The Kakanfò who went to war over a constitutional principle and lost his town, and the hunter who led the Ẹ̀gbá refugees to the rock at Abẹ́òkúta and governed them without a king.
These two men shaped the two great refugee cities of the nineteenth century in opposite ways. Kúrunmí built Ìjàyè into a power, refused to accept a change in the Ọ̀yọ́ succession, and went to war against Ìbàdàn over it; he died in 1861 and his town was destroyed in 1862 and never rebuilt. Ṣódẹkẹ́ led the Ẹ̀gbá refugees to the site beneath Olúmọ rock about 1830, founded Abẹ́òkúta, and governed it without a crown at all, leaving a confederation of townships that outlived him by more than a century. Both were war leaders in a period when war was the only route to authority, and neither held a hereditary claim to anything.
His birth date is not established in the sources this corpus has been able to reach, and any specific year given for it should be treated with suspicion.
He was made Àrẹ̀ Ọ̀nà Kakanfò in 1837 by Aláàfin Àtìbà, in the settlement by which Àtìbà divided the old imperial military authority between two provincial powers: Ìbàdàn under its Balógun to guard the east against Ìlọrin, and Ìjàyè under the Kakanfò to guard the west . Since the Kakanfò could not by convention reside in the capital, Ìjàyè became his headquarters and, in practice, an independent state. Under him it grew into one of the two successor powers to Ọ̀yọ́.
Àtìbà died in 1859. During his lifetime he had secured agreement that his son, the Arẹ̀mọ Adélù, should succeed him. This was a reform, and a substantial one: Ọ̀yọ́ custom required the Arẹ̀mọ, the crown prince who shared in the king's authority during his reign, to die with his father, precisely so that he could not use that shared authority to become king. Removing the requirement made the Arẹ̀mọ an heir, which changed the nature of the office .
Ìbàdàn and most Yoruba states accepted Adélù. Kúrunmí refused, insisting that the Arẹ̀mọ must die as the custom required. It is worth being clear that this was a genuine constitutional position and not merely a pretext. Kúrunmí held the Kakanfò title from a constitution he was arguing had just been altered without authority, and a Yoruba political actor of the period had no other language than custom in which to make that argument.
The trigger was a property dispute. A wealthy woman named Abu, resident at Ìjànnà, a town under Ìjàyè, died intestate. Adélù claimed her estate for the Aláàfin. Kúrunmí resisted and seized the Aláàfin's messengers, which Adélù treated as a declaration and answered by authorising Ìbàdàn to make war .
Ìbàdàn held its war council on 10 April 1860 and Balógun Ìbíkúnlé raised the standard. The strategy was blockade rather than assault: Ìbàdàn cut Ìjàyè's food supply from the Òkè-Ògùn flank and starved the town . Ìjàyè was supported by the Ẹ̀gbá, Ìlọrin and Ìjẹ̀bú. The CMS missionaries resident on both sides, Anna and David Hinderer at Ìbàdàn and Adolphus Mann at Ìjàyè, produced the contemporary eyewitness record, which is unusually good for a Yoruba war of this period and is also, necessarily, written by people dependent on the protection of the chiefs they describe .
Five of Kúrunmí's sons were captured and killed during the war, and the sources treat this as the blow from which he did not recover .
Kúrunmí died in June 1861. He was buried secretly by Abogunrin, his head of slaves. When the grave was found, his head was cut off and taken to Adélù, as custom required for a deceased Àrẹ̀ Ọ̀nà Kakanfò .
Ìjàyè fell on 17 March 1862 and was destroyed. Abogunrin and the surviving chiefs fled to Abẹ́òkúta and founded Ago-Ìjàyè there . The town was never rebuilt on its site, and the Ìjàyè diaspora and its problems of resettlement are the subject of a study by Toyin Falola .
The conventional dating of the war is 1860 to 1862. A minority framing of 1859 to 1861 circulates and should be recognised as the minority .
Kúrunmí held slaves; the man who buried him is identified in the sources as his head of slaves. The Ìjàyè war economy, like Ìbàdàn's, ran on captives. This is stated because it is true of every Yoruba military power of the period, and singling out one of them would misrepresent the structure.
