Community protest over kingship stool in Lagos

The people of Isheri-Oke Church town in Ikosi-Isheri Local Council Development Area (LCDA) of Lagos State, in the dying day of last year, stormed the Governor’s Office and State Assembly in Ikeja, to register their grievances over the controversy surrounding the kingship stool in the last 18 years.

Members of the community, in their hundreds, marched to the House of Assembly and converged in front of the complex chanting solidarity songs.

They said they needed to see Governor Akinwunmi Ambode to use his good office to ensure that justice prevails.

Lawyer to the Olofin family, who claims ownership of the throne, Lekan Odunsi, described the people’s struggle to have their king installed by the Lagos government as “long suffering and oppression”.

“Our clients’ long and endless wait, hoping against all hopes seem to have been stretched to its elastic limit,” he said.

Some of the inscriptions on the placards they displayed read: “Governor Ambode give us our right”, “we deserve our crown”, “please stop the injustice and give us our king”, “the kingship belongs to the Olofin family”, “we have waited for too long”, “we don’t need strangers as our oba”, Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, stop embarrassing Ambode’s government”.

Lawyer to the Olofin family, who claims ownership of the throne, Lekan Odunsi, described the people’s struggle to have their king installed by the Lagos government as “long suffering and oppression”.

“Our clients’ long and endless wait, hoping against all hopes seem to have been stretched to its elastic limit,” he said.

Odunsi said the state government, in the last 18 years, had consistently refused to consider the yearnings of Isheri-Oke Church notwithstanding intrinsic judicial and historical facts presented before the constituted authorities.

He alleged that a member of the state House of Assembly in connivance with the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Musiliu Folami, was working round the clock in a bid to install a non-indigene of the community to become a king over them.

He stated that the community was neither desperate nor begging to have their son installed as the Oba but demanding what rightly belong to them.

Addressing the protesters, Folami, after admitting that he was aware of the case, promised that justice would be done.

He said he was not in the office when they arrived, but Ambode directed him to rush down and attend to their grievances.

He denied taking side with any party, explaining that he had installed 14 kings since he assumed office. Folami said government would have installed a king at the community but was mindful of a pending legal action. But the lawyer quickly countered and reminded him that the case had been withdrawn on the advice of the immediate past administration.

The commissioner asked the lawyer to return to his office by first week of January 2018.

He assured the Awori people that they would get the kingship by the grace of God.