14 Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba Land

Below are the Kakanfos who have ever held office in Yorubaland:

1. Kokoro Gangan of Iwoye
2. Oyatope of Iwoye
3. Oyabi of Ajase
4. Adeta of Jabata
5. Oku of Jabata
6. Afonja l’aiya l’oko of Ilorin
7. Toyeje of Ogbomoso
8. Edun of Gbogun
9. Amepo of Abemo
10. Kurunmi of Ijaye
11. Ojo Aburumaku of Ogbomoso (son of Toyeje)
12. Latoosa of Ibadan
13. Ladoke Akintola – Ogbomoso
14. Kashimawo Abiola – Abeokuta  (the last to hold office).

Kakanfo’s head the traditional Yoruba army and they are never created in Oyo, the political capital. Incidentally, nearly all of them were connected with disturbances in Yorubaland.

Afonja L’aiya L’oko (the brave one with the spear) lost Ilorin, which was founded by his great grandfather, Laderin, a great elephant hunter from Oyo. He lost the town to the Fulani’s he invited when he rebelled against the Alaafin around the early 1800s. Ilorin, a Yoruba town was thus taken over by Jihadists who turned it into an Emirate.

Kurunmi of Ijaye too was particularly famous. He and his people in Ijaye withstood the Ibadan-led coalition that sacked the town making most of the survivors flee to Abeokuta. Ijaye fought till Kurunmi breathed his last. Having lost two of his sons in the war, he ended it like a Kakanfo.

Of all the Kakanfos, only Ojo Aburumaku did not fight a major war. He however fomented a civil war at Ogbomoso and as a tested general, he had no difficulty repressing it.

Iyanda Latosoa of Ibadan led the Ibadan army and his own private army into the Kiriji or Ekitiparapo War that shook Yorubaland for 16 years. Latoosa eventually died of a broken heart during the war. As he had predicted that by the time the Ekitparapo War would end, “there would be no more war in Yoruba land”, inter-tribal war ended with his era as Aare Ona Kakanfo.

Latoosa was succeeded by Samuel Ladoke Akintola, the third Ogbomoso man to be Kakanfo. With his death, another ear also ended in Yoruba History. He was killed in the January 15, 1966 coup that heralded series of military governments in Nigeria.

Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, the 14^thKakanfo was overwhelmingly voted for in a presidential election that was agreed to be free and fair. He would however not be President. He died in detention, fighting to actualize his mandate; one of his wives was assassinated in the heat of the legal tussle to actualize the mandate.