Comrade Lekan Badmus is a Columnist with Oduduwa News.
OONIRISA: The Spirit And The Pride Of Yorubas
By: Comrade Lekan Badmus.
Named as the city of 401 deities, Ife is the cradle of Yorubaland and home to these deities where they are routinely celebrated through festivals in tandem with norms, ethics and customs. Yorubas have great respect and adoration for the supreme God known as Olodu-Omo-Are with the shortened form Olodumare. The regards for God is so much that the Yorubas; in their wisdom, felt the need to have an intermediary intercessor between them and the Creator. Hence, the deities.
Oduduwa is the Yoruba progenitor. Thus, every Yoruba man is proud to trace his ancesstral home to Ife – Ooye. In ancient monarchical era, the administration of the state was vested in the hands of the kings who were the custodians of culture. Being the progenitor of the Yorubas, Oduduwa was the oracle.
In the modern-day Yoruba nation,
Oba Ogunwusi Adeyeye is the spiritual leader who is saddled with the responsibility of making supplication,
appeasement and propitiation
to God and Orisas on behalf of his subjects. Culture and religion are inseparable.
Religion is an integral part of culture and culture is a way of life. It is quite unfortunate however that we have jettisoned the tenets of our culture which is warped in the concept of OMOLUABI. It is also disheartening that western education and civilisation have eroded our culture and replaced it with foreign religions.
Truth be told, religion is an opium of human knowledge. But we have been hoodwinked to discard our heritage. We now prefer imported religions to our inherited religions. What a myopic view ! If we cannot preserve our culture, then, our race is heading towards extinction.
Our culture is our artifacts which reminds us of who we are. They tell more stories about our background and civilization than any attempt at intellectual reconstruction of history. They are indeed, active components of our present. We speak to the artifacts and they speak to us in mutually decodable idioms.
This underscores the imperativeness of upholding our heritage because we found in them; the essence of our being and the concrete validation of our civilization far beyond aesthetics.
It was crystal clear right from the day of Kabiesi’s coronation that he shares some affinities with the world renowned leaders who have made indelible marks in their quests to leave this world better than they met it.
His ideology and intellectual life are constructed around the emancipation of what he must have imagined as a global Africa. His Imperial Majesty is a royal father who embraces a temporal and spiritual specificities that produced and defined him. His expansive cosmopolitan vision never excluded his immersion in; and celebration of the culture in which he lives. That ideology has brought him more prominence, popularity, respect and greater centrality in Africa.
Ọba Ọjájá II was born Prince Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, as a son of Prince John Oluropo Ogunwusi and Princess Margaret Wuraola Sidikatu Abegbe Ogunwusi into the Royal House of Giesi, one of the four royal families of the House of Oranmiyan. His paternal grandfather was Prince Joseph Olagbaju Adewole Ogunwusi whose grandfather was Ọba Orayegba Ojaja who was the 44th Ooni of Ife. Through him, he is a direct descendant of Ooni Agbedegbede, who was a descendant of Ooni Giesi. Thus a descendant of Ọọni Lajodogun. Lajodogun was a son of Ọọni Lajamisan, who was a grandson of the legendary founder of the Oyo Empire Oranmiyan. Oranmiyan, was a son of the first Ooni of Ife, Oduduwa.
The coronation of Ooni was like Ceasar entering Rome. The mammoth crowd that graced his coronation on December 7, 2015 was unprecedented. Kabiesi has brought glamour to the stool. His stylish and aesthetic values have transformed the palace and Ile-Ife into a Mecca of some sort with the beautification, redesign and re-construction of the ancient palace dorned with symbolic white paint. His humility and sense of humor has endeared him to the entire kingdom and beyond. He is a bridge builder, a nexus, synergy and an apostle of unity.
Shortly after his coronation, Ooni Ogunwusi met with the Alaafin of Oyo and by so doing initiated a new era in the history of the Yorubaland. He effectively broke the jinx of institutionalised discord and perennial royal rumble between Ife and Oyo. Arole Oodua has also strengthened and reinvigorated the hitherto severed bond with Modakeke.
Oonirisa is an advocate for the empowerment and emancipation of women and young people. He is also a renowned philanthropist who is committed to service to humanity.
Oba Enitan is a chattered Accountant who has been described as an astute entrepreneur driven by the need to turn impossibilities into possibilities. It may be hard to eulogise Kabiesi to capture in words; not just the facts that make a life but the essential truth of a person as embedded in his qualities that illuminate others’ souls. How much harder to do so for a giant of history – the Ojaja II.
Kabiesi is a royal father who understands the ties that bind the human spirits and so, Baba could be described as one knight without a benighted soul.
Wearing his royal robes, holding the orb and sceptre – the symbols of his authority, Kabiesi
stands proud and resolute in his niche. Oonirisa is an exemplar of modesty.
Urbane, amiable and suave.
May the supreme Allah grant Kabiesi good health, peaceful reign and longevity on the throne.
Kabiesi o !!
Comrade Lekan Badmus is a Contributor to Trailblazer News.
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