Lawyer Counters Alaafin’s Claim On Pan-Yoruba Supremacy

An Abuja-based lawyer, Pelumi Olajengbesi, has dismissed claims that the stool of the Alaafin of Oyo holds supreme authority over pan-Yoruba affairs.

Olajengbesi, in a statement posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday, said no Supreme Court judgment confers such power on the Alaafin, describing the monarch’s recent threat against the Ooni of Ife as “wholly gratuitous and constitutionally unsound.”

Naija News reports that the controversy began after the Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi, reportedly conferred the Okanlomo of Yorubaland chieftaincy title on Ibadan businessman, Engineer Dotun Sanusi.

The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Abimbola Akeem Owoade, considered the act an affront to his authority and issued a 48-hour ultimatum to the Ooni to revoke the title or face “severe consequences.”

Reacting to the development, Olajengbesi said the threat by the Alaafin not only undermines the dignity of the revered Yoruba thrones but also runs contrary to constitutional law.

He argued that “beyond its surface provocation, the Alaafin’s order constitutes an impermissible assault on the very foundation of Yoruba heritage and seeks to revive a jurisdictional contest which neither law nor history sustains.”

“The Ooni of Ife acted squarely within his lawful, ancestral, and cultural prerogatives. These prerogatives are sui generis, inherent, and incapable of usurpation by any other stool. They are not the product of conquest or temporal power but derive from the very normative foundation of Yoruba civilization.

“Every student of Yoruba history knows tradition and scholarship unanimously affirm Ile-Ife as the cradle of existence of the Yoruba people, the primordial seat where Oduduwa, progenitor of the race, laid the foundation of legitimacy from which all kingdoms, including Oyo, derived their authority.”

He emphasised that, as a lawyer who has litigated disputes involving chieftaincy law, he could affirm that no statute, Supreme Court judgment, or constitutional instrument vests exclusive pan-Yoruba jurisdiction in the Alaafin.

The lawyer added, “The law recognises traditional rulers through state chieftaincy statutes, not residual claims of imperial conquest.

“With the greatest respect, the oft-cited Supreme Court decision that is now exaggerated and purportedly vested authority in the Alaafin must be properly confined to its facts. Judicial pronouncements are case-specific, and no ratio decidendi of that Court has ever declared the Alaafin the sole custodian of Yoruba legitimacy. No statute in any Yoruba-speaking state vests exclusive authority in the Alaafin to confer titles of pan-Yoruba significance, and the Court cannot by judicial fiat extend such jurisdiction

“The conferment of the title Okanlomo of Oodua on Chief Dotun Sanusi, a distinguished Yoruba entrepreneur and philanthropist, is not a political office or military command. It is a cultural honour, symbolic of fraternity and solidarity. Such honours fall well within the Ooni’s remit as custodian of Yoruba identity.”