Ìgbájọ, Kíríjì and Yorùbáland, an End of History

Abstract

The Yoruba is an ethnic group in Nigerian with a plethora of intragroup histories of war and peace. One overbearing pan-Yoruba war fought in Ìgbájọ town was the Ekiti-Parapọ war, otherwise dubbed Kíríjì which locked the Ibadan imperial army with the freedom fighters of Ijesha and Ekiti subgroups. The war, which eventually got stalemated, was unmatched in magnitude as it engulfed, destabilised and polarised the entire Yorubaland. Extant literature point to the record immenseness of the war but scantly expatiated on its nitty-gritty, vis-à-vis the cause-and-effect. Notably, the unsophisticated precolonial Yoruba held warmongering as industry and livelihood, hence, like the Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ the society was largely restive and fearmongering. In this paper, we affirm that the Kíríjì was not just extraordinarily vast in reach and involvements, it marked a watershed in Yoruba history. The war ended a customary norm and gave rise to a new sociopolitical norm. The ensuing British intervention resulted in the dual leapfrogging of Yoruba into colonial subjugation and a modernism of law, order and institutions. A major finding is that Ìgbájọ, the battlefield, would have been obliterated were it not for its choice to actively align with the invading Ibadan army, against its kit and kin Ijesha. The paper adopted the historical and thematic methods, and utilised both the primary and secondary data. It concludes that while Kíríjì ended a history of chaotic norms for Yoruba, it kick-started a progressive order for the people.