Osifekunde of Ijebu (born c. 1795) occupies a unique place in the history of West Africa and the wider Atlantic world. His personal testimony—recorded in Paris in 1838—offers one of the earliest detailed European-language accounts of Yorubaland before British colonial rule, while illuminating the operations of the 19th-century transatlantic slave trade.
Early Life in Ijebu
Osifekunde was born around 1795 in Ijebu-Ode, a key Yoruba kingdom in what is now Ogun State, Nigeria. At the time, Ijebu controlled a prosperous trade corridor linking the interior Yoruba states with the Niger Delta ports, making it a strategic node in regional commerce.
His later testimony, carefully recorded by French geographer Pascal d’Avezac-Macaya, described:
Political organisation—the authority of the Awujale (paramount ruler) and the council of chiefs.
Economic life—busy market centres and long-distance trading routes.
Religion and culture—traditional festivals and Yoruba spiritual practices that pre-dated large-scale European colonial intrusion.
These recollections provide historians with a rare insider’s view of pre-colonial Yoruba society.
Capture and Enslavement
As a young man, Osifekunde travelled toward the Niger Delta on a trading journey. Sources differ slightly on the details: some suggest he was tricked or kidnapped by Ijaw raiders, others that he was seized outright by pirates active in the slave trade.
He was sold to Portuguese slave traders and transported across the Atlantic to Brazil, which by the early 19th century had become the largest importer of enslaved Africans. Enslaved in Rio de Janeiro under a Brazilian master sometimes recorded as M. Ferreira, Osifekunde experienced the harsh realities of the Atlantic slave economy decades after Britain and other European powers had officially outlawed the trade.
Journey to Paris and Meeting with Pascal d’Avezac
Fate intervened when his Brazilian master travelled to Paris and brought Osifekunde along as a servant. In 1838, he met Pascal d’Avezac-Macaya, a French geographer and ethnographer keen to document African societies.
Recognising the rarity of a first-hand African perspective, d’Avezac recorded Osifekunde’s detailed oral account of Yoruba geography, politics and culture, and even commissioned a plaster life mask of him.
The mask—later held at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and displayed in the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art—remains a striking physical record of this encounter.
D’Avezac presented Osifekunde’s narrative to the Société de Géographie de Paris in 1841, giving European scholars unprecedented direct testimony of West African society from an African source.
Contributions to Knowledge of Yorubaland
Osifekunde’s recollections went beyond cultural customs:
Geography and trade routes—he mapped major Yoruba towns, described travel times, and explained trade connections from the interior to coastal markets.
Political economy—his observations revealed the Ijebu’s role in controlling access between the hinterland and Atlantic ports.
Such details made his account an invaluable primary source for historians and geographers of the 19th century and remain essential for modern scholars of Yoruba history.
Legacy
Osifekunde’s life story links three continents—Africa, South America and Europe—and personifies the far-reaching networks of the Atlantic slave trade. His ability to recall the complex social, political and spiritual life of his homeland decades after enslavement demonstrates the resilience of cultural memory among the African diaspora.
Today, both his published narrative and his life mask stand as rare, powerful reminders of the human stories behind global historical forces. Modern Yoruba studies and historians of slavery continue to draw on his testimony as a direct African voice in an era when most ethnographic records were filtered through European traders or missionaries.
Sources
National Museum of African Art (Smithsonian Institution), “Life Mask of Osifekunde of Ijebu”, collection notes.
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