Stories by Yinka Fabowale, Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan and Olanrewaju Oyedeji, Ile Ife
When the drama surrounding the death of Oba Sijuade started, it was a real thriller with many denials and allegations making the waves.
But, controversy has always surrounded the monarch and did not just start with his death. A look down history lane would actually reveal that during his lifetime Ooni had always been a controversial man. Though good natured, he had a fair share of disputes, notably with fellow traditional rulers including the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Adeyemi, the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona and even the Ogunsua of Modakeke in his local domain, with whose people he fought years of bloody war.
Supremacy battle with Alaafin
When Sijuwade became Ooni of Ife in December 1980, he inherited a dispute over supremacy among the Obas of Yorubaland. In 1967, a crisis had been resolved when Chief Obafemi Awolowo was chosen as the leader of the Yoruba. In 1976, the Governor of old Oyo State, General David Jemibewon (retd), had decreed that the Ooni of Ife would be the permanent chairman of the State Council of Obas and Chiefs. Other Obas led by the Alaafin said the position should rotate. The dispute calmed when Osun State was carved out of Oyo State in August 1991, but the ill will persisted.
In January 2009, Sijuwade was quoted as saying that Oba Adeyemi was ruling a dead empire (the Oyo Empire, which collapsed in 1793). Adeyemi responded by citing “absurdities” in Sijuwade’s statements and saying the Ooni “is not in tune with his own history”.
Alaafin: “Anybody who does not know his ancestral roots, who does not strive to learn about it and does not learn from those who know will continue to make mistakes and flounder in ignorance. That is part of Ooni’s inadequacies.”
He was not done: “Where is the foundation of Yoruba Language? Oyo State is where the language started. Why are the Modakeke people, not speaking Ife language, and Modakeke is just a stone throw from Ife, why?”
The Alaafin said the Ooni rubbished the Oyo kingdom in 2009 but in 2010 claimed Oranmiyan as his lineage ancestor. “How is it possible to call someone you deny your father?” Alaafin quipped.
Oba Adeyemi, who is currently the Permanent Chairman of the Oyo State Council of Obas and Chiefs, was conspicuously absent from a meeting of Yoruba leaders in April 2010.
In fact, it was believed that one of the chief reasons Osun State was created out of the old Oyo was to resolve the supremacy battle between Alaafin and Ooni. Both monarchs were very powerful as at then and their conflict was escalating and causing conflict amongst Yoruba Obas dividing them into factions, that it became necessary to ensure that the two of them no longer belonged to same state. Each became the chairman of his respective Council of Obas and the dispute abated, but only a little.
Ooni also courted the enmity of the late Olubadan, Oba Daniel Akinbiyi, during the Oyo State Council
of Obas meeting, when he claimed that the location of Ibadan belonged to the Egba people. Olubadan did not take this assertion lightly as he asked the Ooni to name and explain how Ibadan belonged to Egba. It was a huge slap on the face of the Alaafin as the accusation reduced them to being subjects of Egba. Oba Akinbiyi declared that the Ibadans installed two Oonis in the long time when Ibadan was the supreme military lord of Ife.
Towards the end of 2009, a more local dispute between the Ooni, the Awujale of Ijebuland and the Alake of Egbaland was finally resolved. Sijuwade traced the dispute back to a falling out between Obafemi Awolowo and Ladoke Akintola in the Nigerian First Republic, which had led to a division between the traditional rulers. He noted that the traditional rulers were an important unifying force in the country during the illness of President Umaru Yar’Adua.
In February 2009, Sijuwade helped mediate in a dispute over land ownership between the communities of Ife and Modakeke, resolved in part through the elevation of the Ogunsua of Modakeke as an Oba. The new Oba, Francis Adedoyin, would be under the headship of Ooni.
Oba Okunade Sijuwade (1930-2015)
How he became Oba
•The role Awolowo played
Since he ascended the throne till he breathed his last, Oba Sijuwade was described as a worthy ambassador-at-large of Nigeria and a symbol of pride for the Yoruba.
