Daily Trust

From the floor below, a musical din floats up to the balcony of the Brazilian Consulate in Lagos. The music mingles with the voices of the people upstairs, amongs who was the Ooni of ife, His Majesty, Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, whose voice sometimes carried to the end of the balcony. He was holding court here, in the balcony of the consulate after opening an exhibition of Ife artefacts at an event to commemorate the Brazilian Independence Day.

“Right now, we are in Brazil,” the Ooni would say later in an interview with Daily Trust. “We are not in Nigeria now. We are in Brazil.”

Diplomatically speaking, yes, it was Brazil. But it was also Lagos. The Ooni has been building a relationship with Brazil where there are probably more people with Yoruba ancestry than there are in Nigeria. “Eighty million Yoruba speakers” the Ooni said.

The Ooni is believed to be a descendant of the father of the Yoruba nation, Oduduwa, on whose throne he sits as the spiritual head of all Yoruba people. That makes him the most revered traditional leaders of the Yoruba people.

On the balcony, the consulate had set up a small court for His Majesty who sat in the middle of a horseshoe formation of whitegowned Yoruba chiefs. He too was dressed in white, in a long thobe that fell to his beaded ankles and cream-coloured asoke toga draped around his shoulder. The silver splotches on the toga compliment his silver shoes but not his mint green crown of sequins, same material his staff of office, held by one of his attendants standing behind him, was covered in.

Once or twice when he spoke, he caressed the long streams of coral beads that looped down his neck and collected on his lap. When he moved his hands—and he moved his hands a lot—one would notice the coral beads on his wrist. The Ooni is young and energetic. He is only 44 but with the authority his office confers, he often leaned forward to pat the backs of the people who prostrated at his feet, seeking his blessings. Some of them fell on both knees to receive this blessing, to confer with him or to take selfies.

A desperate looking woman knelt by the Ooni’s feet as he leaned forward to listen to her. She pulled out her phone and showed him something. He collected the phone and scowled into the screen for a while. When he talked to her, she fell on her hands and thanked him.

Others took her place. One of them whipped out a photo, the Ooni smiled into the camera. Click! Click!

The Ooni was a happy man that night.

He had just declared open an exhibition of 60 Ife artefacts from his personal collection. It was something close to his heart, evidently, from the passion ringing his voice when he spoke about the work. Generally, the Ooni seemed like a passionate man, from the way he spoke, this passion went a notch higher when he spoke about these artefacts. And even though, an Ife Prince said the Ooni was not supposed to speak so loudly in public, this one’s voice sometimes carried to the end of the balcony and halfway down the stairs, before being drowned out by the music from below.

The Ooni was right. This was Brazil. But it was also actually Lagos. The territory of Rilwan Akiolu, Oba of Lagos, whose public shunning of the Ooni at an April 2017 event created a stir. That time the Oba had refused a handshake from the Ooni, waving him away with a scowl and drawing condemnation for himself. The Ooni might be younger, but he sits on Oduduwa’s throne and is considered the Yoruba “King of Kings.” Not surprisingly, the Oba did not turn up for this