The Circle Of Life
A new historical essay from ‘Shèun Ominira-Bluejack
“The Source Of The Living Water.”
One of the hereditary mottos of the Iralepo royal family of Isinkan, Ondo State, Nigeria.
When I was a child, one of my favourite pieces of fiction was Walt Disney’s The Lion King. A tale of duty, honour, and abiding love — for your people, for your family, for your significant other and, ultimately, for yourself, it helped shape the way I saw these things in a very tangible sense.
Later, when I returned to Nigeria and began studying my own family’s history, I came across a number of stories that had the same effect on my development. One of the most significant ones was the story of how my maternal grandparents Samuel and Clariza Shadare met each other, married and built a life together. It had everything — family acrimony, defiance, bravery in the face of opposition, tragedy… In a very true sense, as all great stories do, it had elements that could serve to show how a life should be lived.
In this article, I’m going to put on my latter-day griot’s hat and relate the major events in the lives of these two remarkable people — I’ll speak about their respective family and communal histories, their professional lives and — finally — what happened when they decided to wed each other. By doing so, I will hopefully show the cyclical nature of a human being’s existence, and express what I hope to do in my own life in emulation as a result of their example.
Hail To The Chief
Chief Samuel Olatunbosun Shadare was born in ca. 1930 into a family of mixed Yoruba and Bini descent in Akure, which was then located in what was known as the Ondo province of the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria — his parents were Chief Joshua Orishagbohun Shadare and his senior wife Princess Janet Jokotade Adeyemi Shadare of Isinkan. His father was a local leader of the nascent Methodist community in the city, a stationmaster of the colonial railways service, a landowner and an elder of its Ado-Akure ethnic group, while his mother was a member of an ancient Yoruba dynasty — the House of Iralepo — which traced its descent to the 12th century of the common era and, by way of its own cosmological tradition, to the dawn of time itself. Due to ambilineality, he inherited dynastic rights in Isinkan through the latter parent.
Unlike most Yoruba dynasties, the Iralepos prided themselves on being of aboriginal stock. As a result, although they also claimed descent from the famous usurping founding father of the Yoruba people Oduduwa, their position in Isinkan was and is predicated on the fact that their rule predated his arrival in ca. the 1100s. This was later codified in state law when Isinkan was finally granted government recognition as an independent kingdom in 2021.
The Ado-Akure community, meanwhile, was a sub-group within the neighbouring Akure kingdom that began life as a colony of the Kingdom of Benin, one of Nigeria’s most famous pre-colonial states. Over time, its members acculturated as Yoruba through intermarriage with the locals. Due to this, many people would consider them to be indistinguishable from the mainline Akures, though the Ado-Akures themselves have always been proud of their uniquely hybridized heritage.
Chief Samuel was born at a time when Nigeria’s political awakening was quickening its pace toward the acquisition of freedom from colonial rule — his numerous siblings and half-siblings included Chief Festus Shadare, a future disciple of the politician Chief Obafemi Awolowo and a Second Republic civil servant, and Chief Jumoke Shadare Gbadamosi, who later became the wife of the eminent historian and Muslim leader Chief T.G.O. Gbadamosi.
After studying locally, Chief Samuel began to work as a teacher in Port Harcourt, a city in southern Nigeria. Following his subsequent marriage to his wife, he too then began to work for the colonial government — in his case as a clerk in the Port Authority. After he was let go by the colonists in the period just prior to Nigeria’s Independence in 1960, he went on to establish Seaway Limited, a company which specialized in clearing, forwarding, transportation and storage of various heavy goods. His connections at the ports were put to good use in this venture, and he ultimately amassed a respectable private fortune by the point that he died in 1983.
Chief Samuel, who was known professionally as either S.O. Shadare or, alternatively, S.O. Sadare, had and acknowledged five children. One of them was my mother Maryanne Mojisola Shadare.
Blueblood
Madam Clariza Adaba Bluejack, Princess S.O. Shadare was born into an Ijaw family on Bonny Island, which was also then part of the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. Said to have been younger than her future husband, her father was the Ibani elder Amadinabo Bluejack.
Her clan, the Bluejack major family, was one of the leading branches of the Fubara Manilla Pepple War Canoe House, an eminent chieftaincy family that had begun its life in the 1700s as a cadet branch of the Perekule Pepple dynasty, the Kingdom of Bonny’s ruling house. Her various relatives in this family would eventually include her nephew the Honourable Sunju Bluejack, who later went on to become a Rivers State lawmaker in independent Nigeria and who served for a time as chairperson of the Fubara Manilla Pepple House during its interregnum.
The house had been started by Fubara Manilla Pepple, the second Pepple monarch, who ruled Bonny from 1754 to 1792. During his reign, his house established a virtual monopoly of the trade between the Ibanis of Bonny Island and the Westerners that had begun to operate amongst them, and by so doing set in motion a chain of events which has caused the Fubara Manilla Pepples to now have a status in Bonny that is second only to that of the Perekule Pepples themselves.
The chieftaincy family appears in history books today as one of the leading factions that took part in the Bonny civil war of 1869, a conflict that involved most of the major lineages in Bonny and which their side eventually won. As a result of this, Madam Clariza grew up in a position of privilege in colonial Nigeria.
After also being educated at local schools, she qualified as a teacher, and was teaching in Port Harcourt when she eventually met her future husband there. After their marriage and the birth of her children, she became a homemaker, and would remain one for the remainder of her life. Be this as it may, the princess would join Chief Shadare in owning shares in a number of important companies in her country by the point of her death.
