Should you say or boast that you know the Ataoja of Osogbo, Oba Jimoh Oyetunji Olanipekun (Larooye II), who ascended to the throne of his ancestors on September 12, 2010, all you know is an assumption and, better still, a footnote of who he actually is.
This conclusion might want to provoke a follow-up poser: ‘Who is he?’ Answer has to wait for a few months; before this year runs out of sight, it looks like a promise that you will have a full dose of who and what makes up Oba Olanipekun, the quite unassuming royal father of all Osogbo sons and daughters resident at home and across the Atlantic.
On July 15, the day the nation was expecting from London body of the immediate past President of Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari to be laid to rest in his Daura homestead, Katsina State, I honoured a scheduled meeting with the Ataoja in his palace, a modest edifice, one of the best in Yorubaland at the time it was commissioned in 1982.
The appointment was a carry over to the previous one with Kabiyesi a week earlier. Alongside two elders of the town, both of whom are public service retirees still mentally sparkling, I met Oba Olanipekun and began to see a personage different from whom I had met, interviewed and, with due respect to the stool, exchanged contagious banters with.
Unlike my past engagements when he feigned shyness with words against my wish, on that Tuesday, however, he was extremely generous and deliberately out to over feed my recorder with factual details I required, thanks to the two elders who encouraged him to speak up with a view to making some clarifications to do justice to his person and the institution, of which he is the current occupant.
In his message to us some hours earlier, it’s 11 am, and we kept to that time. Without much suspense, we were ushered into the spot where Kabiyesi receives and holds meetings demanding no privacy. It’s an open space facing the entrance into the awaiting room of the palace.
By 11 30 am, after we had risen from prostration, we set out for a session that would tie us to our seats for the next two hours.
Be that as it may, it was worth its while; it was a session of frank talk and unimaginable disclosures of events, issues and incidents, all recalled by Kabiyesi with combination of seriousness and contagious laughter.
Expectedly, the session suffered interruptions from aides and visitors but Kabiyesi was resolute in ensuring the hours spent were productive. At a point, he told an aide that what he met him doing was a job, a serious job that needed his concentration, a subtle warning not to come and distract his attention again. However, one of his Oloris led two guests to him. Inevitably, we pressed a pause button. Kabiyesi attended to them, at the same time, joculatly passed a particularly strong message to the leader of the team.
That over. The conversation continued to be rounded off in about 45 minutes afterwards. It was a fulfilled interaction that covered significant ground and aided the motion of the duty. He rose from his seat, we followed suit; he dressed us with words of gratitude and prayed for our safe landing. He saw us off and off we’re. Kabiyesi o!
Published on July 19, 2025
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