By Tunde Oso

The Paramount Ruler of Ugbo Kingdom and the Olugbo of Ugbo land, Oba Dr. Frederick Obateru Akinruntan, has described a recent attempt to retrace Yoruba ancestral roots to Igbo civilization as “heresy.”

The monarch, in a statement signed by his Chief Press Secretary, Prince Ademibo Akingboye, said there is a need to stop this “heresy” now because there seems to be a systematic attempt to institutionalize it.

Oba Akinruntan, referring to some recent historical publications, said these works asserted without any shred of credible evidence that the Yoruba monarchy is built on Igbo spiritual systems.

According to him, the publications further argued that Oduduwa merely overthrew a peaceful Igbo order, and that modern Ife is a hybrid of stolen Igbo identity.

He said these submissions, which lacked any scientific or archaeological research evidence, are being peddled around—hence the urgent need to put a stop to them.

Setting the records straight and quoting two reputable historians, Professor Anthony Asiwaju and Professor Isola Olomola, who have researched the topic, the monarch said that contrary to what is being said, the pre-Ife settlers were actually the Ugbos and not the Igbos, as claimed by what he called “Jankara Historians.”

He stated that “Pre-Oduduwa Ife was also called Ugbomokun, the central market was Ugbo Akira, and the palace was Ule Ugbo. The Ifa corpus made reference to the reign of the Olugbo at Ife in its ‘kutukutu oba ugbo, osangangan obamakin’ which translates to ‘the king of Ugbo presided in the beginning, Obamakin came later.’

“Two of Nigeria’s foremost historians, Emeritus Professor Anthony Asiwaju and Professor Isola Olomola, have also dismissed the claim that the pre-Oduduwa inhabitants known as Ugbo — the group that was referred to in the Ikedu tradition — are the Igbo of eastern Nigeria.

“On the 11th of January, 2013, during a visit to the late Alaafin of Oyo, HRM Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi, to commiserate with him on the inferno that affected parts of his palace in Oyo, the Alaafin — a renowned repository of Yoruba history and culture — publicly affirmed that “the ancestors of the Olugbo were the first original settlers of ancient Ile-Ife.” This royal affirmation was widely reported in newspapers.”

Oba Akinruntan warned that if these “misleading falsehoods” are not immediately nipped in the bud, they could wreak havoc on the historical and spiritual significance of Ile-Ife as the cradle of Yoruba civilization and undermine the pivotal role of the Ugbo people of southwestern Nigeria in the history of pre-Oduduwa Ife and Yoruba origins.