By Lasisi Olagunju
(Published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday, 26 May, 2025).
At the Alaafin’s Garden Hall in Oyo on 6 November, 1934, Alaafin Siyanbola Ladigbolu held a storming meeting with the Resident of Oyo Province, the Honourable Mr. H. L. Ward-Price. The Resident was the equivalent of today’s governor; the Province equated today’s state. That meeting was called to discuss the news filtering out that the white man was moving the capital of Oyo Province from Oyo town to Ibadan.
The meeting was held in a very tense atmosphere. The Lagos Daily News of 13 November, 1934 carried the proceedings verbatim. There is an excerpt here:
The Aláàfin: I summoned this meeting with a view to ascertaining whether the ugly rumour of your impending removal from Ộyó to ibadan was true or not as I have not been authoritatively informed by you.
The Resident: Who told you that I am removing to Ìbàdàn?
The Aláàfin: No one did but it is a general talk among my people that you are packing up.
The Resident: But who told you that? The Aláàfin should not believe foolish talks and rumours.
The Aláàfin: If you want to prove the veracity of my statement, just give three pence to a small boy in the street with the request to bring in as many persons as he can find talking on this subject. You will be surprised at the crowd that will throng this place in a minute. It is a common saying everywhere.
The Resident: Anybody can say what he or she likes but I do not think the Aláàfin believes everything he hears.
The Alâàfin: I do not believe everything but this is too general to be a lie. I and my people do not want you to go. But if you say that you are not leaving Oyó, I am satisfied.
The Resident: I am transferring my Provincial Office to Ibàdàn. That is, my clerks are going to Ibàdàn and I am going to make Ibàdàn my business place. But I shall be living in Ộyộ.
The Aláàfin: How is it then that you say just now that you are not leaving Ộyó? This is rather suspicious. I do not like it.
The Resident: But can’t the Aláàfin see the difference between the Resident and his staff? I am not removing from Ộyộ; my clerks are.
The Aláàfin: I do not want you or your staff to leave Ộyó. Why? I am not pleased at the mere suggestion of it.
The Resident: You see, at Ộyó I have so much work to do through my mails coming in in great abundance. The mails are received twice weekly. Replies to some letters are sometimes delayed through that cause. Whilst at Ibàdàn I can get my mails every day and writing can be reduced or facilitated by the use of phone messages. Letters come from Forestry Department, Agricultural Department, etc., etc. which can be answered at once.
The Aláàfin: But you are not the first Resident to experience the difficulties of which you now complain. How is it that your predecessors never complained of this and were able to satisfy all concerned? Besides, these difficulties can be easily adjusted. I am not pleased that you should go to Ibàdàn for that reason.
The Resident: As I have said, while my office remains at Oyó, I shall never have to know the people of Oyó very well. Even some of the chiefs before me now (referring to the Ộyó chiefs present) are not well known to me because I am constantly engaged upon my work at the Residency. But if I go to İbàdàn, then my work is over. I can come to Ộyo two or three days. I shall then be able to devote more time to Oyo affairs than I have hitherto done.
The Aláàfin: This sounds strange! But you are known and addressed as the Resident of Oyo not of Ibàdàn.
The Resident: I am also Resident for Ibàdàn, Saki, Ifè, etc., etc. as well.
The Aláàfin: Exactly so by virtue of my position as the overlord of the places cited. But Oyó is your home. You are my Resident.
The Resident: Yes, I admit that Ộyo is my headquarters and I shall continue to reside there when I finish my work at Ibàdàn. At least I wish to try it; if not successful, I shall bring back my office. I have no mind of changing my headquarters. Do you think I can change that without the sanction of the Governor?
The Aláàfin: All right. But I am not pleased.
The Resident: Yes, the Aláàfin and the chiefs need not entertain any fear as I shall continue to carry on my work as usual.
The Aláàfin : All right, let us hope so.
It happened. If Ibàdàn was the capital of the old Western Region and the old Western State and is the capital of Oyo State today, the above is how it happened, the story as told by J. A. Atanda in his ‘The Divisional Power Structure in the New Oyo Empire, 1914 – 1934’. The article deals with so many issues including the troublous Ibadan-Oyo relations.
As it turned out, the Resident moved the capital from Oyo to Ibadan without approval from Lagos. And he got away with it. The Aláàfin believed he did it because ‘rebellious’ Ibadan had won him over. The truth was that the Aláàfin had become too hot for everyone to handle and relate with. Ward-Price did it because he thought the Aláàfin was behaving as if he was the boss of everyone – including even the Resident. A month earlier (October 1934), the Aláàfin had reportedly declared that “I know that there is no (one) else besides me but God.” The Resident was supposed to be Alaafin’s boss; he was today’s governor. The man had powers and he used it to teach some lessons in power relations.
