Anthropos 79. 1984: 55-63
The Structure of Administration of Pre-Colonial
Idaisa
'Biodun Adediran
Since 1921 when the Reverend S. Johnson’s
description of the Oyo form of political adminis
tration was published (1921: 40-78), various
scholars have discussed the structure of adminis-
trationamong the Yoruba. Prominent among the
se are N.A.Fadipe (1970: 198-242), D.Forde
(1951: 19-24), and P.C. Lloyd (1954: 366-384,
1971). One major feature which emerges from all
these discussions is that the typical Yoruba
kingdom was one in which power was decentral
ized: the oba (king) sharing power with a host of
non-royal chiefs who were in fact the de facto
rulers of the state.
Yet as Lloyd pointed out (1971: 2), the nature
of Yoruba society was such that favoured the
centralization of power in the hands of the oba.
Indeed, by the time, European colonial rule began
at the turn of the 20th century, the Yoruba already
had traditions of rulers who had at their disposal
large resources of wealth and personal following,
but the best known examples of these were not as
powerful as rulers of the Edo (Ryder 1969) and
Fon (Argyle 1966), two neighbours of the Yoruba
m whose states power and political authority were
concentrated in the kings’ court.
One Yoruba state which developed a central-
ized administrative system comparable with
benin and Dahomey was Idaisa, a small little-
known kingdom in modern Republic of Benin.
The Idaisa case is very interesting to study because
°f the peculiar nature of the state. First, it was
niulti-ethnic in composition being inhabited by
'Biodun Adediran, Ph. D. (1980, Univ. of Ife, Nigeria);
Lecturer in History at the University of Ife. He specialises in
the pre-colonial history of Africa with particular reference to
the Yoruha-speaking people of West Africa. He has collected
0r al and ethnographic data widely among the Yoruba. He is
currently engaged in archival research as part of a project on
LLe pre-colonial history of the Yoruba.
three traditionally hostile but culturally homoge
nous peoples: the Fon, the Mahi, and the Yoruba.
Secondly, Idaisa was a federation of many semi-
autonomous states organized around important
settlements such as Ifita, Ado, Itagi, and Ilemon.
Ordinarily one would not expect consensus on
many issues nor the success of any attempt at
political centralization. Thirdly, the political
situation in the Idaisa region was so unsettled for
most of the period of the kingdom’s existence that
one becomes curious to know if and how it was
able to achieve political stability.
The Idaisa State
The kingdom of Idaisa was founded at the
beginning of the 18th century by a dynastic
group, the jagun, which claims the Egba region in
western Nigeria as the original source of its
migration (Palau-Marti 1957:199). The state grew
up from humble beginnings as a federation of
some pre-existing autonomous city-states of
which Yaka, Epo, and Ifita were probably the
earliest (Adediran 1982), Until c. 1789 it would
appear to have been a satellite state of the alaafin
of Oyo; for local traditions remember that until
then, young Idaisa princes had to be sent to
Oyo-Ile as royal hostages. However located in a
cultural frontier zone, Idaisa grew up into a
multi-ethnic state inhabited substantially by the
Mahi, the Fon, and the Yoruba. For the whole of
the 18th century and a greater part of the 19th, the
kingdom was subjected to continual attacks espe
cially from Oyo and Dahomey (Akinjogbin 1967;
Law 1977). This and the rugged topography of the
Idaisa region made it difficult for the kingdom to
extend farther than the precincts of the pre-
dynastic settlements which accepted the over
lordship of the jagun dynastic group at the