Governor Seyi Makinde, this is a moment for sobriety, not brinkmanship. History in Yorùbáland is a live wire: touch it carelessly and it shocks generations. Oyo State’s traditional institution—anchored by the Alaafin of Oyo, the Olubadan of Ibadanland, and the Soun of Ogbomoso—did not merely “evolve”; it was carved by centuries of statecraft, war, diplomacy, and the colonial and post-colonial bargain that tried, often clumsily, to fit ancestral authority inside modern constitutional walls. The warning is plain: do not repeat the hubris of civilian administrations that attempted to reorder sacred protocols by executive fiat and were remembered more for the crisis they provoked than for the stability they claimed to seek. The past is speaking; heed it.
Long before colonial treaties and the grinding wheels of indirect rule, the Alaafin presided over a sophisticated imperial system, balanced by the Oyo Mesi and the Ogboni—checks and balances that predate the modern separation of powers. That architecture gave the Alaafin primacy in a federation of crowns and baálẹ̀s, with tribute, festivals of allegiance, and a grand diplomatic order radiating from Oyo to its vassal polities. The annals record a constitutional monarchy in its own right, with the emperor’s powers bound by custom and counsel but never reduced to ceremonial dust. The Oyo empire’s reach, military and mercantile, is undisputed in mainstream scholarship; it is the wellspring from which later urban militaries like Ibadan drew both legitimacy and contradiction. 
Ibadan’s rise as a war camp after the old capital’s convulsions transformed it from frontier garrison to a metropolis of formidable chiefs. Yet even as Ibadan matured through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into a powerhouse of Yorùbá politics, its chieftaincy logic kept a careful ledger of seniority and succession—the two lines to the Olubadan stool, the place of Mogajis, and the ritual grammar that turned civic authority into kingly authority. The modern codification of that logic sits in state chieftaincy law and declarations, not in ad hoc gubernatorial preferences. Scholars and legal analysts have repeatedly shown that, while governments regulate recognition and staff of office, native law and custom remain the backbone for who ascends and how. Where governments overreach, the courts have not hesitated to interrogate the competence of the body that purported to make or amend a declaration.  
Here is the constitutional reality you cannot wish away. The 1999 Constitution does not assign executive or legislative powers to traditional rulers. Their roles are largely products of state legislation and policy; governors issue instruments of recognition and staff of office under the state Chiefs Law, but they do not conjure new traditions by press release. The Constitution remains supreme, and “chieftaincy matters” sit in state competence—but competence is not carte blanche to vandalize custom. Where the federation has remained silent, state law must still walk within the fences of native law and custom and the rule of law. Any policy that stirs insecurity or disregards due process invites constitutional scrutiny.   
Oyo State’s own legislative journey on the Council of Obas and Chiefs underscores the point. Earlier arrangements—and subsequent amendments and proposals—have grappled with how to structure the chairmanship among the first-class stools. Recent reporting shows the House of Assembly moving a bill that provides for rotational leadership and clarifies presiding authority within the Council, reflecting both political pragmatism and the delicate balance of prestige among the Alaafin, Olubadan, and Soun. That is not a license to diminish any throne; it is an attempt to codify an order that reduces rancour. When executives move faster than consensus and custom, crisis follows; when assemblies codify with sensitivity to history, stability often follows.   
This is where the warning deepens. The experiment, under your watch, of elevating multiple Ibadan High Chiefs to beaded-crown Obas ignited serious contention in 2023. Former Governor Rashidi Ladoja, a principal in the Olubadan succession matrix, openly rejected the project at the time, insisting it was alien to Ibadan’s tradition. Elevations that look like political arithmetic—rather than organic adjustments negotiated within the palace and among kingmakers—tend to produce litigation, social tension, and blurred lines of seniority that come back to haunt the city and the state. That episode remains a cautionary tale about pace, process, and perception.   
Today, the stakes are even higher. The transition in Ibadan has gathered speed. Reputable outlets have reported that the Olubadan-in-Council has nominated former Governor Rashidi Ladoja as the 44th Olubadan, with timelines being discussed publicly and the state government signaling concurrence. If, as now reported, the installation timetable and approvals advance, the temptation for political actors will be to “shape the throne to fit the times.” That is precisely how institutions fray. The incoming Olubadan—by all accounts a man who has lived the cauldron of partisan politics—should know better than anyone that thrones outlive governments and that the best legacy is to leave the succession culture cleaner than one found it.   
