Category: History
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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.…
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Ajiboyede was the last Alaafin to be buried at Oyo Igoho, the city Eguguoju intended as capital of the Oyo Empire. He initiated preparations for the return to the old capital. Ajiboyede was successful as king but he became increasingly unpopular towards the end of his long reign. It was during his rule that the…
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Kiriji as a term is not native to the Yoruba speaking people, from the perspective of its epistemology . It was said to have been derived from the onomatopoeic booming of the cannons echoed by the rocky terrain of the war field; the cannons which were acquired by the Ekiti Saro merchants in Lagos through their trading…
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Samuel Johnson was an historian and Anglican minister known for his authorship of the standard reference for the History of the Yorubas. Born in 1846 to Yoruba Sierra Leonean returnees in the lineage of the one of the Alaafin of the Oyo Empire, Abiodun. The Johnsons moved to Ibadan when Samuel was eleven years old. Three…
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Ademola Ladapo was the Alake of Egba from 1920 to 1962. Ademola returned from a reclusive life at the town of Isara to accede to the throne of Alake after the death of Gbadebo I who had been his mentor. Since the nineteenth century, he had been a part of Abeokuta’s government, serving as an…