The Egbado appear to have migrated - possibly from the Ketu, Ile-Ife, or Oyo - to their current area early in the 18th century.
Egbado towns, most importantly Ilaro, Ayetoro, Afon, Imeko, Ipokia and Igbogila, were established in the 18th century to take advantage
of the slave trade routes from the inland Oyo empire to the coast at Porto-Novo.
Other towns were Ilobi and Ijanna, which were strategic in protecting the flanks of the slaving routes. The Egbados' were subject to the rule of the Oyo kingdom, which managed
them via governor Onisare of Ijanna.
The Oyo were unable to deploy their cavalry force to protect the routes, due to tsetse fly and lack of horse-fodder and thus had to rely on the Egbado people to manage the routes.
The historians Akinjogbin, Morton-Williams and Smith all
agree that by the early 18th century this route to the coast was heavily engaged in slave trading, and that slaves were the mainstay of the Oyo economy.
The Egbado later achieved a fragile independence after the fall of the Oyo kingdom, but were subject to
frequent attacks from other groups such as the slave-raiding Dahomey (who seized, among others, Princess Sara Forbes Bonetta), and various tribes who wished to force open their own slave-trading routes to the sea.
Ilaro and Ijanna towns had been destroyed by the 1830s. By the
1840s the Egbado had come under the control of the adjacent Egba group, who used the Egbado territory to forge routes to Badagry and the port of Lagos.
By the 1860s the Egba abandoned the route because the British were actively using their formidable navy
to try to abolish the slave trade. Consequently, the Egba expelled British missionaries and traders from the area in 1867.
After 1890 the Egbado asked for a British protectorate and got a small armed garrison, thus becoming independent of the Egba. The area
became part of the British Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria in 1914, as Egbado Division in Abeokuta Province.
The administrative headquarters were later transferred away, after the creation of the new Ogun State subsumed the old Abeokuta Province.
The modern Egbado/Yewa:
In 1995 the Egbado chose to rename themselves the "Yewa", after the name of the Yewa River that passes through the area they inhabit. They are primarily agriculturalists, but there is some artisan and textile processings.
They are located mainly in the areas of: Ado-Odo/Ota, Ipokia, Yewa South, Yewa North, Imeko Afon, and part of Abeokuta North.
There were complaints that the system of patronage and nepotism in Nigerian politics has caused the area to be neglected in terms of investment
The area developed a popular style of music, called Bolojo, in the 1970s. The population level is uncertain, but may be around 400,000
The Yoruba Territory in Togo is called Atakpame. These are the ones whose ancestors migrated to the West African country when tribal wars raged in the 17th century.
"The majority of these Ife settlers migrated from Ija-Oku in former Dahomey into the Togolese territory
and subsequently founded the city of Atapkame all of who migrated from Ile-Ife.
The Battle of Atakpamé was an armed confrontation between the Ashanti Empire and neighboring Akan Allies under the leadership of the Kingdom of Akyem who joined up with the Oyo Empire and the
Martiniano Eliseu do Bomfim Yoruba name was Òjélàdé, (1859-1943), was born in Bahia, Brazil. His father was a member of the Egba, one of the Yoruba sub-groups, had been brought to Brazil as a slave in 1820 and liberated there in 1842. A 16-year-old Martiniano
accompanied his father, Eliseu do Bomfim, who was an import/export trader of Yoruba goods, on a trip from Salvador, Bahia to Lagos, Yorubaland in 1875 for the purpose of attending school and learning a trade. In Lagos he attended the Church Missionary Society Alápákó
Fàájì School for almost 11 years. He arrived back in Salvador on January 30, 1886. During his time in Lagos Martiniano became fluent not only in English but also in Yoruba. He also acquired knowledge of Ifá, the Yoruba system of divination and became a Babalawo, as well as
The Owu-Ife war, as its name denotes, was a bloody conflict that broke out between the people of Ile-Ife and natives of the neighbouring town of Owu between 1821 and 1828. Its significance lies in the fact that it was a war that opened the gate of tragedy for other
wars in Yoruba land.
Causes of the Owu-Ife War
Owu-Ife war broke out barely four years after the collapse of the Old Oyo empire. On the surface, the war outbreak was the result of a disagreement between two market women over five cowries. The main cause, however, was the hatred
On your journey to Oyo, right below Fiditi, there is a little town named “Ilu Aje.” Which basically translates to “Witch Town.” Ilu Aje is a rather significant rural hamlet with huge fields located between the cities of Ilora and Jobele in Oyo State’s Afijio
Local Government Area. “Ilu Aje” literally means “a town of fortune in sales or business transactions.”
However, history bestowed upon it the strange homophonic appellation of “Ilu Aje” (Town of Witches) as a result of the intervention of Akinyolu, a herbalist
Emere & Abiku are the kind of children according to the Yoruba belief who make a certain pledge concerning their life duration with their mate in the spiritual sphere
It could sound primitive, but it is real especially with the Yoruba race. Some children over time are reborn to the same parents with their everything including look, gender, complexion and structure unchanged. Owing to ephemeral nature of Abiku's life.
Abiku completes several consecutive life-cycles with one mother. In some cases, the Yoruba in one of their traditional ways of deterring Abiku from reoccurring deaths after reborn deface them either by cutting their finger, ear or a deep mark in the face or back.