Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Adeyemi to meet President Buhari in Aso Rock

Barring any last-minute change in plans, President Muhammadu Buhari will on Thursday host the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, a foremost monarch in Yorubaland, Premium Times can authoritatively report.

According to Mr. Buhari’s list of engagements for Thursday, the meeting will hold at the State House between 2pm and 2.30pm, lasting just thirty minutes.

According to Presidency sources, the meeting is coming at the instance of Oba Adeyemi whose previous efforts at seeing the president did not materialised.

It is unclear why the monarch is visiting the president. But some commentators suspect it might be connected his ongoing case with the police.

The Federal High Court, sitting in Ibadan, had on December 15, 2014, issued an order of mandamus compelling the Inspector General of Police to investigate Oba Adeyemi for alleged murder, bomb planting, unlawful possession of arms and other offences.

But over a year after the order, the police failed to act, causing the petitioners to write Mr. Buhari in January this year. The petitioners asked Mr. Buhari to compel the police to execute the Ibadan court order, an effort that has yielded no fruition.

In their petition to the President, the petitioners attached damning security documents.

But in a dramatic turn, the police command in Oyo State arraigned the petitioners – Jacob Oluokun and Sulaiman Ishola – and a former lawmaker, Kamil Akinlabi, before a State High Court in Oyo for allegedly defaming the Alaafin.

In a counter action, the petitioners filed contempt proceedings against the IGP for failing to execute the December 2015 order, according to their lawyer, Abiodun Raheem.

Mr. Akinlabi was in the House of Representatives between 2007 and 2015, and had the Alaafin as godfather before they became estranged.

Oba Adeyemi’s visit to the State House is coming after the President had, twice, hosted the Ooni of Ile-Ife, Oba Enitan Ogunwusi.

The thrones of the Alaafin and Ooni are, historically, the greatest in Yorubaland.

While the former’s domain of Oyo is the remnant of the vast Old Oyo empire, the latter’s Ile-Ife is the ancestral home of the Yoruba people.

At the peak of its reign, the Old Oyo Empire had authority over almost all of Yorubaland, and extended to Dahomey, now Benin Republic. 

Source: Premium Times