The Ooni of Ile-Ife (Ọọ̀ni of Ilè-Ifẹ̀) is the traditional ruler of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ and the spiritual head of the Yoruba people. The Ooni dynasty existed before the reign of Oduduwa which historians have argued to have been between the 7th-9th centuries A.D. After the demise of Oduduwa and Ogun’s loss of the throne, Oduduwa's support base dispersed out of Ile-Ife. Another account, but not in tandem with existing evidences, states that Ogun purposely sent all Oduduwa's children on different journeys to effect Yoruba territory expansion. Whatever the case, after Oduduwa's short reign, Ọbàtálá re-emerged as the king of Ile-Ife and the throne was rotated between Obatala and Obalufon houses until the return of Oranmiyan who briefly interrupted the succession pattern. Popular history identifies Ooni Lajamisan to have been a son or grandson of Oranmiyan. Meanwhile Ife tradition remains unclear about his ancestry. Lajamisan is often said to have opened the modern Ife history. Prior to the 20th century, the succession pattern of the Ooni was fluid. However, with the modernity that came with colonialism, the succession pattern was structured to the existing four actual Ruling Houses, which were named from Ooni Lafogido, Ooni Osinkola, Ooni Ogboru and Ooni Giesi. The structure has been heavily critiqued for being influenced by politics, personal vendetta and obfuscation of history. For instance, while the first three were said to have been sons of Ooni Lajodogun, certain figures regarded as siblings of Ogboru have either been completely excluded or subsumed. The current Ooni is Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi Ojaja II (born October 17, 1974).

Various authors have various lists

The primary sources for the history of the Yoruba are from oral tradition. The oral traditions of Ile-Ife indicate that Obatala was an Ooni and is credited with the ownership of the Are (the Ife crown). Since there were no ceremonial recitations of the list of the Oonis (at burial or at crowning), there are in fact several oral traditions that have generated an unusual number of different written transcriptions. In what follows, #nn is the index of the Ooni in the A list (see table, column LA). Nevertheless, the existing literature have excised Oranfe and Obatala from the lists of the rulers of Ile-Ife.

Books and research papers

Sources for the 50 items A list Sources for the 50 items B list

Web sources

Influence on king making

The filling of the stool of a deceased Ooni of Ife is not a simple local affair as it may seem but has national ramifications. Since Ife is regarded as the cradle of the Yoruba, this town has always been the leading religious center of the Yoruba people. But other roles are also involved. Especially, the Ooni of Ife is often presented as the highest ranked Oba or, even more, as the natural chairman of the Council of Yoruba Chiefs. The rules to fill a vacant stool are the Chiefs Law Cap 25 Laws of Osun State (modified 2002). And the Declaration made in 1980 by the traditional Chiefs under Section 4(2) of this Chief Law. In 1957, the former Declaration recognised four ruling houses and established the following order of rotation: In 1977, references to locations in Ife were suppressed. And the January 1980 Declaration confirmed everything just before the death of Adesoji Aderemi. These families are tagged in column desc, as sourced from Vanguard for Lafog, Osink, Ogbor, Giesi. In 2015, it was the turn of the Giesi Family, as confirmed by the Ife kingmakers. Nevertheless: Finally, Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, from the Giesi house, was elected October 26, 2015.

Avoiding original research when consolidating the various lists

Consolidation at the price of the diacritics

The Yoruba language is written nowadays with an alphabet that uses many diacritic signs. But this alphabet was not strictly codified before being integrated as one of the components of the modern Pan-Nigerian alphabet (1981). Like for the McCune–Reischauer system for Korean, many authors of the West have used this alphabet with some laziness, omitting many of the diacritics for various reasons, or even ignoring all of them. But, while poor romanizations of Korean can be fixed by comparing with the hangul/hanja original text, this cannot be done with the Yoruba oral sources of the past. The romanizations of the proper nouns became dependent the pronunciation of a specific speaker and the skill of a specific transcriber, leading to large variations in spelling. Some examples are (diacritics removed): Also note that, in the aggregated table, differences that clearly come only from pronunciation have been ignored.

Consolidation at the price of the obvious discrepancies

Typographic issues

Printing fixes everything, even the typographic issues.

Remaining discrepancies

"At least, it can be said that the existence of numerous variants requires explanation, and an interpretation can be assessed according to how satisfactorily it accounts for their existence. The method might be described as one of reductio ad non absurdum."

Aggregated list