Town located in northwest Ilaje in Ondo State. There is an Oil Palm estate of the Okitipupa Oil Palm Company Plc that was established in the 1960s in Igbisin[1]. Igbisin, also called Igbisin-Oloto is an Ikale clan founded when, in a disputed account, an aged man who was a distinguished Benin chief, Ojukunola Olura came from Egudu Benin to settle close to the Oloto River. While families on the Oloto line claim Oloto Iyarutan, a likely courtier in Benin palace, to be the originator of Igbisin, the Olura group contends Olura Ojukunola arrived even before Abodi, who is recognized in Ikale tradition as establishing many of Ikale dynasties including Igbisin’s. Historian Olu Bajowa wrote that Igbisin may have been one of the stops made by Abodi Jabado, the Benin prince who established Benin civilization throughout Ikale land, before settling at Ikoya. Oloto Iyarutan, he suggested, may have been defeated and killed due to the threat he portends to the authority of the Abodi.
While the two major accounts of Igbisin origin traces the migration of contending forbearers from Benin, it appears the motive is to ascribe its dynastic origin to higher political status. In one factional account, Olura Ojukunola led a group of migrants from Egudu Benin to Igbisin during the reign of Oba Eweka I. This group, it was asserted, was joined by the people of Chief Oloto Iyarutan who was killed by Abodi Tufewa, son of Abodi Jabado. The people of Oloto, it was said, superseded in number, hence the erroneous allusion of the town’s name as Igbisin-Oloto. A second and alternative account has Olura coming to Igbisin after Oloto who was titled Oloja had already been subdued by the Abodi. It was the Oloja’s descendant, Oloto Ohenrekun instead, who gave Olura a quarter to settle. His ancestor, named Ajibola Oloja was said to have founded Igbisin when he settled at the Oloto River with his people after accompanying the first Abodi, Jabado, to Ikale land. The third and final account has Olura Oukunola been accorded some status by the Oloto due to the former’s advanced age, hence the rotation of the town’s rulership between the Oloto and the Olura group. Historian Bajowa concluded the rotation could not have been agreed until a long period of acculturation. He wrote that Olura was the first to settle, before Oloto. The latter’s administrative dexterity, he explained, helped his own quarters blossom, increasing in population till it incorporated Olura’s older quarter.
