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OPINION: The Body Of The Yoruba King

Published

5 hours ago

July 21, 2025

By Lasisi Olagunju

Okuku town in present Osun State has a well-recorded history of cultural promotion and preservation. Ulli Beier’s ‘Yoruba Beaded Crowns’ (1982) and Karin Barber’s ‘I Could Speak until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town’ (1991) are two of the contributions of Okuku to Yoruba cultural history. The late Yoruba playwright and culture icon, Adebayo Faleti, told me in 2004 that he wrote one of his major plays in Okuku in the 1950s.

Oba Moses Oyewole Oyinlola was Olokuku of Okuku from 1938 to 1960. A very deeply religious and cultural man, he died on 20 February, 1960 and was buried two days later. Within those two days, there was a flurry of rites in the town and in the palace. The late oba’s grown-up male children feared that the king’s corpse would be tampered with by some unknown people called traditionalists. And so, they met and plotted to stop it.

One of the boys was embedded in the palace room where the remains were laid in state. Armed with a machete, he kept vigil over their dad’s remains while others lurked around as a back-up. Then, deep in the night, with curfew in place, some elderly persons, in a column, filed into the room. They turned out to be known faces; they were the chiefs that reigned with the now dead king.

The chiefs did not see the hiding young man with a machete. They started the rites while the boy watched every aspect of what the chiefs came to do. To his relief, there was no attempt to tamper with the corpse. “They did not even touch it. All they came with were words and wishes. They communicated with their oba asking him to intercede for them before the ancestors so that their own lives and that of the entire town could be as sweet as that of the departed oba.” They finished their prayers and left. Did the sentry leave too? An eye was kept on the remains until they were buried on February 22, 1960 in the premises of St Michael’s Cathedral, Okuku. The tomb is up to today the most prominent there.

The hiding prince told me all this in 2004 as I was gathering materials for the biography of the late oba, which was published in December 2005. Some people of tradition would ask where the prince is now. He grew to become a man, became successful, earned a PhD, lived well and died a few years ago at almost 90.

The death last Sunday and burial on Monday of the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Olukayode Adetona, is the top trending topic. His transition and the controversy of his burial have renewed public interest in who should bury an oba and what really happens to the body of a king in Yorubaland when he dies. Do the bodies get mutilated and the hearts removed for the installation of their successors? Do succeeding obas eat the hearts of their predecessors?

I have cited the Okuku case above. I have also read wide and consulted people who should know. All my sources maintained that cannibalism is not one of Yoruba people’s ‘disorder’ and so, eating the heart of a dead king couldn’t have been one of the ingredients of their royal installation rites. The late Awujale, in an old interview that has also gone viral lately, gave his own experience on the heart-eating myth: “I cannot recall any rite that was done behind the scene. Let them come and tell me. It is all lies. Nothing like that. They even tell you that they give the heart of a deceased oba to the new one to eat!…Nothing like that. Okay, which heart did Orimolusi eat when Adeboye died in Tripoli? Besides, when Gbelegbuwa died, I wasn’t in the country. I was abroad and didn’t return until about a year after his death. So, which heart was given to me? I didn’t eat anything oooo. So, no such thing happened.” I think other obas should come out and tell their story. Doing so may stop friends and foes of the Yoruba from looking at them as man-eaters.

Some tradition-loving Yoruba persons are angry because the Awujale was buried by Muslims. Now, I ask: What is traditional burial? What is Muslim burial? Among other obligatory steps, the Muslim corpse is washed and shrouded in a simple white cloth; prayers are offered. Inside the grave, the body is laid on its right side, facing the East. At what point does a received practice become part of one’s tradition? I asked because just like the Muslims, the Lo Dagaa of northern Ghana, who are not Muslims, also bury their dead people “lying on their right side facing the East so that the rising sun will tell them to prepare for hunt or for the farm…” So, what is ‘Muslim’ to Yoruba traditionalists is ‘traditional’ to that Ghanaian ethnic group. We can read this and more in J. Goody’s ‘Death, Property and the Ancestors: A Study of Mortuary Customs of the Lo Dagaa of West Africa’ published in 1962.

