By Stephen Adewale

This week has been nothing short of a renaissance for the discipline of History. The age-old rivalry between the revered thrones of the Ooni and the Alaafin once again leapt from the pages of tradition into the theatre of public discourse, rekindling the timeless debate over supremacy.

Suddenly, everyone became a historian, dusting off half-remembered tales and parading fragments of archival lore across social media as though the spirits of our ancestors themselves had been summoned to testify.

It was at once amusing and awe-inspiring to watch the society that so often dismisses History as a fading relic to grasp it as though it were the very lifeline of truth and identity.

In revisiting this enduring debate, we are reminded that History is not merely an archive of the past but a living discourse that resurfaces with passion each time the question of authority, identity, and heritage comes to the fore.

The question of supremacy between the Ooni of Ife and the Alaafin of Oyo is so contentious that it would be simplistic, if not misleading, for any historian to give a straightforward answer as to who truly stands supreme.

I can lay bare the historical evidence as it exists, while leaving my readers the intellectual freedom to draw their conclusions about prominence and authority.

 Although interpretations differ, certain historical truths remain unassailable and rise above mere speculation.

 It is these enduring historical facts that I intend to present here. And while I must apologise in advance if my narrative seems to stretch longer than expected, I will make every effort to keep it lively and engaging, so that my readers are carried along with curiosity rather than weighed down by boredom.

First, History shows without dispute that Ile-Ife is the cradle of the Yoruba race. From this ancient city, men and women dispersed to found the great kingdoms of Yorubaland, including Oyo, Ijebu, Ondo, and countless others. Even Oyo, which we are discussing now, despite its later grandeur, traces its origin back to Ife.

Second, the precolonial arrangement shows that the Ooni was revered as the spiritual and ancestral head of all Yoruba people.

 No king ascended his throne without acknowledging Ife’s primacy. Indeed, even the mighty Alaafin of Oyo, at his coronation, once received prayers and ritual blessings from the Ooni of Ife. This fact acknowledges the divine source from which his authority sprang.

In fact, so strong was this reverence for Ooni that the Yoruba had an unwritten code of honour never to raise their swords against Ooni’s territory. For instance, in the famous Owu War of 1821–1829, the combined armies of Yorubaland destroyed the once-powerful Owu not out of casual hostility, but because Owu committed the cardinal sin of attacking Apomu, which was the territory of an Ooni.

To attack Ooni’s territory was, in effect, to violate the sanctity of the Yoruba soul itself. Whenever a crisis struck, emissaries were sent to Ife because the general belief was that the Ooni held the keys to spiritual balance.

 Therefore, up until the advent of colonialism, the Ooni stood as the king of kings. He was revered not by military might, but by divine investiture as the living custodian of Oduduwa’s legacy.

On the other hand, the Alaafin of Oyo emerged not as a priest-king but as a warrior monarch. Oyo itself was founded by Alaafin Oranmiyan in the 14th century with the singular mission of forging a bulwark against external invasion to the rest of the Yoruba land.

The Alaafin’s court was a citadel of power; he was renowned for his troops’ martial skill, and his cavalry was feared across West Africa.

The Alaafin’s prominence and reverence sprang from this military prowess. He was the iron-fisted General whom all Yoruba kings feared to provoke. In short, in the sacred hierarchy of Yorubaland, the Ooni was the supreme deity to whom homage must be paid, while the Alaafin was the iron-fisted General whom all must respect.

What shifted this balance of power to what we are witnessing today was not Yoruba tradition but European intervention.

 Although Hugh Clapperton and Richard Lander visited Oyo at the twilight of its power, they still wrote about the power of Oyo that stretched from part of the modern-day Northern Nigeria to Dahomey in the present-day Benin Republic.

They wrote about the visible might of the Alaafin. They explained his cavalry, his vassals, his vast tribute system, and in their writings, they cast him as the supreme ruler of the Yoruba.

The British, seeking efficiency in colonial administration, amplified this impression.

 By the charter of the Royal Niger Company and the policies of indirect rule under Lord Lugard, the Alaafin was elevated as the political darling of the British.

To them, the Alaafin’s centralised authority and military traditions made him the ideal instrument of governance. So powerful was this colonial reframing that even Yoruba historiography was reshaped.

Missionary education and Ajayi Crowther’s translations placed a premium on the Oyo dialect as the standard Yoruba tongue.

