For more than a year the rumour mills in the blogosphere were rife with speculations about the death of the Oba of Benin, His Royal Majesty Omo N’Oba N’ Edo UKu Akpolokpolo, Oba Erediauwa I. In March last year, the Secretary of the Bini Traditional Council, Frank Irabor, released a terse statement to the effect that “the leopard is ill in the savannah bush”. For the better part of a year, the monarch had not been seen in public. During the 2015 presidential elections, candidate Muhammadu Buhari was in Benin to pay homage but was received instead by the royal council of chiefs.
The speculations were put to an end on 29th April when the palace officially announced the passing of the monarch. The Prime Minister, the Iyase of Benin Kingdom, Chief SamIgbe in company of royal chiefs and Enigie (Dukes), broke native chalk at the entrance of the palace, signalling that the leopard has taken leave of the savannah bush, re-joining his royal forebears.
There has been an outpouring of eulogies for the departed monarch, from President Muhammadu Buhari to the leadership of the National Assembly, Governors and captains of finance and industry. Edo state and its ebullient governor Adams Ashiomhole has declared five days of mourning, as shops and markets are closed down as a mark of respect for the departed monarch. Given the strict rule of constitutional primogeniture that informs Bini royal succession, the lot has fallen to Crown Prince Eheneden Erediauwa, who was formally installed as the Edaiken of Uselu, early March 2016. A Former Ambassador to Norway and Angola, he has made his mark in the oil and gas sector as a successful businessman.
Let me set the records straight: I am not a fan of monarchies. As a matter of temperament, I am a republican. Although I hold the ceremonial title of Majidadi (the one who gladdens the king’s heart) in Sangaland of Kaduna state, I prefer democracy and the rule of the people to rule by divine right of kings. There are also some evils that are associated with traditional rulership in contemporary Africa that may go unnoticed by several commentators. For one thing, there is anecdotal evidence that ritual killing has not been completely erased as part of the traditional practices. When the Ooni of Ife passed away, a few people fled the ancient city of Ile-Ife. Many feared that there are likely to be mysterious disappearances. The same trepidation greeted the passing of the illustrious Oba of Benin recently. We in Nigeria have never sat down to calculate how much maintenance of traditional institutions is costing our national treasury. Every year in England a great deal of debate surrounds the amount being required by the Chancellor of Exchequer to take care of the royal household. In terms of austerity, royal yachts, royal castles and the general expenditure surrounding the upkeep of the royal household. In Nigeria that debate has not even begun. We have been told that in some northern states, the traditional rulers take as much as 10 percent of total local government allocations. This means that some traditional rulers may be earning millions of dollars per month – all of it at taxpayers’ expense. We must cast a major searchlight on the impact and costing of royal institutions on our public finances and decide whether or not we should not subject them to major structural reforms. The same debate has taken place in democratic monarchies in Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Benelux countries.
Having said this, I must confess that I have never failed to be awed by the pomp and pageantry of African royalty. At a time when collective psyches are pulverised by mindboggling, disorienting changes, our monarchies remain a symbol of stability, continuity and tradition. The longest reigning monarchy in Africa is that of Borno, which recently celebrated 1,000 years of continuous rule. This means that going back one thousand years, Borno people can account for every single one of their monarchs. When the Sultan of Ottoman Turkey sent emissaries to Kanem Borno in the eighteenth century, they came back with a report that simply stated that Kanem Borno was the equal of the Ottoman Empire and that the Sultan should perish the thought of ever invading that kingdom.
The Fulani Caliphate in northern Nigeria is a young upstart kingdom of barely 200 years. It was founded by chicanery and cant, when a group of Fulani immigrants from Futa Jalon in Upper Guinea took it upon themselves to violently overthrow their self-satisfied Habe kings in the ostensible name of religious puritanism. Even at that, when one reads the philosophical treatises of Shehu Usman ibn Fodio and his son Mohammed Bello one cannot help but be inspired. When the Scottish explorer Richard Clapperton visited Mohammed Bello in his palace in Sokoto late in the nineteenth century, he asked his host if there was anything he needed from Europe so that he could bring it to him on his next journey. To Clapperton’s surprise, the Sheikh did not ask for expensive raiment, gold, ornaments, or trinkets; he asked, instead, for a copy of Euclid’s Geometry, because his only copy, he lamented, had been lost in a fire. I am awed by the poetry of the Sheikh’s sister, Nana Asma’u. She was not just a fine poetess; she was a teacher who began a community of women scholars to promote education and literacy among women. Nana Asma’u ought to be on our One Thousand Naira Note, not some dour looking old male bankers.
For me personally, no royal stool in Africa is as regal and as grand in sheer gravitas and power as the ancient stool of the Bini people. The stool of the Oba is over 800 years old. And if you add the Ogiso period before the emergence of the constitutional Oba, the Bini monarchy is over 1,200 years old. What makes it stand apart, as Peter Eke opines, is that it was not based on conquest or usurpation of power. It emerged from the mist of antiquity as the will of the people themselves as they wished to be governed and led. The Oba is venerated as a living god and embodiment of the spirit of the venerable ancestors. Indeed, a whole country in our own neighbourhood of West Africa, the Republic of Benin, took its name from that ancient kingdom, changing its old colonial name of Dahomey to La République du Bénin. The only other stool that is comparable to that of Benin is the Kabaka of Buganda.
