Category: History
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Agboluaje was the second Alaafin to reign during Basorun Gaha’s dictatorship. Unlike his immediate predecessor he was agreeable to his patron, Gaha and was allowed a relatively long reign. Agboluaje lacked ambition, but the Territory of Oyo Empire, now in its widest stretch, had its integrity maintained. It has been said that no Alaafin, having…
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Agbaje War was the social disturbance that led to the assassination of Okikilu who was the last Alake in the Egba forest before the people’s mass migration to Abeokuta. The fracas had originated from the Alake’s envy of the small court at Kosofe market which was fast becoming stronger than his own royal court of…
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Iyayun was the Reagent to the throne of Oyo after the demise of the fifth Alafin, Aganju. Iyayun was the daughter of the Onisambo, whose name was also Aganju. She was forcefully taken into Alafin’s custody during the war in which her father was captured. The war had started due to Iyayun’s father’s intransigence towards…
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Aganju was the fifth Alaafin of Oyo, and son of Ajaka. His ascension to the throne was devoid of dramas, which would have probably been the case if he had a cousin from Sango, his uncle. Ajaka designed the palace innovatively as king, and he domesticated some wild animals. It is said that he tamed reptiles…
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Mojola Agbebi is the native name of the poet and advocate of Ethiopianism, who was born April 10, 1860 as David Brown Vincent in Ilesha. Mojola repudiated his European name in 1894, the year he was ordained as a Baptist minister in Liberia. He frequently used his pulpit to deliver anticolonial sermons, which was also…
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G.W. Johnson was a Sierra Leonean returnee of Ijesa and Owu extraction, a British subject who came to prominence in Egba politics during the reign of Bashorun Somoye. Born in 1828, Johnson received his early education in Wesleyan school before he settled in Abeokuta in 1865. By this time, Johnson’s view had become radicalized, and…
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Adunni Oluwole was a Unitarist, and anti-independence activist. Adunni, a small, almost fragile woman, was one of Nigeria’s most colorful female leaders in the decade prior to independence. Adunni did not think Nigeria was ready to attain independence in 1956 when a date in that year was proposed, and she worked to prolong the British stay. Adunni was…
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Adubi Riot was the revolt of June 1918 in Abeokuta, following the discontent inherited from the Egba United Government period, in which about thirty thousand Egba people tore up the railway line and looted stations and trains, leading to the killing of a number of people including an Oba, Osile, and one European. The Alake…