RECONSTRUCTING CONTESTED HISTORIES USING INDIGENOUS CULTURE: THE IFE-MODAKEKE EXAMPLE (1830-2000).

Oyeniyi Bukola Adeyemi
Head, Department of History and Strategic Studies,
College of Humanities, Redeemer’s University, Mowe, Nigeria
Tel.: 234-0806-290-9894
Email: oyeniyib@run.edu.ng or oyeniyib@gmail.com

Abstract
Customs and traditions continue to be an invaluable source of information for historians of the African past. A vast amount of information and explanations on complex African issues can be found in these aspects of African culture. This paper deals with the Ife-Modakeke conflict, especially the determination of the main contending issue in the conflict i.e. the determination of whether Modakeke was established as a ward in Ile-Ife or a separate town entire of Ile-Ife.

It examines the function of Yoruba customs and traditions in the reconstruction of the intention of Ooni Abeweila, the Ife king that established Modakeke, and the various interpretations given his intentions during and after his reign. The paper analyzes the kind of information and explanations cultural practices like Ogun-Pipin, (inheritance sharing), Ile-Mimu, (division or sharing of lands among family members) Oko-Yiya, (division or sharing of farmland among family members), Ise-Yiya (division or sharing of occupation among family members), etc, could offer when the event that led to the establishment of Modakeke occurred, and in secondary sources, on the Ife-Modakeke conflicts of the later days.

Finally, the paper considers the kinds of questions historians must ask in order to make customs and traditions useful tools in explaining, reconstructing, and understanding a people's past.

AND

The Origin and Causes of the Ife-Modakeke Conflict: The Greed-Grievance Debate

Recently, the World Bank orchestrated the view that underlying most conflict in Africa is either the factors of grievance or those of greed. In fact, the institution’s opinionated that greed is likely to be the underlying cause of conflicts in the continent and not grievance. This view, to say the least, has generated heated debates. To some, the Bank goofed and was just seeking a way to evade the facts of African history. Others, based on empirical studies, have supported the Bank in its assertion that given a level of grievance, greed takes-over. In what has since been termed the (Collier-Hoeffler) CH model, this Bank puts forward an economic model of civil war and conflict that argues that it is not political and social grievance per se that leads to civil war and conflict in Africa, but rather, for given levels of grievance, it is the opportunity to organize and finance rebellion that determines if a civil war or conflict will occur or not. The determinants of such opportunity, in the model, are mainly economic.

Using oral, written and archival methods, this study, in part, tests the applicability of the CH model to the Ife-Modakeke conflict. The underlying aim is to elucidate on the thin line separating greed from grievance, especially in relation to contests over land, natural resources, and economic production. The study finds that both grievance and greed feature in the Ife-Modakeke conflict and that behind every claim of grievance, at least in the Ife-Modakeke conflict, greed or loot seeking dominates.

Keywords: ‘greed’; ‘grievance’; ‘loot-seeking’; and ‘justice-seeking’