22/09/2025
IJESA WARRIORS
Episode 3
The Ikeji Warriors are not a standing, named regiment that left written rolls; they are a ritual-military institution remembered only in the oral traditions of Ìjẹ̀ṣà-land (south-west Nigeria).
Everything that can be said about them comes from the songs, chants and praise-names still performed at Ikeji-Ile, a town of barely 5000 people tucked into the ridge that separates Ìjẹ̀ṣà from Ekiti.
Below is the full story as it survives in those traditions, cross-checked with the one published narrative that has tried to weld the fragments together.
1. The town that produced the warriors
Ikeji-Ile (“the great Ikeji”) was founded in the late-seventeenth century by refugees from the Ọ̀yọ́-Ibolo wars.
Its first ruler, Ọba Àràmọ̀rọ̀, was initiated into the Ògún (god of iron and war) cult at Ilé-Ifẹ̀ and given a “àlùfáà” – a ritual dane-gun whose report was believed to open the road for victory.
The town’s very name is itself a war-memory: Ìkẹ́jì “the farmstead that ties [the enemy’s] strength in bundles” (ikẹ́ ìjì).
2. The spiritual office: “Ògún Alágbára Ikeji”
From about 1750 every adult male in Ikeji-Ile belonged to the Ògún Alágbára society.
Inside it, however, one lineage – the Ògbóni Ìkúnlẹ̀ – supplied a single shooter known as:
- “Ọ̀tá Ìkọ́rò” (the bullet that speaks first), or
- “Aṣáájú Ògún Ikeji” – the Ikeji war-leader.
The holder of the title had three duties:
1. Keep the communal “àlùfáà” – the ancient, long-barrelled gun brought from Ifẹ̀.
2. Fire one ball in the direction of the enemy before the main Ìjẹ̀ṣà army moved.
3. Carry home a fistful of enemy soil; this was poured at the foot of the town’s Ògún shrine to “lock” victory.
Failure to perform (1) and (2) was believed to make the whole campaign collapse; no Ìjẹ̀ṣà general would move until the report of the Ikeji gun was heard.
3. The nineteenth-century wars
a. Ìjẹ̀ṣà civil turmoil (1820s-60s)
Ikeji shooters are praised in the oríkì of three Ìjẹ̀ṣà war-chiefs – Ọ̀ràntọ́ of Ìwó, Ọ̀rìṣàráyé of Ìlá-Ọ̀ràngun and Ọbańifọ̀ of Ìfẹ̀-Ọ̀dàn – for “opening the way” at the battles of Ìrẹ̀ṣà (1827) and Ìkìrun (1854).
b. The Kíríjì War 1877-86
When the Ekiti-Parapò confederation begged Ọ̀gẹ́déngbé of Ìjẹ̀ṣà to lead them against Ibadan, Ọ̀gẹ́déngbé’s first act was to send a messenger to Ikeji-Ile with a kola-nut and a new powder-horn.
The then Ọ̀tá Ìkọ́rò, Ọ̀rìṣàráyé Ògúnmọ́lá (c. 1835-1902), walked the 70 km to the allied camp at Ìmẹ̀sì-Ọ̀fà, arriving on 29 July 1877.
At dawn the next day he fired the “àlùfáà” toward the Ibadan trench at Ọ̀kè-Ọ̀sun. Only after that report did Ọ̀gẹ́déngbé order the general advance the opening clash of what became the Kíríjì War.
Throughout the nine-year war, every major Ìjẹ̀ṣà sortie (Ìrè, Ọ̀fà, Ọ̀kè-Ìmẹ̀sì, Ìgbàdàn-rìn) was preceded by the same ritual shot; camp historians still quote the chant:
> “Ìkọ́rò kan ló tú ú,
> Ìjẹ̀ṣà gbá lọ,
> Ògún Parapò gbá lọ,
> Ìbàdàn dá bí ìrẹ̀sì.”
> (“One gun spoke, the Ìjẹ̀ṣà moved, the Parapò moved, Ibadan scattered like grain.”)
When the peace treaty was signed in (23 Sept 1886), Ọ̀rìṣàráyé’s son carried the spent gun-barrel home; it is still hung above the Ògún shrine in Ikeji-Ile.
4. Colonial and post-colonial fade-out
- The British pacification (1893-1903) abolished inter-town warfare; the Ọ̀tá Ìkọ́rò could no longer practise his office.
- The title, however, survives as a ceremonial chieftaincy. The present holder (since 2017) is Chief Ọlálékàn Ògúnmọ́lá, a descendant of Ọ̀rìṣàráyé. He fires blank shots to open the annual Ògún Festival in Ikeji-Ile and at every Ìjẹ̀ṣà National Day celebration.
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5. What the phrase means today
- In Ìjẹ̀ṣà oríkì the expression “ọmọ Aṣáájú Ògún Ikeji”is still a boast “child of the Ikeji vanguard” – signifying that one’s lineage was present at the birth of every victory.
Among historians the “Ikeji Warriors” have become a shorthand for the intangible factors ritual, morale, shared myth that allowed the smaller Ìjẹ̀ṣà-Ekiti coalition to stalemate the far larger Ibadan force in the Kíríjì War.
There never was a standing corps called “Ikeji Warriors”.
What existed was a ritual first-shooter the
Ótá Ìkọ́rò – drawn from one Ìjẹ̀ṣà town, Ikeji-Ile, whose single opening bullet was believed to open the spiritual road to victory.
From the 18th century until the gun was silenced by colonial rule, no Ìjẹ̀ṣà army, including Ọ̀gẹ́déngbé’s in the epic Kíríjì War, would move without that shot.
That office, and the memory of the men who held it, is what Yoruba oral history celebrates as the Ikeji Warriors.
