The recently installed Ooni of Ife, His Royal Majesty, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, Ojaja 11, knelt down in adoration to God Almighty at a church service in his honour and someone is trying to make a controversy out of it.
His predecessor on that throne of the legendary Oduduwa, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, at the peak of his glorious reign, used to address himself as the Alayeluwa, a term with a meaning akin to that of the owner of the universe or something to that effect. Even his palace used to be described as The Source.
But as the reality of his humanity and mortality began to dawn on him, he dropped all those titles and acknowledged, publicly, that only God is the Source of all things and is also Almighty. It took him almost his entire reign to accept that inexorable truism.
But it is taking Oba Ogunwusi just a few weeks to appreciate that, indeed, there is an Ultimate Source of all things whom Saint Thomas Aquinas acclaimed as the Ultimate Good and that we are mere manifestations of what to Plato, the Greek philosopher, is the Ideal.
The Ooni’risa maybe the custodian of the 401 gods of Ile-Ife and, as a matter of fact, other deities in Yorubaland, but Oba Ogunwusi is certain that there is only One God to whom he owes his life and existence. And to that one God, the Supreme Being, the Omniscience and the Omnipotent, he prostrated in obeisance, total surrender and absolute humility. For him, there is nothing controversial about that incontrovertible reality.
The Ooni of Ife, in accepting that ‘God remains the highest, the King of kings’, has demonstrated in a very noble and sublime manner that he is a profound student of history who would not want to err like the biblical Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar or even the French King Louis X1V who exclaimed in royal ecstasy, ‘I am the state’.
Among the Northern Nigerian traditional setup, there is a saying that there are no bad Emirs but bad advisers. It is possible that the Yoruba have this saying too and that is why their most revered royal father is starting this early to be his own man without necessarily disavowing the role of palace officials.
Oba Ogunwusi is right to be surprised, if not embarrassed, that anyone in his proper frame of mind deigned, even if faintly, to attribute divinity to him. When he knelt down in supplication and thanksgiving, in addition to asking God to guide him the way he guided the young Israelites’ King Solomon, he also broke the myth and misperception that used to surround the religious life of the occupant of the paramount stool of the Yoruba royal institution.
We recall that when he was chosen, even above his father, he knew what the expectations are part of which is that he will bring the modernity associated with his cosmopolitan disposition and exposure to bear on the rich history and culture the throne he is occupying is known for.
Similarly, in our opinion, from his display at the church service, Oba Ogunwusi has served notice to those courtiers who miscomprehend the demands of royalty and misinterpret same as cultural infallibility. He also, by that singular act, distanced himself from any spectre of spiritual arrogance that often leads to a clash between faith and tradition.
Commendable as that lesson is, we hope he will be the light that will reconcile the long drawn misgivings regarding what is culturally defensible and spiritually permissible.
