Okuku is a principal town of Odo-Otin district in Osun state, a small Yoruba town straggling briefly along the main road from Osogbo to Ofa, close to the semi Savannah end of the northernmost parts of Southwest Nigeria. Men being predominantly farmers, enliven the town towards the end of each year, after cocoa harvest, changing it from the town of old men, and traditionalists which it, for most part of the year seem like. A major campus of Osun State University is sited in this sleepy town.
Okuku was formed as a resettled town by survivors of the Ijesha Arara war in 1760 in which the former town, Akokin which was itself originated from Ile Ife was destroyed. Early in the 19th Century, when the Fulani began raiding southwards, all the towns formed around Okuku submitted to them, but in 1878 when Ibadan army inflicted a severe defeat on the Fulani in the Jalumi War, they all came under Ibadan protection. Trouble with the bigger Ilorin town forced people to take refuge together with the friendly Ibadan army at Ikirun until the peace charter by the British Governor, Carter, in 1893. A further attack by the Ilorin infantry led to the direct involvement of the Niger Company troops. Okuku was included as a part of the Ibadan province in the 1901 and 1904 agreements in which the province was subsumed in the limits of the protectorate of Lagos. By 1935, a railway station had been opened at Inisa, a satellite town, complementing the earlier established Okuku station used in transporting produce for export.
The most north easterly portion of the old Ibadan division has been known district and the head of the town, Olokuku was regarded as district head until the revision of the Native Authorities in 1934. This area, covering 75 square miles and having a population of 12,628 in the year, have 12 villages.