Although she would make her life in Lagos, she remained connected to the land of her birth — she returned to it to undergo the Ibani mgbede rite of passage, became a titled citizen of Bonny, then constructed a house of her own in the family compound in Ayama-Peterside thereafter. She died in 1992.
Through Faith And Love
When Samuel and Clariza Shadare met, there were immediate problems — unlike what one finds today, intertribal couples such as them were still relatively unusual in this country. What is more, some of the chief’s relatives wanted him to marry someone else, a Yoruba woman that was a friend of one of his sisters.
As a result, although the prevailing sentiment in his family was that he shouldn’t marry her, Chief Samuel defied it and sought the approval of his parents Chief Joshua and Princess Janet — which he would ultimately receive thereafter.
Controversy didn’t end after their union though, and there soon developed something of a cold war between some of the Shadares and the newly minted princess of Isinkan as a result of these events. To his credit, many years later, during a meeting with his relatives, the chief made it clear that he was siding with his wife by effectively barring anyone who didn’t intend to respect his marriage from his home. Due to this, the uneasy peace was maintained in my family until Chief Samuel suddenly died a few years before my birth.
Madam Clariza never forgot the fact that her in-laws hadn’t been ecstatic at the prospect of her joining their ranks, and the ill-feelings between her and them that this caused were still largely unresolved when she herself died in ‘92.
Her and her husband had what is described to me today as an idyllic union outside of this prior to their deaths, however. Whereas polygamy existed in both the Shadare and the Bluejack families, and despite the rancour that his marriage to her had ignited, Chief Shadare never took a second wife or had illegitimate children — as was fairly common in his day. When she had a stroke in the years before he died, the chief was so devoted to his spouse that he is said to have personally cared for her in addition to a full work schedule — even though there were domestics in their household at the time that could have done so for him. When he passed away, my grandmother felt his loss greatly. In many ways, she never recovered from it.
Their five children would in turn themselves go on to have thirteen children amongst themselves in the succeeding generation.
Conclusion
In The Lion King, Mufasa explained to his son Simba that all of the animals in their kingdom were connected to each other in a spiritual interplay that he described as “the Circle of Life” — those of its monarchs that preceded Mufasa, and those that would eventually succeed Simba himself, were also bound up in this interplay — and it was because of it that he knew what the future had in store for his son and the kingdom that was theirs to rule.
A lot has happened to me since I first watched this film all those years ago — some good, some not so good…I have struggled with the darkness of this world, and I have struggled with the darkness within myself…Still, what I will always appreciate about it is that it reduced a thoroughly honourable humanist ethos into the fabric of a child’s cartoon, all while also showing a romanticized Africa that will always colour how I see the continent that my family has called home for millennia.
The story of my grandparents, when looked at through the prism of what this film espouses, really weren’t so different. They were indeed from different tribes — tribes that had experienced Nigeria in different ways — but ultimately, this wasn’t enough to negate the basic fact that they were both human beings that loved each other. If I have learned anything from them, it is the importance of that.
And so, as I approach my fortieth year on this Earth — single, but open to not being so — I commit to living up to the example that they left behind… Love covers a multitude of our sins, but breaking faith with it is a sin that is beyond all atonement. May the gods of my beloved Africa make it so that I never forget that that is so.
“The Lion and the Manilla.”
The heraldic symbols of the Fubara Manilla Pepple chieftaincy family of Bonny, Rivers State, Nigeria.
● The Lion King, released in 1994, an animated film that is commonly regarded as one of the finest ever made. It was a highlight of the era now known as “the Disney Renaissance”.
● Senior wife, a Nigerian English term, used to denote the principal spouse that a man has polygamously married. In other parts of Africa, a synonym for it is ‘Great wife’.
● The Ado-Akures, fl. 1440-present, a Yoruba sub-ethnic group — a branch of the wider Akure community — that claims an ancestral origin in Benin City.
● The House of Iralepo, r. ca. 1150-present, a Yoruba royal dynasty that has ruled the Nigerian traditional state known as Isinkan since the 12th century. My great-grandmother, Janet Jokotade, was a member of its Adejuyigbe branch.
● The Fubara Manilla Pepple War Canoe House, fl. 1754-present, an Ijaw chieftaincy dynasty that serves by tradition as what is known as a major house in Bonny, a Nigerian traditional state. My grandmother, Clariza Adaba, was a titled member of it.
● Mgbede, an Ibani rite of passage during which a woman ritually acquires the right to wear the pelete bite cloth that denotes social eminence.
Born in England into an old Nigerian family that counted kings and commoners as ancestors, the Nigerian writer ‘Shèun Ominira-Bluejack was raised and educated in various parts of Africa over the course of the succeeding three decades. He has a mother, a sister and two cats that he loves dearly, and has been writing and performing for most of his life — even if it was mostly only for their consumption. A leftist and a womanist by inclination, his mediums are varied, but upper class frivolity, fabulism and allegory often occur in his pieces, and a short film that he co-wrote — Esther — won the award for best cinematography at the 2013 edition of the 48 Hour Film Festival in Cape Town. A prince of the Iralepo and Fubara Manilla Pepple dynasties in the Nigerian chieftaincy system, Mr. Ominira-Bluejack currently serves as the administrative co-ordinator of the historical, genealogical and anthropological service “African Royal Families”, which is itself active on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Substack.
