By Adebayo Sikiru
You did a good job as writer and researcher (in your Monday Lines column) irrespective of you being Ijebu or Yoruba or not. Facts are facts and truth is truth. I enjoyed reading this massive contribution to the global topic Ojude Oba of Ijebu kingdom has become with many knowledgeable and ignorant ones having a say. However, your assertion “Three days after the Ileya festival last week, the Ijebu-Yoruba, home and abroad, staged their annual breathtaking Ojude Oba festival” attracted my attention. Thus I am compelled to write to you to put certain facts of historical importance into light about the origin of Ojude Oba and how it came to be celebrated by Ijebu people on the third day of Ileya. Summarily, this date and time is mere coincidence of circumstances of the time.
Many who are interested in Ijebu Kingdom history are well aware of the Imagbon War of 1892 that led to the collapse of the very much revered Ijebu Kingdom which was based on the ceasefire treaty that made Awujale to cede the entire southwestern part of the Kingdom to Lagos Colony. This treaty is what now makes the Ikorodu and Epe/Lekki division to become part of the present-day Lagos State. That is not the story I wanted to tell here but its link to the date we now celebrate Ojude Oba.
Ojude Oba (The Festival) of course predated Islam or Christianity in Ijebuland. But date of its celebration happened when Oba Tunwase’s first son converted to Islam and helped the Ijebu Muslim Community under the leadership of Balogun Kuku to appeal to his father, Oba Tunwase for approval for granting of land to build Ijebu Central Mosque as it was then called. Oba Tunwase, who never became a Muslim or Christian approved the land that is presently occupied by Etitale Primary School for the Central Mosque building. Oba Tunwase was the Awujale that gave the British a brutal Imagbon War and later entered into a peace deal.
The year Oba Tunwase granted the request of the Ijebu Community was 1881 and the age-old Ojude Oba of 1881 coincidentally fell on the third day of that year’s Ileya. From time immemorial, the Awujale announced the date that Ojude Oba would be celebrated. The Ijebu Muslim community thus made use of that year Ojude Oba happening a day after the end of their own Ileya festival to pay a thank you visit to the Awujale and became part of the festival for the first time as a separate and distinct Ijebu group or community. The Ojude Oba of 1893 was the very first one that white people would first attend and the very first time that attempt was made to introduce christianity to Ijebuland.
Oba Tunwase became so happy on receiving the Ijebu Muslim community at the festival paying homage to him while he sat on the throne. The Awujale rose to speak and made a pronouncement that hence every Ojude Oba would be held on the third day of Ileya. That is the history behind the timing. The first Ojude Oba that the Christian community would participate in was during the reign of Oba Ademolu Fesogbade in 1925, close to fifty years later. This was because for whatever reasons, due to the Imagbon War that destroyed the Kingdom of Ijebu, the Ijebu people hated the British and their religion and strongly persecuted any Ijebu that converted to Christianity.
You did excellently well by informing and educating the misinformed on the socioeconomic and political benefits of the festival. I was quite impressed too with the body of global historical research you put in the write up. This is part of the reasons I needed to point out the two basic areas of historical proportion that you didn’t get good handle of so that those who may or will rely totally on your treatise will realise the unintended distortion that may subject Ojude Oba to religious debacle in the future with the problematic nature religion is developing into in the world.
I have heard a lot of wrong impressions about Ojude Oba being an extension of Muslim festival, which completely is not the case. The decision of the date and time was made when Ijebu Kingdom was still in her full glory and the words of the Awujale were law, long before any European set their feet in any part of Ijebu land. If it were to be today when the traditional institution has become reduced and ridiculed by politics and the traditional rulers have now become a subject and not a leader of total authority, that pronouncement would have been challenged and possibly rendered null and void.
Having celebrated Ojude Oba on the third day of Ileya for more than a century since Oba Tunwase’s pronouncement, it is now almost impossible to change the date and time. It was this thinking of Ojude Oba being linked to Muslim festival that the idea of Obanta day was born and effected. We all know how a huge miss Obanta day is compared to Ojude Oba. Ojude Oba is the only festival and event that define Ijebu Kingdom in totality and that is why it continues to get bigger and bigger with every passing year. I keep imagining how it would have been if there was Ijebu State, definitely Ojude Oba would have had its own public holiday.
Origin of Ojude Oba
Some people have also ignorantly and erroneously tried to compare Ojude Oba to sponsored events or festivals. There is no basis for comparing a sponsored event with one that evolved through customary belief and practice of the people that have been handed down through generations after generations. Ojude Oba event in the present format and style is over three hundred years old, and started long before any modern government was put in place.
It is one of the three festivals that can only be found or celebrated in Ijebuland as part of the uniqueness of very much revered Ijebu Kingdom. It started as seen in the present format during the reign of Oba Rubakoye (female Awujale) when the “regberegbe” (as is today defined) system evolved. Before that time, the art of all Ijebu people gathering to celebrate their culture and pay collective homage to their Awujale was instituted by Oba Obaruwa Amujale (who happened to be the 10th Oba and the first AWUJALE).
We have Obinrin Ojowu, Agemo and Ojude Oba as the festivals celebrated only in Ijebuland in the entire Yoruba land in Nigeria and beyond. Other Yoruba communities have been trying to copy and do Ojude Oba to no avail. This is an Ijebu festival that doesn’t involve government or corporate involvement or sponsorship. A festival that started with various Ijebu communities and enclaves coming to Ijebu Ode to pay yearly obeisance to their paramount ruler, the Awujale which later metamorphosed into “regberegbe” parade and horse riding.
It has no religious or socioeconomic status or political leaning connotation. Purely Ijebu affairs that pushed all differences into the background as if they don’t exist. It is a glorious event that the world has taken notice of and regarded as one of the best cultural and heritage festivals in the whole world.
The “regberegbe” as a word was coined by the present Awujale Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona but “egbe” which is age grade in Ijebu definition was grouped in a three-year category which is what is re-coined as regberegbe that still maintains the three-year category of old. My fore father and many of our fathers who were far older than Oba Sikiru Adetona had their own egbe or regberegbe too.
There was one egbe of historical importance called Egbe Obabeko. This egbe renamed itself with the approval of Oba Ademolu Fesogbade when he was reinstalled back to the throne by the British Governor of Lagos Colony with the help of Otunba Payne (Otunba Adepeyin). Egbe Obabeko were the age grade mates of Oba Ademolu Fesogbade. They did renaming as a show of love to one of their own who regained his throne.
Today, almost all Ijebu towns and communities celebrate their Ojude Oba independent of the general Ojude Oba in the capital of Ijebu Kingdom on the very same day of the third day after Ileya. The law of the last imperial Awujale of Ijebu Land, Oba Tunwase is still very much sacrosanct. That should tell you how mighty indeed Awujale was and still is to the entire people of Ijebu Land.
Prince Adebayo Sikiru of Anikilaya Ruling House, Idewon, Ijebu Ode, Ogun State.(0802 304 7769) sent this via [email protected]
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