WITH and in Nigeria, it is an understatement to say there’s no dull moment. Events happen with such constancy and rapidity that not even the ubiquitous internet technology can keep tracks of them. How one wishes that such activities are positive in the direction of the progress of the country and its hapless inhabitants.

There is no cohesion of any sort, this polity of beautiful and the world’s most resilient people is fast answering to its epithets of being “a mere geographical expression”; in short, in the lamentations of William Butler Yeats, as echoed by Chinua Achebe, “the falcon no longer hears the falconer, things fall apart and the centre cannot hold”.

Those rattlesnakes we felt comfortable to pamper, given pet names and cloaked with the diplomatic immunity of herders sans frontieres, have made such a mess of our security architecture that the commander- in-chief and his boys only find their strengths in loquacious warfare with rebel clerics led by Bishop Matthew Hasan Kukah who strategically chose Easter to draw attention to the memory of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians who, unlike Christ, involuntarily laid down their lives as the horrific metaphor of the failure of our state.

The rest of us live only by the moment, not with faith in the Leviathan to which we have politically surrendered our inalienable rights to self-defence, but by the unfailing Grace of God.

Iku Baba Yeye, Alaafin Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi

Just after our family devotional congregation Saturday morning, I was struck by the news about the Alaafin Oyo, iku baba yeye. I was befuddled by the news not because he was not a mortal or too young for eternal communion with his ancestors but maybe because Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III was among the few Obas I grew up in my over 60 years on earth to meet on the throne.

Such Obas invoke somewhat uncanny longevity that you virtually dress them with immortality. Adeyemi was particularly courageous, colourful, understandably aristocratic, yet accommodating and engaging. What he never comprised during his 52 years on the ancient Oyo throne was its suzerainty in Yoruba land and the historic roles in ensuring the integrity of its territorial space.

While it is arguable that the influence and powers of the empire, while it lasted, did not extend throughout what is today’s Yorubaland, particularly the dense thicket of its south eastern region emptying in the Atlantic, it is undeniable that the military valiance of Oyo and its satellite states, particularly Ibadan, created the launch northwards and thus the buffer that saved the rest of us from being overrun by foreign culture desirous of territorial conquest cloaked in religious or spiritual liberation.

Yorubaland having long embraced Islam through trading activities as far as the Mali Empire, Christianity through the coast and the ubiquitous presence of our undying foundational traditional religions is so famed in religious pluralism and faith tolerance, that neither the European nations from the South nor the Arab tribes of the North could employ the opium of religion to rule over us. While Europe was primarily interested in economic subterfuge, including the accursed trafficking in human persons, the Arabs betrayed no qualms about territorial conquest and cultural revisionism in a combination of evangelism and convoys of men sparing no spears.

Oyo battled and pushed back until the British finally enforced a truce. Lamidi Adeyemi never was one to forget the valour of his ancestors, more pungently and poetically waxed by the Juju music maestro in his several lyrics eulogising Adeyemi which translation into English I lack the capacity.

For can I translate sakata, sapatara, sapowori, akata hunrun l’ojugun, sanpani hunrun lese. Sebi baba yin l’o goke owinrin tan, t’o ba awon atohunrinwa, t’o ni tani akata nfoju di, tani karanbani nf’oju ise wo.

Deep in those words, even obviously bastardised by me, is a message of heroism that swell the heads of the generations of those who did not fight from the back, nor sat on the fence, but led from the front when the choice was only between freedom and slavery.

In 1970 and at the age of 31, Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi became heir to this most organised and enduring empire which at the peak of its monarchy straddled the territorial space from the bank of the River Niger in Jebba through the Dahomey to Ivory Coast, making it the largest empire not only on the West Coast of Africa, but unarguably on the entire continent.

