The year is 1962. Lagos still smells of wet
tarmac and new independence, but in IleAyodele,
the old royal compound stands halfcollapsed —
its orishas silent, its titles dissolved by the
republic’s new laws. The king’s bloodline is
declared extinct. No one speaks of the last
prince, Prince Adekunle, not even the church
elders who once sang his name at dawn prayers.
Pastor’s daughter, Adesuwa, keeps the royal seal
in a tin beneath her mother’s Bible. Her father
preaches that kings are relics, that Christ
alone reigns. But every full moon, she walks to
the broken palace gates and leaves yam porridge
for the spirit of the last queen — a ritual her
grandmother taught her before the Biafra shadows
fell. The seal is not gold. It’s brass, etched
with a python coiled around a crown — proof the
prince still lives, hidden in Enugu since ’58.
Then the oil money arrives. A senator from the
North, backed by London bankers, buys the palace
land to build a “National Unity Centre.” His men
come at dawn, axes in hand, to dig up the
ancestral mound. Adesuwa watches from the church
balcony, her hymnbook trembling. She knows what
lies beneath: not bones, but the prince’s birth
certificate — signed by the last colonial
governor, stamped with the royal crest. If
exposed, the republic’s legitimacy cracks.
That night, she slips into the senator’s hotel
room. Not to beg. Not to scream. She leaves the
seal on his pillow, wrapped in a scrap of her
father’s sermon: “All authority is from God.”
The next morning, the excavation halts. The
senator calls a press conference. He speaks of
“reverence for tradition,” of “Nigeria’s noble
past.” He donates a million naira to the church.
No one asks why.
Three days later, a man in a faded agbada knocks
on Adesuwa’s door. He smells of kola nut and
dust. His left hand is missing two fingers — a
mark from the 1966 coup. He does not speak. He
only places a rusted key in her palm. The key to
the palace vault. The prince is alive. He has
returned.
At dawn, Adesuwa walks to the compound alone.
She unlocks the vault. Inside, a man in a
motheaten colonial suit sits on a broken throne,
holding a photograph of her mother as a girl —
smiling beside the last king. He does not ask
for the seal. He does not ask for help. He only
says, “They took everything but the blood. Now
we rebuild.”
The church bells ring. Sunday. The congregation
sings. But in the back row, Adesuwa sits with
the prince. She wears no veil. She does not
kneel. She smiles — not for God, not for king,
but for the quiet, stubborn thing rising in the
soil of a broken land. The republic may deny
them. But the earth remembers. And tomorrow, the
children of IleAyodele will begin to dig.
