Rèmí Oyèyemí: Oonirisa, to be divorced by a woman?

“Our Kings in Yorùbá land were and still are not made for hypocritical, sanctimonious, pharisaical and duplicitous Caucasoid philosophy of “one man, one woman.” Any woman who comes into any palace in Yorùbá land expecting to marinate in this dubious European marital concept is unfit, ill-equipped, out of place, and unsuitable.”

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“To be candid, Ooni Ogunwusi has not managed the situation well either. Why is he making the Oloris public? They are not to be seen or heard, and they are to remain permanently behind the scenes, behind the curtains, shielded, shrouded and cocooned from “public eyes.” He set himself up for this kind of embarrassment by giving them the clout they do not have and obviously, do not deserve. Does he consider himself a Governor with a First Lady?

He has allowed himself to be used by these unscrupulous Jezebels who came to cultivate an image of royalty when they are dregs, only to embarrass him after getting what they want. This is why some of us shout out that he does not know how to be King. Oonirisa, not just an ordinary king, would be divorced by a woman? What a travesty! An abomination!”

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One of the stories about the creation of the Earth (and many of them) is found in the Bible. The actor and actresses are Adam and Eve. 

How Eve tempted Adam to destroy his life and made him lose the Garden of Eden is all known to those familiar with the Biblical story. Going through the Bible, one would encounter Delilah. Further explorations would put one in contact with Jezebel.

Jezebel was a Phoenician princess in the 9th century. In 922 BC, to be specific, she married Ahab, the prince of Israel. Eventually, they ruled as King and queen. Jezebel continued to worship the nature god Baal, and her citizens and the Yahweh prophet Elijah despised such actions. Preparing herself to be murdered by General Jehu, she applied makeup and dressed in finery before being thrown over her balcony and eaten by dogs.

This Ooni Eniitan Ogunwusi Ojaja II has a lot of challenges. One is always critical of him. But on this issue, one would like to carry the water for him. Most women nowadays are Jezebels. They are as arrogant as they are condescending. They want to turn their husbands into robots to be remotely controlled. They are full of themselves. Their tantrums are very toddlers but schematic and diagrammatic.

They are howlingly hollow in their thoughts which are simultaneously richly imbued with mysterious depths of cunningness and deceit. They are dangerously diabolical and infernal. Husbands of such genre of women who remained alive despite them are fortunate indeed. Usually, they are beautiful on the outside. But on the inside, they are darker than the devil itself. They have misty, murky and muddy minds. In the words of that evergreen and greatest Yorùbá novelist, D. O. Fagunwa, they are the “Kámi-kàmì-kámi” category. Dazzling but deadly. Physiologically splendid but perilous.

Left unfettered, they have destroyed kingdoms. They have kneecapped Nations. They have destroyed beautiful homes. They have dissipated fortunes. Like the Shakespearean Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, they have killed great men in some cases. Bewitching with their beauty, they are billows of bleakness and whirlwinds of anguish. They don’t feel. They are cold-blooded. Mean. Mercilessly rapacious. Their àtubòtán is usually grievous and disastrous, not only for themselves but for the men who they had victimized. Only a few men had gone through them with minor scars.

They are greedy. Self-centred. Egotistic and egoistic. They have no values except to cater to their putrid gratifications. They are insatiable in all ramifications. They have no scintilla of gratitude and appreciation in their bones. Their narcissism is consummate and of the maximalist genre. They burn like a luciferous inferno when thwarted, and their desired gratifications are granulated. It doesn’t make any difference even when they have their ways. Their nature, like that of a poisonous serpent, could never repent.
More often, these kinds of women are intractable. They see themselves beyond any control and have no iota of ability for patience and sacrifice. Being free to do what they like, some of which are disgusting and vicious is what their ilk desire. They gallivant around arrogantly, vaunting their “beelzebubic” beauty, using that to trap, trounce and trip the unwary good men seeking true love and affection.

To be candid, Ooni Ogunwusi has not managed the situation well either. Why is he making the Oloris public? They are not to be seen or heard, and they are to remain permanently behind the scenes, behind the curtains, shielded, shrouded and cocooned from “public eyes.” He set himself up for this kind of embarrassment by giving them the clout they do not have and obviously, do not deserve. Does he consider himself a Governor with a First Lady?

He has allowed himself to be used by these unscrupulous Jezebels who came to cultivate an image of royalty when they are dregs, only to embarrass him after getting what they want. This is why some of us shout out that he does not know how to be King. Oonirisa, not just an ordinary king, would be divorced by a woman? What a travesty! An abomination!

However, Oonirisa has had divorces does not mean he still could not be a great King, and he still has the chance to take corrective steps. One has heard some foolish and uninformed comments that this shows that he was not capable – He would not be the first royalty to have marital problems- We have had Presidents, Kings and Queens who had marital issues.

For example, Nelson Mandela married three times. From George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison (who served 32 days only as President of the United States), John Tyler, James Garfield, Grover Cleveland to Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush, all had marital troubles. John Tyler and Woodrow Wilson lost their wives during their presidency and remarried during their term.
Also, there were a lot of good monarchs who had no marital bliss. Queen Victoria of England’s marriage to Prince Albert was described as “misery.” King Henry VIII, also of England, had six wives – Catherine Part, Catherine Howard, Anne of Cleves, Jane Seymour, Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon. The Russian longest-ruling Czarina (female Czar), Catherine the Great, had a troubled marriage with Peter III, a great-grandson of Peter the Great.

While some men may have their challenges too in marital situations, some women are better not encountered. Whatever the case, the women who have been coming and going through the Ile-Ife Palace since the ascension of Oòni Ogunwusi are uneducated, not adequately primed, had no understanding of the role of traditional Oloris. They came with the misguided, heretic, blasphemous, sectarian and revisionist idea of “one man, one wife”, which is antithetical to our Yorùbá traditions.

Our Kings in Yorùbá land were and still are not made for hypocritical, sanctimonious, pharisaical and duplicitous Caucasoid philosophy of “one man, one woman.” Any woman who comes into any palace in Yorùbá land expecting to marinate in this dubious European marital concept is unfit, ill-equipped, out of place, and unsuitable.
Please, on this, Give Ooni Ogunwusi a break.