modernity, royalty seems to playa a critical and crucial role.
For over three hundred years, the Yoruba have been engaged in a war of will and wits with theirs. Sometimes, they succeed in banishing a few or sending the odd royal to his maker. But as a long term strategy in a war of attrition, they seem to have settled for the policy of giving unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar. The king does not die, and neither does kingship. Please note that king, Caesar, Czar, Tsar and Kaiser are all etymological variations of the same word.
The English succeeded in decapitating one of theirs in an epochal revolution. But after the Cromwellian levelling became a joke taken too far, they quickly signed on a new royalty. It might have been a typical English fudge but it works. The English royals are the nearest object of reverence and national veneration in Britain up to this point. Surprisingly, when the Spanish monarch asked the late Hugo Chavez to shut up in full public glare, the Latin American revolutionary promptly shut his trap.
The French sent off their royal couple to the guillotine only for emperors and presidential monarchs to surface like social submarines. The Elysee Palace can only be occupied by royalty. After they blew up the entire royal family, the Russians found themselves cursed with Leninist and Stalinist Tsars until the revolution collapsed one sunny morning. Now, Vladimir Putin is behaving like another Russian Tsar, minus the pomp and pageantry and the Russians are not exactly resentful.
In the case of the Americans, they, vowed from the word go never to have anything to do with royalty. They seemed to have learnt their lessons from the implacable tyrants they fled from in Europe. But with the regal Reagans and the kingly Kennedys, the Yankees appear to have spoken too soon.
Always centralise! If this is the motivating motto of all modern societies, it also tells us why we seem to be stuck with kings. There can be no centralisation without a central figure. As long as this remains the preferred mode of human organisation, revolutions and the dissolutions of empires may consume royalty but only for new royalties to emerge. Napoleon acidly noted that a throne is but a bench covered with damask, but the sly Sicilian eventually ordered one for himself too.
Snooper spent last Thursday afternoon watching a grand royal opera. It was as magnificent as it could have been in the ancient times of magical lore. The event took place at the Wallan Hall of D’Rovans Hotel, Ibadan. It was at the formal presentation of a collection of essays on chieftaincy laws in Nigeria in honour of his Imperial Majesty, the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi 111.
The Oyo monarch is a principal emblem of royalty in Nigeria and Africa and one of the most sacred totems of the unyielding potency of the institution. When it is said that Africans cannot build durable institutions, you can always point at the institutions of obaship which has survived and thrived for centuries. It is colonial and post-colonial disorientation which have made it impossible for Africans to adapt to western institutions.
Built like a compact but supple prize fighter and without any hint of mechanical inflexibility, his Royal Highness exudes supernatural self-assurance. With his charisma, carriage and comportment , the Oyo monarch is a royal showstopper any day. The finely chiselled features hinting of centuries of breeding and genetic refinement, the Alaafin is the ultimate advertisement for royalty anywhere in the world.
Like most exceptional kings, the Alaafin is many things rolled into one: scholar, diplomat, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, raconteur, warrior, political strategist, traditional savant, writer and supreme athlete. In these days of sharp and severe division of labour even within the same profession, this kind of royal polyvalency is a throwback to some earlier times of superhumans.
Ironically because of its virility and continuing efficacy, the obaship institution in Yoruba land often feels like a jungle of royal adversaries with our traditional fathers often jostling for supremacy and superiority of dynastic lineage. Snooper does not have the capacity or sagacity to dabble into the cloak and dagger world of Yoruba royal politics..
Suffice it to say that while Ile-Ife was, and remains, the ancestral homestead and originating sacred site and spiritual shrine of the Yoruba race, it was the old Oyo Empire that took the race to the pre-colonial zenith of its military, political, diplomatic and economic genius.
All the children of Oduduwa must be grateful to both founders and pathfinders alike for bequeathing a sophisticated culture which has transcended its origins in the forest to become a global brand. While it was the centralising genius of Oduduwa that cobbled and fused the disparate strands into an organic ethnic group, it was a succession of Oyo kings that expanded this into an empire with sub-continental reach.
