The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi has stated that the Igbo people of Nigeria migrated from Ile-Ife, a town renowned to be the source of the Yoruba ethnic nationality.
Backing his claim, Ooni challenged academia in Nigerian universities to properly document the history of the Yoruba race rather than relying on jaundiced history.
The monarch put the challenge before the academia at his palace in Ile-Ife, while addressing newsmen ahead of an International Conference on ‘Ile-Ife and Yoruba Civilization: Nexus between Tradition and Modernity’.
The Ooni said the Yoruba race has about a quarter of its history documented, hence, the reason he is collaborating with select universities on the need to properly document the history of the race with a view to enhancing cohesion among the people globally.
“We have good evidence to believe that Igbo race has its roots here in Ile-Ife. There is Ile-Igbo here in the palace which was not a recent creation but has been existing here for decades.
“For this and many other reasons, I believe we need proper documentation of our history.
“We are not involving government in this project so that we can just place all the facts together, we must write our history properly and put things the right for the coming generations,” the Ooni said.
On his part, a renowned professor of history, Siyan Oyeweso, explained that the conference aims at bringing scholars together to discuss how to properly document the history of Yoruba, with focus on Ile-Ife as the source of the race.
