A Kwara State High Court, sitting in Ilorin, has upheld the installation of Oba Mufutau Gbadamosi as the Olofa of Offa.

It is recalled that Oba Gbadamosi succeeded Oba Mustapha Olawore Olanipekun who passed on in October 2010.

The court also established that the two ruling houses that can lay claim to the stool of the Olofa in the ancient town are Anilelerin and Olugbense.

The late monarch and the current one are of the Anilelerin house.

In 2010, following the installation of Oba Gbadamosi, the Olugbense house approached the court to declare the choice of the tradtional ruler null and void.

The claimant, Alhaji Raufu Keji, had, through, his lawyer, John Baiyeshea (SAN), described the selection, appointment and recognition of Oba Gbadamosi by the kingmakers as wrongful, null and void.

Baiyeshea added that the kingmakers relied on false historical evidence to deny the claimant’s inalienable right to the stool.

He urged the court to discountenance the defendants’ claim that Olugbense ruling house was extinct and disinherited, adding that the ascendancy to the Olofa of Offa stool was rotational between the two ruling houses.

“The Anilelerin house, having produced the immediate past Olofa, in the spirit of rotation, fair play and equity, it is the turn of Olugbense ruling house,” he said.

Defendant’s counsel Lawal Rabana (SAN), urged the court to dismiss all the declaratory reliefs sought by the claimant for lack of merit.

He added that none of the evidence and exhibits in witness before the court alluded to the fact that ascension to the Olofa stool is rotational between the two contending ruling houses.

In a judgment, which lasted over eight hours on Thursday, Justice Suleiman Akanbi said that all the available evidence before the court indicated that there was no rotation of Olofa stool between the two ruling houses.

He added that the claimants did not give cogent reasons to support the rotational policy, noting that they (claimants) have come under the guise of equity and fair play.

Justice Akanbi added that “it is the people of Offa and honest kingmakers guided by their conscience are to determine the Olofa of Offa. The gazette which gives room for the two ruling houses to exist was ominously silent on rotation. What then is the business of the court to do otherwise?”

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