Armies of Ibadan
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Armies of Ibadan In the olden days war campaigns were sent out every two years by the ALAFIN of Oyo to other countries in Yorubaland. Every man capable of fighting and carrying arms was obligated to serve in war, yet the law did not make it compulsory or enforce it; there never had been a standing army nor any trained soldiers anywhere in the country with the exceptions of Ibadan. The idea began to grow when certain Ibadan chiefs trained a number of their slaves solely for war. The young boys were formed into cadets to attend to the fighting men at the war front; thereby, aclamatizing them with the "horrors of war." The Armies of Ibadan fought many unforgettable wars and never lost a single one.
The Gbanamu War This was a war of aggression that was carried out against Ibadan by the Egbas, the Ijebus, the Owus, and the Erunmus. They were fighting to restore MAYE, a deposed Baale (king) of Ibadan to his throne. By forming a formidable alliance with the Ife towns of Ikire, Ipetumodu, Apomu and other towns in the vicinity, they managed to raise a very large army against Ibadan. Only KURUNMI, the generalisimo of Ijaye, allied himself with the Armies of Ibadan. Kurunmi arrived Ibadan on a Friday, which was sacred to the mostly Islamic Ibadan. Kurunmi urged and goaded the Armies of Ibadan to follow him onto the war front between Podo and Idi Esu on the way to Ijebu. This battle field would later be dubbed "Gbanamu" meaning 'grasping fire.' The Ibadan warriors balked and told Kurunmi that the fight should be postponed to the next day because Fridays were sacred to Islam. To which he (Kurunmi) said: "And so what? Fridays are inauspicious only to aggressors and not to us, the defenders of hearth and home. You 'yellow bellies'! Come on, let's go meet Maye and his cohorts." Of course, Kurunmi knew better than to call the Armies of Ibadan "yellow bellies" -- their reservation was purely due to a religious observance. Kurunmi was only joking. Anyway, the Ibadan warriors listened to him and they all went off to the battle field. It was such a bloody and decisive day! For the Ibadans it was a life and death struggle! The legend had it that while the enemy was properly equipped with guns and other munition, the Armies of Ibadan relied only on their swords and cutlasses. Soon it became a hand to hand combat "in which the swordsmen proved themselves a match for those with firearms/[by] Rushing upon their assailants, sword in hand, and grasping the barrel of the gun." Thus the battle was appropriately named "Gba'namu," (grasping fire). With unequal dexterity, using only swords and cutlasses, the Armies of Ibadan and their Ijaye allies dealt Maye and his allies a decisive blow. They were routed completely and Maye --the great fighter-- was seized by common soldiers. He was later beheaded alongside Degesin and Ogini, his Egba allied commanders.
REFERENCES: Iwe Itan Ibadan (A book on the History of Ibadan) by the late king of Ibadan, Isaac Babalola Akinyele & The History of the Yorubas From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorate by the late Rev. Samuel Johnson (Nigeria)
