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The Identity and Provenance of the Forebears of the Ijebu: Reconsidering the Traditions
(Tai Solarin University of Education Press, 2022) Oduwobi, T.
This discourse is a critical appraisal of current historical traditions on the evolution of the Ijebu society. It notes that the general trend of modern scholarship on the subject has been to offer broad reconstructions solely within the traditional narrative framework. The present undertaking challenges the basic substance of the narrative through content analysis achieved by the use of documentary, anthropological, and linguistic evidence. The paper demonstrates that historical traditions as are current for the Ijebu are not to be understood at face value and that a much more fruitful process for historical explanation and interpretation is to determine the context in which the traditions are formulated or to which they apply. Thus, on one hand, the paper raises doubts over the historicity of characters claimed as the forebears of the Ijebu and their place of provenance, and on the other, it offers new constructs in shedding new light on early Ijebu history.