The Other Yoruba States

The Yoruba-speaking world was never one state, and for most of its history the primary political identity of a Yoruba person was not Yoruba but Ijẹ̀bú, Ẹ̀gbá, Èkìtì, Ìjẹ̀ṣà, Ọ̀yọ́ or Ifẹ̀. Treating these as regional variants of a single system, with Ọ̀yọ́ as the model and everything else as a lesser copy, is the specific distortion introduced by Ọ̀yọ́-centred historiography and it produces a false picture. The Ijẹ̀bú had a constitutional structure in which the king was subordinate to a judicial council in a way no Aláàfin was. The Èkìtì never had a single state at all. Ìbàdàn built a functioning military republic with no hereditary ruler. These are different political solutions, not degraded versions of one.

The standard scholarly distinction is between centralised polities, including Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Ijẹ̀bú, Ìjẹ̀ṣà, Ondó, Ọ̀yọ́ and Ìlá, and non-centralised ones among the Èkìtì, Ìgbómìnà, Ondó hinterland, Ọ̀wọ̀ and Àwórì, where the town or village was the highest level of political organisation 1.

Ijẹ̀bú

Ijẹ̀bú is the strongest case against the Ọ̀yọ́ template, and it is also one of the oldest attested Yoruba polities in written sources. A Portuguese account of 1505 describes a very large city called Geebuu surrounded by a great moat, ruled by a figure the account renders as Agusale, which is recognisably Awùjalẹ̀ 2. That gives Ijẹ̀bú a documented urban and monarchical existence at the start of the sixteenth century, contemporaneous with the earliest European contact on the coast.

The moat is real and it is enormous. Sungbo's Eredo, the system of ditches and banks southwest of Ijẹ̀bú-Òde, represents an estimated 3.5 million cubic metres of moved earth, with construction beginning in the range 800 to 1000 CE 3. It is among the largest single pre-mechanical earthworks anywhere in the world. Tradition attaches it to the noblewoman Bilikisu Sungbo, and Ijẹ̀bú-Òde sits inside it 3. The dating range comes from radiocarbon work and predates the Ijẹ̀bú dynastic tradition, which places the founder Ọbanta as arriving from Ilé-Ifẹ̀ around the fifteenth century 2. The earthwork therefore evidences large-scale political organisation in the region centuries before the dynasty that claims it.

The institutional core is the relationship between the Awùjalẹ̀ and the Òṣùgbó. The Òṣùgbó, the Ijẹ̀bú form of what is called Ògbóni elsewhere, functioned as the kingdom's courts, and was divided into six ranked grades with the ìwàrèfà at the top 2. The Oliwa headed this council as the second most powerful figure in the kingdom, while the Olisa served as head of the capital 2. The Òṣùgbó both selected the Awùjalẹ̀ and advised him, and the judicial function sat with them rather than with the palace 2. Alongside this ran the rẹ́gbẹ̀rẹ́gbẹ̀, age-grade associations that organised men by cohort for public works and military service, giving Ijẹ̀bú a mobilisation structure independent of lineage.

Ijẹ̀bú's power in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries came from geography and was enforced by policy. It sat astride the routes from Lagos and the lagoon to the interior markets, and it required that all trade through its territory pass through Ijẹ̀bú merchants 2. This monopoly made Ijẹ̀bú wealthy and made it the specific target of British commercial frustration. In 1892 Britain declared war on Ijẹ̀bú to break the monopoly, and the campaign was a demonstration of the machine gun: several thousand were cut down by Maxim fire, and Ijẹ̀bú was annexed into the Southern Nigeria Protectorate 2. The Ijẹ̀bú defeat was the event that convinced the other interior states that military resistance to Britain was not viable.

The Ẹ̀gbá and Abẹ́òkúta

The Ẹ̀gbá were a group of towns in the forest under nominal Ọ̀yọ́ overlordship until the collapse. Their modern history begins with displacement. Abẹ́òkúta, the name meaning refuge among the rocks, was founded around 1830 by Ṣódẹkẹ́ leading Ẹ̀gbá refugees from the wars that followed Ọ̀yọ́'s disintegration, at a defensible site under the Olúmọ rock 4.

What makes Abẹ́òkúta institutionally distinctive is that it was assembled from pieces and kept them. Rather than dissolving the constituent groups into one polity, it retained separate rulers for each Ẹ̀gbá section, Aké, Ọ̀wu, Ọ̀kẹ̀-Ọ̀nà and Gbágùrà, with a ruler for the Ọ̀wu refugees who arrived after their own city was destroyed 5. Federation rather than amalgamation. The Aláké of Aké eventually emerged as the senior figure and the British later treated him as the paramount ruler, which was a colonial simplification of a genuinely plural arrangement.

