Thanks my darling Bunmi 😘😘By bunmi_olunloyo via repostwhiz app: Happy birthday to this woman of… https://t.co/eynX2IVPNx— olufunke Akindele (@funkeakindele) August 24, 2015
The Olunloyo women remain the smartest in Nigeria. Beauty and Brains. Get ready as we celebrate our ancestor Yejide Olunloyo the first girl to go to school in Ibadan, Nigeria. Yejide Girls Grammar school is named after her and the school Mrs Folake Solanke, Nigerian First Ladies Agagu, Fashola, Olunloyo (My Mom), My aunt Late Mrs Peju Art Alade (Darey's mom) and many other prominent Nigerian women.
The school turns 60 this year. Anna Hindrerer. The first two children they received into their home were given them by a young war chief, Olunloyo. He committed his six year old daughter and four year old son, Yejide and Akinyele respectively, to the couple. Yejide insisted on returning home at the end of the first day with the missionaries and persuaded her younger brother to follow her back home, because she had been told that white people eat human beings at night. Akinyele, at first, followed her counsel but soon returned to the mission house while her sister passed the night with her parents. Yejide was only convinced of her safety with the missionary couple when she returned the following day and found her brother alive and well.
It is not certain why Olunloyo gave his children to these strangers in town, about whom many were still uncertain. It may not be possible to ascertain his motive, since he did not live long enough to commit himself to Christianity. However, he was deeply committed to the well being of the missionaries and did all that was within his capacity to see them fully settled in the town. He appears like one of those drawing close to the light of the gospel by degrees when death took him away in the battlefield while the couple was away to England between 1856 and 1857. He only had a foretaste of what conversion could mean when Akielle refused to participate in one of the family's traditional sacrifices after taking residence with the Hinderers. His quiet acquiescence in the face of his son's vehement refusal is the only evidence that a longer acquaintanceship with the mission might have led him in the way of the new faith. However this relationship is understood, Christian tradition in Ibadan today rightly recognizes his children, Yejide and Akinyele, as the first converts to Christianity in Ibadan as well as the first children to go to school.
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With files from Memories of Anna Hinderer
