Ooni’s last testament

It was as if the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, Olubuse II, had a premonition that he would not be alive to witness the centenary birthday of his dearly beloved Yeye O’odua, Chief (Mrs.) H. I. D. Awolowo, who he described in his last testament as “A Diamond Head.” Even though 18 days before his death, that is on Friday, 10 July, when he spoke to Mama’s biographer, Wale Adebanwi, the University of California, Davis, USA don, he “radiated his usual grandeur and panache,” the testament he had prepared on Mama for the biographer might be read as an intuitive premonition of the imminence of his demise.

“When I went into the inner chambers of the palace to meet him, he was already seated and was holding a prepared statement, which turned out to be a testament on Mama, in a file,” Adebanwi, the author of Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency, told Saturday Tribune. “I didn’t realise at first that it was meant for me. But I noticed that he kept the paper in the official file of the House of Oduduwa, with the insignia of the Olofin Oduduwa embossed on the file. But as we started the interview, he read some parts of the testament to me.”

Adebanwi had visited the Ooni to interview him on a book he was working on Mama’s centenary. The centenary will be celebrated on 25 November this year.

“Even though he radiated his usual grandeur and panache and spoke with verve on Mama H.I.D., it was only when I heard the news of his death on July 28 that I went back to read the statement again with greater attention and realised that perhaps he had a premonition that he would not be there when Mama clocked 100. He said he was eagerly looking forward to the celebration of Mama’s centenary, but when you read the way he wrote the statement, which he personally signed, it was as if he wanted the statement to be his “voice from beyond”, if one can so describe it.”

Even though it was more than five months away from Mama’s centenary, the Ooni wrote in the few paragraphs of the testament which Adebanwi shared with Saturday Tribune: “At 100, it is obvious God has endowed [Mama] with an excellent spirit which encompasses wisdom, knowledge and understanding. These certainly are rare gifts found mostly in those who have the hearts of God…. We are full of thanks to God that Mama Hannah Idowu Dideolu Awolowo is now 100 years old. I wish she could live for another 100 years, but we must all thank God Almighty for making the 1st 100 and we congratulate Yeye O’odua, the true centurion of our time.”

Dr. Tokunbo Awolowo Dosumu, the Executive Director of the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation, had called the late Oba Okunade Sijuwade on Thursday, 9 July, to inform him that Adebanwi would like to interview him on Mama’s biography that he was working on. The Ooni asked Adebanwi to come to Ife the next day.  “It was therefore clear to me by the time I arrived the next morning,” said Adebanwi, “that Kabiyesi must have written that three-page statement himself either the night before or early that morning. Or maybe he dictated it to his secretary to type. But it was distinctively his voice that was represented in the statement. So, I knew it was a very serious matter for him. He and Mama shared a special relationship. As he said it was a ‘mother-son’ relationship.”

In the interview, the Ooni told the US-based scholar that he would not have been the Ooni but for Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief (Mrs.) Awolowo who convinced him to take up the position.

“I would not have been here today. It was Papa (Awolowo) who persuaded me to take up this stool. It was as if he compelled me to take the throne. I was living in London at the time when Papa Awolowo asked me to return home after the late Ooni (Adesoji Aderemi) joined the ancestors,” the University of California-Davis don recalls the Ooni telling him. “I was operating my businesses from London and had branches all over the world. But Awolowo said to me, ‘it’s time to return home and ascend the throne.’ If such an elderly and wise person as Papa, and Mama who joined him in persuading me, asked you to do something, given the love they had shown me, and the fact that they were like my parents, I had to accept.”

The Ooni told Mama’s biographer further that “it is as if [Mama HID] brought me up…. She is like the mother to whom I was born. I cannot sufficiently describe the nature of our relationship….” On Mama’s rare capacity for recall even in old age, the late Oba Sijuwade said, “She is almost 100 and her brain is still intact. She still does everything. She will remind you of what you have forgotten. I have never witnessed this kind of thing before. Papa Awolowo was very lucky to have married Mama.”

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE