Akin Osuntokun: The Olubadan Asanike doctrine

by Akin Osuntokun

I crave the indulgence of Ibadan indigenes. The reason is that I am about to press to service jocular anecdotes about the office and person of one of the more remarkable holders of the Olubadan title in recent times, Oba Adebimpe Asanike. The kingship succession tradition of Ibadan tends to foster gerontocracy as a permanent feature of the Olubadan stool. There is a continuous and ascending ladder of chieftaincy succession that culminates in accession to the throne. Living long enough automatically guarantees any member of the two tier chieftaincy hierarchy lines the certainty of becoming Olubadan.

“The two ruling lines to the throne of Olubadan, are Baale (civil) and Balogun (military), from where Olubadans are appointed on rotational basis’. This is in marked contrast to the rule of royalist primogeniture that generally obtains in Yorubaland; and owes to the inorganic historical origins of Ibadan as a war camp and republican settlement.

The rule rather than exception is the advanced age (often octogenarians) of successive Olubadan at coronation. The reigning Olubadan was crowned at the age of 93 years. The other constant feature is their low level of literacy or outright illiteracy attributable to the generational pattern of colonisation and modernisation of Nigeria. The corollary of this observation is that going forward the same tendency will begin to manifest the trend of educated and modern claimants to the throne.
Asanike was typical of both attributes of gerontocracy and proximate illiteracy. He was also an incomparable wit. His penultimate duty post before ascending the throne was as a magistrate of the customary court and was even then well advanced in years. Prone to the susceptibilities of old age, he tended to drift off into slumber in the midst of presentation of cases brought before him.
And slumber he did the day Okon brought a case before him where it was fairly established that Lamidi had stolen the goats of Okon. Asanike couldn’t really be bothered and seemed to have made up his mind upon the knowledge of the identities of both complainant and accused. On being roused from sleep to give jjudgement he promptly pronounced Okon guilty of the theft and mumbled in petulance ‘how can I be expected to pronounce Okon right and Lamidi wrong in Ibadanland?’
When he mounted the throne, the case of Audu Sokoto who had stabbed somebody and disappeared into thin air was taken to him for arbitration. He directed a search party to fish out the suspect from wherever he secreted himself. The party searched for the prize suspect in the nooks and crannies of Ibadan to no avail but they chanced upon an individual of similar identity named Audu Kano and reported same to his majesty.

Not long after conferring the chieftaincy title of Bashorun of Ibadan on the late Chief Moshood Abiola, he was apprised he had almost exhausted the trove of Ibadan chieftaincy titles. And there was the general complaint on the cheapening frequency with which he dished out the titles; and that very soon there would no longer be any title left to bestow. 

Asanike led a very simple and fairly uncomplicated life and was not about to succumb to the complexities of life at the twilight of his earthly existence. He pronounced it will suffice to apprehend Audu Kano for the offence as he saw no material difference between Audu Sokoto and Audu Kano.

Not long after conferring the chieftaincy title of Bashorun of Ibadan on the late Chief Moshood Abiola, he was apprised he had almost exhausted the trove of Ibadan chieftaincy titles. And there was the general complaint on the cheapening frequency with which he dished out the titles; and that very soon there would no longer be any title left to bestow. In his characteristic sour humour, he countered that the very description — that the titles are exhausted (Oyetan in Yoruba language) — merits being consecrated as a title; and was prepared to confer the Oyetan title on the next person prospecting for Ibadan title. Needless to add, he rendered all this in sparkling Ibadan vernacular.

On occasions, columnists find themselves at unyielding mental blockage over the next fit and proper subject to dwell upon, as I sometimes experience. This time around, I was inspired by the Asanike doctrine — why not write on that dilemma itself — the dilemma of agonising on what to write and how to write it.

I have for some time now harboured the thought of writing on Governor Liyel Imoke of Cross River State. I had even formulated the title as ‘Thumbs up for Imoke’. I thought very highly of his publicly stated position not to further seek public office after serving out his tenure as governor. He would rather take on the responsibility of ceding space and ensuring that other tender flowers are afforded the opportunity to bloom.

