Abdulrasheed Adewale Akanbi

Abdulrasheed Adewale Akanbi (born 21 June 1967) is a Nigerian traditional ruler. He is the 16th Oluwo of Iwo. Quotes Baba Obasanjo is a well-cultured man. He had come here before and prostrated before me. I think what happened in that place was a personal issue between him and a king who talked about him. And Baba didn’t know where to scold that king and I don’t think he could have done that. So, he decided to scold him right there. Obasanjo is a very good man and well-respected. He respects traditional institutions too. So, that’s why I came out and did what I did, I needed to do that at that time. First and foremost, I thank the Almighty God for choosing me to lead my people. And when you are a leader, you need wisdom to rule, to grow, and to drive. Not just your immediate town but also how you impact the world. So as a king of Yoruba people in one of the major towns of the Yorubaland, you have to know what it is all about. You have to come up with new things to deal with the ideas, challenge the status quo and know why things are the way they are so that you can make a change for a better life. We have a very rich and quality tradition, and our language is the best. But we haven’t moved. Do you know that we have not moved? Even these people that we’re talking about; the Chinese, the Russians, the Germans, the English, do all their courses and advance their education in their languages. Even the Ethiopians are using their language and I wonder why we haven’t moved. We don’t move because we have so many superstitions. I want to ask, who is the traditionalist? A traditionalist is someone who wears his clothes, someone who practises the asa and ise. When you came in here, you prostrated. People want to define traditionalists as people who worship deities. We are not deity worshipers. We are the Yoruba people who worship Olodumare. Odu is all the codes of life. It is the Yoruba word. It is not any deity’s word. It is not Ifa word. It encompasses everything. If you call someone “Olo’du”, it means he does everything.