The Egba United Government, under M’Callum constitution, between 1898 and 1914; was an independent government encompassing the four sessions of Egba people of Abeokuta. The head town and villages is divided into four sessions, and each section into townships, each township representing one of the hamlets that existed as separate unit before the scattering of the Egba…
Iwe Irohin was the bilingual newspaper published by the Church Missionary Society in Abeokuta from 1859 to 1867. The principal contents of the paper were marriage announcements, church news, post office notices, advertisements, trade reports, cotton statistics and general news. During the years of its existence, it had remarkable impact on the local administration of…
Olugabi Awolana was the Akogun of Owu in the year of the disastrous civil war waged against the old Iwo by the Ijebu with the aid of the Ife and Oyo. Awolana was appointed by the king of Owu to protect the peace and welfare of of the market patrons of people who made transactions…
Lisabi is the traditional hero of the Egba people, who are the native occupiers of Abeokuta, a Yoruba town some 77 kilometers from Lagos. Lisabi was a giant man who lived in Igbehin but he was from another Egba village called Itoku. He conspired to achieve independence for the Egbas from the Alaafin of Oyo…
Owu is an ethnic Yoruba subgroup popularly known as one of the four arms of the Egba by virtue of its historical association with the latter especially since 1834 when they arrived in Abeokuta after a devastating war. Tension had grown between Owu and neighbors, firstly, Ife, whose Apomu market town they confiscated in c.1810, and Ijebu,…
The Egbas were peaceful forest dwelling members of the Yoruba nation of whom nothing was known until their 1775 uprising against the central authority of the Oyo Empire. The independence of this tribe was followed by series of wars, which appeared in the end to be a catalyst for the opening of an enlightenment era.…
Abeokuta Girls’ Grammar School was founded in 1953 through the recommendations and efforts of prominent indigenes and the Anglican Missionaries Abeokuta District Church Council. The school shared space with Abeokuta Girls Secondary Modern School, which was its forerunner in all-girls school. In 1959, it moved to Onikolobo. Since then, the host community had taken deep interest in…
In this editorial of The Nigerian Provincial Guardian of 17 April, 1937, originally titled; “Education of the Mind,” the writer discusses what ought to be the object of education for the youth. The chief objects of mental education are to cultivate and discipline the mind, and to store it with those great facts and principles…