Governor Makinde, the message bears repeating with the bluntness history demands. Do not end up remembered like Governor Ajimobi on matters of chieftaincy—talented administrator, yes, but forever footnoted by a bruising confrontation with palace protocol that inflamed identities and divided elites. The ephemerality of office is cruel; crowns endure. The Centre will not hold if the State House keeps testing the tensile strength of custom with improvisations that may satisfy short-term political constituencies but destabilize the ritual architecture that keeps communities at peace. The safer path is institutional: allow the Council of Obas and Chiefs—under a law that reflects the rotational and presiding arrangements the Assembly has been debating—to work as intended; let native law and custom guide succession without executive overreach; recognize that the governor’s powers under the Chiefs Law are administrative and regulatory, not creative powers to invent a new tradition overnight.   
To the National Assembly and the Presidency, the time for half-measures is over. The country keeps rediscovering the same lesson: where traditional rulers are visible, legitimate, and properly integrated into security and development governance, tensions cool faster and civic trust rises. A structured, constitutionalized role—carefully drawn to avoid duplication and supremacy contests with elected officials—has been tabled more than once in Abuja. Committees have studied it; policy briefs have made the case; bills have reached second reading. Finish the job. Create a National Council for Traditional Rulers with clear advisory, mediation, and community-security functions, and allow states to mirror that clarity with their Councils. You are not “politicizing tradition” by codifying it; you are depoliticizing it by removing the incentive for governors to use recognition powers as patronage.   
To the Alaafin’s court, the Olubadan-in-Council, and the Soun’s palace, restraint is still strategy. Prestige is not a zero-sum game in Yorùbáland; it is a choreography. The Alaafin’s historic seniority and ceremonial primacy, Ibadan’s distinctive succession genius, Ogbomoso’s antiquity—each can breathe within a Council framework that is statutory, rotational in leadership, and deferential in protocol. The quarrel that consumes public oxygen today often begins in miscommunication and accelerates under the megaphone of politics. The corrective is a standing protocol book, adopted by the Council and gazetted by the state, that lays out precedence, regalia, styles and titles, presiding formulas, and the boundary between state ceremonial and native ceremony. The Assembly’s current work can enshrine such a manual by reference to schedules in law. 
A word to High Chief Rashidi Ladoja, the incoming Iba of Ibadan: posterity will not judge you by how many political points you score in the weeks of your coronation; it will judge you by whether you used your rare vantage—both as a former governor and as a custodian of Ibadan’s palace ladder—to heal the fissures left by the 2023 elevations and to reset the conversation with Oyo and Ogbomoso as a statesman of crowns. You know the inner workings of government and the sacred kinetics of ritual. Bring them into harmony. Close the file on litigation temptations by returning every sensitive adjustment to the four wells of legitimacy: native law and custom, palace consensus, transparent public communication, and statutory instrument properly made.  
And to Ibadan’s baálẹ̀/baálẹ̀-derived memories and the Mogajis who embody the organic roots of the city’s compound civilization, let there be no confusion: in Yorùbá public law, a baálẹ̀ is not an oba; and historically, a baálẹ̀ did not contest imperial precedence with the Alaafin. Modern law has created first-class stools, yes, but it did not repeal history. The Council arrangement being refined in 2025 recognizes seniority and symbolism while providing a rotation that reduces rivalry. Treat that as a peace pact, not a provocation.  
Nigeria has tried both extremes: the colonial “Native Authority” that over-empowered traditional rulers as arms of the state, and the post-1999 silence that pushed them to the periphery. Neither worked perfectly. The centre path—constitutional clarity, statutory councils with defined advisory roles, state Chiefs Laws applied with humility to custom, and executives who know when to step back—is our best bet. The President and leadership of the National Assembly should move the current reform to conclusion, while Oyo State perfects its own Council law without triumphalism. That is how you reduce the flashpoints that so often erupt over precedence, regalia, or recognition.  
Governor Makinde, the admonition could not be more direct. Respect the limits of your office under the Constitution; use the Chiefs Law to administer, not to alter identity; let the Assembly’s Council architecture breathe; and work with the palaces to craft an agreed protocol manual that you then gazette—nothing more, nothing less. There is still room to turn this chapter from confrontation to statesmanship. But history is watching, and history remembers.
