Place name · Founding undated (guessed 12th-13th century) to present · Tradition
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Most towns remember a founding father. Iperu remembers a woman who sold boiled corn. Her market still carries her name, and the town still argues, cheerfully, about where its own name came from.
Iperu is a town in the Remo country of Ogun State, about five kilometres from Sagamu on the road to Ibadan. It sits on flat high ground, a table land, which a local history written for the Remo Voices Aloud site says no other Remo town shares. Its neighbours, Ogere, Ode Remo and Ilisan, are now so close that the writer expected them all to grow into one town within a few years.
Most towns in that history begin with a man. Iperu, unusually, begins with a woman. There are several accounts of how the town started. One says Iperu came off Ijebu Ode, as some historians say of Makun, Ogere, Isara and Ode Remo too. Another says it came off Epe, a town that is now part of Sagamu, though nobody gives the details. But the account the writer trusted most is about a woman named Akesan.
In that story, Akesan came from Oyo, the city of the Alaafin, and some say she was the daughter of one of its kings. A third version says she and her husband first left Ile-Ife, stayed a while in Oyo, then moved on. Either way, she and her husband Ajagbe wandered until they reached the site of Iperu and stopped. Nobody records that they met anyone already living there, or that they brought a crowd with them. They settled, and people came one after another to settle with them. That is how the town grew.
Ajagbe was a hunter and a farmer. The couple lived in a quarter called Ijesu, which still exists. Akesan sold boiled corn, and the spot where she sat to sell became a market. It is still a market, the only one in Iperu, and it is called Akesan Market. The writer, being an honest local historian, asks the obvious question: if she sold corn, who bought it? Perhaps, he suggests, there were a few people there after all, as there were when other Remo towns were founded.
Nobody knows when she came. There are no written records. The writer offers the twelfth or thirteenth century as a pure guess, and warns that it cannot be relied on.
All Yoruba names mean something, the writer says, and Iperu has more than one meaning on offer. He lists four.
The first is the best known. Close to where Akesan sat selling her corn, a palm tree had sunk into the ground, leaving a hole. The place where the palm tree sank, ibi ti ope ti ru, was shortened to Iperu. The writer is sceptical. A palm tree has fibrous roots, he points out, and that kind of root cannot make a palm tree sink.
The second is gentler. There were plenty of palm trees around her selling spot, so it was the place where palms flourished, ibi ti ope ru, and that too became Iperu.
The third ties the name to Epe in Sagamu. A piece of Epe broke off and started a new town, the writer explains, rather like a company opening a branch somewhere new and keeping its name. From Epe came Iperu. An Ifa verse, he notes, says Iperu will be greater than Epe, so the link cannot be ruled out.
The fourth is the homeliest of all. Akesan had an earthen pot she cooked her corn in. One day, worn out by age, the bottom of the pot caved in. In the Remo dialect, ape means pot and ru means caved in, and from ape ru came Iperu.
Which one is right? The writer will not say. The town has carried the name for centuries, he concludes, and it will stay Iperu as long as its people want it. Meanwhile, Akesan's name never fades. When an Iperu person is met outside the town, the writer says, people greet them with a praise line that begins "Akesan baale Oja", and they smile broadly to hear it.
Like other Yoruba towns, Iperu was not founded without asking Ifa. The reading, the writer says, was Idi meji, and it was full of good news: the village would grow into a big town; it would not lack the support of God and people; no enemy would hold it down; it would be greater than Epe of Sagamu; and Akesan Market would never be empty.
People did come. Settlers from near and far made Iperu home, and some became royalty. Two ruling houses, Agbonmagbe and Mogunsen, came from Egba settlers. One story says a handsome, friendly prince from Osile in Egbaland became king as the Mogunsen. Later a Mogunsen fell sick for a long time and came out of it with a yellow, fine skin, so people said he looked like crystal and nicknamed him Amororo, which became the house's name. Another house, Fibigbuwa, was shut out after one of its kings died of smallpox, which was seen as an abomination. Smallpox was believed to come from Obaluwaye, one of the most dreaded Yoruba gods, and people said "the king has taken away the king". That house has since been restored.
In 1926 Oba Owokolade Odoru became the first Iperu king to wear a beaded crown. It came from the Awujale of Ijebu Ode, and the community raised one thousand pounds to pay for it.
Iperu also had wars. The Egba attacked after the Ogere war of 1833 and were driven back with Ibadan's help. In 1862 Egba and Oyo forces attacked in what was called the Kutuje war and were beaten, and in 1864 Ibadan attacked and lost. Neighbours like Makun, Ogere and Isara fell in their wars, but Iperu, the writer says, was never sacked. Perhaps the Ifa reading was right after all. The corn seller's market is still open.
