THE NATION
The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi has revealed that the Igbo tribe has a strong tie with the legendary and founder of Yoruba, Oduduwa.
Oba Ogunwusi lamented that there are many distorted fact about Africa history especially Yoruba history and migration of its people to the entire world.
Ooni, while speaking in his palace to unveil first of International Conference tagged ‘Ile-Ife and Yoruba Civilization: Nexus between Tradition and Modernity’, alongside foremost history professor, Siyan Oyeweso and his team, challenged them to research into deep tie of Yoruba with other tribes.
According to him, “There are so many facts not written down about the nexus of tradition and modernity, our oral tradition has been majorly unwritten down, and so many facts and figures are very distorted, for me, to build a legacy for a race, the entire ‘Karo O Jire’, also known as Yoruba people(Yoruba is our nickname), we are discovering every day that our history is deeper than what we have in various academic documents.
“But thank God for erudite professors, led by Siyan Oyeweso, we have been deliberating back and forth on documenting our history properly. On the second year on the throne, I went to Ghana and saw my brother King and a race, they said they are from Ife, I traced their family house to the Agaako compound. I saw a race between Ethiopia and Sudan, one of the largest races in that region, they call themselves sons and daughters of Oromiya, they told me that he came to defend them from the Afro-Asians when the entire Ethiopian was about to be invaded.
“Ethiopia is the only country in Africa that was not colonised. We traced back to Ife in Okerewe, they are a ruling house here. Same in Kenya, Uganda and I saw my brother Kings, they said they are very proud Luwo people. They said they came from Egypt, originally Kemet people, they walked across the Nile and settled in Egypt. They were the aboriginal Egyptian. They said from the place they normally get their kingship crown from, it is called ‘Ifa ri a wo’ which is now converted to Pharaoh, we have the linage in Ife till date.
They settled in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, they are our brothers, but our scholars and professors have only touched on the last dynasty in Ife.
He disclosed: “We are leading a team globally, so we are starting this academic Conference which will be a compendium, we will take our time, we do not want to make any mistakes, nobody has documented the three dynasties. Nobody will help us to document our history. Recently, the Igbo race, some of their scholars discovered their root here, we still have house of Igbo in this palace of Ooni, they have a strong link with the Obatala dynasty. These are thought provoking fact for our scholars and professors in the world.
