With FOREWORD By Dare Babarinsa, Chairman, Gaskia Media Ltd
In 1877, thousands of young men and some women from the 16 principal Ekiti kingdoms and other towns gathered at Ita-Ode in Okemesi Ekiti and marched to war. It was to become the last of the Yoruba wars of the 19th Century that started with the Ilorin crisis of the 1830s. The war that the young people participated in was to be known to history as the Ekitiparapo War. It was our own War of Liberation during which time, for the first time in Yoruba history, European weaponry were employed. The Snieder repeater-rifle use to give a report when fired into the distance and its sound captured by the echo of the forest, Ki ri jii! The onomatopoeic sound led to nicknaming the war also as the Kiriji War.
The Ibadan who brought the war on us preferred to call it the Kiriji War. The Ekiti who fought the War of Liberation, preferred to call it the Ekitiparapo War. The Ibadan made their stand in Igbajo where we now have the Kiriji Memorial Grammar School as an everlasting symbol of that war. It was at the Igbajo camp that Latoosa, the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Oyo and military ruler of Ibadan, died and they carried his body home. The Ekitiparapo alliance had one of its most famous generals, Prince Faboro, from Ido-Ekiti, where they built the Ekiti Parapo College, to commemorate that war of liberation.
If you drive from Okemesi to Imesi Ile, especially in the night as I sometimes do, you will see the ravine on your right as you are approaching Imesi Ile. It was in that ravine that extends to Igbajo that Ekiti youths engaged Ibadan soldiers in hands-to-hands combat.
Though rifle was used by an elite corps commanded by Labinjo and Gureje, most of the soldiers were armed with machetes and cudgels. The battles were brutal and blood-cuddling. The war went on with brutal efficiency, year after year. The line of supplies trailed through the forests with food and weaponry coming from all parts of Ekiti, Ijesha and Igbomina countries. It was a time of stirring events and the people rose as one to serve the cause of freedom.
The blacksmiths of Okemesi were working day and night to produce more weapons, including arrows and in later years, guns copied from the European originals. Charms and amulets were also produced on an industrial scale to fortify the soldiers spiritually and help build their self-confidence.
I thank the author of this book, Femi Alufa, for giving me the honour of writing The Foreword to this important addition to historigraphy about the last of the Yoruba Civil War of the 19th Century.
The book, Ekitiparapo Legends: Warriors & Peacemakers in Eastern Yorubaland (1877-1893), chronicles the lives of some of the principal players in that historic struggle.They were representatives of our ancestors who risked their lives for the cause of freedom.Thousands of them fell on the battlefields and they have their final resting place in the forest of Imesi-Ile and the battle-grounds of Igbajo, Ile-Ife, Offa and other fronts of that war.
This book is a direct challenge to professional historians to sift through the myths and hearsays to give us authentic history of our people.
There are enough resources, both oral and evidential, to create credible and accessible narrations.It is instructive that the people of Okemesi, the prime-mover of the Ekitiparapo struggle under the leadership of Ishola Fabunmi the, deputy Supreme-Commander of the Ekitiparapo Forces, are working on a comprehensive compendium on Okemesi history.
A central part of it would be the telling of Okemesi participation in that historic struggle and the central role of Fabunmi.
Some historians have pondered why Yoruba people waged wars against themselves with such uncivil ferocity in the 19th Century, therefore swelling the market for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.As a consequence of that wars, millions of Yoruba descendants are now in the Western world and majority of them would never be able to trace their roots.
Their forebears were carted away as slaves. I have no doubt that every single town in Ekiti, Ijesha and Igbomina areas have representatives in the United States, Brazil and the Caribbean as a result of that nefarious slave trade. The truth was that the war was avoidable if only our forebears have exhibited greater understanding and statesmanship.
The consequences of that war remain with us till today, not just in the Diaspora, but also in our land. We have suffered the brunt and wore the scars; I hope we also have learnt the lessons.
When the Action Group crisis exploded in 1962, many analysts saw it as a re-enactment of the titanic struggle of the 19th Century with the supporters of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Ladoke Akintola pitched in battle on opposite divide. When the Ekitiparapo War ended, it brought in the British as colonial overlord. It was the first time the entire Yoruba nation would fall under foreign rule. When the AG crisis of the 1966 became stalemated, it was only the military coup of January 15, 1966 that ended it, but it brought in an era of military rule, the first time again since independence that the entire Yorubaland was again coming under the rule of unelected leaders. The consequences of both colonial rule and military rule are still with us.
The book gives us the colourful people who dominated the struggle for freedom by Ekiti people and their allies across Yorubaland. We have now moved into a new era. But we must not forget the lessons of the past. We need to know that the future of Ekitiland, and indeed of the Black race, would not be dominated by the men of prowess and muscular heroism. The frontier before us can only be conquered by knowledge and conscious embrace of intellectual power.
Our humanness, dignity and freedom can only be defended and consolidated if we have the capacity to compete on an intellectual level. It is when we have the capacity to build a strong economic base for Ekiti and Yorubaland, based on equity, justice, democratic values and shared prosperity, that we can hold our own in Nigeria and Africa.
This book is contributing to our knowledge of who we are. It is confirming to us and our descendants that we are indeed standing on the shoulders of giants.
We owe them a debt of gratitude.Thank you Femi Alufa for contributing to our knowledge about who we are.Self-knowledge is the foundation of true freedom. Femi Alufa has done us a good service. I recommend this book for the seekers of the truth.