Nelson Fashina

Nelson Fashina

In recent times, both social media commentators, historians and pseudo-historians have engaged different interpretive outlooks and perspectives upon the historical relationship between Yoruba and Benin. Both scholar-historians with genuine research evidence and ordinary lay historians who barely rely on their imaginative drives to configure history have locked horns on the historical truths and facts about the cultural affiliations between Yoruba and Benin, especially the eastern Yoruba bloc. In this essay, I will explore the historical sources of cultural similarities and socio-linguistic interferences between Owo and Benin.

The cultural influence between Benin and the Owo Kingdom only came during the reign of Olowo Osogboye, an Owo crown prince who was born to Olowo Omaro by a Benin princess.

Historical journals, books and oral historiographic research agree that Kabiyesi Olowo Omaro had only one son, Prince Osogboye. Due to the Oba’s fear of Palace intrigues which might endanger the life of his only son, he sent Prince Osogboye to his maternal home, Benin, to live there with his mother’s lineage. Thus, Osogboye grew up in Benin.  He spoke only the Benin language and was immersed in Benin culture and tradition because he grew up there. After the death and transition of Kabiyesi Olowo Omaro, Owo people did not recognise the suitability of Prince Osogboye to ascend the throne. In fact, Osogboye had almost been forgotten as a true and existing prince of Owo Kingdom. The kingmakers had installed several princes on the throne of Owo Kingdom, but they died mysteriously in succession, because the IFA Oracle was not consulted to give them guidance on the choice of Obaship. Now, after a dark period of successive deaths of several Olowos, the kingmakers consulted the IFA Oracle. The oracle mandated Owo people to fetch Osogboye from Benin, his maternal home and bring him to succeed his father as the Olowo of Owo ancient Kingdom. Owo people who had initially resisted the idea of bringing Prince Osogboye to become the king later complied because all the kings installed to succeed Olowo Omaro died in quick succession within a short time. This forced the Owo people to send emissaries to Benin to fetch Prince Osogboye and to crown him as the Olowo of Owo Kingdom. Initially, the Benin people did not trust the sincerity and mission of Owo people in the bid to bring their maternal prince to his father’s paternal throne in Owo. They feared that the tragedy that struck about a dozen kings who died in quick succession might also befall their maternal son, Prince Osogboye. Therefore, they equipped prince Osogboye with hundreds of men, women and slaves from Benin who accompanied him to Owo in preparation for the latter’s coronation as the Olowo of Owo Kingdom.

No sooner than Osogboye was enthroned, he opened Owo borders to the influx of Benin people in trade, commerce, culture, customs and tradition. Owo people, being also characteristically receptive to strangers, accommodated the Benin traders and artisans with an open mind. Soon Osogboye, the maternally born Owo prince who became the Olowo, began to introduce Benin street names, chieftaincy titles and traditions to the indigenous Ile Ife culture matrix that the Owo people brought from Ile Ife under the first Owo King Ojugbelu. This cultural intermingling of Owo-Yoruba cultures with the Benin alternative culture, as introduced by the Olowo Osogboye, later created a linguistic interference of Owo-Yoruba and the Benin language.

The cultural and linguistic interactions between  Owo and Benin over the centuries have produced a miscegenation of Owo-Yoruba dialect, which was influenced by the phonetic and phonological features of the Benin language. All these are the key factors that caused a resemblance between Owo and Benin cultures in terms of art of chieftaincy, street names and pronunciation of Yoruba nouns that have glottal fricatives, such Owo/Ogho, Olowo/Ologho, and the replacement  of such front vowels as /i/ with /u/, as in Ile/ uli/ iwa/uwa/, etc. In Owo dialect of Yoruba, Edo is pronounced as /Ado/. And this reference to Edo as Ado is prominent among most of the Yoruba dialect sociolinguistic communities. The linguistic interference of Benin and Owo led to the unique variety of Yoruba dialect that is spoken today in Owo  (in contemporary history), and it is known as “Osogboye” language. It is a playful reference to the fact that  Prince Osogboye could barely speak the Yoruba language, therefore, the kind of ruptures of Edo and Yoruba that he spoke was sociolinguistically described as “Osogboye”. Thus, in various humorous social references in Owo today, people do say:

Bi oo gbo (ede) Owo

Wa saa gbo Osogboye

( If you’re not proficient in Owo/Yoruba language, you can at least speak Osogboye). Osogboye is a hilarious reference to the Osogboye’s linguistic malapropism of Owo/Yoruba and Edo language –  an adulterated form of Edo/Yoruba dialectal variety.

One of the armchair historical fallacies often fabricated by politically motivated accounts, nowadays, is that the Benin  people waged an expansionist war on Owo and defeated Owo. This is contrary to the historical truth that resonates in Owo Kingdom’s folkloric aphorism and festival song, that

_Ado gbo’gun wo’gho

Ogho yi o p’Ado o

O mu le iba re so’gun ja ooo._

_Ee  suon, ee suon

Ero Ado me i suon tenren44 reen…_

It is a common ground historical fact that the Benin/Owo war took place during the reign of Kabiyesi Olowo Aghagunghaye – a name that is not only phonoaesthetically grandiloquent, but also semantically fearful – meaning a warrior who confounds both the warriors and their  reasoning faculties. The battle was so severe that Owo people dug deep  trenches around the town’s border areas amidst a provoked  serious battle in the dead of the night, whereby the Edo warriors fell into the trenches and were mercilessly discomfited, massacred and defeated using tact and superior war amulets and Intelligences. Consequent upon Owo’s defeat of the Benin warriors, hundreds of  prisoners of war amongst the Benin people were captured and held hostages as slaves until negotiated ransoms were paid to the Olowo of Owo by their principals.

Even though historians today have come to believe that Owo culture is the borderline culture between Benin and Ile Ife cultures, the historical reasons for Owo and Benin cultural affinities were hinged on the fact that Owo artisans, sculptors, drum makers, and weavers of linen cloths, etc displayed ingenious skills that made their products superior and much more valuable as an  artistry of international market. Another indisputable historical evidence of superior civilization of Owo peoples was the massively available  elephant ivory l, tusk and others like hides and skins of animals which were the produce from the great tradition of hunting in Owo. It is on archival records that the first hunter in Africa to catch an elephant alive originated from Owo. This accounted for the reason why the guild of hunters from Owo were so honoured to have received a significant handshake of the representative of Her Majesty the Queen of England, emperor of the British Empire when the live elephant was commissioned to the University College, Ibadan zoo, in 1953.

*Prof. Nelson O. Fashina

University of Ibadan, Ibadan