There are seasons when truth must speak in whispers, not because it lacks strength, but because speaking plainly has become a punishable offence. You can be hunted down like an antelope on the run, by the big bad wolf!
In such times, restraint is mistaken for wisdom, & caution is branded as loyalty. Yet history has taught us this much: when silence is enforced, it is rarely for the protection of truth.
What should have unfolded as a sacred, deliberate, & culturally anchored passage has instead begun to resemble a theatre of exhaustion, energy spent, dignity bruised, meaning diluted. One is tempted to ask, quietly but firmly: Kilode?
The throne left behind by the late HRM Alaiyeluwa Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona, Ogbagba II, is not an ordinary seat. It is not a chair to be moved at will, nor a title to be announced by convenience. It is a covenant between history & the people, between the living & their ancestors.
Covenants, once treated lightly, have consequences.
Yet there is now a growing unease that time itself may be deliberately stretched, not in reverence, but in calculation.
And where tradition is made to wait endlessly, something else often arrives in its place, swift, decisive, & conveniently final. Sometimes, it even comes with applause already arranged.
Politics, that restless guest, has once again wandered into a shrine uninvited. What was once sacred is now discussed in hushed corridors. What was once divine is now subjected to negotiation. Men, clothed briefly in authority, appear to forget that power has an expiry date, even when it pretends otherwise. Shior.
Stories, many, careless, & conveniently untraceable, now drift through the air like smoke. We resist the temptation to chase them. Smoke, after all, often exists to distract from the fire. But beneath the haze, one fact stubbornly remains: the kingmakers ask for nothing extraordinary, only the freedom to perform the duty for which tradition installed them. Not to rehearse lines. Not to validate decisions already taken elsewhere. Simply to do what has always been done.
Whether they will be allowed to do so is the question that refuses to be answered.
For now, the process stands paused, halted by official correspondence, conveyed through familiar administrative channels. A pause, they say. But history reminds us that pauses are not always neutral. Some are merely preludes.
Will the drums sound again, this time in the right order?
Or will the people awaken to a proclamation, neat, complete, & irreversible?
Ijebu watches. Patiently. Thoughtfully. A people seasoned enough to recognize when a story is being carefully rewritten while they are still reading the original. Beyond Ijebu, too, eyes observe, because how a people treat their sacred institutions often foretells how they will treat everything else.
Ogaju…
History does not shout. It records. And in its quiet, unblinking gaze, it remembers who protected tradition, & who believed it expendable due to political expediency. Those who gamble with what is sacred for the comfort of the moment should remember: time is patient, but judgment is thorough.
Shior.
