Historical Revisionism: Letter To Loye Akinlade Tunde

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Dear Loye Akinlade Tunde,
I am compelled to write you this letter in order to publicly challenge you to produce EVIDENCE of your pernicious claims about the Ìjèsà people. I am also piqued about your challenge of the authenticity of my Ìjèsàness, the best thing that has ever happened to me, insisting through implication that, like every Ìjèsà son and daughter, I am Ìjèbú. For this reason, I would not hold back in the deployment of appropriate language in this fireworks that you have lit.

I had challenged you to prove your claim that Ilésà, the political, social and economic capital of Ìjèsà land, is part of Ìjèbú land; that Ìjèsà is a fake identity; that the cognomen, "Obòkun" was "imaginary"; that there has never been an Ìjèsà Kingdom and that "IJESHA kingdom is a derogatory identity orchestrated as Traditional Dynasty by European Rogues!" You had posited that I wouldn't have a legitimate basis to challenge all these your flummeries and fustian tales.

My dear Loye Akinlade Tunde, I consider your request of me, to prove my identity as Ìjèsà, as an odious affront emanating from a discombobulated mind, swirling in the natatorium of consolidated ignorance. Your rendition of fictitious narratives from the fountain of fibs and fiction, and projecting such as facts of History without any reference, is a great disservice to History and posterity. It is a venture from which I seek to dissuade you.

Since you lacked the courtesy of learning the true History of Ìjèsà and your flagrant disrepect of an entire people, mendaciously baking bales of obloquy to assuage your odious personal ego, thus wittingly, bringing other honourable Ìjèbú sons and daughters into disrepute, as well as engineering an unwarranted antagonism between two groups of people who love and respect each other as members of the same race, you have to be checkmated.

On your Facebook page, you claimed to be the voice of omo'oba Onijebu (progeny of the owner of all known Ijebu land). You claimed that Ìjèsà is a fake identity created by one Major Reeve Tucker, the Colonial Administrator of Ife, to erase the Ìjèbú identity of the Ìjèsà. You also made several fatuous statements, that would recommend you for intellectual asylum after due professional psychiatric tests. These your crazy narratives, you had projected as facts of History and simply because I asked for the factual and referential elucidation of your claims, you are questioning the authenticity of my Ìjèsàness. That is preposterous and outrageous!

In your inebriating historical revisionism, you claimed audaciously that Ilésà is part of Ìjèbú land and "Ìjèsà Kingdom" is a creation of your much touted Major Tucker who was a Colonial Administrator in the 1890s. You wrote the following:

"IJESHA kingdom is a derogatory identity orchestrated as Traditional Dynasty by European Rogues! Before late 19th century, no ancient Towns have Ijesha attached to the identities untill Major WR REEVE TUCKER forcefully documented same on every Towns around."

Only a bastard would have the above lies written about his people by an untutored rabble-rouser like you, and let it go unchallenged. To you, there was nothing like Ìjèsà as a cognomen before the arrival of Major Tucker as Administrator of Ife at the tail end of 19th Century. In the books you have read, or stories you have been told, there was no Ìjèsà Kingdom before Major Tucker. In fact, you also claimed that "Ilesha was IJEBU land before white man stepped into our land."

Wooow! What a fallacy and travesty!
Asked to produce any evidence of these claims of yours, no matter how tenuous, rather you descended into obnoxious mortification, mystification and misinformation. You came up with fantabulous fantasy and fallacy, throwing into garbage, the entire History of Ìjèsà people, insulting, maligning and denigrating an entire people with your baleful vituperation that you characterised as "History." Evidently, sleeping and waking up on the wrong side of one's bed could have very serious psychological and emotional implications.

In your demagoguery, you made incendiary claim that the Ìjèsà had no History before 1861. That was the year the British annexed Lagos. To you, Ìjèsà had no History before 1884. That was the year the British established the Oil River Protectorate. Other European powers acknowledged Britain's dominance over the area in the 1884/85 Berlin Conference summoned by Otto von Bismarck. To you, Ìjèsà people had no History before this date until Major Tucker landed in 1890s!

My dear Loye Akinlade Tunde, of your own volition, you have repeatedly attested to your own complicated ignorance of History which you have been parading to you readers as knowledge. Your condescension noting that, for me to have a legitimate right to challenge your falsehood and Historical denseness, I must first prove my authenticity as an Ìjèsà, is to say the least, irritating. This, to me, is the first red flag of your flailing historical illiteracy.

