*Aare Ona Kakanfo says ‘conduct of some judicial officers capable of negatively affecting our democracy’
*Text of the speech delivered by the Aare Onakakanfo of Yoruba land, Iba Gani Abiodun Ige Adams, at the Grand Finale of the 2026 edition of Eledumare Festival, on Tuesday, April 7, 2026, in Lagos.
1. I am pleased to welcome you all to the grand finale of the Eledumare Festival for 2026, a 21-day festival to celebrate God Almighty and showcase the diverse culture and tradition of the Yoruba people.
2. My special welcome goes to the Royal father of the day, Onifako of Ifako Kingdom, Oba Taofik Ayinde Abiodun Fatusi, Obawole 1, and other royal fathers who have come to honour us.
3. I thank all members of the Onifako Council of Chiefs, who have made time out to attend today’s grand finale.
4. I welcome all other dignitaries too; your presence is highly appreciated.
5. I specially commend the National Executive Council and the National Coordinating Council for their unwavering commitment to the worthy cause of the Eledumare Festival over the last 14 years.
6. This God Almighty festival is organised by the Olokun Festival Foundation (OFF). It has been promoting the festival for 14 years.
7. The festival, which has been on in the last 21 days, has involved different communities and states hosting various aspects of the festival.
8. Since this year’s edition took off, some of the programmes that has featured include prayers to Almighty God, sports such as boxing competition, football tournament, beach soccer, taekwando competition, table tennis competition, draft, ludo, and ayo olopon, Harvest of Praise, and fashion show.
9. We also had our day with widows, and visited the School for the blind and motherless homes as part of our humanitarian outreach.
10. The essence of the festival is to praise God for his magnificence and for what he has done in our lives.
11. However, through these events, we have also been able to promote culture and tradition, and promote tourism and commerce within the host communities, while also ensuring lasting peace within our society.
12. Today, the Eledumare Festival is coming to an end. I want to thank all our members for putting together the most organised and successful festival in recent history. The level of planning and resources that has gone into organising this festival and the determination of the host communities to see it succeed, is commendable.
13. I pray that God Almighty continues to uphold every one of us and show us his mercies for celebrating this year’s Eledumare Festival uniquely.
14. Meanwhile, it is our belief that with our commitment and tenacity, whether there is sponsorship or not, this festival will keep growing every year till it gets to a stage where it will be able to sustain itself across the entire Southwest region and will begin to attract one or two days as public holiday.
CALL TO OBAS TO DOCUMENT HISTORY AND TRADITION
15. What the OFF is doing with the Eledumare Festival and other festivals underscores the need to always value and preserve our culture and tradition.
16. At this juncture, I want to use this avenue to call on traditional rulers across Yorubaland to begin to document and curate the history, tradition and culture of their lands and preserve them in mini-museums that could be situated either in their palaces or close to the palace.
17. People could visit such mini-museums to see and read about the evolution of the people of the communities, towns or cities over the years. This will go a long way in preserving our history, culture and tradition for future generations, and will also serve as a way of educating indigenes who come home periodically and visit the palace.
EGBA PEOPLE’S SUCCESSFUL HOSTING OF LISABI/OLUMO FESTIVAL
18. This year’s celebration of the Lisabi/Olumo by the Egba people was grand and very impressive. We saw Egba sons and daughters travelling down from far and wide for the festival.
19. With about a week to the festival period, it became difficult to secure accomodation as all hotels had been fully booked by intending attendees of the festival.
20. For the grand finale, the Alake of Egbaland declared that there should be no commercial activities within the city and virtually all businesses and stores complied with the directive. All roads simply led to the festival ground.
21. Without doubt, this year’s festival was beyond a cultural celebration. It also promoted businesses and commerce. I commend the Alake, the Alake-in-Council and the Festival Planning Committee for a hugely successful festival.
22. I want to commend the Egba people for the passion they have developed for presering an aspect of their culture and history through the celebration of the 2026 Lisabi/Olumo Festival in a grand way.
23. It is noteworthy that within a few years, that passion is now moving the Lisabi/Olumo Festival on a fast lane to catch up with the Ojude-Oba Festival.
APPEAL TO POLITICIANS TO SUSTAIN DEMOCRACY IN NATIONAL INTEREST
24. As we celebrate the grand finale of the Eledumare Festival today, it is essential to lend a voice to a salient issue confronting our nation’s democracy – tolerance for opposition parties.
25. A democracy without opposition is becoming a dictatorship. Even when a former military man was running our democracy, the judiciary was reasonably independent. It was not being used indirectly to disrupt the opposition parties as we currently do.
26. It is now clear that the opposition already have a mindset that they can never get justice from our court, starting with the Federal High Courts, to the Appeal Courts and to the Supreme Court. Some Supreme Court judgements will be given as a 50-50 such that the interpretation will be difficult and the government in power will capitalise on that.
27. The annulment of the 1993 presidential election was caused by an injunction given to two people by Justice Bassey Ikpeme. On the eve of the election, Chief Arthur Nzeribe and Abimbola Davies went to court in the evening at about 5pm to get an injunction that the election should not hold.
28. INEC decided to go ahead, stating that Nigeria had spent billions of Naira preparing for the election and an injunction procured in the evening of the election eve could not be used to stop it. After the freest and fairest election, on June 23, 1993, the military capitalised on it, among many other excuses, and annulled the election. It was the beginning of many troubles for Nigeria as a nation.
29. I am a citizen of Nigeria. I will not say because someone from our tribe is in power, we will now keep quiet in the face of wrongdoings. This is about my future, the future of my children and generations unborn. If we do not speak up now, our children will ask tomorrow what we did when things were going wrong.
30. As the Aare Ona Kakanfo, I get several calls from Nigerians living overseas on what I am doing about many situations going on in the country. It is time to say the truth in the interest of our dear nation, so that politicians will not put this country in a state of anarchy and then flee.
31. We strongly appeal to the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, and the entire judiciary, to look into the judgements and injunctions being given by some judges, mostly against the opposition parties, as they are capable of negatively affecting our democracy.
32. We appeal that a decisive action should be taken now so that it will not be recorded in history that when she was the head of the country’s judicial system, judges destroyed the nation’s democracy through their court pronouncements.
33. In the past, the Supreme Court had ruled that courts have no right to intervene in the affairs of political parties. So, why are we having the recent recurrences whereby moles planted in opposition political parties are using the instrumentality of the courts to unsettle opposition parties?
34. Take for instance, one of the opposition parties that had a strong showing in the last general elections. The back and forth of court judgements have impacted the party negatively such that the party is now barely surviving. It is the same story with the opposition party that was once a ruling party. The same pattern is now being observed with the new opposition party that was formed by some coalitions.
35. The big question now is: Are we creating an impression that by January 2027, there will be no solid opposition to the ruling party as the nation heads into the general elections? We have to be careful; we must not create room for crises to happen in this country.
36. In the event that politicians allow politically-induced crises to unsettle this country, with the population that we have, where will our massive population go to seek refuge. We must be guided in our actions. The whole world is watching. And today, the media is so multi-faceted that nobody can suppress information in the media.
37. So, we appeal to the politicians to ensure that they do not destroy our democracy through their actions or while trying to protect selfish interests.
38. I am making this call because I was one of the people that fought for this democracy. Given the sacrifices we made for a period of six years, we will not keep quiet and allow anybody to destroy it while we are still in existence.
39. Thanks for your attention. God bless you all.
*Iba Gani Abiodun Ige Adams
Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland
Chief Promoter, Olokun Festival Foundation
