THE AWUJALE SUCCESSION: BETWEEN FAMILY DISPUTE, DUE PROCESS AND THE SANCTITY OF AN ANCIENT STOOL

By The Nation’s Backbone

There are moments when a people find themselves at the edge of their own history and must decide whether they will honour it or injure it.
Ijebuland stands at that edge today.

The latest turmoil within the Fusengbuwa Ruling House, the reported removal of its Chairman, Alhaji Abdulateef Owoyemi; Vice-Chairman, Prof. Fassy Yusuf; and Deputy Chairman, Adeodokun Ajidagba, is not just another episode in a family dispute. It reaches into the living core of an institution older than modern Nigeria itself. The Awujale stool is no trophy. It is not a political post. It is the gathered memory of a people, the unbroken thread that has kept Ijebu identity intact through war, colonialism, and the tempests of change. To handle it recklessly is to risk profaning something sacred.

Serious allegations have been made: financial inducement, document manipulation, failure to classify candidates according to lineage. Seriousness, still, is not proof. The accused have pushed back just as strongly. Prof. Yusuf has challenged the legitimacy of the committee that sat in judgment. Owoyemi has described his accusers as rebels and the charges against him as baseless. At this point, then, every Ijebu son and daughter, and every Nigerian who still believes institutions matter, must keep three things separate with utmost care: an allegation, an internal committee finding, and a fact established by law. They are not interchangeable. Blur them together, and chaos follows.

Still, it would be less than honest to suggest this rupture came out of nowhere. For months, the succession process has been dogged by petitions, security concerns, and governmental intervention. The Ogun State authorities had already moved in. Leadership of the ruling house itself has been disputed before. This storm is not some isolated flash of lightning, it is simply the latest flare in a sky already thick with tension. That does not prove the allegations. But it does mean they cannot be brushed aside.

The Declaration Must Remain Supreme
The selection of an Awujale is not a family poll. It is the consecration of continuity. There is an Awujale Chieftaincy Declaration, written in the blood and memory of generations, governing ruling houses, rotation, and eligibility. There is also the law of Ogun State. These are not optional. They are the rails on which the train of legitimacy must move.

If candidates were not properly classified according to their lines of descent, then something foundational has been breached. Eligibility for this ancient stool cannot be bought with money, popularity, political access, or the favour of those temporarily overseeing the process. A man or woman either bears the bloodline prescribed by custom and Declaration, or they do not. There is no middle ground. If the process followed the sacred rules, the evidence will bear that out. If it did not, then the process must be corrected, plainly, promptly, and without the hollow bravado of those who value speed over truth.

Due Process Cannot Be Selective
Even those convinced the leadership failed must face a tougher question: was the meeting that removed them itself lawful? Were all branches properly notified? Was there a recognised quorum? Who had the authority to convene and preside? Were the accused given adequate notice and a genuine opportunity to defend themselves?

These are not lawyerly technical points to be batted around over tea. Due process is not something one wears when convenient and drops when it becomes inconvenient. Those who protest irregularity in the selection of the Awujale must not, in turn, become agents of irregularity in the removal of those charged with that selection. Integrity does not run one way.

Allegations of Bribery Demand Evidence, Not Theatre
The allegation of financial inducement is the most toxic of all. It cuts straight into the moral foundation of the entire process. Such an accusation must never be reduced to a weapon of convenience in a family quarrel. Anyone with bank records, communications, credible witnesses, or documentary proof has a duty to place them before the proper authorities. Anyone making such a charge without evidence should understand what that means: they are not merely attacking individuals, they are smearing the stool itself with rumour. The Awujale institution deserves the dignity of facts, not the corrosion of unverified accusation.

Government’s Narrow and Sacred Duty
The Ogun State Government is walking a razor’s edge. Go a step too far, and it becomes the de facto selector of the Awujale, an act that would permanently wound the independence of the traditional institution. Go a step too little, and it abandons its duty as guardian of lawful process. The Awujale belongs neither to any governor nor to any political party. He belongs to the custom and law of Ijebuland. Government’s role is to ensure the path to the stool remains clean, not to decide who takes it.

Before recognising any new leadership or allowing the process to move forward, the authorities must review the reported 25-page committee report, the minutes and attendance of the meeting that claimed to remove officers, the original nomination documents, relevant court records, and the Chieftaincy Declaration itself. Anything less would be negligence dressed up as restraint.

Transparency Is the Only Path That Honours the Dead and the Living
Let the findings be disclosed to legitimate stakeholders, carefully and without defamation. Let the list of candidates, and the lineages under which they claim eligibility, be made clear. There should be no fog around qualification for the Awujale stool. A prince who is truly eligible has nothing to fear from daylight. Secrecy protects only those with something to hide. Transparency, put simply, is the shield of the legitimate.

To Begin Again Is Not Defeat It Is Honour
If an impartial review uncovers fundamental defects, Ijebuland must not be afraid to start afresh. The aim is not to produce an Awujale quickly. The aim is to produce an Awujale whose legitimacy no honest person can later dispute. A few extra weeks or months spent cleansing the process is nothing, truly nothing, compared with decades of contested reign, litigation, and the slow erosion of the institution’s moral authority.

Remember the late Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona. Sixty-five years on the throne. A whole generation was born, grew old, and passed under his reign. That fact alone should quiet every voice now urging haste. We are not electing a local government chairman. We are choosing a monarch whose shadow may stretch across Ijebuland for half a century or longer. There is simply no case for speed when the cost of error is counted in generations.

Let the Stool Be the Only Victor
Those celebrating the purported removal of the three officers as victory, and those waving away every complaint as rebellion, both risk dragging a sacred process down to the level of everyday factional politics. The committee may be right. The removed officers may be right. Or perhaps the truth is more tangled, and more painful, than either side now admits. Judgment must come after evidence, not before it.

At this fragile hour, every participant, prince, family head, government official, aspirant, must ask one question deeper than ambition or grievance: Will my actions strengthen the institution of the Awujale, or diminish it?

Personal ambition must yield to history.
Family pride must yield to Ijebu unity.
Governmental power must yield to law.
Every aspirant must yield to the legitimate genealogical and customary requirements of the stool.

The next Awujale must not ascend burdened by open wounds of bribery allegations, manipulated papers, disputed lineage, factional imposition, or suspicion of governmental overreach. He or she who lawfully qualifies must emerge from a process so transparent, so meticulously conducted, that even those who lose can still look at the throne and say: the process was clean.

Ijebuland has endured wars, the humiliation of colonialism, political upheavals, and the long weakening of traditional authority, yet the dignity of the Awujale has endured. This present dispute must not become the moment we allow that inheritance to fracture.
There is no dishonour in pausing a disputed process to establish the truth.
There is no weakness in correcting error.
There is only folly in rushing to fill a throne that has stood for centuries merely to satisfy the impatience of the living.
Let the Declaration speak in its ancient voice.
Let customary law speak without apology.
Let due process prevail without favour.
Let evidence silence allegation.
And above every competing interest, every bruised pride, every political calculation, let the dignity and sanctity of the Awujale stool remain supreme.

The ancestors are watching.
History is keeping score.
And the stool itself will remember who stood for its honour when it was most vulnerable.

— THE NATION’S BACKBONE
Independent. Objective. Nation First.