Kabiyesi, I have just given you one big reason you cannot afford the title of “Imperial Majesty”. You have to jettison this foreign title by all means and all efforts.
Kabiyesi,
Kade pe lori, ki bata pe lese. For a starter, sir, I think it is important I let you know that I’m not your subject but a citizen of Ibadan just as you are. Why is it important? You made a beautiful distinction at the week-long coronation that brought you to the throne between the monarchs of yesteryears and those of today. You proclaimed very loudly that the glamour usually associated with the throne is gone. You said “glamour is gone.” That was when Peter Obi, the 2023 Labour Party presidential candidate and some other dignitaries visited you in your house at Bodija Estate, Ibadan. That distinction made many citizens like me very glad. It seems Ibadan is now ready for real governance from the monarch. I know too many citizens don’t like it because there are always many people who prefer the status quo to change. One of the implications of your proclamation is that from your coronation henceforth, there will be nothing special about you other than that you are a servant of the Ibadan people. Therefore, Ibadan people are not your subjects but fellow citizens with you.
You said this much at your coronation when you spoke a mixture of the English language and the Yoruba language. That is a problem we commonly face in Yoruba land today; none of us who went to school can speak our Yoruba undiluted again. When you mixed yours too, I said this problem has gotten to the very top. I think, Kabiyesi, you should do something about this. Since it affects you as it affects all of us, I’m sure you will know what to do about it. It started when those who taught us in school regarded the Yoruba language as vernacular, and they made it a sin for us to speak “vernacular”. We have to reverse this and similar other practices that made English more important than Yoruba. In my own time in secondary school, the Yoruba language was one of the subjects we easily made an ‘A’ in since it was the language we spoke at home and in school when we were not in the presence of our teachers, who felt inferior to the English men and women. But I was amazed when a daughter of mine failed both English and the Yoruba language in the School Certificate examination about two years ago. It has gotten so bad that our citizens in Ibadan have lost their native language and also the borrowed one. Kabiyesi, I think you have to stop speaking in English and speak in Yoruba. This will encourage all of us to take after you. We will still pass English as we read novels.
Kabiyesi, I have just given you one big reason you cannot afford the title of “Imperial Majesty”. You have to jettison this foreign title by all means and all efforts. If you are going to throw away the glamour usually associated with the throne all over the world, and serve your people as you said that the rest of your years you will dedicate to serving the people of Ibadan and your are going to walk in the truth that you are the servant of the people, you must relieve yourself of any thinking that the people are your subjects; rather you must know that by the admission of that truth the people are now your bosses. This will be a big surprise even to the people themselves, but if you want this change, you must reinforce it by repeating it at all times. You know, Kabiyesi, that this is the reason democracy has not served the people of Nigeria. Those we elected to offices see themselves as our bosses. When your leader is your boss, your Kabiyesi, you can’t question him or her; he or she has free access to the tax you gave him to run the government, and he steals it anyhow. There is this crude joke about Adelabu Adegoke, penkelemesi, a popular grassroots politician of Ibadan of those days and the Treasurer at Mapo, who at a campaign lifted a huge key before the people and said: “if you don’t vote for me, I will lock the vault where money is kept in Ibadan and money will not circulate again.” The people believed him and threw themselves on the floor, promising that they would vote for him and that he should not lock the vault. This is what the Kabiyesi concept has done for the psyche of the people of Ibadan and Nigeria in general. The leader is not to be questioned, his is the public money, his is the vault. I think, sir, you have set yourself to change. I don’t doubt that you have the capacity to fight and change this evil. After all, you have fought many such battles as you rose to become king in Ibadan. Imperial Majesty is a title used to describe emperors all over the world. It’s a title that sets the title holder above other kings. It is honorific, but it often scales the wearer up in pride. It has set rulers in conflict with God. God is the only one who deserves that title. You said you are not religious or pray more than other people, but you are sure that God has always been with you in all you do.
