Lasun Alagbe
Yorubaland and indeed Nigeria and Africa in general have lost one of their most prominent monarchs as the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, has joined his ancestors.
The highly influential, knowledgeable and elegant oba was said to have passed on late Friday.
He was said to have breathed his last at the Afe Babalola Teaching Hospital, Ado-Ekiti.
He was 83.
Gifted with a computer brain and passion as well as vigour to research and read voraciously, Oba Adeyemi boasted facts, dates, places and contexts of almost anything important in the historical and socio-political equation of the Yoruba alongside that of Nigeria.
His death can thus be likened to that of an unfathomable and irreplaceable library.
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Many will, as a matter of fact, agree that a human treasure has bid the world bye.
In the Yoruba mourning parlance, ‘erin ti wo, ajanaku sun bi oke’, meaning that the elephant has fallen, ajanaku the great one has indeed eternally fallen asleep like a mountain.
So was the status of Oba Adeyemi, who qualified to be an oba of obas, in human sense.
A custodian of history and politics of the Yoruba race, Alaafin Adeyemi was one of the longest reigning, having been installed on November 18, 1970.
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The traditional ruler, who was also a socialite, was often saluted by praise singers as death himself, whom death could thus not kill.
But intensely philosophical king, who was also an orator and loved speaking truth to power, once described the assertion as artistic idiocy as, according to him, every mortal was born to die.
He was a lover of youths as he had as many youths as he had elders.
Although he was never shy of controversies too, Oba Adeyemi would be remembered for many positive things, including maintaining a stand for true federalism and the need for Yorubas to place themselves in a position that will guarantee the realisation of their great destiny.
The departing traditional ruler was also a sensational boxer.
