By Wale Ojo-Lanre
Ooni is unquestionable on the appointment and installation of Toyin Kolade as the Iyalaje Oodua!
Whoever is musing, crying and in the sad mood about the appointment and instalment of a non-Ile-Ife indigene as Iyalaje Oodua should have his or her head laundered at the nearest psychiatric clinic.
And the fellow should borrow him/herself a tot of the brain to know that it is Iyalaje Oodua, and not Iyalaje of Ile – Ife.
Ile Ife is the Source of the world. The ancestral stead of all the Yorubas, home and in the diaspora.
Every Omo Oodua,
I mean omo ‘Karo Ojire’ belongs to Oodua.
The Ooni of Ife is the Arole Oduduwa. The palace is the House of Oduduwa!
There are many obas in Ike-Ife, with each having the royal right as conferred on them to appoint their chiefs with approval from Arole Oodua.
The Ooni is an Imperial Majesty; not His Royal Highness, or His Royal Majesty.
Imperial is intercontinental, not a community or a clan or kingdom.
Hence the Ooni has the divine inclination, power and unquestionable might and authority to appoint whoever he in his wisdom qualified as chief over Oodua property.
His appointment of Princess Dr Mrs Toyin Kolade as the Iyalaje Oodua was not a brain wave decision.
The fact is that Iyalaje Oodua is different from Iyalaje Ile-Ife, or Iyaloja of somewhere!
One is restricted within a town, a kingdom of a fiefdom; while the other, Iyalaje Oodua, is a global title that covers all the true sons and daughters of Oodua in this firmament called earth!
So whoever is sponsoring or inciting any group about the appointment of Princess Dr Toyin Kolade as Iyalaje Oodua on the point that the title is for an Ife indigene should get educated and stop his or her act of deception and fueling an unnecessary emotion and rabid sentimental passion, which is jejune and cheap, both in content and mission.
Iyalaje Oodua is not an exclusive traditional title for only Ife indigenes. The appointment of Iyalaje Oodua is on the Exclusive, Special and Prerogative List of the Arole Oduduwa, under the influence of the ancient order of the spiritual temple and direction.
The Yeye Oba of Oduduwa too is on the same list.
Alaafin of Oyo, Iku Baba Yeye, His Imperial Majesty, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III, has bestowed a plethora of chieftaincy titles that bear Yoruba on non-Oyo indigenes.
Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland was bestowed on Iba Gani Adams; the Maiyegun of Yoruba was conferred on Chief Wasiu Ayinde Marshal; the Ayedero of Yoruba was also conferred on Hon Shina Peller; these distinguished and eminent personalities are not from Oyo town.
The Arole Oduduwa can pick whoever the spiritual elements direct him to choose as the Iyalaje Oodua or the Yeye Oba of Oodua.
It is also people of cheap minds and of low mental capacity of an animal that always insinuate illicit or sexual, amorous or convivial relationship between two personalities, who are bonded together by mutual respect. And whenever they could not decode the chord which has fastened a mutual engagement of a duo, the next option for jobless dirty-minded people is to allude to ‘illicit sexual relationship,’ or ‘the lady must have washed something to charm or hypnotize the other.’
Such thought is always bandied about by people with sawdust brains and of lower IQ, worse than a fly.
Such thoughts are peddled by idiots and dregs of the society, and embraced by senseless people, who cannot think that an impregnable relationship is sealed and signed by mutual respect between one party and the other, based on SWOT computations, not on sexual or amoral relationships.
This is the secret of the bond between the Arole Oduduwa and the Iyalaje Oodua.
Arole Oduduwa of today, the Ooni of Ife, has not committed any imperial, territorial, divine or spiritual harakiri in the appointment of Princess Dr Toyin Kolade, a first-class merchant and intercontinental trader, who is spiritually wired in African tradition, as the Iyalaje Oodua
The Ooni of the Source has not erred on this and whoever is not happy with this can appeal to heaven or go to hell!
It should be noted that no amount of dirty propaganda and hiring of town criers can mitigate the appointment of Iyalaje Oodua in the person of Princess Dr Mrs Toyin Kolade.
And no amount of bogus and acrimonious falsehood of sex portion and role usurping news being spread by crude people can truncate the progressive developmental alliance of the Office of Iyalaje Oodua with the House of Oduduwa and to the Arole Oduduwa. For Ile-Ife is the Source and spiritual home of all ‘omo kaaro oojire.’
And whoever is trying to sequester the indigenes of Ile-Ife from the rest of Yoruba is only embarking on a self-destructive mission.
The appointment of Princess Chief Toyin Kolade as the Iyalaje Oodua by the Ooni is right, correct, fit and proper; and perfectly in agreement with traditional and cultural dictates of the order of the House of Oduduwa.
Oodua a gbe wa oo!!!
Ojo-Lanre, a journalist and public analyst, writes from Ibipeju Oniru Chamber, Upper Ogudu River, Irede Estate, Temidire, Usi-Ekiti, Ekiti State.
