This narrative reads like a vivid folktale stitched from later oral fragments and social-media retellings rather than a careful reading of the archival, archaeological and historical record. Below I trace the main points where the story collapses under evidence — showing what is demonstrably wrong, what is plausible oral memory, and where scholars and primary sources say something different. I do this as a continuous, literary rebuttal rather than a checklist, because the damage this sort of account does is to rewrite long, messy processes into one tidy fiction.
First, the central claim — that the royal title changed from “Oloyo” to “Alaafin” in 1837 as an invention of Atiba Atobatele — is simply false. The title Alaafin is far older than the nineteenth century. Historical tradition and the best-available syntheses of the Oyo polity locate the origin of the Alaafin title with Oranmiyan and the earliest days of the Oyo monarchy; Alaafin (literally the owner/master of the palace from ala + aafin) is the classic dynastic title for Oyo rulers long before the 1800s. The Oyo political vocabulary, including the Alaafin and the institutions that surround that office, are attested in both oral-historical compilations and modern historical syntheses; they are not a nineteenth-century innovation concocted by one refugee king. 
Second, the chronology the tale uses is confused and compresses distinct events into a single contrived drama. The terminal strokes against Old Oyo (Oyo-Ilé, “Katunga”) came in the 1820s–1830s through sustained military pressure (Ilorin, internal rebellion, Dahomey raids and general political disintegration), and the final military defeats that mark the end of Old Oyo’s imperial dominance happened before Atiba’s refoundation of a new court to the south. The last Alaafins who tried to hold the old capital — including Oluewu — are recorded as Alaafin in the contemporaneous and near-contemporary record; Oluewu’s fatal clash (and death at Ilorin) occurs in the mid-1830s and is often dated to c.1835, which is what made the old imperial center untenable. Atiba’s role is best understood as the leader who gathered a remnant, refounded a court at Ago-d’Oyo (the “new Oyo” or Oyo-Atiba) and kept the dynastic title and claim alive — he did not invent the title.  
Third, the story’s telling of how the palace-title and land claims were argued — “Eyìn lè ní ìlú yín sugbon emi ni mo laafin” as the linguistic origin for Alaafin — is a classic folk etymology. Linguistically and historically the compound Alaafin (ala + aafin) had already been the conventional royal title; the phrase offered in the narrative reads like a retrospective slogan created to justify a political settlement, not the origin of a title. Serious treatments of Yoruba institutional vocabulary treat Alaafin as an existing, entrenched title tied to the palace (aafin) and its ritual and political functions, not a verbal flourish invented in a negotiation with local Baales. The evidence points to institutional continuity of the Alaafin office (albeit reduced in power after the empire’s collapse), not a renaming episode in the 1830s.  
Fourth, the tale’s cast of local players — Soun of Ogbomoso, a hospitable Baale called Oja who dies mysteriously, Elebu the younger brother, a rival Oloja who refuses to accept Atiba — mixes plausible local memories with unverifiable embellishments. It is historically plausible and documented that Oyo refugees dispersed into the southern Yoruba towns (Ogbomoso, Ibadan, Ijaye, Abeokuta and the formation of Ago-d’Oyo among them) and that local chiefs and military leaders played large roles in subsequent politics. But the specific incidents in the narrative — the Soun refusing hospitality because the prince might usurp him; the sudden, mysterious deaths that conveniently remove rivals; the narrow phrase that becomes the etymology of Alaafin — are not substantiated in archival or archaeological records and do not appear in the careful secondary literature except as variants in late oral retellings and popular social-media posts. In short: plausible background (refugees, local hosts, shifting loyalties), implausible specificity (the neat conspiratorial deaths and the catchphrase-etymology).  
Fifth, there is abundant scholarly work showing that Atiba’s achievement was less the invention of a new office and more the political act of securing continuity. Atiba is widely recorded as the Alaafin of the new settlement in the 1830s (often dated 1837–1838 as the date when the new court became settled), and scholars emphasize his role in negotiating with rising powers such as Ibadan and Ijaye and in using patronage to keep Oyo identity alive. The idea that colonial officials later “wrote down” Alaafin because they found the title on the ground is a misreading: colonial records perpetuated what was already a dynastic title; colonial administrators did not invent Alaafin out of thin air. Atiba’s move southward and the founding of Ago-d’Oyo are recorded, but as a relocation and refoundation of an existing dynasty — not as a title-changing coup. 
Sixth, the narrative’s attraction to moral-drama and conspiracy is a sign of its provenance: many versions of this story are circulating on Facebook, TikTok and other recent platforms where oral fragments are sensationalized for clicks. Those posts are important for understanding popular memory, but they are not a substitute for cross-checking with primary documents, ethnographic collection, colonial administrative papers or university-press scholarship. If one balances oral variants against archival sources and archaeological data from Old Oyo (which show a medieval capital abandoned and a later refoundation southwards), the balance tips decisively away from the tidy “title creation” story and toward a far more complicated process of collapse, migration, contingent settlement and institutional preservation.  
Finally, the proper conclusion is twofold. One, read the popular account as a later, local narrative that makes sense of traumatic dislocation by turning it into a moral tale of scheming and language — that has value as folklore and memory, but not as history without independent corroboration. Two, when we place archaeology (ruins at Oyo-Ilé), contemporaneous reports and modern historical syntheses side by side, the documentary picture is clear: Oluewu and other late Alaafins belonged to the old dynastic sequence; Old Oyo fell in the 1820s–1830s; Atiba refounded the court at Ago-d’Oyo and called himself Alaafin in continuity with that long title; the name Alaafin predates the events in question and is not a 1837 neologism. The measured scholarly account — messy, contested, and rooted in institutional memory — is not as narratively neat as the social-media tale, but it is the version supported by the weight of evidence. 
By : Jide Adesina | 1stafrika.com