Samuel Johnson’s magisterial History of the Yorubas, which was written in 1897, disproportionately celebrated Oyo’s political greatness and ended up sidelining Ife’s preeminence.

Therefore, between 1861 and 1960, the colonial narrative crowned the Alaafin as “king of the Yoruba,” a title that Yoruba tradition had never granted him.

This colonial distortion lingered into Nigeria’s early independence. In fact, by the 1950s, Alaafin Adeniran Adeyemi was viewed with suspicion by Awolowo’s Action Group, not only for his political leanings but also because of his enduring closeness to the British authorities.

His eventual deposition in 1956 was therefore as much about politics as about redressing the colonial inflation of the Alaafin’s place.

To counterbalance this and restore Ife’s ancestral primacy, Awolowo and the Action Group threw their weight behind Oba Adesoji Aderemi, the 50th Ooni of Ife. Oba Aderemi became a political force, thereby elevating Ife once again in both politics and symbolism.

Again, the issue of salaries paid by the colonial authorities to Yoruba kings has also been raised in some quarters as a sign of superiority. However, the criteria for the payment to the kings by the British were never a matter of seniority.

It had nothing to do with who was the “first king” or whose crown had the longest shadow of myth.

The colonial office had, in fact, gazetted part of its reasons for these payments. Still, many chose to ignore the plain record, preferring instead to weave selective tales from colonial documents that suited their arguments.

The truth was more prosaic, yet more telling. The size of the monthly salary depended not on ancestral prestige, but on the administrative usefulness of those kings. To the British, loyalty and utility counted far more than ritual primacy.

Let’s take the Alaafin of Oyo, for example. His salary was £4,200. He was handsomely rewarded for three principal reasons. First was his historic prestige. For centuries, the Alaafin had sat atop the Oyo Empire, the once-mighty leviathan of Yorubaland. Even in decline, Oyo’s aura lingered, and the British, obsessed with indirect rule, seized upon that grandeur to dignify their system of governance. Second was his territorial sway.

The Alaafin commanded a wide stretch of districts under Oyo Province, a vast population through which the British could extend their grasp. Third was necessity. Oyo Province was sprawling, and the colonial residents and district officers, who were few in numbers, could not govern it without the Alaafin’s cooperation.

Therefore, his stipend became both tribute and investment.

Ibadan’s case was equally instructive. Olubadan earned £2,400. The British paid Olubadan generously, not out of affection, but out of caution. Ibadan, the enfant terrible of the 19th century, had been the storm that dominated Yorubaland.

It was militarily supreme, politically restless, and economically vital. This was the city that checked Dahomey and Nupe, controlled the arteries of trade, and built itself into a formidable urban giant.

To rule Ibadan was to hold a lion by the mane, and the colonial government knew it. To keep the Olubadan content was not mere courtesy. It was a strategy of survival.

The Ooni of Ife, meanwhile, was draped in ritual reverence but stripped of territorial might.

The British acknowledged him as the spiritual father of the Yoruba, the custodian of sacred origins, but Ife wielded no sword and commanded few towns. Politically and militarily, it paled beside Oyo, Ibadan, and the Egba in significance to the British Indirect Rule.

In fact, the Owa of Ijesha earned £1,450. Considering his hardened soldiers and territorial reach, Owa commanded more practical value in the eyes of the British, and he earned a greater stipend than even Ooni.

 To the colonial authority, symbolism did not balance the books. The Ooni was recognised, yes, but they did not heavily bankroll him. Therefore, Ooni’s salary was £1,400

The British calculus was cold and clear. They paid not for crowns, but for control.

 They paid not for shrines, but for subjects. Spiritual grandeur may have elevated Ife in the Yoruba imagination, but in the ledgers of the colonial office, utility and ability to control a large territory on behalf of the British reigned supreme.

In the end, History must be read with both eyes open.

The Ooni of Ife has always been the spiritual head of the Yoruba nation, the custodian of Oduduwa’s sacred legacy. The Alaafin of Oyo, no less significant, was the sword arm of the Yoruba.

He is a king feared for his military might and revered for his empire’s reach. The truth lies in the duality of their historical functions. The Ooni, as the priest-king, is the eternal source, while Alaafin was the military figure in Yorubaland.

To argue for one over the other is to miss the essence of Yoruba civilisation, which thrived precisely because it balanced the spiritual sanctity of Ife with the martial ferocity of Oyo.

Stephen writes from the Department of History, Obafemi Awolowo University, ile- ife, Osun state.