Ooni, Obasanjo, Amosun, others add glamour as Owu indigenes celebrate heritage

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By Femi Ogunleye

NIGERIA:  IT has become a yearly event that has come to stay, where Owu sons and daughters at home in Nigeria and in diaspora gather in unison to celebrate their heritage.  This year’s event was indeed colourful with the grandeur added to it, particularly by celebrating it at the seat of Owu Kingdom – the palace.

Traditional drummers, dancers, folklore singers and other performing artistes – happily dressed in colourful attires – were allurement to the epicentre of the ceremony which extended from the Olowu palace premises to the adjunct road.

To add glamour to the unique ceremony, the two pathways – Jebooda from the south and Kobiti from the north – were decorated with buntings of several colours, creating the ambience of pageantry and resplendence, for which the guests including Ogun State Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, former Nigerian President and the Balogun of Owu, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former World Court judge, Prince Bola Ajibola and many other prominent personalities and Obas from all Owu districts outside Abeokuta and environs, signified their pleasance.

Definitely, Saturday, October 22 would remain a memorable day that Owu indigenes stormed the traditional home of their monarch to celebrate their ancestral heritage of Omo Olowu festival.

The legendary Trustee of Oduduwa, the progenitor of the Yoruba race, Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, glamourised the event with his presence among other spiritual and temporal leaders.

Coming within space when the Benin Kingdom and the Yoruba race concurred to their single Oduduwa progeny at the crowning of the new Oba of Benin, Omo n’oba n’edo Uku Akpolokpolo, Ewuare ll, Ooni Ogunwusi’s presence in Abeokuta to join in the celebration of Omo Olowu festival accentuates the pre-eminence of Owu Crown in the Oduduwa House.

The Omo Olowu festival was the renaissance of Owu culture and heritage immortalised some two decades ago by the late Olowu of Owu, Abeokuta, Oba Olawale Adisa Odeleye, Lagbedu 1 (1993 – 2003) and which since has remained a major touristic event in Abeokuta and Ogun State every year.

Previous ceremonies were often held at the open arcade in a school premises at Iyalode Square, Abeokuta, but the 2016 event was shifted to the Owu Palace on the Hilltop, perhaps to showcase the transition of the old palace architecture designed by the late Olowu Oba Odeleye, who became the first Nigerian President of the Commonwealth Association of Architects, into an aesthetically refurbished edifice tucked within the hilltop full of ageing traditional homes of kin, who had settled there on arrival from their war-torn homestead, Orile Owu, circa 1834.

A significant feature of the ceremony was the traditional obeisance by all Owu sons and daughters from all house compounds in Abeokuta and satellite towns and villages in the districts which cut across the Ogun State boundary, with all depositing “abo oko” harvest from farms, as perquisites of the throne, in the palace court, evidently, making puerile, a seemingly political assumption in some quarters that Oba Olowu’s traditional jurisdiction does not go beyond Abeokuta North Local Government.

Amosun, an Owu indigene, spoke at the colourful event.  He said he was delighted to be part of the celebration and promised to contribute to its upliftment.

Oba Olusanya Adegboyega Dosunmu, the Olowu of Owu, expressed gratitude to all guests including the governor for sharing their busy schedules with attendance of the ceremony, praying that all visitors would reach their homes in peace.