He struck a chord and echoed the mission statement of a political pressure group, Progressive Action Movement (PAM), I co-founded 13 years ago. We formulated the statement as:

“One of the cardinal imperatives of political development is a functional and sustained process of political leadership recruitment and succession. That is the successive preparation and enlistment of political leaders from generation to generation. This is a role that can meaningfully take place in the context of civil democratic rule. The fact that we have had military rather than civil democratic rule for the better part of Nigeria’s political history meant that the performance of this role has been intermittent and irregular. This systemic failure resulted in an emergent political generational leadership vacuum and the recycling of the old political class at the advent of the Fourth political republic in 1999. To highlight this problem is the contrasting scenario in Nigeria’s economic sector where there is an emphatic reflection of successful generational transfer of leadership.”

Ultimately, the reason I did not go on with the Imoke approbation was the acknowledgement of the observation that I had tended to personally become an issue in most of my recent write ups — this was mostly not my making. I had been provoked to write replies to publications that had gone personal in criticism and attack of my advertised positions. I wanted to reflect this observation as much as I could in immediate subsequent writings — even if it is true that at the end of the day all writings are autobiographical.

To my mind, the strong point of column writing is the uniqueness that the writer brings to the table and I have the privilege of living Nigeria’s political history right from birth, in a relatively unique manner. I have been compelled, often, by circumstances beyond my control to partake of a singularly challenging political heritage which took me to the pinnacle of political observation of Nigeria.

On my choice of subjects, I have been accused by divergent interested parties of the following ‘your obsession with the North is legendary … You write too much about Yoruba this or Awolowo that’ and of course ‘you are too pro PDP and Jonathan and anti APC’. All these are legitimate observations although if you take the North, the Yoruba, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressives Congress (APC) out of Nigeria’s commentary, I don’t know if there is much left to discuss.

The trademark of my column ever since I started writing one in 1990 is political advocacy. I take a political, often partisan position, and consistently write in explanation, defence and promotion of such positions in all its ramifications. At the Vanguard in 1990, I started out by disclosing upfront my chosen mission to adopt, promote and defend the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP) and I did.

This position dovetailed into the crisis that attended the annulment of the 1993 presidential election won by Abiola on the platform of the party. Resulting from the divide-and-rule strategy of the Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha’s regimes, the annulment crisis was essentially reduced to a Yoruba struggle. In this understanding, concerned media personalities and the intelligentsia accepted the reality and refused to be apologetic and defensive of the contrived reduction.

I say this, of course, without taking anything away from the nobility and sacrifice of the non-Yoruba who stood out to be counted in fighting the injustice. This was the beginning of my association with people like Olisa Agbakoba and Dangiwa Umar. At the peak of the struggle (between 1996 and 1998), my weekly column for the Guardian was a study in casus belli against the annulment and the culpable military dictatorship.

At the commencement of the Fourth Republic in 1999, there were virtually no ideological differences among the three registered political parties namely the PDP, Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), one anecdotal explanation being that the late Chief Bola Ige wrote the constitutions of all the parties in his exodus journey through the threesome.

The compensatory concession of the presidency to the Yoruba in 1999 stole the fire of Yoruba nationalism from the AD and made it easy for the party to work in support of the re-election of then President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003. And it was under this dispensation that I was invited to co-lead the re-election campaign in the capacity of Director of Media and Publicity. And since my incorporation into the PDP in 2002, I had remained in situ and consistently defended and advocated the party to the extent permissible by the constraints of its conspicuous shortcomings.

If there is any need to defend and explain my openly partisan style of writing, I will simply point to corroborating precedence and traditions all over the world. Nigeria itself is replete in this tradition. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, was at the same title the editor of the right wing Spectator magazine and Member of British Parliament (MP). The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are unabashedly devoted to the ideological partisan divide of Democrats and Republicans in the United States. Nobel laureates and Ivy-league universities tenured Professors Paul Krugman and Milton Friedman follow suit as columnists.

In the glory days of the Daily Times under Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi, two columnists Ojo Maduekwe and Doyin Okupe were specifically enlisted to spar on a weekly basis on the pages of Sunday Times as standard bearers of the opposing political parties.

Perhaps I should end with the mea-culpa I gave nearly a year ago ‘The truth is that I tend to feel lonely in the PDP… It has gotten so bad that it has steadily chipped away at my social life but I am comforted in the belief that my present persuasion is a vocation, a calling. Somebody has to stand up in the public space to give balance to the near one sided hypocritical narrative in the media today’.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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