Olusegun Obasanjo’s order for the traditional leaders in Iseyin, Oyo State to get up and greet him and Governor Seyi Makinde has been criticized by the Yoruba Council Worldwide (YCW) as sacrilegious.
The alleged video showing the former president meeting President Bola Tinubu and asking for a job at the president’s office on Thursday during the 80th birthday celebration of the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo, in Abeokuta, was denounced by the former president as phony yesterday.
Traditional leaders were instructed to get up and greet Obasanjo and the governor of Oyo State on Friday at a public event in Iseyin.
The former president, who was Governor Makinde’s guest, traveled to Iseyin to officially open the Iseyin Campus of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Iseyin’s College of Agricultural Sciences and Renewable Natural Resources.
As he and Makinde were being introduced, the monarchs stayed seated, and Obasanjo showed his disgust at what he called their disdain and disregard for the governor’s office.
The status and power of a governor or president at any event outweighs that of any traditional ruler present, he said, adding that the Yoruba culture respects both age and position.
However, yesterday during a press conference at the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) secretariat in Jabi, Abuja, the president of YCW, Oba Oladotun Hassan, urged the former president to make amends to the aristocracy.
Hassan said, “The recent weeks have witnessed a barrage of monumental embarrassments, ridicules and brazen abuse of traditional royal Obas and most shocking to grasping with this well-intended orchestrated embarrassments by chief Olusegun Obasanjo who dropped the biggest bombshell taboo in the history of Yoruba land, perhaps most disturbing sacrilege in Iseyin, Oyo State when he addressed arrays of first-class royal fathers and other leading Obas like toddlers or a village headmaster or Army General talking profusely at his foot soldiers in a most depressing, disparaging and disrespectful manner.”
He warned Obasanjo that failing to apologize right away within the next three days would result in severe traditional and legal repercussions.
“Furthermore, we shall mobilize all market women, youths, and leaders of thoughts against the Baba Obasanjo for desecrating the Yoruba ancestral cultural heritage, norms, tradition, and values. On this note, we wish to set the records straight that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo is no longer the President of Nigeria, and he should stop parading himself deceitfully and impersonating or creating a scenario to command such ill-motivated authority.”
The Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdulrosheed Adewale Akanbi, Telu I, has also referred to Obasanjo’s actions against traditional leaders in Oyo State as a violation of Yoruba traditional institutions, stating that the former president cannot treat emirs similarly.
In a statement provided the media yesterday in Osogbo by his media assistant, Alli Ibraheem, Oluwo accused the traditional leaders present for following Obasanjo’s orders.
The monarch claimed that because monarchs serve as God’s ambassadors on earth, Obasanjo should have treated them with some respect. If he were still alive, the monarch stated, such an incident would not have occurred.
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