BALOGUN-FULANI: THE MAKING OF A SERIAL MACABRE DANCER By AbdulMumeen Oniwiridi

Balogun-Fulani title is a highly revered and respected traditional title in the ancient ilorin emirate the capital of Kwara State in Nigerian's North-Central, so much revered that the occupants of that stool are referred to as 'Balogun Agba' (Senior Balogun) in the Ilorin Emirate.

Ilorin with its age long ties with the core north, was founded on a strict Islamo-Hausa culture and tradition. That accounts for its Emirate status even while the lingua-franca is Yoruba language, which is the lingua-franca of the Yorubas of South-Western Nigeria. This is not unconnected with the historical antecedents of the Ilorins, having a link with the old Oyo empire and the North.

Since the demise of Alh. Mahmud Durosinlohun Atiku who sat on the throne as Balogun for 15 years, there has been rabble-rousing within the Balogun-Fulani family, spearheaded by the Saraki-induced factional APC Chairman, Ishola Balogun-Fulani.

Investigation into the matter revealed that only male child of the Balogun-Fulani family is entitled to being enthroned as Balogun-Fulani of Ilorin Emirate and there was never a point in historical lane that it was recorded that a female child or her offspring was enthroned to the exalted traditional stool of Balogun-Fulani.

Research however unveiled that Ishola Balogun-Fulani's mother was originally born to the Balogun-Fulani family and his (Ishola) father was born to the popular Jabata family in Ilorin Kwara state. Ishola was only raised within the Balogun-Fulani compound as a foster child and hence, his usage of the family name as his official surname. Invariably, what we should have is a 'Ishola Jabata' and not 'Balogun-Fulani'.

Today, the same supposed 'Ishola Jabata', whose benefactors are his maternal relatives, the Balogun-Fulanis, dragged the same family to court, seeking to be declared the Balogun-Fulani of Ilorin after being unanimously rejected by the family. He is hell bent on breaking the customary order within his own maternal family by wanting to impose himself being a son of a female child of the Balogun-Fulanis as the heir to the throne.

I was actually feeling ashamed for Ishola when he allowed himself to be used as tool for his own generational destruction by the drowning king of their kleptomania hegemony but started feeling indifferent having get exposed to where Ishola is coming from, he is just a serial macabre dancer who believes so much in getting what may in the crook ways.  If a man can attempt disrupting the order in his own maternal family, we should not expect less from a personality as Ishola Jabata, popularly called Balogun-Fulani.

One must feel the pain of the Balogun-Fulanis for having such a disgraceful character connected to them,  that was registered through their standing firm against the political muscles exerted on them to illegally install Ishola as Balogun-Fulani, but they should get set for more dreaded exhibition of desperation over the game of throne as the only reward Ishola negotiated with Saraki after the hatch job against APC and Kwarans might have succeed is to be made the Balogun-Fulani against odds.

Consequently, the winning of the oppressor (God forbid) come 2019 spells double trouble for the Balogun-Fulanis; a stall to our common yearning for a stop in misgovernance and installation of a Jabata son as the Balogun-Fulani of Ilorin.