A crown is not won with words. In Ijebuland, royalty rests on one thing: blood you can trace. Who was your father? Who was his father? Who was your mother, and the people she came from? You follow the line back, on either side, until it reaches the ruling house. That is how it has always worked. That is how it must stay.
So there is a simple question for Mr Abimbola ‘Bimbo’ Onabanjo, who is said to be linked to the Fusengbuwa Ruling House of Agunsebi, Ijebu-Ode. Through whom does the line run, his father or his mother? A claim to a ruling house must pass through blood, and blood comes down from a parent. Either the Fusengbuwa connection comes through his father’s side, or it comes through his mother’s side. One of them must carry it. Which one?
Begin with what his father has said in public, in his own voice. In an interview marking his 80th birthday, carried by The Nation and republished online, Otunba Dipo Onabanjo described his own background himself. He said the people who gave him his Otunba title are his people in Ijebu Ogbeere, in Ogun State. He spoke of schooling in Ijebu-Ode as a boy. And he named his wife, Bimbo’s mother, as Chief Mrs Margaret Onabanjo, nee Akintola, from Odosida in Ondo State.
Read that again. Ijebu Ogbeere on one side. Odosida, in Ondo State, on the other. Neither one is the Fusengbuwa house.
Now, at last, an answer has been offered. But notice first that it does not come from Bimbo Onabanjo himself, who to this day has not explained his own lineage in his own mouth. It comes in statements pushed on his behalf by a handful of paid bloggers. And when you read what they put out slowly, it does not settle the question. It deepens it.
The statement says Bimbo descends from Fusengbuwa through his maternal great-grandfather, a certain Lamina Aderibigbe, known as ‘Daily Woollen.’ Then, in the very next breath, it says Bimbo’s father, whom it now styles Prince Stephen Oladipupo Onabanjo, is the ‘first grandson’ of that same Lamina Aderibigbe.
Both of those cannot be true. If the man is reached through the mother, the line runs on the mother’s side. If the father is his grandson, the line runs on the father’s side. To say the same single ancestor sits on both sides at once is to say that Bimbo’s own father and mother are of one blood, from one grandfather. No family makes that claim about itself, and no ruling house is built that way. A statement that contradicts itself in two sentences has not proved a lineage. It has only shown that its authors do not know which parent they are claiming.
Then comes the most troubling turn of all. The woman the father himself named, with pride, as his wife and Bimbo’s mother, the lady from Odosida in Ondo State, is now waved away in the same statement as a mere ‘stepmother,’ and a new, unnamed biological mother is produced to carry the bloodline that the named mother cannot. No name is given. No marriage, no record, no family that anyone can point to. When a man’s own mother, acknowledged by his own father in print, must be quietly replaced to win an argument, the argument is already in trouble.
Let us be plain about what does not count. Going to school in Ijebu-Ode does not make a man royal. Living there, working there, or keeping good friends there does not make a man royal. A ruling house is a family, not a town. If schooling in a place conferred a throne, half the country could claim one.
And let us be just as plain about money. The throne is not for sale. It cannot be bought with projects, gifts, or donations spread around the town. A man may build roads, fund events, and give generously in every direction, and still not be of the blood. Generosity is welcome, but generosity is not genealogy. The stool answers to ancestry, not to a bank account.
Asking for proof is not an insult. It is respect for the throne, for history, and for every true son and daughter of the house. The one who makes the claim carries the burden. Those who ask the question are not required to disprove anything. Our people put it simply: ir?´ ní ?s?` kúkúrú, a lie has short legs, and cannot run far before it falls.
So the questions remain on the table, sharper now than before:
Does the Fusengbuwa claim come through the father, or the mother? It cannot be both, from the same man.
If through the father, who are the ancestors, by name, from Dipo Onabanjo back to Fusengbuwa?
If through the mother, who is she, and how does her family connect to a ruling house in Ijebu-Ode?
And who is the recognised head of the Fusengbuwa house, not paid bloggers, ready to stand up and confirm any of this?
Until these are answered without contradiction, this remains a claim awaiting proof, not settled history. Fusengbuwa is older than today’s politics. It belongs to the people and to children not yet born. It cannot be bought, and it deserves the truth.