Category: History – General
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Adeyemo Alakija was born Placido Assumpcao in 1884. He changed his name to the original family name, Alakija in the year he was called to Bar in the London Inner Temple, 1913. This was possible because his family knew of their origin in Abeokuta. His father was one of the Yoruba Brazilian slaves who returned…
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Aguda is the term used for Yoruba Brazilian returnees in 19th Century Lagos. Many of these people, also known as emancipados, or Amaros were captured from the interior in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century and exported to Bahia in Brazil. The immigration of Amaros were concurrent with those of the Saros, Yorubas who…
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Adeona Fusigboye, born in 1863, was crowned on 3 May, 1906 as the Awujale of Ijebu land. He was the son of Ademuyewo, the famous nineteenth century ruler whose pro-Ibadan stance in the Imagbon war was unpopular. Like his father, Adeona was a difficult man for the British to deal with, and he, with the…
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Israel Ransome Kuti was a pioneer educationist and union activist, born 30 April 1891 in Abeokuta. Israel was like his father before him, an Anglican priest. When he left the Lagos Grammar School, he became the first pupil to be enrolled at Abeokuta Grammar School in 1908. His education continued at Fourah Bay College from…
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Odarawu was the successor to Ajagbo, who was the longest reigning Alafin. His own reign, unlike Ajagbo’s, was very brief. Odarawu was as a ruler, despotic and bad tempered that his short reign was afterward used across the empire as a moral lesson to individuals and a warning to succeeding kings on the need to…
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Ofinran was the Alaafin of Oyo whose reign was entirely in a strange land. His father, Onigobi, son of Oluaso, having carelessly lost the capital city of the Yoruba nation to Nupe raiders, had died in a refuge camp close to the Bariba country. These normadic people, being unconventional in their daily living, utilized this…
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Ogbubona was the Balogun of Ikija and contender in 1854 to the Alake title, which is the premier Egba royal title. In reference to his imitation of the manners of Anglican missionaries who followed Townsend to Abeokuta in 1843, he was called “Agboket’oyinbo,” meaning “A man of elegant manners like the Europeans”. He was presented…
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Losii Osokale was the Egba chief from Ake, commissioned by Maye, the head of the Oyo-Ijebu-Ife coalition that subdued the Egba people prior to their migration to Abeokuta, to determine the dexterity of Egba’s intention to find a new settlement after the alienation of their villages. Losii was to do this by splitting and casting the…
