Author: tope_litcaf
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Timi of Ede is the legendary figure in Yoruba account who achieved renown in the Old Oyo Empire during the reign of Alafin Kori, for his military accomplishment. Ijesha people (of Ilesha) were at the time before Timi’s rise terrorizing their neighbors by kidnapping them in their farms, and molesting travellers to Aponmu, a frontier town…
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Topi, scientific name, Damaliscus lunatus, is medium sized antelope with rusty red color and black legs and chest. Topi have the short neck and elongated face typical of the Alcelaphinae. It is distinguished from its look-alike, the hartebeest by its darker coloration and absence of sharply angled horns. The muzzle is long and narrow with…
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New Africa is the term used for the ideological movement of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries southwest Nigeria sprouted in reaction to the anticipated change of the old order. From the late 19th Century, privileged African children had been sent overseas to study and decades after they have bequeathed their children with the…
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Adesanya Otubusin was born in 1888 and ascended the throne of Ijebu in September 1933. Before his coronation, he was a respected member of the St. Saviour’s Anglican Church. Daniel Adesanya was a difficult man to appraise, given his sometimes progressive tendencies but he was believed by his antagonists, a group constituting a great majority…
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Somoye, the Egba leader was appointed Bashorun or head war chief of Abeokuta in 1851. Somoye was a relative and follower of Sodeke, the man who led the exile to the town from their original homestead. He was the de facto Alake till his death, wielding more influence than the Okukenu who was then the…
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Traditional Aristocracy, the political system that trusts power with a limited ruling class in ancient times, existed side by sides with the royal institution and over the centuries, a balance of power between these two was somehow achieved in the region that would constitute the southwestern Nigeria. Hardly was there a monarch who successfully promoted…
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Sodeke was the founder of Abeokuta; the third Seriki of the Egba people who led them away from their several villages to the new place of relative safety. Sodeke was a king in every respect but in name. His happy reception of the British missionary, Henry Townsend, in 1843, is considered to be foresighted. He…
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Western Tree Hyrax, Dendrohyrax dorsalis, is a small stocky animal resembling a bigger Guinea-pig. The Nigerian subspecies, D. d. sylvestris is called Ofafa in Yoruba. Like elephants they have similar footpads and toenails, there are also skeletal similarities. Unlike more highly-evolved mammals, hyraxes are unable to completely regulate their body temperatures. They are found in southern…
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Saro, a descriptive term apparently coined from “Sierra Leonean,” is a class of urbanized Yoruba former slaves that emerged in the nineteenth century following the 1807 British outlaw of slave trade. They were the ones, or children of those liberated by the British navy from slaving ships on the high seas. Many of these returnees…
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Thomas Birch Freeman was a Methodist minister and first preacher of the Christian gospel in Nigeria. Freeman was a mulatoo of black and English parentage, born in 1809 in Hampshire, England. He arrived in West Africa in 1838, a year after he was accepted as a Methodist missionary. At this time, some Saros who had…