₦airaland Forum

THERE WAS NO OYO EMPIRE

By Ndagi Abdullahi Amana Nupe

It was British historians like Professor Robin Law, swayed by Reverend Samuel Johnson’s pretentious History of the Yorubas, who invented the claim that by the 1690s Oyo had become the greatest Empire in pre-Colonial Nigeria.¹ But all the earliest writers on Yoruba, including the Danmasanin Katsina² and Sultan Bello in the 1830s,³ never mention any Oyo Empire.

The first Europeans to visit Oyo itself, including Captain Hugh Clapperton⁴ and the Lander brothers,⁵ never wrote that Oyo was an empire.

In 1668 Olfert Dapper described the Benin Kingdom in details but never mentioned any nearby great Oyo Kingdom.⁶ In fact, the first documented mention of Oyo was two years later in 1671.⁷

For hundreds of years no pre-Colonial European map mention any Oyo Kingdom, let alone Oyo Empire, even though the same European maps repeatedly depicted the Benin, Zegzeg, Borno, and other kingdoms of those days.

More importantly, there is no any documentary evidence that Oyo ever conquered its neighbours into an Empire.⁸ Dahomey, Akure, Ile Ife, Ilesha, the Owu, Ijesha, the Egba, Ijebu, the Ondos, the Owo, the Ugbo, the Ekiti, etc., were never part of any phantom Oyo Empire.⁹

Instead, in 1793 the Portuguese Resident Archibald Dalzel, wrote as a living witness that the Oyo Kingdom was part of the Nupe Empire and was still paying annual tributes to the Etsu Nupes at the end of the 18th century.¹⁰

How could Oyo had been the greatest Empire in pre-Colonial Nigeria by the 1690s when one hundred years later in the 1790s it was still a small kingdom paying annual tribute to the Etsu Nupes?

References:
1 - Law, Robin (1975). "A West African Cavalry State: The Kingdom of Oyo". The Journal of African History. 16 (1): 1–15. doi:10.1017/S0021853700014079. ISSN 0021-8537. JSTOR 181095.

2 - Sheikh Muhammad ibn Massana’s book ‘Tuhfat i'Anbariyya’ quoted by Sultan Bello in Infaq al-Maysur, by Muhammed Bello, Edited by Abubakar Gummi, Published by Dar wa matabi al-Sha'b, Cairo, 1964.

3 - Infaq al-Maysur, by Muhammed Bello, Edited by Abubakar Gummi, Published by Dar wa matabi al-Sha'b, Cairo, 1964.

4 - Clapperton, H. (1829). Journal of a second expedition into the interior of Africa, from the Bight of Benin to Soccatoo. London: John Murray, 1829, p. 103.

5 - Lander, R. and Lander, J. (1832). Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger, vol. 1. London, pp. 78-79.

6 - Dapper, O. (1998). Description of Benin. University of Wisconsin Madison Africa, 1998.

7 - "Suite du Journal du Sieur d'El bee," J. de Clodore (ed.), Relation de ce qui s'est passe dans les Selen et Terre-ferme da l'Andrique pendant la demiere guerre avec l'Angleterre (Paris, 1671), III, 557-558.

8 - Peel, J.D.Y. (2003). The Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Indiana University Press, p. 30.

9 - CA2/056, James Johnson, 18 Sept 1879; CMS C/A2/O49/36, D. Hinderer to secretaries, September 24, 1858; Burton, R. (1863). Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains: An Exploration, vol. I. London: Tinsley Brothers, p. 105.

10 - Dalzel, A. The History of Dahomy: An Inland Kingdom of Africa. Snowhill: Spilsbury and Son, p. 40.

Excellent revision of history!
If I may understand you, the Oyos never had an empire that extended the whole of Yorubaland to parts of modern Benin republic?

And the claims of Rev . Johnson ,( a black man,) is nullified simply because a white skin does not agree to the claim if an empire?
Ok.
Simple test:- why did Lísàbí fight the Oyo off and established Abeokuta, and why was he extremely angry about the fact that the Oyos had brought all the other sons of Oodua under them, paying Isakole to the Oyos?


Why are Yoruba's also found as far as Togo, Ghana and Dahomey?
Is it a fact that unless a white-skinned stranger acknowledged your own claims, it is invalid?

Hmmmmm.

Another empire debate.

Automaticmotors
samuk
Gregyboy

caye:
Excellent revision of history!
If I may understand you, the Oyos never had an empire that extended the whole of Yorubaland to parts of modern Benin republic?

And the claims of Rev . Johnson ,( a black man,) is nullified simply because a white skin does not agree to the claim if an empire?
Ok.
Simple test:- why did Lísàbí fight the Oyo off and established Abeokuta, and why was he extremely angry about the fact that the Oyos had brought all the other sons of Oodua under them, paying Isakole to the Oyos?


Why are Yoruba's also found as far as Togo, Ghana and Dahomey?
Is it a fact that unless a white-skinned stranger acknowledged your own claims, it is invalid?

Dahomey defeated Oyo and enslaved lots of people from Western Nigeria. In fact Abeokuta was formed by combination of Dahomey slave soldiers and native slaves runaway. You have no idea of history. What you think about Yoruba today are all revisionists done by Yorubas slave returnees who learnt the power of mass Media.

Awon oni yeye..

See Oyo in the map below.

SEE the real map of the region before FULA(Proxy forces of the Ottoman empire) and the Igbo ( Those exported from Aboriginals of Australia) to come and be used as cannon fodders in the region. FULA has finally subjugated, infiltrated and nearly erase the political and historical culture of the real owner of the Land Hausa. Just what the Igbos too were sent there to do.

THEY ARE STILL FAILING TILL DATE..

Your propaganda stem from the real owner of Palestine. They were Yorubas ok.

THe Ottoman empire/Persia erased them and today you have the land of Palestine. The same Christendom are erasing as we speak in what we call Genocide.

Imagine, the writer of this article is the information war terrorist. The fula as usual.

The Oyo Empire reached Ghana
The Ewe people of Ghana and Togo were under Alaafin of Oyo

Some people will just,sit some where to write nonsense. You ought to put oyo never existed before 1965