Oba Sijuwade succeeded Oba Adesoji Aderemi, who reigned from 1930 to1980. He took the regnal name Olubuse II. The coronation was graced by the then Emir of Kano, Oba of Benin, Amayanabo of Opobo, Olu of Warri, representatives of the Queen of England, etc.
The staff of office was presented to him by the then Governor of old Oyo State, Chief Bola Ige who urged all the Yoruba to support the Ooni to enable him succeed.
Formerly, during his coronation, an Ooni had to embrace the sword of justice, and enter into his palace on a cloth stiffened by the dry blood of sacrificed men and women. But the immediate past Ooni was a rich businessman, with several vast properties in Nigeria and England.
How did he become Ooni? He answered the question during his lifetime: “I was living in London at the time when Papa (Obafemi Awolowo), asked me to return home after the late Ooni (Adesoji Aderemi) joined the ancestors. I was operating my businesses from London and had branches all over the world. But Awolowo said to me; ‘it’s time to return home and ascend the throne.’ If such an elderly and wise person as Papa, and Mama who joined him in persuading me, asked you to do something, given the love they had shown me, and the fact that they were like my parents, I had to accept.”
Two weeks before he passed on, he confirmed this again to Dr. Wale Adebanwi, a university teacher based in the United States, who is the author of Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency, that the late Premier of the Western Region, Awolowo and his wife persuaded him to ascend the throne of his forebears.
Adebanwi, noted that nothing indicated that the Ooni was near his death at the time he interviewed him for his new book on the biography of Chief (Mrs.) H.I.D. Awolowo: “Though one would expect that an 85-year-old could die at any time, on the Friday that I interviewed him in his palace, Kabiyesi was so full of life and he was enthusiastic as I opened the interview by asking him about his relationship with Mama Awolowo, the subject of my visit to the palace.
“He was resplendent, as usual, and became very animated once I mentioned Mama H. I. D. The first thing he told me was that his relationship with Mama was ‘very great.’ He then added in Yoruba that ‘it is as if she brought me up… She is like the mother to whom I was born. I cannot sufficiently describe the nature of our relationship. ”
Oba Sijuwade, who installed Mrs. Awolowo as the Yeye Oodua many years ago, lost his wife Yeyeluwa of Ife, Olori Oyetunde Sijuwade, in August 1986. He bore adversity with dignity and composure in keeping with age long Yoruba tradition that the Oba never mourns. He was in fact the one who consoled and pacified mourners.
Oba Sijuwade was known to champion the socio-physical development of his domain. Every year, he superintends the Ife Day as a fund raising venture for development of key infrastructural projects within the town. On these occasions, notable indigenes and friends of the town and the monarch converge on Ife for the ceremony, which often lasted a week.
…His business empire
Prince Okunade Sijuwade, by the age of 30, had become a manager in Leventis, a Greek-Nigerian conglomerate. He became Sales Director of the state-owned National Motor in Lagos in 1963.
His business career was marked by more than average fortune. Endowed with an agile mind, highly motivated and possessed of an iron-will, courage and prodigious industry, the prince was certainly destined for success. And so he drove himself to limits that would seriously test all but the most dogged.
Early in his career he decided he could do with not more than four hours sleep and that distance would prevent him from accomplishing his goals. Even today, with the enormous demand on his time in several places, some of them several miles apart he maintains a travelling schedule that even the most peripatetic would consider punitive.
Shortly after Prince Sijuwade returned to Nigeria, he was appointed the Sales Manager of Leventis Motors in Western Nigeria with its headquarters in Ibadan. By 1960, with Nigerian Independence, he became an adviser to the Leventis Group.
In 1963, the government of the old Western Region, then getting increasingly involved in a lot of industrial activities in the country approached the Leventis Group to release the prince for five years to help in re-organisation of some of their companies. The request was reluctantly granted after months of hard negotiation by the then Chairman of the Leventis Group, Chief A. G. Leventis, who considered the young Prince Sijuwade as an asset to their organization. The Leventis Group made the Western Nigeria Government promise to let the prince return to his organization at the end of assignment.
