Awujale Fires Back At Alake’s Oba Ranking

Does the ranking of Obas really matter? They are all kings, Lol! The Alake of Egbaland in his ranking of the five top Obas, placed the Ooni of Ife as the first, followed by the Alaafin of Oyo, the Oba of Benin, with the Alake coming fourth and the Awujale fifth.

The Awujale and Paramount Ruler of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona, dismiss the ranking as self-serving, false and misrepresentation of facts, Awujale said the Alake was not higher than him in order of ranking, adding that at best, he was a junior traditional ruler in Yoruba land.

To get the records, the Awujale advised the Alake to meet with former President Olusegun Obasanjo for proper tutelage. “My advice to Alake, being a young and inexperienced traditional ruler, is that he should contact Chief Olusegun Obasanjo for proper education so as to save himself and his people from further embarrassment,” he said. Oba Adetona spoke in Lagos at the Inaugural Lecture of the Professorial Chair in Governance he endowed at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye.

The Alake’s ranking of Yoruba sparked off heated debate, with the Benin Kingdom countering that no Yoruba Oba was higher than the Oba of Benin. The polity had been suffused with series of arguments and counter-arguments over the issue since then. Picking holes in the ranking, the Awujale faulted the 1903 gazette the Alake based his categorisation on.

His words:  “Not long ago, after the installation of Oba Alaiyeluwa Adeyeye Ogunwusi as the Ooni of Ife, he undertook steps to foster unity and cooperation among leading Yoruba Obas and for which I personally commend him. 

Thereafter, he visited me at Ijebu-Ode on Friday, January 29, 2016, followed by another visit to Abeokuta on Sunday, February 7, 2016, where he met Oba Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo in his palace at Ake, Abeokuta, with the exception of the Agura of Gbagura, Abeokuta, who was not around then. “The Alake, while receiving the Ooni at his palace, said the Yoruba Obas (the Big Five so to say) had been categorised with the Ooni in the first position, followed by Alaafin, the Oba of Benin, with Alake coming fourth and the Awujale as the fifth in that order.

“He also went further to quote wrongly from a 1903 Gazette to support all the fallacies in his statement. When I learned of the statement, I made several calls to Alake until I eventually succeeded in finding out from him if those statements were actually made by him, which of course he vehemently denied. “In a recent discussion between the Oba of Lagos, Oba Rilwan Akiolu, and I, we also touched on the same issue and the Oba of Lagos told me that he too had asked Alake the same question, which he had again denied vehemently.