Like his martial ancestors, the incumbent Alaafin has phenomenal guts and what they call plenty of cujones to spare. It was an unusual act of personal bravery for a prince of Oyo to train as a professional boxer. The boxing ring does not recognise royalty. You are all alone and on your own. Only the handlers and the proverbial towel can save a prince from punitive pounding, particularly from adamant regicides on the margins of society roused by class hatred and envy. For every prince, there is a waiting pauper.
The early life of the future Oba is the stuff of magical fables. Like all prize fighters, the Alaafin has taken a couple of hard blows. But he has also managed to deliver some sledgehammers. By his own public admission in Ibadan on Thursday, Oba Adeyemi has been involved in about a hundred litigations, ninety five of which he won by technical knockout and a few through lack of diligent prosecution on the part of his opponents. In boxing parlance, this is the equivalent of an opponent not answering the bell for the next round.
It was as if from birth, his father, a strong-willed monarch, strenuously prepared the young prince for royal ascendancy. From early childhood, he was sent off as a royal apprentice to serve in the household of foremost traditional rulers and notables. It was an exacting and tasking royal journeymanship/.
A series of character-steeling adversities ensued. In the event, his father was deposed and banished by the then Action Group government. Inevitably, the new political elite thrown up by the colonial irruption came into conflict and collision with the old traditional class. Oba Adeyemi became a principal casualty of this shift in the locus of power.
In the north, the same dynamics was to see to the removal and banishment. of the old Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sanusi. Whereas the ordeal of Sanusi exemplified the tension between the old Kano metropole and the new Sokoto caliphate which began with the Othman Dan Fodio conquest, in the west there was a hint of old sub-ethnic rivalries and pre-colonial animosities about it all.
Ahmadu Bello had fought with his cousin, Sultan Abubakar for the Sokoto throne and even after becoming the de facto ruler of Nigeria, this was still the prize he coveted most. Obafemi Awolowo, on the other hand, belonged to the new ascendant class who owed their hegemony to the colonial disruption of the old order.
But looking at a king’s mouth, one would never have imagined that he ever sucked at his mother’s breath. At seventy three and after forty two years on the throne, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi has worn very well indeed. The entire hall erupted in swooning adulation and veneration as the royal retinue, replete with dancers and drummers, heralded the arrival of his imperial majesty. Resplendent as usual in fine native plumage, his royal highness was quite a sight to behold.
Perhaps one was going to get a gift of royal dancing. Like all gifted musical artists, his royal highness has a supreme sense of inner rhythm which translates into exquisite fancy footwork and the inimitable regal trot. But it was not the time for royal cantering. This afternoon, his imperial highness seemed to have weightier matters on his royal mind. The scholar and the cultural warrior were ascendant.
As he sat impassively on his chair behind a wall of practised silence like an all- seeing, all-knowing, all-hearing deity, you get a sense of why the Yoruba consider their kings as being next to their traditional gods. The ways of these deities are truly mysterious.
You got a sense that your number was up when a native enforcer informed snooper that the Alaafin had ordered that he should be brought before his royal presence. But it was to exchange witty banters. As the king would later publicly reveal, he keeps a file on all major writings in the country. Needless to add that he has a capillary network of informants where it matters most. It doesn’t get more chillingly impressive.
It has been an engrossing encounter in Ibadan with a worthy embodiment of arguably the most durable and viable institution thrown up by the ancient Yoruba society. In his rigour and painstaking devotion to duty, this remarkable traditional ruler shows just how sophisticated and socially advanced the pre-colonial political order could have been. The life of the Alaafin teaches us two important lessons: The immutability of destiny and the fact that it is not life that matters but the courage you bring to bear on it. Here is wishing the Iku Baba yeye many more fruitful years on the throne of his ancestors..