It happened that some bad kings received bad burials in the past. One of such punishments for royal misdeeds could be dismemberment of the cadaver. There were other rewards for good and bad behaviour on the throne. When a wicked oba died, the chiefs stormed the palace and seized all items in there as communal property. When a good oba died, the chiefs delayed the announcement until the family of the departed had moved all they wanted out of the palace to his private residence. The chiefs could achieve that because in theory, the Yoruba king owned nothing as personal property. He reigned in the name of the town, got gifts and favours in their name and on their behalf he kept or used them. It was therefore the law that the palace, the king, and all he owned were property of the kingdom. All these, including the body, could go back to the people and the oba’s family stripped naked if the departed was not a good man.

If it is the Yoruba tradition that the king’s body belongs to the community, then we have to define who approximates that community today. The majority Muslim/Christian groups or the minority who claim ‘tradition’ as their religion? If tradition is a people’s way of life, have Christianity and Islam not become part of the Yoruba ‘way of life’? Indeed, there is a whole Odu in Ifa celebrating Islam and Muslims. It is called Odu Imale. Tradition is a river; it draws its strength from the source but gets stronger and larger as it takes from this stream and that tributary. It would be a dirty, diseased pond if it resists the cleansing ritual of free-flowing.

Tradition is not the earthing of a people in a past that is long gone. What is traditional is not exactly what is archaic.

The West brought Christianity and civilisation to the ‘savage’ tribes of Africa. In 1946, they stopped the suicide of an Olokun Esin in Oyo who was billed to accompany the Alaafin on his journey to the ancestors. Since then, no Oyo king has enjoyed having an entourage to heaven. Dying with the king was hugely celebrated in Oyo as the ultimate expression of love for the empire and high-end duty to the king:

Olókùn-esin İbàdàn

K’ó má ba Olókùn-ęsin Ộyộ je

Ẹni ó bá rójú b`óba kú

L’`a á mò l’Ólókùn-esin.

Eyí ti ò rójú b’óba kú

A á maa pè ‘ón l’Ólókùn-eran ni…

(Adeboye Babalola, 2001:125).

It was also part of the ritual of passage for the Alaafin that his crown prince (Aremo) must die with him. But Alaafin Atiba stopped that practice. He got his Aremo Adelu endorsed as his successor before he died in 1858 at the age of 58. There was a resistance to that change snowballing into a very bad civil war – the Ijaye War of 1860-1862. But the reform was eventually upheld because forced suicide (or murder) was repugnant to decency and a violent assault on the prince’s right to life.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:[OPINION] Buhari: A Tale Of Two Deaths

Tradition speaks to aspects of a people’s way of life. It is the “inherited beliefs, practices, and values passed down through generations.” But it is not immutable. Traditions are practices in perpetual transition. A tradition isn’t what it is called if it fails to adapt to societal shifts, to advancements in tech, to new cultural influences. Customs and traditions live when they accept modifications, reinterpretations, and even the abandonment of certain practices as societies evolve. Take a glance at the death and burial of King Francis I of France in 1547. I will rely on this quote from Ralph Giesey’s ‘The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France’ published in 1960: “With the death of a king, the body was immediately eviscerated, embalmed, and the removed remains subsequently buried apart from the corpse.” Evisceration means to disembowel a person or animal. Would anyone expect the evisceration of a king’s body today in the West? Even French that did it five centuries ago has since abolished the monarchy itself. It did so on 24 February, 1848. Have we paused to ponder the future of Yoruba kingship as democracy digs in?

