Egba-Remo War 1861-1865

This was not the end of the matter. The Egba had supported Ijaye, and the Ijebu Remo had supported Ibadan. Remo lay on the most direct trade route from the coast to Ibadan. Egba attacked Remo, and Ibadan became directly involved because of its trading interests. Ikorodu, one of the Remo towns besieged by the Egba, is just north of Lagos, and the British became actively involved in the Yoruba wars for the first time. Governor Glover, one of the more aggressive administrators of the colony in the 19th century, had formed a view of the situation which successive governors were to share: that the Egba and/or the Ijebu were blocking the road to the interior and that this was the main issue in Yoruba politics. The wider political issues of the period, the struggle between Ibadan and the other states for supremacy, largely escaped them (Phillips, 1970). In Lagos, the administration was short of funds. It relied on customs dues and trade, and needed to keep the roads open. The merchants supported it at this stage, but the missions were still pro-Egba. Townsend was opposed to Glover's attempts to station a British viceconsul in Abeokuta, but his own influence in the town was on the wane. After some peculiar doubledealing, Glover expelled the Egba forces from their positions around Ikorodu by force in 1865, but failed to achieve either his political or his economic objectives. He merely antagonised the Egba, who were already worried by the British annexation of Lagos.

References

Yoruba Today.

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