On Friday, November 1, 1878, a decisive war was fought in the north-eastern corridor of Yorubaland. History remembers it as the Jalumi War. It was that one-day battle that permanently halted the southward march of the Fulani towards the sea.
One of the bitterest engagements of that war was fought in a place called Iba, a few kilometres off the Ikirun-Offa Road.
I remembered that episode of Yoruba history when the oba of the town, the Eburu of Iba, Oba (Prof) Adekunle Okunoye, invited me to deliver his tenth coronation anniversary lecture last Thursday. We agreed on the topic: ‘Old Crowns, New Worlds: Obas and the Future of Indigenous Leadership in Yorubaland.’
I told two friends about the assignment, and their responses were the same: how safe could that journey be with the Fulani around? They refused to accompany me. I did not find their apprehension amusing. That Osun State community is a shouting distance from Kwara South, with its blisters of insecurity. Imagine bandits from the north invading a gathering of Yoruba kings.
I could have told Kabiyesi that there was another assignment. For a reporter, there is always another deadline and a reason to postpone one journey for another. But then I asked myself whether it was divine design or mere coincidence that a major cultural event was taking place in that community at the very moment the aggressor of the nineteenth century appears to have resumed the abandoned campaign to penetrate and plunder Yorubaland.
Why are armed men from the north ravaging the peace of the Yoruba often without resistance? Why are they killing the old and abducting the young from communities that had known peace for almost two centuries? How have the Yoruba become so vulnerable at a time when a Yoruba man is President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria?
Eminent historian Professor Banji Akintoye, in The Yoruba People: Profile of the Foremost Black Nation (2022:95), quotes equally eminent Professor Wande Abimbola as lamenting in exasperation, “in elite circles”, that “the British could not, and did not, conquer us Yoruba, but now Nigeria is conquering us.”
Professor Abimbola’s observation deserves careful reflection. I read it through the lens of the fourteenth-century North African thinker, Ibn Khaldun. In his Muqaddimah, Khaldun argues that every successful society carries within itself the seeds of decline. He calls the force that makes a people great ‘asabiyyah’ —group solidarity, social cohesion and a shared sense of purpose. It is this collective spirit that builds civilisations and sustains them through adversity. It worked for the Yoruba generations that fought the Fulani wars of the 19th century.
Yet prosperity and comfort can gradually erode solidarity. Men who inherit power often forget the hardships through which it was won. A further reading of Ibn Khaldun tells me that as asabiyyah weakens, societies become vulnerable to more cohesive, more determined challengers. Dynasties, Khaldun warned, have life cycles just as men do. The question confronting the Yoruba today is whether the insecurity engulfing their homeland is merely a failure of the Nigerian state or evidence of a deeper erosion of Yoruba asabiyyah.
In the past, a full Oba River was never an excuse for turning down the oba’s invitation. Now, something worse than a full, furious flood stands on the way of the Yoruba traveller. Should it be so bad that in the 21st century, there would be a part of the fatherland that a citizen would be afraid to go? In Yorubaland, offspring of the house does not knock before crossing the threshold; besides, a child should never dread his father’s home. So, I was there, in Iba, on Thursday to heed the king’s summon.
The assignment turned out to be more than a lecture. It became an opportunity to reflect on an institution many have repeatedly buried but which stubbornly refuses to die: the Yoruba throne. For more than a century, prophets of modernity have predicted the disappearance of kingship. Colonialism was supposed to finish it. Democracy was expected to replace it. Globalisation was thought capable of making it irrelevant. Yet the palace remains.
But as what? A king without kingship. A ruler stripped of the sword but still burdened with his people’s expectations of protection in a time of war.
The lecture and the discussions in Iba were not merely about the past. They were also about the anxieties of the present. There were about forty obas at the event. I looked at them; they asked questions, I answered. We looked at one another. We found no magic with which to retrieve the peace of the past. It is gone.
A friend who hailed from Ogbomoso agonised over the recent mass kidnap of kids and teachers in her homestead. She sent me a staccato of messages conveying her fears and frustrations. She recalled what she encountered in that part of Yorubaland four years ago:
“I was in Ipapo in Oke Ogun, in 2022 for a research on the farmer-herder crisis. The town itself had about 70 per cent Hausa-Fulani population and the Yoruba residents were constantly harassed by these people. When we tried to have focus group discussions with them, we observed that as soon as any Hausa-Fulani passed, they either went quiet or carefully measured their responses. In the mosque, northerners were at the front and the Yorubas stayed at the back to pray. There was a demarcation. One of us was a Muslim who went into the mosque to pray; he briefed us on what he saw.
“These things had been brewing for long. The warning signs were ignored. What was overlooked has now come full blown in Yorubaland. These towns — Ipapo, Otu, Sepeteri — had always been terrorised. During that research, the only place that was clean of Fulani torment was Igangan. When we got to Sepeteri, the people told us which roads to take, which ones to avoid and the time to travel. It was tales of woe – and fear – throughout.”
Listening to her, I found myself wondering what the old Yoruba political order would have done in such circumstances.
The oba of old handled such situations as war commander. He was a lion. His authority was measured not by the ferocity of his roar but by the peace enjoyed by those under his care. He stood watchful and composed, a steady presence in turbulent times, unshaken when storms gathered over the land. That is why the Yoruba say: “Ibi tí kìnìún bá tọ̀ sí, ẹranko tó bá bá ibẹ̀ lọ kò so ríire.” Where the lion marks with its urine, any animal that passes through the place is doomed.
