Disgraceful soundbites from the palace -By Festus Adedayo

I have tried unsuccessfully not to lend a voice in the show of shame of the traditional institution in Yorubaland that is trending now, for two reasons. One is that, I am very close to many of the stakeholders of that institution. Second is that, lending a voice would be akin to washing the dirty linen of the hitherto revered institution in the public. But the truth is that, Obaship in Yorubaland is gradually going extinct. Today, it lacks regards, doesn’t command respect and it must shape up or be shoveled out of total reckoning.

The altercation between the Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrasheed and Agbowu of Ogbaagba, Oba Dhikrulai Akinropo is the proverbial last straw that has broken the camel’s back. It is such a disgraceful, disheartening and dispiriting act that should make every Yoruba sons and daughters cover their faces in shame. But it is a small manifestation of a larger rot that has assumed epidemic proportion.

The political class should be held responsible for this rot. Since we began to have fraudsters, identity thieves and persons of no identifiable pedigree as leaders of government, it was obvious that soon, they would infect the traditional institution with their virus. And they have. We must not shy away from admitting that bastards of Yorubaland are mostly on traditional stools today. 419ers, drug addicts and peddlers, voyeurs and perverts, evil merchants who will kill their fathers and rope their mothers for the murder, occupy the apere.They sell traditional lands at random and appear in demeaning and beggarly functions that they shouldn’t be seen at. They don’t even know the history of the traditional stool they occupy and are so averse to intellect that they don’t take time to study what their forefathers did or didn’t do. They are the mentees of the political bigwigs who themselves have no identity. Recently, the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, was so peeved by this descent that he announced that any Oba who clubs, eats in public and subverts what was known of the Obaship system in Yoruba land does not deserve the prostration of any Yoruba man.

Iwo is a great town with great sons and daughters. I remember a similar event as theirs that took place in Akure, Ondo State some years ago. Erstwhile Deji of Akure, Oba Adepoju Adesina, was alleged to have brawled in the public by beating up his wife. Akure people prevailed on government to depose him as brawling does not represent that great kingdom. Today, he is history. Iwo people are decent people. I knew that much while I was a pupil of Ajangbala DC Primary School in the early 1970s. The ball is in the court of the children of that famous river called Odo Oba.