By Akinboboye Owoeye

Permit me to state that I am an interested party in the matter between Akure and Isinkan. My father and his forefathers were bona fide sons of Uro in Akure. When it was time for my father to take his first wife, my mother, he went to Ojijigogun street in Isinkan to marry Juliana, daughter of Ifaseye. Ifaseye, known as Aba Faseye, was the grandson of Obiri Alopo, who was the Olu Ode of Isinkan in his day.
I recently read an account on a social media handle named “Itan Akure”. For the purposes of this short essay, I will reproduce the relevant part of the post below:

Beginning of quote:
“One Mr. YinkaSalard Akinterinwa, who has turned himself into an emergency PRO in a matter that does not concern him, a family matter that will eventually be resolved anyway, posted the full judgement of the High Court in the case between the Deji of Akure and the Iralepo of Isinkan. There is a paragraph which reads:

“All N, R, W and X are very old historical records from the national archives buttressing the fact that Isinkan is an autonomous community very distinct from Akure. This court finds that Isinkan community has their own distinct community and they have their own land which extends up to Aponmu River and share boundary with Ilara-Mokin and other communities. It is very curious that the Claimant’s Counsel in his defence to Counter-Claim did not make any effort to controvert and challenge these documents. The Claimant’s Counsel put nothing forward to contradict the fact and the documents relating to Isinkan having existed as an autonomous community even long before the advent of Asodeboyede the primogenitor of the Akure people. The position of Courts when facts and document are not challenged by the other party is well-settled in Nigerian Law.”

If Isinkan shares boundaries with Oke-Aro, Aponmu, Ilara-Mokin and others, it means they own Gbogi, that was named after Deji Gbogi. Danjuma, Olokuta that Akure fought a legal battle over with Idanre before being victorious. Before you get to Ilara-Mokin, you will pass the ancient Mojere Market, known as Ilesha Garage. Aule, Ibule, even Ipogun where the Arakale lineage has been the Adapogun. The history of Ipogun even says the Deji gave them the land where they are when they arrived from Ile-Oluji. It means all these communities belong to Isikan.

I can see from all this that some people are behind this disunity in Akure land. You will never succeed. When the issue is finally settled, you will all be missing.”
End of quote.

I will address only a few issues relating to history and leave the rest to lawyers. I will state what I heard from my mother before her death, what I heard from my uncle, another direct descendant of Alopo, and what I heard from my father, the son of a warrior from Uro in Akure. I am saying this in the context of the unity promised at the last assembly of Akure-speaking communities. Unity can only succeed if we speak the truth. The Deji was the de facto convener of that assembly. The Iralepo and other Obas were there, and they all supported him.

Around 1972, when I was about 20 years old, I asked my mother why her street in Isinkan was named Ojijigogun yet had an ancient Esi Iralepo. My mother laughed and revealed to me that Ojijigogun was an Iralepo of Isinkan. Isinkan has had Iralepos who took the regnal names Ojijigogun and Ojiligogun. My mother mentioned several other past rulers of Isinkan who had Esi in their honour. Oligbogi (Oba Gbogi of Isinkan, rather than Oba Gbogi of Akure) had his Esi near Eselu in Isinkan. That is the place known as Gbogi today. Yes, the name Gbogi originated from Oligbogi, the Iralepo of Isinkan whose regnal name was Iralepo Elesobaye. He was the father of Aseso, who also later became an Iralepo, taking the regnal name Iralepo Agunlejika. And where does it get interesting? My uncle told me that Iralepo Oligbogi was the maternal grandfather of Adetimeyin, who became the Deji of Akure after the reign of Eleyogbute. Adetimeyin was a son of Atakumosa (Deji Adesoye), the first Oba of Akure to use the title ‘Deji’. Adetimeyin adopted his maternal grandfather’s popular name, Gbogi, as his regnal name in honour of a man he loved and admired. Years before him, his own father, Adesoye had adopted the name Atakumosa, in honour of his maternal great-grandfather, who was considered to have been the Oba of Ilesha at the time.

Meanwhile, Deji Gbogi is not the only Deji whose mother was a princess of the Iralepo of Isinkan. Ademuagun’s mother was a princess of an Iralepo, and her family still has land in Isinkan to this day. In fact, when Deji Ademuagun died in December 1973, he died in his mother’s house in Isinkan. What was the reaction of the Akure chiefs? They took umbrage at his having died in a foreign land! If a house barely 1 km beyond Imogun in Isinkan, at the very junction where Famoritade Bakery stood in the 1980s, was considered to be in a foreign land in 1973, at what point did Isinkan cease to be a foreign land and become a traditional part of Akure?

My father, whose ancestors fought fierce wars for Akure as Uro warriors, would later clear up all the doubts I had as an inquisitive young man. He said that the whole of Oke Aro, as well as its chiefs, prominent among whom was the Aro, a member of Iare in Akure, had previously been entirely under Isinkan’s suzerainty. How old are you in 2026? Do you have dependable and honest elders at home? Rather than publicising on social media reasons why we can never be united in Akure, why not take what you read from people like me to your elders for an unbiased examination? How will we achieve peace if we discount the rights of an entire community like Isinkan and seek to impose the hegemony of conquest upon it? I read a young man saying, “Iralepo is a chief of Deji”. How? Is that according to history? Is that according to tradition? When did that tradition begin? Apart from modern revisionist accounts, which old historical publications have you seen that affirm this claim?

So, what is the point? An unbiased understanding of our history will save us from the puffing and heehawing I see today everywhere, which reveal the immense gaps in knowledge, glaring errors and sheer ignorance of those who may be making life-and-death decisions on our behalf.

If you are a genuine seeker of peace for Akure and all Akure-speaking communities, and you are my age or in your seventies and retired, this is the time to speak up instead of waiting for things to get out of hand. When you were a child in Akure in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, did you ever hear of fights between Isinkan and Akure? Did you ever hear in the 1960s or 1970s that Akure took Dududu or Esibi to Isinkan? Did you ever hear that a Deji of Akure fought to install an Iralepo? Even Deji Adelegan, who coveted that role, limited his quest to secret correspondence between himself and the Akure local government; he did not pursue it openly as is now being done. While we all crave peace and unity, will these not remain mirages if we sidestep the truth and pretend that all is well?