Prince Sijuwade’s first assignment with the government was as Sales Director of National Motors in Lagos. He subsequently headed the management of the company with numerous Nigerian and expatriate staff under him. In 1964, he undertook an extensive international tour to look into the possibilities of acquiring better products for National Motors. One of the places he visited was the Soviet Union whose cars he believed would sell well in Nigeria, because they were relatively cheap and appeared durable.
When he returned to Nigeria and reported to his employers, they were not as enthusiastic about the business proposal, because the government was not at this time well disposed to trade with the Russians. Rather than feel disappointed Prince Sijuwade, smart businessman that he was, immediately saw a business opportunity and seized it.
He formed a company along with three friends; the company, WAATECO, was to become in a few years the sole distributor of Soviet-made vehicles, tractors and engineering equipment in Nigeria with at least 50 Russians on its staff and a dozen branches all over Nigeria.
The small beginning marked the start of trade with the Soviet Union in Nigeria, and for Prince Sijuwade the birth of a business empire that was to include at least 50 companies. Two years after WAATECO was set up, Prince Sijuwade offered the Soviet Union 40 per cent equity participation in the company. The Russians did not hesitate since the company was doing well.
It is a credit to his acumen in business that while trade with the Russians expanded, his business contacts in the capitalist West continued to grow and develop. He was seasoned in the tough world of business.
While he was setting up his own company, he continued his efforts to help re-organise the government-owned National Motors and by 1965 the company began showing a profit. The political turmoil in the country following the coup of January 1966 and the counter-coup of July the same year brought his good friend General Robert Adeyinka Adebayo (retd), then Colonel, to office as Governor of the Western Region.
Sensitive to the possibility of having a disagreement with his friend over a public issue, he decided that it was best to resign his appointment as an employee of the government of Western Nigeria. He subsequently left the service of the government and went fully into business on his own. With this resolve, he explored with fresh zeal his many contacts within Nigeria and on the international scene and revitalized business possibilities which time had not allowed him to exploit while working with the government.
Within 10 years, his activities stretched far and wide, and to keep in touch with the various commercial capitals of the world, he moved the headquarters of his operations to the United Kingdom n 1973. Then, he was truly where he wanted to be in the business world; the world was, as it were, his oyster.
With his business firmly established internationally, he established a stronger footing in his home town, Ile-Ife. He embarked on two major projects in the town, which turned out to be a wise decision both from a business angle and as a means of enhancing his image in his community.
A modern housing estate, which he built in one of the quieter and newer parts of the town, was to provide housing for senior staff of the University of Ife, and help relieve the university’s acute staff housing shortage. It was for Prince Sijuwade not only a business investment, but a contribution to the development of the University and his home town.
It was the same thinking that inspired his decision to build a first class motel for V.I.P. visitors to Ife, the Motel Royal. This also turned to be a far-sighted decision because at his coronation a few years later, when the town played host to thousands of guests, the accommodation problem was not nearly as chaotic as it might have been.
Urban, relaxed and self confident, Prince Sijuwade had a wealth of experience from which to draw and was at home in boardrooms both in Nigeria and in leading capitals of the world. He had a large international circle of friends, contacts and business associates. It was often dispassionate, well informed and judicious, precisely the qualities required of a traditional ruler in a pluralistic society like ours.
As a businessman, Prince Sijuwade maintained a diverse social, political, ethnic and ideological group of friends in Nigeria and abroad. He genuinely enjoyed playing host and was equally at home in small groups as in large gatherings. He enjoyed travelling and had visited most countries of the world.
