When Tradition Meets Power – Money, Politics, and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Ijebu’s Royal Succession

For sixty-five years, the Awujale’s throne stood apart. Not perfect, not mystical, but disciplined. Under Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona, the stool survived Nigeria’s worst decades without becoming a bargaining chip. His death in July 2025 did not just end a reign; it exposed a truth many preferred to ignore: no institution is immune once money and power decide to test it.

What should have been a sober, ancestral transition is fast mutating into something recognisably Nigerian. Influence is edging out inheritance. Strategy is competing with custom. The Awujale’s stool, once above politics, is now being dragged into the same marketplace where everything else is priced, negotiated, and traded.

Inside the Fusengbuwa Ruling House, the atmosphere has changed. Respect has thinned; calculation has thickened. Officially, the Afobajes and Olori-Ebis remain the gatekeepers. Unofficially, the process now smells less like sacred choice and more like a political primary. Inducements are whispered about. Endorsements are quietly brokered. Lineages are allegedly “borrowed.” Nigerians recognise this pattern instinctively, and that recognition is precisely the problem.

Legitimacy does not survive transactions. Once money begins to referee ancestry, the throne loses its metaphysical weight and becomes another office with regalia.

The unease is grounded, not speculative. Reports filtering out of traditional structures are troubling. The Regberegbes, historically the moral spine of Ijebu society, are said to have expanded suddenly and selectively. More damaging are persistent murmurs that even Afobajes may not be untouched by inducement. If kingmakers can be bought, then kings are no longer crowned, they are commissioned.

Hovering over everything is the Lagos factor. Lagos is not just a city; it is a political export hub. Its money reshapes outcomes far beyond its borders. Into the Ijebu succession steps Wasiu Omogbolahan Anifowoshe Marshall, Fuji icon, political force, cultural heavyweight. The central question on the streets is blunt: can quiet legitimacy withstand loud money? In Nigeria’s current power architecture, that question is never rhetorical.

Viewed without sentiment, the succession is beginning to assume a familiar hierarchy. Prince Abimbola John Onabanjo is widely seen as the frontrunner, reportedly buoyed by a well-funded and carefully executed consolidation of influence among key Afobajes. Otunba Anikilaiya Abiodun Onanuga follows, grounded and connected, yet encumbered by serious procedural contradictions. Otunba Dr. Kunle Hassan represents elite professionalism, but his candidacy is shadowed by unresolved ethical questions. Otunba Ademorin Kuye remains visible and relevant, but visibly partisan.

Then there is Marshall himself. To admirers, he is reach and relevance. To traditionalists, he is the line that must not be crossed, the conversion of monarchy into celebrity politics. To others still, he is a sideshow, masking a quieter, more methodical capture of the process by entrenched interests.

Strip away the noise and the fault lines are clear.

Otunba Ademorin Kuye’s open membership of the APC is disqualifying in principle. The Awujale must belong to Ijebu, not to a party. A partisan Awujale collapses the throne into the electoral cycle. This is not an attack on any president or party; it is an institutional boundary.

Otunba Dr. Kunle Hassan faces an ethical burden that cannot be waved away. A physician inheriting the throne of his deceased patient raises unavoidable moral questions. These concerns deepen when placed alongside the unresolved controversy around the Eshugbo Committee and the historical anomaly of his blood brothers ruling Eshugbo consecutively after its elevation. In traditional systems, patterns matter.

The people are watching closely. They know who is spending. They know who is being positioned. They understand that even in tradition, process matters.

A crown taken in shadows will illuminate nothing. Not the king. Not the kingdom. And certainly not history.

Olumide Adekunle Fashina is a Lagos-based public affairs commentator writing on power, institutions, and legitimacy in Nigeria.