QUEEN LUWOO GBAGIDI: The First And Only Female Ooni Of Ife In Yoruba History

Ile-Ife, a town in present day Osun State, Nigeria, has always been regarded as the cradle of the Yoruba race, thus any presiding Ooni (King) of Ile-Ife (also called Ife) holds a high place in the league of Yoruba traditional rulers.

More than 70% of Yoruba people do not know that Ife once had a female king and nearly half of that percentage were astonished by this fact because they know the Yoruba culture gives little and in most cases, no room for a woman to be crowned king.https://youtu.be/AFwpZcpAgw8

Ooni Luwoo (sometimes spelled as Luwo) was the 21st Ooni of Ife, a paramount traditional ruler of Ile Ife, the ancestral home of the Yorubas in the 10th century. She succeeded Ooni Giesi and was succeeded by Ooni Lumobi. Ooni Luwoo’s reign remains the only one by a female in Ife till date.

History has however not been kind to her as it was said that Queen Luwoo jeopardized all the chances of women ever ruling over Ile-Ife again.

The legacy of Ooni Luwoo

In some accounts, she is referred to as Lúwo Gbàgìdá, a descendant of Otaataa from Owode compound, Okerewe. She was said to have been married to Chief Ọbalọran of Ilode and became the mother of Adekola Telu, the founder of Iwo town.

She was the first and only female to take the crown as Ooni after the demise of Ooni Giesi.

Ooni Luwoo was a beautiful woman who took great pride in her physical appearance and that of her surroundings. For this reason, she put the whole town of Ife hard at work at keeping the whole town clean and beautiful — both men and women.

She was also known to commission the unique Yoruba custom of construction of decorative pavements and open-air courtyards paved with pottery shreds.

The streets of Ile-Ife were paved with quartz pebbles and broken pottery as punishment for anyone who committed an offence. The offenders were ordered to bake the clay, and afterwards use their bare hands to break it into pieces and then lay it on the floor for the queen to walk on.

She was so sophisticated and finicky that she refused to walk on the bare floor, and some of the hand-made clay tiles she walked on while she reigned are still available in parts of Ife and other parts of Yoruba land she visited while on the throne.

However, she was perceived as wicked and a terror to the Yoruba people and deemed “uncontrollable” and “high-handed” by the elders of the land.