The age long history that has been in the Nigerian space concerning the history of so many groups especially the minority ethnic groups needs to be re-examined.

The myth of IFE being the origins of all Yorubas and even other groups has been accepted without question for decades.

The Yoruba had a tendency of attributing the beginning of the world to IFE invariably attributing all cultures and peoples as being, from IFE even nonblack races.

This attribution slipped into the books of early historians of various ethnic groups especially southerners attributing their origins to IFE, eg the benin historian Jacob egharevba,and others who attributed Benin origins to IFE.

Many ethnic groups close to the Yorubas do this eg,Akoko-edo, ijaw,itsekiri etc.

However there's been no concrete proof of this.

Even within the Yorubas,the different factions of yorubas in reality are not from IFE but mostly probably only their royal lines as Oduduwa was the originator of kingship system in yorubaland and from him it spread to other Yoruba groups.

The Yorubas were part of an ancient stock that included many other tribes of today that broke out forming their own ethnic groups, some similar to Yorubas others dissimilar. These stock included majority of southern and middlebelt Nigeria.

The oyo group of Yoruba expanded and conquered some of their neighbours thereby imposing a lot of the culture and language on these neighbours to incorporate a familiar culture of what is termed Yoruba today.

The cross-fertilisation of the oyo and ife cultures on the neighbours is what gave rise to a Yoruba identity,however this Yoruba identity only took shape in the nighteen century,prior to that various Yoruba groups saw themselves as different, only probably the royal lines that have probably similar origins,it is this royal line history from IFE that is imposed on other Yoruba groups today as being from IFE.

The oriki cannot be taken as factual history as it can be distorted or parts and bits lost,or being a royal line oriki wrongly attributed to a whole people.

My hypothesis is that any non yoruboid speaking group that cannot correctly explain its origin is probably very ancient and is not in any way from IFE or presumed to be of Yoruba who changed their language eg.Benin.

The key to this is the IGALA who speak a yoruboid language but has never been attributed to being from IFE( why is that?),it therefore clearly shows that they are part of an ancient stock who spoke the same language with most of the Yorubas but divulged from it as they separated. The Okuns too are also a key to this,the okun are likely also IGALA related despite them attributing their origins from IFE,the Okuns might have gotten their royal line from IFE thereby attributing their origins to be from IFE.

In summary the IFE origin story of many minority tribes,and including Yoruba groups needs further questioning and reexamination.