Abẹ́òkúta's early wars were immediate: conflict with Ijẹ̀bú Rẹ́mọ in 1832 and with Ìbàdàn in 1834 4. Its population was around 60,000 by the 1850s 5. Its defining external threat was Dahomey, and it repelled a major Dahomean invasion in 1851 with British assistance 5. That victory, and the presence of Sàró returnees and CMS missionaries in the town, drew Abẹ́òkúta into a close and eventually corrosive relationship with Lagos and Britain.

The Ẹ̀gbá United Board of Management, established in 1865 largely by returnees, was an attempt at a modern administrative state with written records, a treasury and postal arrangements, run by Yoruba men educated in Sierra Leone and Brazil. It is the earliest experiment of its kind in the region. The Ẹ̀gbá United Government that followed maintained a form of recognised independence until the British abolished it in 1914.

Ìbàdàn

Ìbàdàn was founded in the 1830s on the site of an earlier Ẹ̀gbá settlement, by a mixed force of Ọ̀yọ́, Ifẹ̀, Ijẹ̀bú and Ẹ̀gbá warriors thrown together by the collapse 5. It was a war camp that became a city, and its institutions reflect that origin exactly.

Ìbàdàn had no ọba and no hereditary ruling house. It was a military republic in which titles were non-hereditary and were won 5. A man entered at the bottom of a ranked ladder of war-chief titles and advanced as vacancies opened above him, with advancement determined by military success and by the size of the following and the quantity of firearms he could command 5. The two principal lines were the civil, headed by the Baalẹ̀, and the military, headed by the Balógun, with the Aàrẹ Ọ̀nà Kakanfò title revived for supreme commanders. Leadership alternated between collective rule by the chiefs and periods of dominance by a single powerful warlord 5.

This system produced extraordinary military effectiveness and chronic instability. Ìbàdàn destroyed Ìjàyè in 1862, sacked Ifẹ̀ in 1859 and Ilésà in 1870, and imposed tribute across a wide interior 5. Its population reached around 100,000 in the nineteenth century, making it one of the largest cities in tropical Africa 5. The structural problem is that a state whose entire promotion ladder runs on war has no mechanism for stopping. Ìbàdàn's ajẹ̀lẹ̀, resident agents in subject towns, became notorious for extraction, and the resentment they generated in Èkìtì and Ìjẹ̀ṣà is the proximate cause of the Sixteen Years War.

Ìjẹ̀ṣà

Ìjẹ̀ṣà was a centralised kingdom with its capital at Ilésà under the Ọ̀wá Obòkun, whose title refers in tradition to a journey to fetch seawater for a cure, tying the dynasty to Ifẹ̀. Ìjẹ̀ṣà occupied hilly, forested country east of Ifẹ̀, terrain that cavalry could not operate in, which is a large part of why Ọ̀yọ́ never incorporated it.

Ìjẹ̀ṣà's nineteenth century was dominated by Ìbàdàn. Ilésà was sacked in 1870 and Ìjẹ̀ṣà came under Ìbàdàn's tributary system with resident ajẹ̀lẹ̀ 5. The reaction produced one of the most consequential figures of the period: Ògèdèngbé Àgbógungbòrò, who became the field commander of the eastern alliance in the Kiriji war. Ìjẹ̀ṣà also had an unusual asset in the Ìjẹ̀ṣà diaspora among the coastal and Lagos communities, whose remittances and purchased firearms materially changed the eastern side's capacity.

Èkìtì

Èkìtì is the clearest case of a Yoruba political form that is not a kingdom. Èkìtì consisted of sixteen principal kingdoms, each with its own senior ọba, and there was never a single centralised Èkìtì political unit 1. The Ẹ̀wì of Adó-Èkìtì heads the traditional institution at Adó 1, but he was one crowned ruler among many rather than a paramount.

The Èkìtì towns are numerous, close together, and sited in hilly country. That geography supported a dense network of small autonomous polities and made external conquest expensive. Èkìtì was not incorporated by Ọ̀yọ́, and its subjection to Ìbàdàn in the nineteenth century was recent, resented, and short-lived.

The Èkìtìparapọ̀, meaning the Èkìtì joined together, formed in 1877, is therefore a genuine novelty: the first time the Èkìtì kingdoms combined into a single military alliance, and they did it in coalition with Ìjẹ̀ṣà against Ìbàdàn. A political unity that had never existed was created by the pressure of a common enemy. This is a pattern worth noticing, because the larger Yoruba identity emerges by a similar mechanism in the same century.

