ERODED REVERENCE OF YORUBA ROYALTY: PROGNOSIS TO MORAL BANKRUPTCY IN YORUBALAND

Abstract 

The Yoruba, as a people, culturally have great respect for their kings. The kings were taken to be the representatives of the gods until the advent of the Westerners. The respect the Yoruba had for their kings was primordial. The kings were the executive heads of government as well as the spiritual heads of the traditional religion. However, civilization has diminished the role and importance of kings in the Yorubaland. The kings who upheld the moral values of the people are no longer accorded the respect they once enjoyed. Governments no longer respect these traditional authorities and relate to them in a demeaning way. Evidently, the kings have lost their power and correspondingly have been unable to maintain the moral standard of their subjects. Latching onto the foregoing, this research work examines the evolvement of kingship in Yoruba culture and its roles in the Yoruba traditional institutions. Furthermore, the work evaluates the impact of the kings in the Yoruba tradition in relation to what their roles are now. The paper also examines the effects of the diminished roles of the kings on their domains and subjects. This paper concludes that the moral decadence in Yorubaland is the direct result of a lack of good models the people could emulate. Restoring the traditional institutions will make them a model that could be emulated.

Keywords:    Eroded, Reverence, kings (obas), Yorubaland