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On Behalf of Whom Is Akiolu Speaking? For His Edo and Ekaladerhan/Oduduwa Ancestry of Course, Otunba Akinfolarin By Ewaen
Edoghimioya Otunba
Morakinyo Akinfolarin’s article would not have been dignified with my
rejoinder, but for the
necessity of improving human society through enlightenment of the ignorant who are likely to be misled by
his article and the lies he peddled around about the Omo
n’Oba’s book. Reading the
article, you are first
struck by the fact that this so called Otunba have
not read the book in question , how much more understanding the
argument and the issues. I suspect that he collected his information in
a state of drunken stupor from an owambe in London or he was too
disoriented by the statement of His Royal Highness Oba Rilwan Akiolu,
Oba of Lagos supporting the
Omo n’Oba. Otherwise, he would not have exposed such crass ignorance
in his article and resort to uncouth language.
Firstly
he wrote that the Omo n’ Oba claimed
“that the Yoruba migrated from Ile-Ibinu(Ibini)”. I do not
know whether it is the season of lies for some
elders and intellectuals as already exposed in the case of
Emeritus Prof J.F.Ade-Ajayi and now an elderly Otunba. There is no where
in Omo n’Oba’s book
where he claimed
that the yoruba’s migrated from Benin. All the Omo n’ Oba
did was to trace his genealogy from the Ogiso kings through the
banished Benin Prince Ekaladerhan whom Edo oral tradition claim
to have migrated to Uhe(Ile-Ife) and founded a new dynasty with the
name- Oduduwa. Tracing
his genealogy, explaining and
describing some aspects of his coronation rituals of the Obaship in
Benin and its relation and connection with Uhe or Ife are all legitimate
in an autobiography or memoirs. Is
there a world standard or limitation on what must be included or not
included in one’s autobiography or memoir which Omo n’Oba has
violated? If there are, are selected
Yoruba Professors and Otunbas now the world policemen
of autobiographies and memoirs? I ask these questions because
Prof Ade-Ajayi and the follow-follow(apologies to Fela)Otunba
Akinfolarin are belly aching over why Omo n’Oba should include his
genealogy and oral history of his ancestry and connection with Oranmiyan
matters in his autobiography. To both of
them, the autobiography should
have just been a mere description of his civil service experience and
nothing more or less. But
the truth which they are afraid to let the world into, is that the Omo
n’Oba’s recounting of this oral tradition in his book, demystified
the Oduduwa ideology built by Action Group on which their political survival depends. My
dear Otunba, Omooba and descendant of Pupupu, permit me to ask, was Ondo
an uninhabited place before
your matriach Pupupu got there? Where did she meet
her husband Yangede? Did he also come from Ife or Idoko (Epe)? If there were people in Ode Ondo before
Pupupu, daughter of Oduduwa got there and if Yangede was an idoko man
and Pupupu met
him at idoko and married him, then Ondo existed on its own and
was not founded by Oduduwa ‘s descendants. Pupupu only started
a dynasty there. The world Oduduwa founded was an Ife world and not an
Ondo world. This hard fact of history has long been established by the
late Prof Ade Obayemi that what happened in Ife was an exclusive Ife
experience and was not universal to what became known as
Yorubaland and the rest of the world. Learn to differentiate between a
myth and an ideology. The oduduwa myth is exclusive to Ife. But the
Oduduwa as progenitor of Yoruba race story is an ideology whose patent
is solely Action Group. Please go and
find out about the myth
of creation
and origin of the Ifore, Ijamo and Idoko which formed
your native Ondo and
the Pupupu people suppressed and Action group buried, before you start
asking Omo n’Oba about
Benin mythology. I
tried very hard to see the correlation between contemporary politics of
the Igbinedion family and the Omo n’Oba
which you dragged
into the issue at stake, but could not find any. I wish you can request
your family back in Nigeria to courier them to you to enable you do a
“better” work of the dirty political jobbery you have chosen for
yourself. But in the alternative, you can request the archives of the
newspapers on-line for the materials or better still try some of the
university archives or the Nigerian High Commission. But it will still
be a hard sell because if anybody is having an identity crisis in Benin,
it is definitely not the Omo n’Oba. I very much know from the
emptiness of your writing that
it is the you and some
Yoruba of your ilk who were fed on ideology and mis-educated on
their history about Oduduwa that are suffering from an identity
crisis. This is in spite of the numerous universities and history
departments in yorubaland and the immense works they have churned out on
yorubaland before Oduduwa. I recommend
that you read Prof Akinjogbins chapter on “Yorubaland before
1800” in Obaro Ikime(Ed) Groundwork of Nigerian History, published by
Heinemann and you will be a better person for it As for your question of “On behalf of whom is Akiolu speaking? I will answer you historically because you don’t seem to know and have been unable and failed to see the connection. Oba Akiolu was speaking on behalf of his Ekaladerhan/Oduduwa and Oranmiyan ancestry which derives from the ruling dynasty in Benin. Akiolu’s ancestry dates back to Oba Orhogbua of Benin who established the war camp Eko and appointed his grandson Asipa as the first Eleko of Eko. So he was speaking on behalf of human history and not Action Group politics and ideology nor the theology of Oba Okunade Sijuade, Ooni of Ife. Sorry if Oba Akiolu disappointed you by siding with his ancestry and “betraying” the Yorubaness of Lagos culture.
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