While we seek to preserve what we call our tradition, have we asked how the various parts came to be? How do traditions get invented? What the French did to the corpse of their king in 1547, the act of disemboweling that took place some 500 years ago, was it for ritual or for medical reasons? W. Arens’ in ‘The Demise of Kings and the Meaning of Kingship’ (1984) from where I got the Giesey quote will serve you if you need more on the sacred and religious contents of that royal burial and the parallel it drew with the burial of kings in a part of Africa.

So, as we bid the iconic Awujale good night, it is time the Yoruba elite and commoners calmed down and got to work on the real issues of development that need urgent tackling. As I told someone at the weekend, the Yoruba have no friend in Nigeria. Onílé owó òtún kò wo niire, ìmòràn ìkà ni t’òsì ngbà, ká lé ni jáde ni tòókán ilé nwí. I will not translate this; rather, I will add that majoring in minor issues degrades the Yoruba advantage of over 200 years of education and of global engagement.

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Court Freezes Firm’s Accounts Over N24.9bn Debt

Published

1 hour ago

July 21, 2025

Editor

Justice A.I. Akobi of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory has frozen bank accounts linked to TAK Logistics Limited, TAK Agro PLC, and their director, Thomas Etuh, over alleged debts totaling N24.9 billion.

The court on Monday granted the interim order following an ex parte application filed by Mofesomo Tayo-Oyetibo, (SAN), on behalf of Keystone Bank Limited.

The order made by Justice Akobi includes a Mareva injunction restraining the defendants from accessing or dealing with any funds, shares, dividends, or other financial instruments up to the disputed amount.

In the ruling, the court also directed all banks and financial institutions holding accounts operated by the defendants to preserve the funds and to file affidavits within seven days, disclosing the balances and providing relevant bank statements.

The judge also barred the defendants from transferring, selling, or otherwise disposing of any movable or immovable property pending the resolution of the matter.

Furthermore, the court granted an application for substituted service on the third defendant, Thomas Etuh, allowing Keystone Bank to serve court documents via courier or by posting them at his last known address.

The court ordered that,“The defendants, their directors, agents, privies, or representatives are hereby restrained from withdrawing, transferring, dissipating, or otherwise dealing with funds, shares, dividends, or any other financial instruments up to the sum of N24,934,741,718.91, or any part thereof, in any bank or financial institution.”

In addition, the court ordered immediate compliance by all affected banks and financial institutions, including a requirement to preserve any funds tied to the defendants and submit full account disclosures: “Within seven days of being served with this order, each bank or financial institution shall file an affidavit stating the balances in all accounts held by the defendants, along with relevant statements.”

The court said that the order applies to accounts associated with the defendants, including those linked to the Bank Verification Number (BVN) 22273745073.

The interim order will lapse seven days after it is served unless extended by the court.

Consequently, the matter was adjourned till July 22, 2025, for further hearing.

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Nigerians Spent Over $3.6bn Annually On Foreign Healthcare Under Buhari

Published

1 hour ago

July 21, 2025

Editor

Nigerians spent at least $29.29bn on foreign medical expenses during the eight years of former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, according to The PUNCH. This translates to an annual spending of about $3.6bn during the review period.

This is according to a detailed analysis of data from the Central Bank of Nigeria’s quarterly statistical bulletins. The sum, recorded under the “Health-Related and Social Services” category, reflects cumulative outflows of foreign exchange from June 2015 to May 2023 — precisely covering the duration of Buhari’s two-term presidency, which spanned from May 29, 2015, to May 28, 2023.

The data, reviewed by our correspondent, shows the depth of Nigeria’s dependence on foreign healthcare services, with the CBN’s record showing a year-on-year movement of funds abroad for medical purposes amid economic downturns or dollar shortages at home.

It also highlights the irony that, despite repeated declarations by the administration to revamp the health sector and reduce capital flight, health-related foreign exchange outflows remained significant and even spiked dramatically during the latter years of Buhari’s presidency.

A close review of the spending pattern shows that the first year of Buhari’s presidency recorded the single highest amount spent on medical tourism. Between June 2015 and May 2016, Nigeria spent $7.81bn on health-related services abroad.

