ITAN ILU ELESU

The story of the city of Elesu: the founder of Elesu is called AYELANGBE, Ayanlagbe is from the Basorun Fajimi Compound in Oranyan – Ibadan. Ayelangbe is originally from Onikooko, in Ilora – just like all the descendants of Yerombi.

Ayelangbe is a warrior. Ayelangbe had a friend called Moje, who took Ayelangbe to Elesu.

Ayelangbe, as a warrior, was receiving a lot of guests in this town. Among these guests was a specific older man who comes to sit down in the town with a carving of Esu every week, as a result of this man sitting in the town every week. As a result of this, the identity of Elesu was given to the town since everyone started referring to the place as ‘The place where you will see a man with the Esu carving’.

All Ayelangbe’s children that were brought to Elesu died, as result of this, Ayelangbe married a daughter of the Esu carving man, the woman later had two children for Ayelangbe, one male and a female. The names of the children are, BANKESA is the name of the female and the male was called IFABUNMI.

But Ayelangbe decided to go back to Oranyan, to the house where other Yerombi descendants were. He took Bankesa, the female child, with him to Ibadan and left the male child, Ifabunmi, with the Elesu man. Ifabunmi was left with the mother’s family and he lived there for the rest of his life. After many years they started calling the town ELESU, because they were the ones who founded it.