The old Oyo empire was a powerful force in the history of the Yoruba race. History has it that the empire was created by Oranmiyan, the grandson of Oduduwa,.
The empire was blessed with industrial brass making and as such amassed enormous wealth and military skill, the Oyo empire was very decentralized in nature and power was shared among several bodies to prevent authoritarianism, The paramount ruler (called Alaafin) oversees the affairs of the empire and he is being checkmated by the Kingmakers, (knwn as the Oyomesis), the Oyomesis were in turn checkmated by the Ogboni fraternities, who were reverend as being powerful and often described as the “mouthpiece of the gods”, their heads is called an ‘ifa priest’ and they are always consulted for spiritual solutions, strategies and prayers.
The Oyo empire also has the ‘Baales’ who were responsible for revenue generaton, during the second half of the century the empire grew stronger and bigger following the conquering of the Dahomey Kingdom.
The wealth started getting in the heads of the chiefs, they would often argued, quarrel and fight over dividends and supremacy. This soon led to the doom of the empire.
During the reign of Alaafin Abiodun, a bitter and bloody civilian war broke out and soon the central government of the empire crumbles when in 1793 the Aare Ona Kakanfo, in the name of Afonja in his quest for power began a series of attack on the northern part of the empire, these attacks resulted in trepidation among the people giving vassal states to take advantage of the situation and they rebelled against the authority of the Alaafin
The Aare Ona Kakanfo confided in his fulani friend, whom he had helped in ilorin, to help overthrow the Alaafin but unfortunately he was betrayed, Afonja was killed instead and the Old Oyo empire was eventually razed and demolished in 1896.
