The desecration of ancient thrones

ON September 11, 2009, I sat with Justice Rasheed Fawehinmi (retd), elder brother of the then recently deceased legal luminary, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, SAN, in his bedroom at his Laje, Ondo residence. On that occasion, reflecting on his younger sibling’s sojourn, Justice Fawehinmi told me that Gani inherited his activist spirit from his grandfather, the late Lisa Alujannu of Ondo Kingdom, who died in 1908. His words:  “Gani, if you look at him critically, was a human devil, an imp. He inherited his fiery temperament from our grandfather, Lisa Alujannu who, during his lifetime, was so powerful that he even usurped the power of the Osemawe. Lisa Alujannu, noted for doing extraordinary things, once buried a pregnant woman alive in the height of his power. He was a no-nonsense chief who brooked no opposition.” The elder Fawehinmi later showed me copies of the Nigerian Tribune that he had bought since 1984, adding that anyone interested in the Gani mystique should read his 1992 book Makers of Ode Ondo, a copy of which he gave to me.

Lisa Alujannu may have been more powerful than the Osemawe of his day, but African kings were extraordinarily powerful in those days. As we all know, they did not sit on stools: they sat on thrones. They were not chiefs but kings. But the white man came and banished them to stools and today, like loyal apes obeying him for life, we have chieftaincy laws. My 2017 dissertation titled A Pragmastylistic Analysis of Some Supreme Court Judgments on Chieftaincy Disputes in Nigeria  looked at the apex court’s decisions on some kingship disputes. You see, African kings are now chiefs. We are far from the days of Lisa Alujannu when even chiefs could decree instant death to dissidents without question. Or the days of Aole Arogangan, the Alaafin who demanded and got the head of another traditional ruler in a calabash.

In William Shakespeare’s Richard II, a rebel lord is rebuked for calling the king Richard instead of King Richard. That lord, Northumberland, claims that he did so “only to be brief,” but he is promptly reminded by the displeased Duke of York that in former times such brevity would have cost him his life. Hear York: “The time hath been, would you have been so brief/ with him,/He would have been so brief to shorten you/For taking so the head, your whole head’s length.”

But Northumberland is not to blame: Richard is about to lose his throne to Bollingbroke, a relation he had earlier banished from the kingdom in a fit of rashness. Nowadays, many kings have lost the power of their throne; they are just like any regular dude out there. It can be no wonder, then, that ill-bred and ill-mannered artistes treat them like motor park buddies. Sometime ago, a king was caught rolling up a joint, desecrating a throne founded by a great prince in the 14th century. His Royal Majesty, who once beat up a fellow ruler right in the presence of law enforcement, now hankers after foreign titles, completely divorced from the nobility of his people.

 How can itinerant kings be taken seriously? Don’t they say that familiarity breeds contempt? How can a king be in people’s faces week after week, attending every owanbe and laughing with everybody? Does humility mean an utter lack of circumspection? And when a king is trapped on foreign soil, charged with sundry frauds, are the people not doomed? I have to stop here. May their Majesties mend their mendacious ways. Amin.

The noise about Yoruba superiority

Until relatively recently, the title Yoruba referred exclusively to the Oyo. So if the Oyo say they “own the crown”, no one should rise in dispute. That statement has nothing to do with, say, the Ilaje or Awori: what is known as Yorubaland today was never at any time a single kingdom. The crown that the Oyo own has absolutely nothing to do with the House of Obokun, say. Oyo was the most militarily powerful of the Oodua kingdoms–and, yes, the Alaafin gave orders to even the Ooni at certain periods in history, because of Oyo’s immense military power–but it never was the origin of the race. A son can never be his own father. Even at the height of his power, the Alaafin knew that he came from somewhere, and from someone. Enough of the noise.

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Many people are Yoruba only because they live in the modern day: the title Yoruba was adopted at some point by the colonial powers to refer to people who previously were known as the Ife, the Ijesa, the Remo, the Owu, the Egba, the Ilaje, etc. Oyo also happens to be the dialect of “Yoruba” adopted for educational purposes. It is the standard Yoruba. But as Nobert Dittmar (1976) reminds us in his book Sociolinguistics: A Critical Survey of Theory and Application, standard dialects result from certain “power-political circumstances;” they are not inherently better than other dialects of the same language. The non-standard dialects of “Yoruba” called Ijebu, Ondo, Eko, Ijesa, etc, aren’t impoverished in any way.  And while we are at it, may we remind the language jurists in our media space that even the Standard English they venerate isn’t inherently better than any other variety of native speaker English: it just happened to be historically right on cue. Nor should anyone scoff at Nigerian English. Or ask us to eat rice with fork and knives. I never have and I never will.

Lately, a journalist claimed that the Yoruba people owe much of their language to the North, a statement that I find depressing because language contact is universal and unending, and languages are mutually reinforcing. But if the North keeps claiming a big influence on Yoruba affairs, I can have no objection because the Yoruba they are referring to is Oyo, and I am (historically) neither Oyo nor Yoruba. These triumphalists tend to speak as if the North’s historical relations with Oyo means a dalliance with the entire Ootu Oojiire. Just how do you equate Oyo history with Oodua history simply because we are all now known as Yoruba? Gross.

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Pun intended. I am now a co-sharer of space under your Windows column every Saturday Tribune edition I humbly cherish the honor. Continue to engage in your incisive and educative writings. You can be rest assured that there are gazillion members of the public who constantly read your column to enrich their knowledge on current affairs about our dear country, Nigeria. I belong to such a “tribe of readers.” The column is my cup of tea every Saturday( a must read). Please, stay the course as a fearless writer, not a brown envelope journalist or mealy-mouthed (doublespeak). In the words of OBJ: “Tepid writing does not evoke a desire for reform, and without reform, progress is not made.” ( My Watch Vol.1, page XII.)

Yacoob Abiodun: 0810 350 1024.