Earlier still in 1934, that same Resident had told Oba Aromolaran I, the Owa Obokun of Ijesaland, in his palace in Ilesa that “white ants are eating the legs of the Aláàfin ‘s chair without his knowing.” It was interpreted in Yoruba to the Owa who did not ask the white man to explain what he meant. The oba knew that it was an official acknowledgement of a gradual setting of the sun of what historians call the New Oyo Empire which started with the founding of a new Oyo town in about 1830. Mr. Emmanuel Adedeji Kayode was the orderly (asojú) to the Owa Obokun from 1920 to 1942. He listened to that conversation between Ward-Price and Owa. He retold it to Professor J. A. Atanda in an interview held at his Ereja Quarters residence in Ilesa on 13 June, 1966.
I do not know in person the present Aláàfin of Oyo, Oba Akeem Owoade. I have not met him but the first and the only newspaper interview he has granted since his choice as the Aláàfin was conducted by me – on the phone. He sounded calm and humble throughout that interview engagement. He spoke on his expectations and laid out his plans for his people. I think I was impressed. Although I know that like an aircraft, the take-off is always difficult, still I feel there are already too many negative vibes since this oba’s coronation. I am writing this today as my own incision in his occiput on how he flies his plane, particularly his handling of the current crisis over the composition and chairmanship of the Oyo State Council of Obas.
The contentious Oyo State Council of Obas bill was passed some days ago. The new Aláàfin and his townspeople are not happy with that bill. But the authors of the bill originally proposed making Aláàfin the permanent chairman; in his absence, Olubadan and Soun were to serve as concurrent chairmen in that order of ranking. Very loud protests by Aláàfin’s people that their king would not share the seat with anyone even when he is absent woke up the other side – Ibadan and Ogbomoso. They reacted by rejecting the bill as originally drafted, and demanded a rotation of the chairmanship. They will share the seat two years apiece. Now, they’ve won.
They would win. In particular, the Ibadan would win. They have so much resistance and activism in their checkered history to guide them. Besides, they are brave and daring in reaching for whatever they covet. Their ancestors had it. At the beginning of the Ibadan-Ijaye war in 1861, an Ibadan General who later in life became famously known as Basorun Ogunmola, was reported to have boasted a promise that: “After shaving the crown of the head (Ijaye), he would shave the occiput (Abeokuta).” That was the Ibadan warlord’s way of promising to destroy one enemy after the other. He did not mention Oyo and its king, the Alaafin, but it is there in history that when it was his time to be Baale of Ibadan, Ogunmola told the Alaafin that the title he wanted was that of Basorun, Oyo’s prime minister. And he had it even while someone was holding the title in Oyo.
Professor Bolanle Awe in a 1965 piece wrote that Ogunmola and, much later, Aare Latosa while establishing an Ibadan empire stretching over the whole of Yorubaland “openly discarded the support and friendship of the Alaafin of Oyo. Of the two leaders, however, Ogunmola was the wiser, in that he replaced the Aláàfin’s friendship with that of the British government…” (See Awe’s ‘The end of an experiment: The Collapse of the Ibadan Empire, 1877-1893’). The effect of that foundational friendship with the new power, the British, is what we see later in the colonial government acknowledging Ibadan over Oyo as the new power centre.
Potshots aimed at Oyo are Ibadan’s regular bugle songs of freedom. A conference of Yoruba Chiefs was to be held in Ibadan in May 1939. Then a storm ensued over a custom-made damask cloth for the conference. The cloth had the photograph of Olubadan Abasi Alesinloye holding a tiger on a leash. The Aláàfin protested vehemently and the government banned the cloth from being sold and worn throughout the province. Why did the Aláàfin protest? Ruth Watson explains in her ‘Civil Disturbance is the Disease of Ibadan’ (2003, page 159) quoting Olubadan’s driver: “Abasi was holding a tiger, that signifies Oyo under Ibadan because that tiger sign (symbol) belongs to Alaafin. He had rope tied around that tiger’s neck, it was pulled tight.” Between that time, 1939 and now, so many events have occurred which have served to relive that experience of a tiger on a leash. Many more will happen.
The present Ibadan-Oyo crisis over the chairmanship of Oyo State Council of Obas and Chiefs I find very vexatious and unnecessary. The new Aláàfin should shake off suffocating creepers from his orange tree and own himself. He should move closer to his ancestor, Atiba, and ask him how he used diplomacy to make the Ibadan serve his purpose; how his son, Adelu, got the Ibadan fight his wars, particularly the decisive one against Kurunmi of Ijaye in 1861-1862. The Aláàfin needs Ibadan and other Yoruba towns more than they need him. I pray for his success but the current noise so early in his reign is very distracting and unnecessary. In fact, if I were the Aláàfin, I would call a strategic, unilateral ceasefire on this council of obas thing; I would withdraw my troops while I reach out to rival kingdoms. There are greater things ahead to do together.
“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others” (Jonathan Swift). Yoruba ancestors saw today and made it a rule of behaviour that obas must never leave their kingdoms. They also decreed it a taboo for obas to meet face to face. Throughout the period of obedience, no oba compared his height with another’s and none talked down on another. But the British broke the pot, first in 1886 to sign a treaty; second in 1925 at a durbar for the visiting Prince of Wales. The really bad one was in 1937 when the British called and held a Conference of Obas of Western Province. Since then, intrigues and fights over who sits where have combined to ruin the family.