Permit me, sir, to tell you that humility, which everybody says you wear as a garment, is the reason God is always with you. My own religious book tells me that God honours the humble but resists the proud. Sir, with all due respect, the day you begin to be proud is the last day you will see the hand of God in your life and work. And you know, Sir, that pride goes before a fall. The man who said he would make you ‘edun-arinle’, I understand, has come to crawl before your feet when you were pronounced as the Oba of Ibadan, the largest city south of the Sahara. Be guided also, don’t let that title make you proud. You are not better than any Ibadan citizen or any human being at all. God decided to make you what you are, and if you continue in humility, you are sure to finish well. Whatever influence you have, use it to prevail on Seyi Makinde, the governor of Oyo state, to restore you to simply the title Oba, which your forebears wore. Let that be enough for you. I watched a documentary on YouTube that told how your progenitors came from Abeokuta and how your progenitor carried Orisa for Iba that Iba could not carry for fear that he would die. Your progenitor stopped that death, killing six of the seven persons that were sent to assassinate him, because of the fear that your progenitor might upstage the Iba. He became prominent and was allocated where your family is today. I won’t doubt if I’m told that you derive your title, Arusa 1, from that encounter of your progenitor. I think Arusa may have a symphony as Ibadan are won’t to do from ARU ORISA (the carrier of Orisa). Anybody who heard you speak Ibadan dialect on the day of your coronation will not believe that your progenitor came from Egba. You’ve lost any trace of the Egba dialect, and now you rule over Ibadan. That is what only God can do. You have a humble beginning, you didn’t climb because you know how to climb. You said it yourself that you were born in 1944 and became the 44th Olubadan. You described that as a rare grace. Continue to see it like that and let your behaviour be attuned to that reality so that you will finish very well.
Dear Oba Rasidi Ladoja, permit me to tell you one thing more. In fact, I have quite a lot to say, but God willing, I will be doing it bit by bit as occasion affords me. I have set myself to monitor you and pinch you anytime I see you derailing from the beautiful marks you set for yourself. When you said glamour is gone, you mean, in my understanding, you will not afford yours of the usual paraphernalia of rulership. No loud feasting, no loud wears, no exotic cars. People know you for simple wears, Ankara. You said your priority is to eat well. No wonder you were as fit as a fiddle when you performed the traditional rites of your throne. You prostrated three times as a forty-year-old old whereas you clocked 81 years a day before. But you breached one of your promises on that day, your first day in office. You rode in a Rolls-Royce. That car costs a whopping N1.4 billion. It was said to have been given to you by a person who was never one of the people we know in Ibadan as rich. One wag who loves you so much said he hoped the Kabiyesi had not received from these emergency rich people who make their money like Ozumba Mbadiwe of old from ‘sources known and unknown’. This wag said he hoped drug pushers and scammers had not invaded the palace of illustrious Oba Rasidi Ladoja. When people who have not been known to have bestowed labour in any work suddenly arise to throw large money around, we must suspect their wealth and keep them at arm’s length. Our society has become corrupted with money, so monarchs must rise to defend our values.
The wag may not be correct, but let me give you some advice, one coming from an Ibadan citizen that loves you so much and wants a change: sell this Rolls-Royce and use the money to build a quality secondary school for Ibadan indigenes. You may not know, but Ibadan has not only become a slum as you observed, but education has also collapsed, especially at the secondary school level. When you do, those who want to infiltrate your palace with ill-gotten wealth will beat a retreat. The crown must be established on righteousness. Don’t allow blood money around you. If you stick to that, Rolls-Royce, you would have given the impression that you don’t mean your promise to forsake glamour. When you ride a Rolls-Royce, you will be competing with the Ooni of Ife who rides one too. And other Obas who do too. It seems the fashion among the Yoruba obas now is to ride in a Rolls-Royce. Please forsake the Joneses, stick to your simple lifestyle. The people of Ibadan are in the wrong lifestyle already, and that has affected commercial progress in the city. They are given to pleasure. Parties are held almost daily, and nobody thinks of conserving money to train their children. That is the reason for your observation that Ibadan sons have no jobs. Who will give a job to youth who have no skills? When they dropout of the very bad and poor school government sends them in the deceitful name of free education, they turn to drugs and hide in all those slums. Ibadan people need a leader who can model a simple lifestyle before them and reverse the trend of Igbo buying off all properties in our city. Our freeloading lifestyle is the reason for the appalling poverty and the sale of our patrimony for a pittance. Please learn from Lagos and get the city of Ibadan going again with hard work
I stop here, sir. This is the only way your crown can endure on your head and your shoes can endure on your legs. Any other way, as the youth says now, is a scam.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
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