When the python gets caught in the knot of its deadly curl, it becomes food for the hyena and a joke to the millipede. The Oluwo of Iwo, Oba Abdul-Rasheed Akanbi, is not a python but he is currently caught in the wave of his own storm. Colourful and controversial, the Oluwo has become (in) famous for his predilection to get into spats with whoever got in his way or attempted to.
If he is not displaying his gaudy lifestyle on social media, including new material acquisitions, he is posting childlike videos like an excitable kid just experiencing a smart phone. In a fit of power-drunkenness, the Oluwo, cracked an expensive joke, when he said he would love to be addressed as an Emir by the Muslim community. The monarch of the largely Moslem town in Osun State, who always hopped from one controversy to the other in recent time, immediately came under stringent attacks especially that such allusion was deemed disrespectful to the Yoruba culture and tradition.
He later came out to say he was misunderstood and denied ever saying that. You couldn’t have forgotten so soon how he stripped Chief Abiola Ogundokun of all chieftaincy titles, ranging from Islamic and social to traditional titles conferred on him by the Iwo Traditional Council. The Iwo monarch accused Ogundokun of disrespecting him as well as making utterances and actions he described as anti-Iwo.
However, the 82-year-old Ogundokun, forged in the political warfare of the 70s through the 80s to the Sani Abacha days, has described the Oluwo as incompetent to strip him of any title. “I have been maintaining and using my money to keep him. A few months ago, he told the whole world that Ogundokun is the best Iwo man. He said if he had two Ogundokuns in Iwo, he did not need anybody again.
He is doing this because I advised him against criminality, to stop collecting money from people he does not intend to confer chieftaincy titles on.†To underscore that the King might just be on an exuberant spree, religious leaders across the three local government areas that make up the ancient town, as well as the five royal families, in a meeting held at the Iwo Central mosque, faulted the decision of the monarch and unanimously passed a vote of confidence on the high chief. They maintained that Ogundokun has not done anything that contravenes neither Islamic doctrine nor traditional norm, which necessitated the action of the king.
