How the Egba, Ijebus, Hausas, and other Ibadan Enemies used the British colonial Government against the Ibadan Warriors (The reign of Baale Fijabi Part 2)
This was during the reign of Baale Fijabi just after the Ekiti Parapo ended after settlements and treaties with the British Government, The minds some Ibadan people still want to go to war and fight, not against the British government and its soldiers but they want these white people to leave fast so that they a start going to wars against other Yoruba towns, from all the descriptions since the Begining of this story, you can already tell the kind of people Ibadan ancestors were. Never did they know that the White people are not going to leave anymore. The mind of the British soldiers and their governors are not at peace because of the fake news and incitement from the enemies of Ibadan Like Egba, Ijebu, Hausa, and others, their chiefs were closer to the British representatives than the Ibadan chiefs and they wanted to use the opportunity to take revenge of what Ibadan has done to them in the past.
Historians concluded that this was the reason why Captain Bower was Arresting the chiefs and putting them in detention one after the other, either to scare them or clear the thoughts of going to war off their minds. The first chief to be Arrested was Sanusi Baale when other chiefs went to beg for his release and he was freed from detention. After this, in August 1894 when they were doing the Ogiyan Festival and there are so many people in Ibadan during this festival because all the people in small towns and other villages came to the main town of Ibadan and many of them are feasting and getting drunk. They beat each other in the evening of these festivals which they call ”Ija Igbo”.
A night During one of these festive moments, Captain Holland who is the right hand of Captain Bower was riding on his horse on a night stroll/ride, one of the drunk men dragged him down from his horse when he got back to the barrack, he reported the people who harassed him are having a Gombo tribal mark. The enemy of Ibadan already knows the tribal mark he was referring to, they told Captain Bower that the perpetrators are Balogun Akintola’s Children. you are aware they are already looking for ways to arrest the big Ibadan chieftains, on the second day Captain Bower and his guards went to Balogun Akintola’s house to arrest and detain him at the Barrack
The town went sad when this Man of influence was arrested, markets were closed and commercial activities were suspended out of the sorrow of the Balogun being in Captivity, no entertainment or any sort of drum sound throughout Ibadan during the four days Balogun Akintola spent in detention.
Not Up to Four weeks after this, Fajimi who is the third in command to Baale(Osi Baale) was arrested and detained just like they did to Balogun Akintola and Sanusi but the people didn’t care about his arrest because they don’t like him. when they see that nobody has come to plead for his release, instead they were mocking him and happy he was arrested.
When Captain Bower realized nobody cares about him, he released him. After that comes freedom and oppression disappeared for a short period of time. The soldiers started disturbing the people, they were robbing people, seizing farm produces unduly and they were doing several things that we cant finish mentioning here. This was also when there was a scarcity of cowries and people were hiding their money in several ways to avoid being ripped off, robbed, and heavily taxed by the soldiers. These soldiers became more wicked. Some people would hide their cowries in a pot and pour water on it, some would wrap cowries and back it like a baby, this was why a soldier hit a baby on her mothers back with a baton because he thought it was money that is hidden there, the baby died instantly and even captain Bower doesn’t know about it because nobody dares go to him to report the incident.
On the 4th of April 1894, Captain Bower brought in a new and different coin from England and he was selling it to the people for a certain amount of cowries per bag. In this same year, Captain Bower went to bring Ogedengbe who was the Balogun of the Ijesha people to Ibadan, Ogedengbe lived in Ibadan for about two weeks before taking him to Iwo.
Baale Fijabi was such a good man, there was no crisis, conspiracy, coup, or any type of political violence during his time. War was dead and conspiring against each other went on hibernation. Fijabi died in 1895 and he could have lived longer on the throne but he was very old before he died. May his soul rest in peace.
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