Throughout his years on this ancient throne, Adeyemi left no one in doubt of his determination and capacity to defend the enviable legacy. He deployed his education, knowledge of history and his wide reach to drive home his points. In and outside Yorubaland, he seized every moment to leave no one in doubt about Oyo supremacy. The most important factor that quickened the creation of Osun out of the old Oyo was the supremacy contest between the Ooni and the Alaafin. The anti climax of the transition of Oba Adeyemi was the unwarranted demystification of the most enduring artefacts of our culture.

As stated earlier, Yoruba has an enviable culture of religious pluralism. Thus, on several of our thrones have Obas of different faiths presided. But no considerations whatsoever should have presented the remains of the Iku Baba Yeye so commonly everywhere, including the intractable social media.

By our worldview of immemorial source, a Yoruba Oba occupies a spiritual position only next to the Olodumare; he is immortal with dual existence. He was not born but a gift from the supreme Deity to his people to preside over their affairs momentarily in this earthly divide of divine existence.

At the conclusion of the divine task, he dies not but only ascends upstairs (àjà) in re-unity with the ancestors to continue his service to the people. Thus, in Yoruba cosmology, we only hear “Oba w’aja” never Oba ku. No one, except those specially seized of that special knowledge can decipher the mystery of his transition. Such knowledge is neither disclosed nor expressed.

For the Yoruba, that parade was not the remains of our Alaafin, of all Obas for that matter. It is not the Iku Baba Yeye and it is beyond logic or argument. We will never be so convinced or persuaded.

The earlier we get out of the mentality of denigrating as fetish and bad, anything not done according to the Christian or Muslim ways, the better for us all. I am a Christian and no less devout to the service of my God. I also confess my love for our culture, particularly of its monarchy, to which I belong by birth and marriage.

Welcome back home, Aketi. Governor Rotimi Akeredolu

As I was concluding this piece Monday evening, our Governor in Ondo State, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Odunayo Akeredolu SAN, would have resumed at his desk after two weeks of leave. In a country and state where everything revolves around the seat of power, the absence of the Leader invokes all kinds of imaginary thoughts and speculations from the absurd to the incredible.

We recall that after the arrangee APC Convention in Abuja, the Governor, as the Constitution provides, made a written representation to the House of Assembly, which was published on social media, wherein he informed the Parliament of proceeding for a two-week holiday till April 22. Before you say Aketi, the rumour mill was awash with stories on the Governor’s health which climaxed in publications in the social media.

The illogicality stares one in the face because simultaneously with such absurd speculations was that the same social media was lavishly showing Mama Aketi interacting with the people of Imo West where she was reported to be nursing senatorial ambition. As one began to reconcile the news of an allegedly critically ill husband with the political campaign of his wife, the Supremo Songito himself came through the same kosemani social media, singing, dancing and praising God. Welcome home, Mr.

Governor, nothing do you.

From the Afenifere Secretariat, we acknowledge your open demonstration of commitment to the principles of true federalism and restructuring of the political architecture of Nigeria, even at the risk of partisan correctness. In a country where people no longer sleep with both eyes closed, the Amotekun security initiative by you and your colleague Governors and its positive exploits is eloquent testimony that if true federalism is enthroned, the country would be the better for it.

The media reports that a civil servant allegedly suspended for being linked with the evil rumour appears not to be your style. Painful as it is, such impulsive reaction is beneath your personality, office and the Grace of God that keeps you on. Please let the initiator of the act pull it down.

Those behind the rumour may not necessarily wish you evil and certainly not your political opponents, within and outside your party who are fervently praying that you complete your full term hail and hearty; and I can tell you, the list is not short.

Finally, let me on a final note and on behalf of the good people of Ilaje Local Government appreciate you, Mr. Governor sir, for the security initiatives by you since last December by which Ilajeland and our Igbokoda headquarters, in particular, now enjoy peace.

It is gratifying that people now appreciate the security agencies, particularly the Amotekun, rather than the fear of some youths who constitute laws unto themselves. The entire Ilaje community promise their supports as our land is swept of all forms of criminality without minding whose ox is gored.

Nigeria! We hail thee.

SOLA EBISENI, is Secretary General, Afenifere