Owo History and Relationship with Benin
(I will be posting different versions of the history including M.B Asara’s works. my input will be limited. If it’s too long, I will supply links where u can read it completely. Let’s read and have conversations. This was written by a non-indigene. Please I am not endorsing any work here. I only want us to have a meaningful discussion.
Recent excavations in western Nigeria conducted by the Department of Antiquities of the Government of Nigeria indicate that the town of Owo—situated between Ife and Benin—may provide long-sought clues to the puzzling interrelationships which link those two famous art centers. Though our analysis is not yet complete, the quality and quantity of the finds must now place Owo on the archaeological map of Nigeria together with such better-known sites as Nok, Ife, Igbo Ukwu and Benin.
Today, Owo is a fairly large town some seventy miles north of Benin and about one hundred miles east of Ife. Its culture is more Bini than Yoruba in character: the Olowo’s (i.e., king’s) regalia are similar to those of the Oba of Benin, many of the art forms parallel Bini work and most rituals and ceremonies have their counterparts in Benin City.
According to Bini tradition, Owo was at one time under the suzerainty of the Obas of Benin; the Owo people themselves maintain that they have never been conquered. However, whether Owo ever fell prey to conquest or not, it is clear in the town of today, and indeed in prehistoric times—as I hope to illustrate—that Owo was greatly influenced by Benin.
Though one of the more important Yoruba towns today, Owo is relatively obscure in recorded history, probably due to its location in the extreme eastern portion of Yorubaland. The events commemorated in the oral tradition of the western sector appear not to have been recorded there. For example, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries a series of wars was being fought between Dahomey on one hand, and the northern Yoruba kingdom of Oyo and the Egba city of Abeokuta on the other; there was also internal strife affecting Oyo, Abeokuta, Ibadan, ljesha and Ekiti. These events do not appear to have involved Owo and other eastern Yoruba towns.
The local Owo historian, Chief M. B. Ashara, says that the Owo people branched out frbm the main Yoruba stock about A.D. 1100, when they migrated from Ile-Ife, where, as the Yoruba believe, they and all mankind were created. The migration is said to have been led by one Ojugbelu (sometimes called Arere), youngest of the sixteen sons of Oduduwa, father of all the Yoruba people. According to tradition, Oduduwa came down to Ife from Egypt or the Sudan, or, following the Yoruba creation myth, descended from heaven. The Yoruba all agree that he settled Ile-Ife, and that from Ile-Ife all his sons migrated to found other Yoruba kingdoms.
Various reasons are given for these migrations. In the case of Ojugbelu, it is said that Oduduwa forgot to mention him in his will because the son was away on a hunting expedition at the time the will was made. When Ojugbelu returned, he decided to leave Ile-Ife accompanied by twelve warrior chiefs and other followers. The party first settled at Ujin before moving on to Upafa, near Idanre. At Upafa, Ojugbelu died and leadership of the party fell to his eldest son, Imade.
Because of frequent attacks on their colony by earlier settlers, and because of constant threat from thunder and lightning, Imade led his people from Upafa—stopping first at Oke-Imade, a hill five miles southwest of the present town of Owoand eventually moving on to another hill, OkeAsegbo, where they either drove out the indigenous people, the Efene, or absorbed them into the new kingdom.