From your factory of fibs, you fabricated "Loja of Ilésà", something that has no factual basis in the History of the City or that of the Ìjèsà. You insinuated that the title of "Owá Obòkun" was a latter day manufacturing, probably by Major Tucker too! Then, with a nauseating temerity you claimed again as follows:

"I have repeatedly mentioned that before European came to our land, we only have Loja in Ilesha understand Onijebu Dynasty."

Though, the above seems very convoluted, it could only be surmised from this statement of yours, that there was no Owá Obòkun Àdìmúlà of Ìjèsà land before 1861. Or to give you more latitude, before 1800. The other deduction that could be made from this same malodorous statement is that Ilésà and by extension, all Ìjèsà land, was an Ìjèbú tributary! What nonsense!

Your failure to produce any evidence for this Historical heresy and aberration to enable productive intellectual engagement, showed that you should not be invested with any scintilla of seriousness. Instead of rising up to the challenge of producing evidence that Ìjèsà land is part of Ìjèbú land, you elevated into the cloud of inanities about Ìjèsà people and their History, seeking that your asininity be taken hook, line and sinker, as the "gospel truth."

You manifested pathological nescience by suggesting that the "Obòkun" in the Àdìmúlà's title was "imaginary" and preposterously asked in your response "Where did Owa of Ilesha derived the imaginary Obokun title?" From this question of yours, you are oblivious that Owá Obòkun Àdìmúlà is not of Ilésà City alone, but of all Ìjèsà land.

You have never heard of the relationship between Ajíbógun and Odùduwà and Òkánbí. You have never heard of his adventure to the sea. You further concretized the evidence of your ignorance by exuding obtuseness about the man called Ajibogun. You have no idea of how he arrived at Ìlemùré. You have never heard of how the Owaship transmuted to Ìlówá before Ilésà. You have not heard of Eréjà and its Ogboni as the autochthonous people of that Ilésà City in its infancy about a thousand years ago.

My dear Loye Akinlade Tunde, in edifying your sciolism about the Ìjèsà and Ilésà, you demonstrated that you has never heard about Owá Àtàkúmòsà (1526 - 1560), the greatest warrior king in Ìjèsà History whose feats were recorded almost 300 years before the Caucasians thought of colonialism. It was under him that the Ìjèsà reached it's apogee in terms of territorial extension which was maintained for hundreds of years until the coming of the intra-ethnic wars. Was Ilésà and Ìjèsà land under the Ìjèbú at that point in History, if at all, in any point in History? It was also 335 years before the advent of any Major Reeve Tucker or what have you, on the hallowed grounds of Ìjèsà land.

Your outlandish renditions of fallacies about the Ìjèsà is akin to the nauseating claim by Chief Adegoke Adelabu saying that the Ìjèbú are not Yorùbá, when he was being "politically correct" with his Ibadan people against Chief Obafemi Awolowo. This could not have been unconnected with Samuel Johnson's hollow theory implying that the Oyo are the real Yorùbá. That claim by Chief Adelabu like your tapestry of titilated tall tales are balderdash at its blazing best. They are indeed, in the famous words of Chief Adelabu himself, "a peculiar mess."

We must remind ourselves that before the cognomen "Yorùbá" for this race was generated or appropriated, this race had been known and referred to as "Eku" people. This was derived from the way greetings were and are still conducted among the race. The incontrovertible fact is that this is a race that had been linked ab initio with uniform tradition, language, institutions and same cosmological interpretations. For this, ease of movement was practicable all over the "Ekú Nation" and settlements became interwoven.

This, therefore, would not be a validation of the claim by some misguided elements of some sub-groups of ownership of some towns and villages without Historical attestation of conquest. The poisonous rendition of fatuous narratives by the likes of Loye Akinlade Tunde is dangerous on many fronts: (a) edification of falsehood (b) creating unnecessary antagonism among constituents of Yorùbá Nation (c) disrespect of Historical Facts (d) misleading the youth and those interested in genuine History of their people as well as Yorùbá Nation as a whole.

My dear Loye Akinlade Tunde, you must desist from spreading fatuous claims about people, the History of whom you are not familiar. Stop the ego trips that would poison the polity and create unwarranted antagonism. Weaving falsehoods together to create what you characterise as "History" is going to embarrass you.

History is important. In the course of rendering our History, we must refrain from fiction and faction. This is why I consider my letter to you to be important. You would never be allowed to change Ìjèsà History to assuage your egotism and egoism. For every lie you tell, you would be vigorously challenged and held accountable.

Thank you.
Remi Oyeyemi

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Articles by Remi Oyeyemi