17/01/2026
Are We Rewriting Ourselves Out of History?
On the Alaafin, Political Power, and Yoruba Memory
There is no credible historical evidence that Chief Obafemi Awolowo formally elevated the Ooni of Ife above the Alaafin of Oyo in any permanent or traditional sense. What he did, however, was far more consequential. He restructured the political relevance of traditional stools, especially that of the Alaafin, in ways that permanently altered power dynamics.
Under the colonial Native Authority system, the Alaafin of Oyo was not merely a ceremonial ruler. He exercised real administrative power over courts, taxation, district heads, and governance. This reflected the legacy of the Oyo Empire, one of the most politically sophisticated states in precolonial Africa, with a constitutional system that balanced royal authority through institutions like the Oyo Mesi.
By contrast, the Ooni of Ife, though spiritually preeminent as custodian of Yoruba origins and sacred traditions, did not wield comparable centralised political power within the Native Authority framework. His authority was primarily ritual, symbolic, and ancestral, not imperial or bureaucratic.
When Awolowo removed the Alaafin from the Native Authority system in 1955, it was not merely a reform. It was a structural rupture. The Alaafin was stripped of institutional power and reduced to a cultural figurehead. This move did not elevate the Ooni or any other ruler in a traditional sense, but it created a vacuum. And in politics, vacuums do not remain empty.
Over time, the modern Nigerian state showed a preference for rulers who were symbolic rather than politically formidable. This explains why later governments found it convenient to assign ceremonial prominence such as council chairmanships to monarchs whose authority posed no political challenge. This was not tradition reasserting itself. It was administrative pragmatism.
Fast forward to recent years, and the same logic persists.
The Oyo State government decision to remove the Alaafin permanent chairmanship of the Council of Obas and replace it with a rotational system is not neutral. It is a continuation of this political reordering. It flattens historical distinction into statutory equality, treating profoundly unequal histories as interchangeable titles. This is not modernisation. It is historical flattening.
The Cultural Cost
What is at stake is not the prestige of one stool, but our collective memory as Yoruba people. In Yoruba civilisation, royal stools were not just seats of power. They were;
• Vessels of memory
• Custodians of political philosophy
• Repositories of ancestral legitimacy
• Living archives of civilisational meaning
The Alaafin stool encodes the Yoruba's story of empire, diplomacy, military organisation, constitutional governance, and the limits of power. To reduce it to a rotating administrative chair is not democratic. It is ahistorical.
Other civilisations understand this.
In England, the monarchy has almost no real political power, yet its hierarchy, rituals, and precedence are fiercely preserved. Why? Because the British understand that history is a form of capital. The Crown is not powerful, but it is untouchable.
In Japan, the Emperor has no political authority, yet embodies national continuity. In Thailand, Bhutan, and parts of Malaysia, royal institutions are protected not for their utility, but for their meaning.
These societies understand something we are forgetting.
Power can fade. Meaning must not.
And this is where a revealing contrast emerges within Nigeria itself. In the North, Arewa has been remarkably careful in preserving the symbolic primacy of the Sultanate and emirate system. Though these institutions no longer wield sovereign political power, they remain culturally hegemonic. They continue to embody the historical memory of Fulani rule over the Hausa polities, an inheritance that is neither denied nor flattened for administrative convenience. The North understands that such institutions are not merely ceremonial. They are repositories of conquest, continuity, identity, and power memory. That story is preserved, not legislated into neutrality.
The Yoruba approach, by contrast, appears increasingly eager to dissolve historical specificity into bureaucratic sameness.
The Yoruba Contradiction
We are doing the opposite of what enduring civilisations do. We are allowing modern politics to rewrite ancient prestige, flatten layered histories, reduce mythic stools into administrative units, replace memory with convenience. This is not progress but cultural amnesia in slow motion. When stools lose their stories, people lose their sense of self. A civilisation does not survive by being efficient. It survives by being remembered.
Conclusion
Awolowo did not crown the Ooni over the Alaafin, but he dismantled the Alaafin political centrality. Today Oyo State government is not dethroning the Alaafin, but it is continuing the same project of turning historically institutional power into ceremonial symbolism.
What we are witnessing is not tradition evolving organically.
It is tradition being reformatted by the modern state.
And if we continue like this, we will not destroy our history violently.
We will erase it politely. Legally. Administratively. That is the real danger.
Wón ní àmòjù níí pa ekùn Sàáré.
Ogbón àgbónjù náà a máa so èèyàn di agó.
Oluwafisayo Olatunji
160126