This figure alone accounted for over a quarter of the total medical tourism expenditure under his administration. Notably, September 2015 stood out as a month of exceptional outflow, with $3.20bn disbursed — the highest for any single month throughout the eight-year period.

That spike occurred during Buhari’s first few months in office and was followed by elevated monthly figures in October, November, and December of 2015, which further raised questions about whether the expenditure reflected a backlog of deferred medical bills or a broader trend among elites seeking healthcare abroad immediately after the administration took office.

In the subsequent year, between June 2016 and May 2017, the figure dipped to $2.76bn, although substantial sums were still recorded in months such as March 2016 ($0.96bn) and April 2016 ($0.67bn).

Spending continued to decline in Buhari’s third year in office, falling to $1.72bn between June 2017 and May 2018. By the fourth year of the first term, which ran from June 2018 to May 2019, Nigeria’s medical tourism bill had dropped sharply to just $0.44bn — the lowest across all eight years.

However, a closer examination of the second term reveals a different picture. After a relatively low fifth year, when Nigeria spent $0.92bn on medical services abroad between June 2019 and May 2020, there was a slight increase in the sixth year, with foreign exchange outflows reaching $1.57bn.

This modest recovery coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, which imposed global travel restrictions and temporarily subdued international medical travel. The data during the lockdown period between April 2020 and June 2021 reflected lower figures, but it also hinted at pent-up demand that would soon be unleashed.

Indeed, from June 2021, medical tourism experienced a surge once again. The seventh year of Buhari’s administration — between June 2021 and May 2022 — recorded $6.96bn in health-related foreign exchange disbursements.

June 2021 alone accounted for $3.02bn, almost matching the record set back in 2015. April 2022 saw another massive jump with $1.28bn spent, suggesting that Nigerians, particularly the affluent class and public officials, resumed international travel en masse to seek healthcare that remained inaccessible or underdeveloped at home.

The eighth and final year of the administration recorded the second-highest annual expenditure, with $7.12bn spent between June 2022 and May 2023. January 2023 was a particularly costly month, accounting for $2.30bn in medical outflows — the third highest monthly figure during Buhari’s presidency.

With this late surge in medical tourism spending, the second term of Buhari’s government, which initially appeared more conservative in terms of health-related foreign exchange usage, ended up outpacing the first term.

A total of $16.56bn was spent in the second term, compared to $12.73bn in the first term. This shift suggests that, despite earlier constraints, the underlying drivers of medical tourism — including poor local healthcare infrastructure, lack of trust in domestic medical services, and the elite’s preference for foreign treatment — remained unaddressed and may have worsened.

Throughout his presidency, Buhari was frequently criticised for seeking medical care abroad. He made multiple trips to the United Kingdom for undisclosed treatments, sometimes staying for extended periods.

Buhari, during his eight-year reign, spent at least 225 days outside the country on medical trips, visiting no fewer than 40 countries since 2015. Eight months after assuming office, the former President embarked on his first medical trip to London, United Kingdom, on February 5, 2016, spending six days.

His second medical trip followed four months later, on June 6, 2016, during which he spent 10 days treating an undisclosed ear infection. On January 19, 2017, Buhari embarked on his second-longest medical trip to London, spending 50 days away.

In May of the same year, barely two months after his last trip, he returned to London for what became his longest medical stay, lasting 104 days. He did not return to the UK for medical purposes again until May 2018, when he spent four days on a follow-up review.

In March 2021, Buhari departed for London once again, on what the Presidency described as a “routine medical check-up,” which lasted 15 days. His departure came amid a labour crisis in the health sector, during which members of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors commenced an indefinite strike over unpaid allowances.

Almost a year later, on March 6, 2022, the ex-President travelled to London again for medical reasons. This time, he spent 12 days. On October 31, 2022, Buhari departed from Owerri, the capital of Imo State, to London for another medical check-up, which lasted approximately two weeks. He returned to the country on November 13, 2022.

