THE IJEBUS IN NIGERIA: Their lost Pride Through Yoruba's Literary Colonization & Imperial Hegemony

By
Dr. Saint

HISTORY is universally believed to be the best medicine to the traditional wellbeing of every community.

According to the word of historian David McCullough, he once said, “we need history as much as we need food or water or love”, which translates to mean that, history is tremendously significant in all facets of human life, medically, religiously, culturally, socially, economically and scientifically.


In lieu of that, the trauma of historical irregularities and contradictions explicitly portrays in the variances of the traditional documentations among Yoruba historical scholars have, however, appeared worrisome to the present generation of the Ijebu speakers who allege to have being literarily deprived of the right understanding to their ancestral root.

What hitherto spurs this curiocity is the concern over the rate at which the present generation of the Ijebu-speakers in Nigeria is lost in the confusion of the understanding of their true ancestral root, as what is being taught in the literary discourses in Nigeria is the history of Yoruba – a system of indirect colonization that had deprived the ancestral pride of the Ijebus.

In the course of this curiocity, the pertinent questions seeking profound answers are:

1. What is the true meaning of Ijebu?
2. When did the Ijebu Kingdom coalesce in Nigeria?
3. What circumstance instigated the formation of the Ijebu Kingdom?
4. Is the claim of linkage to Biblical Jebusites realistic?
5. Are the ancestors of the present Ijebu towns all Ijebus by origin?
6. Who is ALARE?
7. How did Awujale Stool gain the paramountcy over all other traditional rulers?
8. Who are the first generation traditional rulers in Ijebuland?
9. Where did the old Ijebu kingdom emanate from?
10 What was the reality of Queen of Sheba and her influence over the development of Ijebu kingdom?
11. Who were the original Yoruba speakers, and why the dialect override Ijebu-dialect in literary discourses in Nigeria?
12. What is the origin of YORUBA, and its hegemony over the IJEBUS?

Virtually all the Ijebu speakers in Nigeria are ignorant to the true understanding of the above questions. This is the time to revive our heritage and the historical pride.

Since the tradition of human evolution, history has being the window through which the past events are post-viewed, preserved, promoted and celebrated with basic objective of enriching cultural and ancestral understanding of people so as to inclusively avoid cultural extinction and traditional hegemony.


In this era of traditional subjugatory contentions, the Ijebus must rise to the chalenges

This exploratory package, in its captivating aura will capture the feelings of several people who had been previously abreast with contradictory historical knowledge about the origin of the Ijebus in Nigeria. It will further bring to the world view the Ijebus glamorous past as active partakers in the ancient civilization and point the searchlight far beyond 18th century to which many history aristocrats and potentates still cling.



NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

Interesting!

I hope you can answer some of the questions you raised but would love if you could start with the first one


What is the true meaning of Ijebu?