One of the contenders to the stool of Owa Obokun of Ijesaland, Prince Michael Adewale Arimoro, has said the planned coronation of Oba Clement Haastrup as the Owa Obokun of Ijesaland would be an ugly precedent for the Ijesa people, which the court of law is currently looking into and would soon nullify.

Arimoro, in an interview with journalists on Thursday in Ilesa, Osun State, described the emergence of Oba Haastrup as “a rape of the tradition and culture of the Ijesa people,” insisting that the real traditional ruler of the Ijesa kingdom would soon emerge.

He said he instituted a matter at the State High Court seeking nullification of the alleged illegal selection process of the new monarch, in order to prevent what might be a bad history for the Ijesa people.

Arimoro, while reacting to the adjournment of the matter and the stalling of an application for interlocutory injunction seeking the stoppage of Oba Haastrup’s coronation ceremony billed for Friday, May 23, 2025, said, “Soon, the right thing will be done and there will be singing and dancing in the whole of Ijesaland.”

He said, “Justice is always patient. Some people want to have their coronation ceremony tomorrow (Friday), but we are still going to have another one. We are going to have the real one. It is okay for people to have their ceremony.

“The end result is that we will work with the law, and we are going to stand by the law because we are law-abiding citizens and to ensure that the right thing is done, and our tradition is preserved, and that our ancestors are happy with us.

“In due time, the right thing will be done, and there will be singing and dancing in all corners of Ijesaland.

“We have allowed people, because of greed and over-ambition, to rape us by allowing someone who is not an Ijesa person to preside over the selection of Owa without following the laid down principle that our founding father, Owa Ajibogun, who I am one of his descendants, had laid down.

“The ruling stalling the application is good because even if it was issued, they would have still gone ahead to do the coronation tomorrow; they were not going to stop. You can rape any other tradition but not Ijesaland.”

Justice Matthias Agboola on Thursday adjourned the pending suit till September 13, 2025, for all pending applications.

Arimoro’s counsel, Oyebola Odeleye, had made frantic efforts to move the application for interlocutory injunction seeking the stoppage of the planned coronation, but it was stalled because Oba Haastrup contested the service, and the parties have not been fully constituted.