Ooni was a political creation, Ife never had any empire - Alaafin of Oyo

An interview granted by His Imperial Majesty, Oba Dr Lamidi
Olayiwola Adeyemi III (CFR, JP LLD), The Alaafin of Oyo.


QUESTION: HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR
WITH OTHER PROMINENT OBAS IN
YORUBALAND?
ALAAFIN:

Very very cordial. But there have been some
controversies concerning supremacy. You see, the issue of
who is supreme among the obas is a 20th Century
phenomenon. No oba can say he is greater than the Alaafin.
Up till now, there is no oba who has come out to make such
claims; they only use surrogates. If any oba wants to attack
the Alaafin, he uses a baale or another inconsequential
element to do that, whereas the Alaafin has come out openly
to say he is the head of the Yoruba obas and nobody has
controverted that.
If you go to Sir Lugard's political memoranda in 1917, he
detailed the hierarchy of all the traditional rulers in the north
and the south. My father or my grandfather was not there to
influence Lord Lugard to write it. If you say Johnson had bias
for Oyo, go and see C. R. Neeving, who stated unequivocally
and authoritatively that the Alaafin is the supreme oba in
Yorubaland. Go to Johnson, see the treaty signed by the
Alaafin in 1881, stating, I, Adeyemi I, Alaafin of Oyo, King of
Yorubaland.'
In his letter to the British in 1881, during the internecine wars,
he wrote, "I, king of the Yoruba?" There is no dispute over that.
I have challenged them to a debate, at least for 10 minutes,
but they have run away because the facts are there.
Somebody wrote recently that the first settlement was ruled by
the first Alake. Do you believe that the first settlement of
Yoruba was established by Alake who was established in
1830?


QUESTION: DO YOU BELIEVE THE HISTORY OF YORUBA
STARTED IN 1830?
ALAAFIN:


The first Alake in Abeokuta, Okukenu, was a Sagbua,
a chief of the Alaafin. Go to the book, Egba and her
neighbours, written by an eminent professor of history,
Professor Saburi Biobaku, page 15, he wrote that the Egba
forest laid within the remotest part of the Alaafin Empire, and
how the Alaafin superimposed his authority over the Alake and
all other Egba traditional chiefs is acknowledged.
Go to the salary scale of all the obas in 1938, the record of the
pay-slips is in the Palace here. Oyo province was constituted
on January 14, 1914 and Ife and Ijesa were all under Oyo
Province. For purposes of effective administration, Oyo
Province was broken down into three, namely Oyo Division of
Oyo Province; Ibadan Division of Oyo Province and Ife/Ijesa
Division of Oyo Province. And principal obas in these areas
were designated district heads.
In Ibadan, the Olubadan was the district head of Ibadan, Ooni
was the district head of Ife, Orangun was the district head of
Ila and Owa was the district head of Igbomina. The Alaafin
was the paramount head of the whole province, and in
ranking, the Aremo, who was the crown prince of the Alaafin,
was the district head of Oyo Province. Twenty district courts
were opened for the 20 districts in the province, and the
Alaafin never sat in any of the district courts, but at the court
of appeal over the 20 district courts.
When there was a problem between Ife and Ijesa, Sir John
Macpherson asked the Alaafin to intervene. The Alaafin sent
Are Ilugbohun and Alapini and a number of Oyomesi to go and
adjudicate. The boundary fixed by the Alaafin at Enuowa still
subsists till today. Ditto the dispute between Ife and Ede,
Alaafin's ruling still subsists till today. When Ibadan and Egba
quarrelled over Bakasari, the Alaafin settled it and said
Bakasari belonged to Ibadan, and he made all the parties to
sign an undertaking.


TO BE SPECIFIC, THERE WERE INSINUATIONS THAT THE OLD
OYO STATE HAD TO BE SPLIT INTO TWO; OYO AND OSUN,
BECAUSE OF THE SUPREMACY FIGHT BETWEEN YOU AND
THE OONI OF IFE.
ALAAFIN:


I would not know the inner workings of government.
But I want to tell you this: politics brought out the Ooni. There
are so many things we cannot cover in the course of this
interview. Like I told you, the question of whether the Alaafin
is supreme is a 20th Century phenomenon, when Awolowo
emerged the premier of the old Western Region. That was
when the government propped up the Ooni. And the only way
they could do it successfully then was to get rid of the Alaafin,
which they did by deposing the Alaafin, and Ooni Adesoji
Aderemi on August 8, 1960 was appointed the governor of the
Western Region. The governorship thing was to give leverage
to a man who never founded any empire.
When they organised the Traditional Rulers' Forum in Abuja,
Yoruba obas were ridiculed. They put all the Emirs on the first
row and put Yoruba Obas, including the Ooni on the second
row. When I came in, I asked for my seat and they wanted me
to go and sit at the back. I just removed one of the tags and
sat beside the Sultan of Sokoto. Under the Clifford
Constitution in 1922, two Obas represented the whole of
Nigeria at the Legislative Council, the Sultan of Sokoto and the
Alaafin of Oyo. The Alaafin represented the entire south in
Lagos. I left the place and went home, wrote a strongly
worded letter to General Jeremiah Useni and copied the late
General Abacha. Abacha invited me and I told him that
government is a continuum. He reasoned with me and
corrected that. The Alake and the Awujale never fought their
own cause but I fought mine.
When they asked us for a meeting in Abuja, they asked us to
bring our aides for hotel accommodation. The emirs would
bring about eight and they put them in suites while they
reserved two rooms for me. I just packed to one of the
presidential suites. They said but it was not reserved for me,
and I said they didn't have to do that, I did it myself. You see,
as the Alaafin, you cannot fear anything.

Source : Alaafin of Oyo's page