Former presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, consistently defended Buhari’s foreign medical trips, stating that he “has used the same medical team for about 40 years.” In a recent interview following Buhari’s death, Adesina argued: “If he had said I’d do my medicals in Nigeria just for show off or something, he could have long been dead.”

In total, Buhari undertook 84 trips to 40 countries during his tenure in office.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Medical Association, the Medical and Dental Consultants’ Association of Nigeria, and the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors earlier criticised political leaders for consistently seeking medical care abroad while neglecting the country’s healthcare system.

The President of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors, Dr Tope Osundara, described the trend as not only disheartening but an indictment of Nigerian leaders’ investments in the sector they are expected to strengthen.

Osundara expressed disappointment that Nigerian leaders continue to patronise foreign hospitals despite annual budget allocations to domestic medical facilities like the State House Clinic.

“It’s more like building a company, investing resources in it, then refusing to use the product and telling others to trust it. It tells you that something is fundamentally wrong with the system, with the people entrusted with managing it.

“There was a time when the former president, Muhammad Buhari, made some utterances that they should abolish this medical tourism. But unfortunately, before he died, he was even at the forefront of going abroad for treatment. Even a former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, disclosed that he and Buhari were admitted to the same hospital in London shortly before Buhari passed away. This tells you that Nigeria’s healthcare system is in bad shape.”

On his part, the President of the Nigerian Medical Association, Prof Bala Audu, noted that while individuals are free to seek care wherever they choose, the consistent reliance of public office holders on foreign hospitals despite Nigeria’s budgetary allocations to domestic healthcare speaks volumes about misplaced priorities.
(PUNCH)

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Coach Ikhana Discharged From ICU, Recovery Hailed As ‘Miracle’

Published

2 hours ago

July 21, 2025

Editor

Kadiri is standing next to his eldest sister and her husband (Pastor and Mrs Jonathan Abioye) in Lokoja, on his way to Abuja. Photo: Segun Odegbami/LinkedIn

A former Green Eagles star and Nigerian football icon, Kadiri Ikhana, has been discharged from the Intensive Care Unit at Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, Edo State, after three days of treatment for an undisclosed illness.

According to a statement on Monday via LinkedIn from the chairman of the International Sports Academy and Ikhana’s former teammate, Segun Odegbami, the veteran coach’s recovery is “nothing short of a miracle.”

Odegbami shared the update in a statement released late Sunday night, saying he had Ikhana’s permission to speak on the matter.

“Yesterday, Kadiri Ikhana, MON, my Green Eagles colleague that I reported was gravely ill last week, was kept in the ICU of Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital for 3 days. He recovered quickly and was discharged after receiving treatment and undergoing full medical tests.

“All his medical bills were settled by the Edo State government.

”This morning, I spoke to him. The preliminary medical report of the various tests conducted was handed over to him, and he was asked to report back to the hospital in 3 weeks time for further tests.

“He assures me that he is getting better everyday, even as he still ‘wears’ a catheter underneath his robes, and is on some very serious medications.

“He was cheerful and very grateful to all those that came to support him morally, physically, financially and spiritually. He wants me to thank all Nigerians for their shower of love and prayers,” he wrote.

As part of his recovery plan, Ikhana has temporarily relocated from Auchi to Abuja, where he is expected to rest and continue his treatment. He made the journey on Sunday, stopping in Lokoja to visit family.

A photo shared shows him standing with his eldest sister and her husband, Pastor and Mrs Jonathan Abioye.

“On behalf of the entire Ikhana family… we thank the Creator of the Universe, the Government of Edo State, his friends… and several other concerned Nigerians that rose up to support and pray for him,” Odegbami stated.

Meanwhile, preparations are underway for a “Night of Tributes” in Lagos to honour five Nigerian sports heroes who passed away in the last six months.

The event, sponsored by Air Peace, is scheduled to hold in eight days. Further details are expected to be released starting Monday.