Awujale: The Fusengbuwa Question Bimbo Onabanjo Has Never Answered
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 allegedly 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. It comes down from a parent. So 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?
Look at what his father has said in public. In an interview for his 80th birthday, carried by The Nation and republished online, Otunba Dipo Onabanjo describes his own background himself. He says the people who gave him his Otunba title are his people in Ijebu Ogbeere in Ogun State. He talks about schooling in Ijebu-Ode as a boy. He says his wife, Bimbo’s mother, is 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.
So the question sharpens. If the claim runs through the father, show how Dipo Onabanjo descends from Fusengbuwa, father to father, name by name. If it runs through the mother, show how Margaret Akintola of Odosida, in Ondo State, connects to a ruling house in Ijebu-Ode at all. One of those bridges has to exist. Neither has been shown in public.
* 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 having good friends there does not make a man royal. A ruling house is a family, not a town. If schooling in a place made you a prince, half the country could claim a throne.
And let us be just as plain about money. The throne is not for sale. It cannot be bought with millions of dollars in projects. It cannot be won with gifts, donations, or favours handed around the town.
A man may build roads, fund events, and spread money in every direction, and still not be of the blood. Generosity is welcome. But generosity is not genealogy. No amount of spending turns an outsider into a son of the house. The stool answers to ancestry, not to a bank account.
And here is the part that should give everyone pause: Bimbo Onabanjo himself has never publicly explained his lineage. Not the parent it runs through. Not the ancestors between him and Fusengbuwa. On the one question that decides everything, there has been silence.
Let us be fair. 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 person making the claim carries the burden. Those who ask the question do not have to disprove it.
* That is simple fairness.
* So the questions stay on the table:
Does the Fusengbuwa claim come through the father, or the mother?
* If the father, who are the ancestors, by name, from Dipo Onabanjo back to Fusengbuwa?
* If the mother: how does a family from Odosida, in Ondo State, connect to a ruling house in Ijebu-Ode?
* Who is the recognised head of the family ready to stand up and confirm it?
Until these are answered, this remains a claim waiting for 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.
Read Otunba Dipo Onabanjo’s own account here: The Elites Nigeria, “Otunba Dipo Onabanjo @ 80” https://thenationonlineng.net/otunba-dipo-onabanjo-80-my-journalism-adventure…
– Adejumo Olanlegbe an indigene of Ijebu-Ode writes from the United Kingdom.
