Why Ife Is Not Yoruba Land, It Belongs To The Igbos - Ooni And Prof Ade Obayemi

The Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi recently opened a longstanding debate about the relationship between the Igbo and the Yoruba, and did affirm that the Igbo were ancient inhabitants of Ife.The Ooni’s asserts that the ancient Igbo connections to Ife is still evident in the traditions preserved in the oral narratives of Ife itself, and in the extant lineages of the Igbo still present in their habitations inside the Ooni’s palace. The Igbo quarters are still present in Ife. What the Ooni brings to this debate is legitimacy, because Yoruba tradition confers the authority of national memory on the office of the Ooni.The Ooni in a sense validates the accounts of the eminent Nigerian historian and anthropologist, the late Professor Ade Obayemi.Obayemi accounts for a first pavement of culture in what is now known as the cradle of Yoruba origin, but which was once originally settled by the Igbo led by Obatala.The Igbo were the original inhabitants of Ife and had installed, and practiced a culture based on their ancient Odinala religion of peace, of the divine rights of the individual and not of kings, of the protection and validation of the weak and infirm, of an artistic and creative value rather than of war and destruction. All these values are embodied in the myth of Obatala the sculptor and creative “demiurge” of current Yoruba mythology.And of course of he also models the value of the Republic over the monarchy. The Igbo had been marked by the multiplicity of their settlements in Ile-Ife which the Igbo know by its more ancient name as “Igbo-Omoku.” As a matter of fact, Obatala was a High Priest in the mold of the Igbo priesthood, like the Eze Nri, and aspects of this priestly function was absorbed by the Ooni who equally then also absorbed the monarchical order that replaced the Igbo republican order of the Obatala era.https://www.vanguardngr.com/2019/08/ooni-of-ife-and-the-igbo-yoruba-relationship/