Why did Ooni change its name?

How many employees does Ooni have?

I don't know.

And she said that to be on the safe side, she had been preparing an inventory list from memory and then looked at the list before taking me through to the next office on the floor. This is where my dad is, she said, stopping in front of an air-conditioned office. The walls were mostly covered with pictures of Ooni: young, smiling, bearded; with a big head of white hair and a round face looking down at us; with a much younger woman with short hair and a thin face, looking up at him.

As we left I asked where her daughter was, and she said that she had rung off when the call came through. What does she do? She is a lawyer, said Oye Olayina. That is what we do. We are lawyers.

Back home, there was a lot of news about Ooni and his son. People talked about them in the same way they talked about the Oba of Lagos, a man named Alak and the late General Sani Abacha. When I went for a drink at the Hotel de la Paix, a friend of mine said: Everybody will be talking about Ooni and his son tomorrow. But who are they?

Who are who? I said. The Ooni of Ife, and his son. Who are they? They are the Ooni of Ife and his son. My friend was not convinced. Do you have pictures of them? he said.

I opened the Internet to search for pictures, but there were no images of the Ooni or his son, only images of Ooni and his wives, two of them, one as old as a lioness, a very regal creature with a long, thin face, and the other as young as a wild gazelle with delicate features and sparkling eyes. There were no pictures of him and his son. I wondered what Alagbon Ajaiye, the Ooni's heir-apparent, would look like. I also wondered what the Ooni was thinking about as I typed.

Why did Ooni change its name?

On October 31, 2024, the Oba of Lagos, Oba Adeyeye Enitan (aka Baba Rufau) did a complete about-turn, and changed his name to Oluwole Famililowo Adeyeye Enitan, the second Ooni of Ife. For those who are not very familiar with Nigerian history, this is a very important point, because the Oba's formal title of Ooni has been one of the things which gave the position more legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

I'm not sure how much this is a story designed to provoke controversy in some circles, as that doesn't seem to be its primary purpose. But why Ooni Adeyeye did this is still an open question to me; it certainly wasn't as simple as a change of heart: it must have been a political statement, and probably one not without risk. Let's see what the sources have to say.

History. Ooni Adeyeye (Baba Rufau) was the second Ooni of Ife. But not very many people know who he was. He came from a family of traditional rulers called Elewa, and according to legend, he was only the ninth Ooni from a dynasty that could trace its lineage to Oba Iyalode who came from outside Lagos.

Baba Rufau was born in 1886 or 1887 in Ogbagi Kingdom (in Ife). His father, Aga Aje Elegbe, was a descendant of Oyo and Egbado kings, so the Oba of Ogbagi considered him a bloodline relative. The child took the Ooni name on his name at a ceremony held in his tenth year; Ogbagi kings would usually give this name to boys who were not born to their immediate lineage.

But things weren't as usual in Ogbagi kingdom, which was falling into a rapid decline with a civil war being waged among four different factions. And when the Oba's brother, Oba Akinyemi III was killed in 1905, the power struggle intensified. The young Ooni, despite being heir apparent to the throne, found himself under house arrest.