Abeokuta

Abeokuta, town, capital of Ogun state, southwestern Nigeria. It is situated on the east bank of the Ogun River, around a group of rocky outcroppings that rise above the surrounding wooded savanna. It lies on the main railway (1899) from Lagos, 48 miles (78 km) south, and on the older trunk road from Lagos to Ibadan; it also has road connections to Ilaro, Shagamu, Iseyin, and Kétou (Benin).

Abeokuta (“Refuge Among Rocks”) was founded about 1830 by Sodeke (Shodeke), a hunter and leader of the Egba refugees who fled from the disintegrating Oyo empire. The town was also settled by missionaries (in the 1840s) and by Sierra Leone Creoles, who later became prominent as missionaries and as businessmen. Abeokuta’s success as the capital of the Egba and as a link in the Lagos-Ibadan oil-palm trade led to wars with Dahomey (now Benin). In the battle at Abeokuta in 1851, the Egba, aided by the missionaries and armed by the British, defeated King Gezo’s Dahomeyan army (unique in the history of western Africa for its common practice of using women warriors). Another Dahomeyan attack was repulsed in 1864.

Troubles in the 1860s with the British in Lagos led the Egba to close the trade routes to the coast and to expel (1867) missionaries and European traders. After the Yoruba civil wars (1877–93), in which Abeokuta opposed Ibadan, the Egba alake (“king”) signed an alliance with the British governor, Sir Gilbert Carter, that recognized the independence of the Egba United Government (1893–1914). In 1914 the kingdom was incorporated into the newly amalgamated British Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. The Abeokuta riots of 1918 protested both the levying of taxes and the “indirect rule” policy of Lord Frederick Lugard, the British governor-general, which made the alake, formerly primus inter pares (“first among equals”), the supreme traditional leader to the detriment of the other quarter chiefs.

Modern Abeokuta is an agricultural trade centre (rice, yams, cassava, corn [maize], palm oil and kernels, cotton, fruits, vegetables, shea butter, and rubber) and an exporting point for cocoa, palm produce, fruits, and kola nuts. Rice and cotton were introduced by the missionaries in the 1850s, and cotton weaving and dyeing are now traditional crafts of the town. Abeokuta is the headquarters for the federal Ogun-Oshun River Basin Development Authority with programs to harness land and water resources for Lagos, Ogun, Osun, and Oyo states for rural development. Irrigation, food-processing, and electrification projects are included. Local industry is limited but now includes fruit-canning plants, a plastics factory, and sawmills. Near the town are the Aro granite quarries, which provide building materials for much of southern Nigeria, and a huge modern cement plant at Ewekoro.

Abeokuta was a walled town, and relics of the old wall still exist. Notable buildings include the Ake (the residence of the alake), Centenary Hall (1930), and several churches and mosques. Secondary schools and primary teachers’ colleges at Abeokuta are supplemented by the Federal University of Agriculture, which specializes in science, agriculture, and technology, and the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic. Pop. (2016 est.) urban agglom., 595,000.