With the web of litigations beclouding the process, many indigenes and observers are beginning to despair over the selection of a new man for the stool of the Ooni of Ife. BISI OLADELE examines the suits filed by individuals and ruling houses to make kingmakers and government to toe their paths
When will a new Ooni of Ife emerge? This has become a recurrent question going by the number of court cases clouding the process of selecting the right candidate for the vacant stool.
Since the Osun State Government wrote a letter to the kingmakers early September, instructing them to ask Giesi Ruling House to present candidates for the stool, two other ruling houses-Lafogido and Osinkola-as well as some individuals in the two ruling houses have filed a number of suits challenging the propriety of government’s decision to restrict right to present candidates to only Giesi.
No fewer than four suits have so far been filed in court against the process. The four ruling houses in the town are Lafogido, Ogboru, Osinkola and Giesi.
While Lafogido contends that Osinkola has been successfully divided into three – Osinkola, Ogboru and Giesi-to its own detriment, it should not be excluded from presenting candidates; Osinkola contends that all the four houses have the right to nominate candidates for the stool out of which only one prince will be chosen.
Lafogido insists that the 1980 Ife Chieftaincy Declaration used by the government to pick Giesi as the next ruling house was allegedly “lopsided, unjust, unfair and repugnant to natural justice, equity and good governance.”
It further posits that the complaint of lopsidedness had been presented before a judicial commission of inquiry in 1994, recalling that though the commission rejected its proposal to also split Lafogido to three, it (the commission) recommended that government should urgently convey a meeting of the four ruling houses to enable them to agree on whether or not to amend the declaration.
It added that although the commission submitted its report to the government, it did not act on it until the stool became vacant again following the death of Oba Okunade Sijuwade on July 28, this year.
Among others, Lafogido contends, in its statement of claim in the suit number HOS/16/2015, that “the 1980 Ooni of Ife Chieftaincy Declaration is fundamentally flawed in that it contradicts the culture, tradition and practice of Ife in the filling of Ooni of Ife vacant stool, in that it attempts to split Osinkola Ruling House into three namely Osinkola, Ogboru and Giesi ruling houses while the plaintiffs ruling house remained only one.”
Consequently, Lafogido prayed the court for “a declaration that the 1980 Ooni of Ife Chieftaincy Declaration is lopsided, unjust, repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience;”
It further prayed the court for an order setting aside the declaration, an injunction restraining Osun State and kingmakers from selecting the new Ooni using the 1980 declaration and an order directing the government and kingmakers “to revert to the old and ancient tradition of selecting the Ooni through the Ifa Oracle.”
The court has since granted an order of injunction restraining the defendants from going on with its plan to select candidates from the Giesi Ruling House pending the determination of the suit.
In another suit marked HOS/19/2015 by Lafogido Princes, the plaintiffs seek, in addition to the above prayers, inclusion of Lafogido and other ruling houses in the selection process and “a declaration that a press release by the kingmakers wherein they asked all other ruling houses to wait for their turn is not in tandem with the spirit and tenor of the 1980 Ooni of Ife Chieftaincy Declaration.”
Relying on section three of the said declaration, Lafogido added that by the press release, the kingmakers “have become biased and acted against the spirit, tenor and proper interpretation of the 1980 Ooni of Ife Chieftaincy Declaration in shutting out other ruling houses from the race.”
According to the 1980 gazette, the four ruling houses are arranged in the following order: Osinkola (then ruling), Ogboru, Giesi and Lafogido. Clearly, the arrangement took cognisance of the then incumbent Ooni, Oba Aderemi, who hailed from Osinkola Ruling House.
The gazette, however, stated that in the event of the death of an incumbent, the next houses on the line should produce the next Ooni but that the second next can produce the king if the candidate of the immediate next ruling house is not acceptable.
As for Osinkola Ruling House, its contention is that rotational ascension to the throne is alien to the history and culture of the people. It claims that there is only one ruling house for the throne. The ruling house, according to Osinkola, is the Ooni Ruling House, which it insists, belongs to one family known as the Ooni of Ife family. This family, Osinkola claims, has four branches known as the four ruling houses in Ile-Ife today. They are Osinkola, Lafogido, Giesi and Ogboru.
For this reason, Osinkola posits that princes in the four branches are entitled to vie for the vacant stool instead of restricting it to only one branch as done by the government in its September letter to Ife kingmakers.
The ruling house is seeking, among others, a declaration that the four ruling houses are branches of the sole ruling house of the Ooni of Ife; and a declaration that governor Rauf Aregbesola’s instruction to Giesi Ruling House to nominate candidates for the throne for kingmakers’ consideration is “discriminatory, inequitable, sacrilegious, untraditional, not in tune with the people’s custom, illegal, unconstitutional, ultra cures, null and void and of no effect.” It is also seeking the declaration of the 1980 Chieftaincy Declaration in the above terms. The suit is marked HOS/18/2015.
There is another suit filed in the Ile-Ife judicial division by some members of the Lafogido Ruling House.
The Chief Judge of Osun State, Justice Adepele Ojo, is hearing the two cases filed in Oshogbo. The judge expressed desire to consolidate all the cases since they are on the same selection of a new Ooni but it is not yet clear if all the parties and their lawyers want to accept the proposal.
Given this web of litigations by the ruling houses, Ife kingmakers have their hands tied in continuing with the process of selecting a new Ooni.
At the resumed hearing of two of the suits in High Court One, Oshogbo on Tuesday last week, some of the kingmakers in attendance expressed anger. While ruminating over the ongoing suits, some of them wondered why some princes and the ruling houses chose to stall the process through the channel of the court.
But as the legal fireworks take shape, Southwest Report gathered that elders in the town were already mulling intervention to prevent an interregnum because of the importance of the stool to the Yoruba all over the world. If the elders successfully intervene, the ruling houses may end up shifting ground for a ruling house to nominate candidates for the stool. Otherwise, litigations may create a long period of interregnum.
For now, indigenes of the town who are only expecting a succession may already be in despair as the news of much litigation surrounding the selection process fill the air daily.
