Atiba Atobatele

Atiba is the salvage operation. The empire was gone, the old capital was abandoned, and the man who put a kingdom back together had been a bandit with a private army in a market town — which is the honest version, and the reference treatments give it without embarrassment. What he did that mattered was political rather than military: Ibadan had the soldiers and could have simply ignored him, and he talked Oluyole into taking the title of Bashorun under a nominal Alaafin instead of ruling in his own name. The office survives to the present because of that conversation. He is the son of Abiodun, which closes the arc: the last Alaafin who ruled, and the son who rebuilt the throne fifty years after him.

Parentage

• Abiodun

Domains

• kingship
• city founding
• statecraft

Sources

• Reference treatments of Atiba Atobatele's parentage, his rise at Ago, the founding of New Oyo and his settlement with Ibadan.