HISTORY OF IBADAN 44: The reign of Ajayi osungbekun
Ajayi Osungbekun is the second son of Baale Orowusi, and he became the heir and number 1 leader of their family after the death of his elder brother Keredolu. Before the death of Aare Latoosa, all other chiefs older than Osungbekun are already dead, therefore he was coronated outside the town not while inside the town. All other chiefs are dead except for Akintola who was said to be the Seriki.
After the death of Aare, the Ekiti Parapo war continued and it’s beyond the capacity of the Ibadan people like they expected, they went through pain and agony but a colonial governor went to rescue them.
This colonial governor took the Ibadan warriors(Balogun and his people) to Ikirun and took Ekiti and ijesha to Imesi oloja oke
When the people of Ibadan girl back to Ikirun, Balogun started getting power drunken and committing all sorts of atrocities. His sons were being wicked to people and whenever they were sent home (Ibadan town) to do something, they do a lot of evil under the pretense of being sarcastic, they sell indigenes of the town and even other small towns that Ibadan control. During this time, a famine happened and this was called the Iyan sodidogbun or Iyan Ogungbe ju in 1887
That was how Balogun and his chiefs were carrying on till Ibadan is almost destroyed completely, they never even thought of returning to Ibadan, all they cared about was benefiting and extorting their hometown. When God was ready to deliver the poor Ibadan people from this problem, he brought Governor carter (a colonial governor) and he brought them home with a veto, before they left Ikirun, Osungbekun ordered Pastor Olubi and other Christian elders beheaded and their youths and women captured as slaves, that was the first hatred poured towards Christians in Ibadan. We realized that they didn’t do this for themselves because the people of Ibadan don’t care about any religion so far it doesn’t disturb them from going to war, they did this because of Awujale(The king of Ijebu) who hated Christianity then, and the reason is that they want to satisfy Awujale because it’s only through Ijebu that they get gunpowder and if they refuse to do his wish, he would Seal that route to them and they won’t have any access to gunpowder anymore but the white people in Ijebu came to their rescue.
Here is the list of Osungbekun’s slaves who unleash bad leadership wrath on Ibadan when Osungbekun was away, we can’t blame them because Ibadan is not their home nor their hometown, the deterioration of Ibadan is not their loss, they inflicted pains on the people, killed many too. They are:
Babare
Ogboro
Fasimi
Lobaleyin
OGundipe
And these people mentioned couldn’t find it hard to destroy anything in Ibadan when it was under their watch because their own homes too have been set at ours before they became slaves.
Balogun Osungbekun and his chiefs returned to Ibadan in 1893.
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