The Egba leader Sodeke founded Abeokuta around 1830 as a settlement for a group of refugees from the collapse of the Oyo Kingdom. Abeokuta translates as “under the rocks,” or “refuge among rocks,” and refers to the city's location on the craggy east bank of the Ogun River. The early city comprised four Egba subgroups, the Ake, Gbagura, Oke-Ona, and Owu, each in a separate ward. (The Egba are themselves a subgroup of the Yoruba.) In the 1840s missionaries and freed Egba slaves introduced Christianity and secular European influences to Abeokuta. The subsequent arrival of Sierra Leone Creoles further diversified the town.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Abeokutans warred with the neighboring kingdom of Dahomey (in present-day Benin) and then with Ibadan. Abeokuta maintained an alliance with Great Britain during this war and the later Yoruba civil wars (1877–1893 Consequently when Great Britain asserted its control ...
