ALARA, AJERO AND ORANGUN – THREE LEGENDARY YORUBA BROTHERS

THE ALARA, AJERO AND ORANGUN – THREE LEGENDARY YORUBA BROTHERS.

The Alara of Aramoko Ekiti, The Ajero of Ijero Ekiti and The Orangun Aga of Ila. These three Yoruba Obas are like triplets in the corpus of Yoruba history and philosophy, and they feature prominently in our songs, poems and proverbs. Whenever one is mentioned, the other two follow immediately after.
History from the three ancient Yoruba kingdoms tells us that all three Obas were born of the same womb to a woman often remembered as Ademiregun or ‘iwa’ and sired by Oduduwa Olofin Adimula. Alara is the eldest and Orangun is the youngest of the trio. All three princes left Ile Ife with followers to found their own kingdoms towards the northeasterly direction.

While the first two are prominent Ekiti Obas belonging to the class of Oba Alade Ekiti Merindinlogun (16 Crowned Kings of Ekiti), the later is a prominent Oba of the Igbomina.
The three were said to be the first students of Ifa philosophy and were taught by Agbonniregun till they became profiient in it. As such, nothing can be done in the Ifa corpus without the mention of these three.

Interestingly, in the past, descendants of these three prominent Obas would not have been able to see one another face to face as it was considered a taboo for Oduduwa descended kings to see one another and communicated through emissaries and messengers between their various kingdoms.