Hon Patrick Obahiagbon paid his tribute to the late Oba of Benin with some very admirable words.
The death of the traditional monarch was announced by the Iyase of Benin Kingdom, Chief Sam Igbe on Friday, April 29.
Hon Patrick said: “You cannot gloss over the fact that Omo N’ Oba Erediauwa, Oba of Benin, was a man of impeccable and unimpeachable integrity with the resilience of a Royal salamander. In him you found a coruscating display of that apothegm which holds that noblesse oblige.
“This sui generis quintessential quality of his came under bold relief especially during the locust and philistine years of the military militocracy. He was practically the only triton among the minnows of Royal hierarchs that resisted and stood up to the military rascality and apacheism that characterized the Abacha era. He stood at all times with the people, eyeballing political and military demagogues and damning their treacherous hooey and blarneys. It won’t be erroneous and superfluous therefore to pontificate that his integrity was altruistically integrious if you permit me that neologism.
“Omo N’ Oba EREDIAUWA,Oba of Benin was a cornucopious emblematization of the rich heritage of the Benin culture both in his modus vivendi and modus operandi. He left no one in doubt that he was the spiritual and traditional agglutinating anodyne that offers a centripetal canopy for the Benin ethnic nationality into one harmonious and synchronized armada and of particular interest to me here was how he was able to bring this about especially against the backdrop of modernism and attenuating cum corrosive forces of religious petulancy and perfervidism.
“It’s in his cosmopolitan and cerebral mien that is situated the Alladins lamp that gave him the enablement in striking a delicate equipoise and hence at a meeting of the ‘Benin Anglican Dioscesan Synod on June 3,1980,the revered monarch posited thus ….’The conflict between traditional religion and Christian religion is not supported by scriptural teaching. But must Christian religion condemn and push out the traditional? Must traditional worship and Christian worship not be seen as complimentary?’
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