History of Ibadan Part 1: How Ibadan was Before it was Founded

Before it was founded, The city called Ibadan and its environs were nothing but a thick forest with no settlement, not a settler. This forest served as a boundary between Igbo town known as Ilu Igbo and Ilu Odan. The ijebus (forest) and Egbas were living in Igbo while the Oyos were living in Odan (savanna) while the forest separates them and the land of this forest belongs to none of both sides, it was only a neutral ground. This forest was called IGBO IPARA meaning Ipara forest.

The forest was like it was described with no-one living there until Lagelu from Ife and founded the town as Ibadan.

The first Settlement Inside Forest

The first settlers in this thick forest called Igbo Ipara are hooligans, people with Questionable characters, runaway boys and girls and people with all sorts of immoral behaviors. Most of these hooligans came from egba, ijebu,  and Oyo and they started meeting and hanging out in small groups inside this forest and eventually this Ipara forest became a territory gang of truants and hooligan. That's the source of Yoruba proverb that's being said that ''Asiwere tii wo igbo ipara lo'' which means ''a weird person who goes/live in Ipara forest'' this proverb tells a lot about the people who live here.

As time goes on the population of the people living in the forest started increasing but they never founded it, organized nor name it as a town. Stealing, terrorism bandit practices are the daily jobs and they disrupt the peace of small neighboring towns by enslaving them. These hooliganism and thuggery kind of behavior is the foundation of the place Ibadan occupied today.

During the time of those thieves and bandits, these forests haven't become a town and it has no other name other than Igbo Ipara until Lagelu left Ile Ife for the IPARA forest and settled there and founded it as a town properly. The crazy and weird ones he met there fought him and tried to chase him away but after realizing he is a warrior, they became happy that they have found someone to lead them better in their evil deeds which is what they know how to do best (constituting violence and nuisance)

Within a very short period of time, the founded town became big and the insane people of the IPARA forest started becoming sane. This was how the Ipara forest changed from a forest to a town eventually named as Ibadan By a man known as Lagelu.

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Nice info.
Just hope it is not a miss leading story