A rather intemperate debate took place some years ago between the late Oba and the Ooni of Ife, Alayeluwa Oba Okunade Sijuwade Olubuse II, who passed away only July last year. The debate centred on the question of precedence. The Ooni maintained that the Bini stool was founded by one of the sons of Oduduwa who immigrated farther south to the forest region of Edo. The late Oba retorted that royal stool of Ile Ife was founded by one of the Edo princes, standing on its head a long-held tradition solemnised by the British who had placed the Oba as number 3 among the monarchs of the old Western Region. The first position was that of the Ooni of Ile Ife, the second that of the Alaafin of Oyo and the Bini monarch came third.
More recently, the Alake of Egbaland, Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo III broght out a new classification in which he accorded himself fourth place, and the Awujale of Ijebu Kingom in fifth place. This predictably drew the ire of the powerful and wealthy Awujale, Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona who used rather un-royal language to put the Alake in his place. The debate hit the blogosphere, where my good friend the poet Odia Ofeimun made the famous observation that the Oba of Benin is not a Yoruba, so we cannot debate his place among Yoruba monarchs. Odia wrote a rather long essay that intermixes history, Ifa mysticism, myth and social anthropology to make a case of the Oba being the “first born among Yoruba monarchs”. The reality is that whenever the Oba of Benin sat among the Yoruba Obas, he knew he was the eldest. He did not have to say it for it to be true. Those who deny him his place may stand on ethnic arrogance, which is hollow.
For my part, I do not know. I do not who is the older or the superior king. The simple truth is that the Benin Kingdom is unsurpassed in its regal dignity. You judge the power of a ruler by how much he is deferred to by his people. Judged on that criterion and on the longevity of its line, the Oba of Benin is Number One in Nigeria.
According to the writer Naiwu Osahon, the Benin monarchy shares eerie similarities with the ancient Pharaohs of Egypt. According to him, “Bini monarchy demonstrates strong affinity with ancient Egyptian gods and Pharaohs, with which it shares identical authority, grandeur and a great deal of reverence from their subjects”. For example, the hairstyle of Bini chiefs is in the same manner as that of small helmet worn by Ramases II. The kings of Bini were often addressed as ‘the Open Eye’, analogous to the Osirian mysteries who described the Pharaohs as possessors of omniscient eyes.
There is no doubt that the late Oba of Benin was a great royal father. He led his people with honour and dignity. With perhaps a tinge of hyperbole, in announcing his passing, the Iyase of Bini Kingdom Chief Sam Igbe declared that, “Oba Erediauwa is the Oba of Peace, the Oba who brought prosperity to his people, the Oba who understands his people. He makes sure that no one was offended, the Oba who could sit in judgment and give judgment against his own son for a commoner. It is rare. Oba Erediauwa is the best that has happened to Benin Kingdom in the last 1,600 years.”
As a struggling graduate student in England in the early nineties, I met a rather elderly English gentleman at a luncheon reception. He was a retired consultant surgeon. When he got to know I was from Nigeria he casually asked if I knew his old mate at Kings College Cambridge, by the name of Solomon Akenzua. I told him, well, he is now the King of Benin and he could not be seen without an appointment. The man was astonished, protesting, “But he never told anyone he was a prince”!
The departed monarch was born Prince Solomon, Aiseokhuoba, Igbinoghodua Akenzua, on 23 June, 1923. He attended Edo College Benin before proceeding to Government College Ibadan, where he was reputed to have been an excellent scholar as well as sportsman. He later attended Yaba College for his higher studies before proceeding to Cambridge University, where he studied Law and Public Administration. Upon returning to Nigeria, he joined the Eastern Region Government as a District Officer in 1959. In those days that was the most prestigious position any Nigerian young man could hold. He later transferred to the Federal Service where he rose up to the rank of Permanent Secretary, retiring in 1973. He briefly served as the Regional Director for Gulf Oil and was later Commissioner of Finance in the defunct Bendel State. He ascended the throne of his ancestors as the 38th Oba after his father Oba Akenzua II passed away in 1979.
It was not for nothing that Oba Erediuwa was hailed as the Oba of Peace. During his long reign Edo land was an oasis of peace in a troubled region. We were told that when the South-South militants wanted to extend their activities to his domain, the palace sent a forbidding message, “Omo n’Oba will not hear of it”. We have it on authority from none other than Erik Eniola, a former Director in the Presidency, that the late Oba played a central role in keeping this country together. He was one of the top civil servants that accompanied former Head of State General Yakubu Gowon to the Aburi peace talks in Ghana in Janaury 1967. Gowon had unwittingly conceded what amounted to a dangerously loose confederation. Upon return, Prince Akenzua penned a strong memo urging the Head of State to reconsider his position. It was on the basis of that memo that the Gowon administration beat a hasty retreat from a confederal arrangement that would have spelt the death knell of our country. Those who insisted “On Aburi We Stand”, did not quite know their international law. Treaties entered into are of no legal effect until they are duly ratified. The Aburi Agreement was not ratified by the Federal Government and was thus invalid and non-binding as a legal agreement. It was the wisdom of Prince Akenzua that saved Nigeria.
In an epoch when men do not know how to exercise power with wisdom, moderation and restraint, the late Oba was a shining light in a dark and benighted age. His legacy is imperishable. Great Leopard of the ancient savannah I hail you! Prince of Ogodomigodo, Solomon, Aiseokhuoba, Igbinoghodua Akenzua. Emini mini mini Omo N’Oba N’ Edo UKu Akpolokpolo, Oba Erediauwa
Obadiah Mailafia
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
