Ibadan - City of Nigeria

Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, is the third largest city in Nigeria by population and the largest in geographical area. At independence, Ibadan was the largest and the most populous city in Nigeria and the third in Africa after Cairo and Johannesburg.

Ibadan came into existence when Lagelu, the Jagun of Ife and Yoruba's generalissimo, left Ile Ife with a handful of his people to found his own city, Eba Odan, which literally means 'between the forest and plains.' According to HRH Sir Isaac Babalola Akinyele, the late Olubadan of Ibadan, in his authoritative book on the history of Ibadan, Iwe Itan Ibadan, printed in 1911, the first city was destroyed due to an incident at an Egungun festival when an Egungun was accidentally disrobed and derisively mocked by women and children in an open marketplace full of people.

Lagelu was by now an old, frail man; he could not stop the destruction of his city, but he and some of his people survived the attack and fled to a nearby hill for sanctuary. On the hill they survived by eating oro fruit and snails; later, they cultivated the land and made corn and millets into pap meals known as oori or eko, which they ate with roasted snails. They improvised a bit by using the snail shells to drink the liquefied eko.

Ibadan was historically an Egba town. The Egba occupants were forced to leave the town and moved to present-day Abeokuta under the leadership of Sodeke when the surge of Oyo refugees flocked into the towns as an aftermath of the fall of Oyo Kingdom.

Ibadan grew into an impressive and sprawling urban center so much that by the end of 1829, Ibadan dominated the Yorùbá region militarily, politically and economically. The military sanctuary expanded even further when refugees began arriving in large numbers from northern Oyo following raids by Fulani warriors. After losing the northern portion of their region to the marauding Fulanis, many Oyo indigenes retreated deeper into the Ibadan environs. The Fulani Caliphate attempted to expand further into the southern region of modern-day Nigeria, but was decisively defeated by the armies of Ibadan in 1840.

The British also developed the academic infrastructure of the city. The first university to be set up in Nigeria was the University of Ibadan. It has the distinction of being one of the premier educational institutions in Africa. The Polytechnic Ibadan was the first technical institute and is considered to be the best in Nigeria. There are also numerous primary schools and secondary schools located in the city. Many of these schools are suffering due to lack of financial assistance.

In 1853, the first Europeans to settle in Ibadan, Reverend Hinderer and his wife, started Ibadan's first Western schools. They built churches and schools and the first two-storey building in Ibadan, which can still be found today at Kudeti. The first pupils to attend an elementary school in Ibadan were Yejide and Akinyele -- the two children of an Ibadan high chief.