What do our obas really do with the present so-called council of obas? What will happen if a state does not have that council? I do not want to ask what will happen if there really is no oba in a town. Should custodians of culture be found fighting over a council that is practically powerless and of no developmental value to the society? Besides, and this is important: Is there an oba today whose kingly arms reach out beyond his kingdom? There was an Oyo Empire at a time when there was no Ibadan. There was an Ibadan Empire which succeeded Oyo Empire at the demise of Oyo and its powers. Today, neither exists.
From the epochal 1934 to date, Ibadan has not stopped insisting that the present Oyo is not the Old Oyo to which their ancestors belonged and which they served. The British in the 1920s set up a court of appeal for Oyo province and made the Aláàfin its chairman. What was the reaction from Ibadan? Ibadan people refused to take their cases to that court. I got an interesting paragraph from Professor Toyin Falola: “The Aláàfin ‘s Appeals Court only existed on paper as far as its connection with the Ibadan ‘native’ courts was concerned.” The people knew that the political implication of taking their case to Oyo would be “to offend all the (Ibadan) chiefs who held the Aláàfin in contempt.” (See Toyin Falola’s Ibadan, 2012, page 600).
Today’s Ibadan will not submit to today’s Oyo. Their fathers didn’t. Late Nigerian art historian, Professor Cornelius Adepegba, in a 1986 journal article did an extensive work on controversies such as the current one. Adepegba struck a cord in noting that “when the British were upholding the Aláàfin ‘s supremacy, a section of Oyo domain, particularly Ibadan, did not stop protesting until it was separated from Oyo native administration in 1934” (Read Adepegba’s ‘The Descent from Oduduwa: Claims of Superiority among some Yoruba Traditional Rulers and the Arts of Ancient Ife’, 1986).
In Olufemi Vaughan’s ‘Chieftaincy Politics and Communal Identity in Western Nigeria, 1893-1951’, we read that as early as 1914, Ibadan launched an association of elites called the Egbe Agba O’tan (Society of Elders Still Exist) to defend Ibadan against policies inimical to its progress. To clearly show its anti-Oyo/ Aláàfin stance, Vaughan reports that “the organization broadened its political base by appointing the Ooni of Ife as patron in 1923; in March 1928 it made the educated ‘crown’ prince of Ife, Adesoji Aderemi (who succeeded as Ooni two years later), as honorary member…By embracing the Ooni and its influential ‘heir apparent’, the Egbe posed a traditional counterweight to the political supremacy of the Aláàfin.” But the hand of fellowship to Ile Ife did not mean that Ibadan was trading one chain for another. We realize this when we fast-forward fifty-something years later. At a meeting of the Oyo State Council of Obas on Thursday 20 October, 1983, when the Ooni referred to himself as “the father of all”, Olubadan Yesufu Asanike was among obas who kicked and vehemently rejected that relationship. He was quoted as saying “O si wa npe wa ni omo re. Baba taa ni?” (He called us his children. Whose father is he)?”
Ironically, those things which Oyo did to Ibadan which Ibadan loathed and rejected, Ibadan at the height of its powers did worse to others. It took the people of the present Osun State generations of ‘anti-colonial’ struggles to stop listening to a crude refrain of exploitation from Ibadan chiefs: “Omo yín ó d’àgbà yíò tó ‘gbà sìn k’á tó tún wá (Your children would have matured enough to serve us before we come again).” When the people felt they had had enough, they finally found the right words to reply Ibadan: “Omo wa yíò ti d’àgbà yíò tó ìyà gbòn tí e bá tún wá (Our children would have matured enough to shake off your yoke if you come again).” Read this in ‘Oyinlola Olokuku: Every Inch A King’ by Lasisi Olagunju, et al (2005:78). The Ekiti/Ijesa/Ila people’s response to the same experience was violent; it was the trigger for the war that eventually ended all wars in Yorubaland in 1893. These experiences and responses can serve you if you feel sufficiently cheated and dispossessed by the Nigerian elite and the system.
Now, descendants of the past are fighting one another to recreate the privileges their ancestors enjoyed. Ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, told humanity that “you can’t step into the same river twice.” Power and privileges constantly flow downstream; like running water, they are in ceaseless motion. Neither Oyo nor Ibadan seems to realize the truth in that quote. They are fighting over the permanence or the impermanence of a presiding office which really presides over no one in the real sense. Beyond being symbols of communal unity and cultural pride, the political powers of the oba are in the graveyard of history. The point I make in all this is that if I were the governor of Oyo State today, I would cancel that council of obas and tell each oba to stay at home and limit his problem to his domain. After all, each of them has an instrument of appointment which clearly states the geography and limit of his suzerainty. Or should a man be made a king and still be hankering after money ritual? A kingdom should be enough for a king.