CLUES TO WILDACTS BY AKURE'S KING

By NBF News

In Nigeria of the 21st century not of the stone or medieval age Oba Adesina said his public bizarre and primitive show of shame on the street where his estranged wife lives in her father's house since relocating from the palace about nine months ago, was to carry out the traditional rites of a royal divorce. In which a monarch throws ash on a consort he wants to part way with. Something he could have done by deceitfully inviting the wife to the palace for a reconciliation meeting between them. Of course, what he drenched his wife with could not have been ash since it burned and peeled her skin as seen in newspaper publications like the Nigerian Compass of Tuesday, June 1 and the Punch of Wednesday, June 2. You will wonder what the level and depth of Oba Adesina's crudity would have been if he had not lived in the United Kingdom for ten years or more returning home only in 2004 to vie for the throne.

Only those who had not been following the thuggish activities of Oba Adesina in the press in the last one to one - and - a half years would be taken aback by his barbaric behaviour two Sundays ago. Because the traditional ruler become a nuisance going about with ruffians to claim parcels of land and built - up areas from people who had owned them for many years or two or more decades. Which people say he wants to use to build housing estates and shopping centres in different parts of the Ondo State capital. One of his notorious exploits and the one that led him into trouble with the kingmakers was a piece of land belonging to the Nigeria Police Force in the St Luke Church area of the city where his thugs molested the caretaker in-charge of the place Chief Josie Abegunde, a humorous man of little education who calls himself and is known by many people in the town as intelligent illiterate. He used to be the head of palace staff during reign of the last Deji.

With this development Akure kingmakers thought the monarch had disgraced the people of the kingdom enough and therefore announced his dethronement by the Akure traditional council of chiefs. One of the kingmakers I met in Akure in January referred to Oba Adesina as 'Kabiyesi Digbo Lugi' (Yoruba words for Mad Dog behaving king),

Unfortunately, Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State who has the authority to effect the monarch's deposition did not act on the recommendation. He is not even known to have cautioned the monarch to live up to the expectation of his exalted and revered office. Perhaps this was because Oba Adesina supported the governor during his struggle to wrestle the governor's seat from former Governor Olusegun Agagu who was eventually sent packing from power last year by the verdict of the Election Petitions Tribunal. No doubt that if Governor Mimiko had reprimanded Oba Adesina or advised him to change his behaviour he would not have become wildcat engaging in a street brawl with his wife eleven days ago.

Even if Oba Adesina did not obtain any university degree while in the U.K. as people in Akure say, what could make the 49 year - old monarch a secondary school graduate of Aquinas College, Akure to be behaving lawlessly in the manner of a deranged hooligan? My finding while in Akure in January and making telephone calls to people in the town last week is that in addition to the allegation that they suspect he may be on hard drugs the Oba may be suffering from spiritual problems he created for himself by falling short in his customary responsibility to the kingmakers and the wrong way circumstances made the traditional rites for his coronation to be carried out in 2005 in the reversed order from what it used to be since the 12th century.