Ondó

Ondó is a centralised kingdom under the Ọṣemawé, ruling over more than forty subordinate towns and villages 1. Its rulership institution is described as hierarchical with defined protocols and procedures intended to constrain abuse of office 1. Ondó is notable among Yoruba states for the prominence of women in its title system, with the Lóbùn, a female chief, holding a central role in the installation of the Ọṣemawé, an arrangement without close parallel elsewhere in Yorubaland.

Ondó sat between the Ifẹ̀-Ìjẹ̀ṣà zone and the coastal lagoons, which gave it a position in the trade running down to the Atlantic and made it a participant in, and a supplier to, the coastal trade including the trade in people. Olatunji Ojo's work on Ondó in the later nineteenth century is the closest study of slavery and its practices within a Yoruba polity in that period 6.

Ọ̀wọ̀

Ọ̀wọ̀ under the Olówò sits on the eastern edge of Yorubaland against Benin, and its material culture reflects that position directly. Ọ̀wọ̀ terracotta and ivory work combines Ifẹ̀ and Benin features and is the clearest physical evidence that the Ifẹ̀ and Benin traditions met and mixed rather than one simply transmitting to the other. Ọ̀wọ̀ was subject to Benin influence and at times Benin authority, and its court dress, titles and ritual show Edo elements alongside Yoruba ones. It is a border kingdom in the full sense, and treating it as purely Yoruba or purely a Benin dependency both misrepresent it.

Kétu and Sábẹ̀

Kétu under the Aláké̩tu and Sábẹ̀ under the Onísàbẹ̀ are western Yoruba kingdoms now largely in the Republic of Benin, a division created by the French and British boundary of 1889 and not by anything in Yoruba history. Both were old, both claimed Ifẹ̀ descent, and both sat on the frontier with Dahomey.

That frontier position defined them. Kétu was brought into Ọ̀yọ́'s tributary system alongside Dahomey and Badagry 7. When Ọ̀yọ́ collapsed and Dahomey was freed of tribute, Kétu was directly exposed, and Dahomey destroyed Kétu in 1886. The Kétu Yoruba are heavily represented in the Atlantic diaspora, and the ethnonym Nàgó, used for Yoruba people in Brazil and in Francophone West Africa, derives from the western Yoruba region rather than from any self-designation used in the heartland.

Lagos, Èkó and the Àwórì

The Àwórì are the Yoruba subgroup of the Lagos lagoon and its hinterland, and Lagos originates as an Àwórì settlement. Tradition holds that Olófin, an Àwórì leader, divided Lagos Island among his sons, one of whom, Àrómirè, farmed pepper on the site that later became the Ọba's palace 8.

Lagos was then taken into the Benin orbit. In the sixteenth century Benin expanded into the region, and the Ọba of Benin appointed Àṣípa as the first Ọba of Lagos 8. All subsequent Ọba of Lagos trace descent from Àṣípa, described as an Àwórì and a war captain of the Ọba of Benin who was given the title Olórí Ogun and Benin's sanction to govern Lagos on Benin's behalf 8. Èkó, the Yoruba name for the city, is itself of Benin derivation. Lagos is therefore a Yoruba city with a Benin dynasty, which is why it does not fit the Odùduwà crown framework.

Lagos became the principal slave-exporting port of the Bight of Benin in the nineteenth century, which is what drew British naval attention. The succession dispute between Kòsókó and Akitoye gave Britain its opening. The British bombarded Lagos in December 1851, installed Akitoye, and ended Lagos's tributary relationship with Benin, which Akitoye repudiated on restoration 8. On 6 August 1861 Ọba Dòsùnmú signed the Treaty of Cession under the threat of bombardment from Commander Beddingfield of HMS Prometheus, having resisted for eleven days 9. Lagos became a British colony, and from that base British power moved inland over the following three decades.

The pattern

Three observations follow from setting these polities side by side.

There is no single Yoruba constitution. The common elements are a sacred ruler installed rather than simply inheriting, a council with real power, title systems open to achievement as well as birth, and an age-grade or society structure carrying civic function. Beyond that the variation is wide, from Ijẹ̀bú where the judicial council outranked the palace, through Èkìtì where no central state existed, to Ìbàdàn where there was no king at all.

Institutional variety was a response to environment and to trade position. Cavalry states in the savanna, monopoly gatekeeper states on the trade routes, dense small-polity networks in hill country, war republics in the zone of maximum disruption.

The nineteenth century compressed all of this. The states that ended the century strongest, Ìbàdàn and Abẹ́òkúta, were both foundations of the 1830s built out of refugees, and both were destroyed as independent powers within seventy years of their founding.