Ola Rotimi's play Kurunmi (1971) is the reason most Nigerians know the name, and it is a fine tragedy built on the constitutional conflict. It is a work of drama and is not evidence for anything. Where popular accounts of Kúrunmí supply psychology, dialogue or motive, they are usually drawing on Rotimi rather than on a source.
Also written Sodeke and Shodeke. His title was Ṣeríkí, the war-leadership title, not a crown .
His birth date is unknown. His death is given as 1844 in some sources and 1845 in others, and the corpus names both rather than choosing .
The Ẹ̀gbá were dispersed by the Owu war of about 1822 and the general collapse that followed the fall of Ọ̀yọ́. Ṣódẹkẹ́, described in the sources as a hunter, was chosen as leader of the refugee body and led the first migration to a site beneath a large granite outcrop, Olúmọ. The name Abẹ́òkúta means "under the rock," and the site was chosen for defensibility, principally against slave raiding from Dahomey . The founding is conventionally dated about 1830.
What he then built was not a kingdom. Abẹ́òkúta was a confederation of townships, each keeping its own chiefs and identity, and Ṣódẹkẹ́ held supreme authority by consent and reputation rather than by office. Johnson's formulation is that until Ṣódẹkẹ́'s death the Ẹ̀gbá never spoke of having a king over them, Ṣódẹkẹ́ wielding supreme power . About 1834 he persuaded the Owu refugees to settle at Abẹ́òkúta as well, adding them to the confederation .
He welcomed the Saro, the liberated Africans returning from Sierra Leone, and this is the decision with the longest consequences. It brought Abẹ́òkúta a literate class, commercial connections to the coast, and the mission. The CMS Yoruba mission was established at Abẹ́òkúta from January 1845 by Henry Townsend, Samuel Àjàyí Crowther and Charles Gollmer .
The timing matters: Ṣódẹkẹ́ died on the threshold of the mission's arrival, which is why he appears in CMS correspondence as the chief who invited them rather than as the chief they dealt with. The chief they dealt with was Ṣàgbùà Okùkẹ́nù, later the first Aláké to rule at Abẹ́òkúta.
Leadership fragmented immediately. The Ògbóni and the Ológun, the civil-judicial and military constituencies, competed for dominance, and the rivalry produced what the sources describe as anarchy. No Aláké reigned at Abẹ́òkúta until 1854 . Earl Phillips's argument is that after Ṣódẹkẹ́'s death the Ẹ̀gbá reverted to decentralised township governance, and that the later Saro attempt to enter Ẹ̀gbá politics failed when the military assumed control .
It is sometimes stated that Ṣódẹkẹ́ had himself been enslaved earlier in life, and Johnson's text contains a passage that has been read that way. This corpus has not been able to verify the claim against Biobaku, Ajisafe or any other scholarly account, and does not assert it. If a reader finds it stated confidently online, the source should be checked before it is repeated .
Abẹ́òkúta was founded as a refuge from enslavement, and its early politics were shaped by Dahomean slave raiding. That much is documented. Ṣódẹkẹ́'s own involvement in holding or trading enslaved people is not established in the sources reached here, and the corpus makes no claim in either direction.
The town that replaced Ọ̀yọ́ as the dominant Yoruba power, the achieved-title constitution that let a farmer or an Ifá priest rise to command it, and the men who did.
How Abẹ́òkúta went from a chief without a crown to a crowned Aláké in 1854, and the attempt by returnee intellectuals and traditional chiefs to build a modern state there that collapsed in 1874.
The fall of Ọ̀yọ́, the Ilọrin and Sokoto dimension, the Ọ̀wu war, the rise of Ìbàdàn, the Sixteen Years War at Kiriji, and the political map they left behind.
A historical analysis of Madam Ẹfúnpọ̀róyè Ọ̀ṣúntinúbú, examining her career as a nineteenth-century merchant magnate, political kingmaker in Lagos and Abeokuta, and first Iyalode of Egbaland.
The political career, military rule, and historical debates surrounding Kurunmi of Ijaye, the supreme military commander of nineteenth-century Oyo.
The refugee city under Olúmọ rock, its four townships each with its own ọba, the Aláké, and the Ẹ̀gbá United Government, which was the only Yoruba state Britain recognised as sovereign.