But his career could be divided into two parts, when he ascended the throne of the “ Holy City of the Yoruba” to borrow Leo Frobenius’ apt description of Ife. These two segments of one active and productive life are not separate or apart, indeed one fertilized the other. His training and experience as a prince today serve well in the great task of reigning in a society that is being increasingly modernized thanks to his industrialization and zeal; at the same time, he maintains the prime position of Arole Oduduwa, the Keeper of the seal of Yoruba. The first was as a dashing young Prince and the other began in 1980, when he ascended the throne of his forefathers.
Oba Okunade Sijuwade (1930-2015)
Ooni’s political activities
Although on the surface he appeared insular with regards to politics, there were indications that the Ooni was a silent but active supporter and of the political tendency of Chief Awolowo, many of whose disciples were harangued and jailed after the Second Republic fell to the military. When General Muhammadu Buhari (retd) took over power on December 31,1983, Ooni was restricted to his Ife domain with his travelling documents also seized by the Buhari/Idiagbon led -Millitary government. Ooni’s activities were drastically reduced and there was no way the conflict forcing the Ife monarch to become very careful in his political activities. When General Ibrahim Babangida (retd) overthrew Buhari, Ooni got his status back.
In 1993, Babangida annulled the June 12, 1993, presidential election, believed to have been won by Chief MKO Abiola, a prominent Yoruba son. The annulment led to a crisis by the people against the government. The Yoruba chose to fight Babangida’s government to a standstill.
But Oba Sijuwade led some Yoruba monarchs to a meeting with the then troubled Babangida who was facing the backlash of the annulment of the poll and came out saying: “Babangida is talking sense” and would try to convince Yorubaland to accept the decision. While many Nigerians saw his statement on the annulment as a way of playing the role of a father, with a view to defusing the tension in the land, he courted controversy for ostensibly justifying the voiding of the poll, believed to be the freest and fairest in the nation’s history. There was a lot of outrage at this “sell-out.” But Ooni claimed he was misunderstood.
He was also a prominent member of the Traditional Rulers for Good Governance and Peaceful Co-existence where he moved round the country trouble-shooting and ensuring that things went normally.
He was also said to have gone ahead to encourage participation in the transition programme of General Sani Abacha, who had taken over government and slammed Abiola into detention for “treason” for proclaiming himself president on the basis of the June 12, 1993 election.
At the time, the South West was patently against Abacha and wanted all Yoruba to treat him as a leper. Also, Abacha sought to set up a constitutional conference to write a new constitution to start a new political process altogether, but mainstream Yoruba leaders declared a boycott. Sijuwade intervened yet again, encouraging his people to go out and vote delegates into the conference. His famous statement, “E jade, ke lo try best yin” (go out and try your best) drew him more enemies than friends.
In July 2009, Oba Sijuwade said he was concerned that Yoruba socio-cultural groups such as Afenifere and the Yoruba Council of Elders were taking partisan positions in politics. In January 2010, he attended a meeting of the Atayese pan-Yoruba group, which issued a call for a truly federal constitution in which the different nationalities in Nigeria would have greater independence in managing their affairs.
When he celebrated his 80th birthday in January 2010, he conferred chieftainship titles on a number of politicians and their wives, including former governor of Imo State, Ikedi Ohakim; former Oyo State governor, Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala; former Niger State governor Babangida Aliyu; former Abia State governor, Theodore Orji; Senators Jubril Aminu and Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello.
Guests at the ceremony included former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo; President of the Republic of Benin, Dr Thomas Boni Yayi and King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene of Kumasi, Ghana. When Peter Obi, former governor of Anambra State, was re-elected on February 7, 2010, Sijuwade congratulated him, saying his victory was the will of God.
In August 2010, he mediated in the ownership dispute between Oyo and Osun states concerning Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso. The peace meeting he convened was attended by former governors of Osun and Oyo State, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, and Alao-Akala; and Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, which resulted in an action plan.
Daniel Temiloluwa, a student of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, said though he is still young, his experience with Ooni has shown that the great man could be controversial: “Ooni was not a perfect man; he had his own shortcomings, though he was a father to Youbaland. During the OAU fee hike crisis, he promised to intervene, but we really did not see the outcome of this, this created lots of tension.”