Such was the authority of the oba. But that was in the past. T. A. A. Ladele’s ‘Igbi Aye Nyi’ tells us of that transition from the substance of power to its abject opposite. The novel laments: Omi lọ ľáyé, pètèpétè l’o kù/ Oba lọ l’ayé, àworán l’ọbá dà (The spring water has gone; mud remains/ Kingship has departed; only its image survives).
One oba asked me how the past could be salvaged? I asked if there had ever been a river that flows backward. The challenge before today’s oba is not how to recover lost political power. That era is gone. The challenge is how to recover moral authority. A throne respected for integrity, restraint and service will remain relevant. A throne converted into a business venture may survive physically but lose its soul.
I told the gathering of traditional rulers that the oba of the future must be more than a custodian of rituals and of beautiful regalia. He must be a custodian of relevance. He must understand tradition without becoming trapped by it. He must embrace innovation without becoming uprooted. He must be educated without becoming alienated. He must speak the language of ancestry and the language of technology.
I told them the oba must be an instrument of development, cultural renewal and community advancement. He should champion education, encourage enterprise, support social cohesion and serve as a voice of moderation in moments of tension. The palace should become more than a residence; it should become a living classroom.
We also discussed obas and politics.
Should an oba openly participate in partisan contests? I told them no. The oba is a citizen. He has opinions. He votes where the law permits him to vote. But the throne belongs to everybody. The palace must remain a place where supporters of opposing parties can sit together. Once a king becomes identified with one faction, he risks turning subjects into opponents.
Political victories come and go. The throne is expected to outlive them all.
Which brings me back to Jalumi.
If Jalumi was fought to halt an external threat to Yoruba existence, today’s threat is different. It comes on motorcycles instead of cavalry; with kidnappers instead of imperial armies. Yet the challenge remains the same: can Yoruba institutions still mobilise society in moments of danger?
The answer to that question may determine whether the throne remains merely a monument to history or a participant in shaping the future.
It is true that the obaship institution has lived through threats that threatened its existence. But survival alone is not enough. The palace faces a challenge our ancestors never imagined. That challenge is modernity, or what J. D. Y. Peel called olaju.
The danger is not technology. The danger is forgetting who we are. Odò tí ó bá gbàgbé orísun rẹ̀ yóò gbẹ. A river that forgets its source will dry up. The same is true of a people.
The modern oba’s battlefield is no longer the theatre of war. It is the frontier of ideas, organisation, intelligence and community resilience.
The future will not belong to societies imprisoned by tradition. Neither will it belong to societies ashamed of their heritage. It will belong to those wise enough to carry old crowns into new worlds.
The challenges of our age demand more than nostalgia. You cannot fight today’s AK-47 war with yesterday’s amulets. A Yorubaland that will survive the present existential threats must learn to hunt today’s hare with today’s hound. The wisdom of the ancestors remains invaluable, but the ancestors themselves taught adaptation. After all, a river that refuses to bend to the landscape never reaches the sea.
And perhaps that is the real agenda for the oba – and for Yoruba leaders in general.
As we discussed the place of the throne in today’s insecurity, a striking intervention came from the North. The Emir of Argungu, Alhaji Muhammad Samaila Mera, urged district heads, village heads and ward heads in Kebbi State to organise active community responses to banditry. He asked his people to match bandits’ arms with arms, gun with gun. He asked them to cure madness with madness. His point was simple: criminals thrive where communities are vulnerable, fragmented and fearful.
Whether one agrees entirely with the Emir’s prescription is not the issue. The larger lesson is that a traditional ruler should not be a ceremonial spectator while his people live under siege. He must think. He must strategise. He must convene. He must use the moral authority of the throne to organise society against danger.
That, perhaps, is what the modern oba must become.
The oba of old rode at the head of armies. The oba of today cannot do that. The Constitution has taken away the sword, but it has not taken away the voice. It has not taken away influence. It has not taken away legitimacy. It has not taken away the capacity to bring hunters, farmers, traders, youth leaders, religious authorities, security agencies and community organisations to one table.
My point is that in an age of insecurity, the king must be more than a custodian of festivals and traditions. He must be the community’s chief thinker, chief strategist and chief mobiliser. He must understand the changing realities of his domain, encourage intelligence gathering, strengthen social cohesion and help transform frightened populations into organised communities.
Jalumi was won not merely because brave men fought. It was won because leaders recognised a threat, understood its implications and mobilised society to confront it.
Every generation has its own Jalumi.
The weapons change. The battlefield changes. The enemy changes.
But the need for leadership does not. That is why the future throne cannot afford to sleep, even if the old powers now reside in the pouch of the one who commands troops from Abuja.
Now, a spur away from the oba and their future. If the president has inherited the powers the oba once wielded, should he not also inherit the obligation that came with those powers?
The first duty of government is security. Everything else comes after that. Roads, bridges, rail lines and airports are useful only when citizens are alive and free to use them. History ultimately judges rulers not by the grandeur of their projects but by the safety of their people.
If the old oba was measured by the peace of his kingdom, if he rose and fell with his people’s security, the modern president cannot escape the same test. In a season of fear, protection is the highest form of leadership. The leader who secures his people earns their gratitude; the one who fails is remembered like Alaafin Aole under whom Yorubaland became an empire of refugees.
Also published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday 08 June, 2026
