Abejoye

Abejoye (also Abejioye or Abojioye) is the name given in Itsekiri royal lists to a 17th-century Olu of Warri. The current Warri palace chronology counts him as the tenth Olu, dates his reign to 1674–1700, and calls him Louis or Dom Luigi. It says that he succeeded his father, Omoluyiri, and was in turn succeeded by his son, Akenjoye.^[1]

The dates and Christian name attached to Abejoye vary among published reconstructions. William Moore's 1936 royal tree also lists Abojioye as the tenth Olu, but places Omoluyere before Oyenakpagha and gives no dates or Christian name for Abojioye.^[2]: 23 Historian Jorge Fonseca instead identifies Abejoye with Dom Matias, the ruler documented during a Capuchin mission of 1656–1660 and in a 1673 appeal to Portugal.^{[3]: 134–136} The palace list assigns the name Matias to Omoluyiri instead. Events recorded under that Portuguese name can therefore be connected to Abejoye only with this disagreement made explicit.

The palace uses the spellings Abejoye and Abejioye, while Moore printed Abojioye.^[1][2]: 23 Moore said that the activities of most early Olus had been forgotten and that even the surviving traditions about a small number of them were meagre. His sequence around Abejoye is Omoluyere, Oyenakpagha, Abojioye and Akenjioye, differing from the palace sequence of Oyenakpagha, Omoluyiri, Abejoye and Akenjoye.^[2]: 23 A 2022 study by Allegra Ayida, following Moore's account of the succession, likewise places Omoluyere among the claimants immediately after Atuwatse's death and before Oyenakpagha's accession.^{[4]: 42–43}

Anthropologist P. C. Lloyd found that little was known about the Olus who reigned before the mid-18th century. He noted discrepancies between two king lists available by the 1950s and reported that most elders could not name more than half of the earlier rulers. Lloyd suggested that this loss of names may partly reflect a ritual practice in which past Olus were invoked collectively rather than individually.^[5]: 192

Fonseca's reconstruction lists Omoluyere and Abejoye as successive 17th-century rulers, identifies Abejoye as Dom Matias, and identifies Akenjoye as Dom Ludovico Domingos, with an approximate reign of 1675–1709.^[3]: 136 The palace also associates Akenjoye with Dom Ludivico Domingo, but dates his reign to 1701–1709.^[1] Joseph Kenny's study of the missionary evidence emphasises that the accounts are difficult to reconcile. Kenny identifies the Olu documented in 1690 as Lewis II and infers that a deceased elder brother had been Lewis I, but he does not give that elder brother an Itsekiri throne name.^[6]

The principal narrative about Dom Matias was written by the Capuchin Bonaventura da Firenze, who worked in Warri in the late 1650s. Bonaventura wrote that the previous Olu's Portuguese wife died in childbirth together with her child, after which the king had four sons and four daughters by African women. The eldest son, Matthias, was seven or eight when his father died. Court officials left the royal title to the boy but governed for nine years, transferring full authority to him when he was about eighteen.^[7][6]

Bonaventura was unsure whether the former ruler's name had been Antonio or David. Kenny consequently sets out three possible reconstructions: Matias may have been the same person as the Antonio Domingos reported as Olu in 1644; Matias and Antonio may have been half-brothers and sons of Dom Domingos; or Matias may have been Antonio's son.^[6] Fonseca adopts the half-brother reconstruction, describing Matias and Antonio Domingos as sons of Dom Domingos by African and Portuguese mothers respectively, and associates Matias with Abejoye in his dynastic table.^{[3]: 134–136}

The Capuchins Angelo Maria da Ajaccio and Bonaventura da Firenze reached Warri in 1656. According to the missionary account, Matias received them favourably, arranged for the dilapidated church to be repaired, and allowed them to preach.^[6][8] The missionaries hoped that the king would set an example by entering a monogamous Christian marriage. Matias said that he would do so if a white wife could be found, as his father had married one. A 20-year-old woman living on São Tomé agreed to the marriage with the consent of her parents and was ceremonially received in Warri. Fonseca dates the marriage to 1659 or 1660.^{[6][7][3]: 134}

Conflict with Portuguese officials and traders prevented the mission from becoming permanent. The two Capuchins left Warri for São Tomé around the beginning of 1660, intending to seek reinforcements, but were imprisoned there and sent away. Although they were later cleared in Lisbon and given permission to return, neither resumed the Warri mission.^[6][8]

In October 1673 the Olu gave a visiting Franciscan a letter to the king of Portugal. He complained that no priest had come since Angelo Maria da Ajaccio's departure, asked for missionaries, and described the decline of Portuguese shipping to Warri. Fonseca attributes the appeal to Matias.^{[3]: 134–135 [6]}

No effective response followed until 1684. Fonseca states that Dom Ludovico Domingos was then Olu and identifies him with Akenjoye, not Abejoye.^{[3]: 135–136} A later mission produced a letter dated 16 January 1690 from an Olu called Lewis II, granting land for a Capuchin church and residence. The missionary Francesco da Monteleone described this ruler as young and said that he had inherited the wives of both his father and a deceased elder brother. Kenny labels the brother Lewis I and considers the two brothers likely sons of Matias or of the ruler called Domingos II in a suspect 1653 letter.^[6] These records establish a change of ruler between the 1673 appeal and the 1680s, but the surviving sources do not produce a single, uncontested match between the Portuguese names and the Itsekiri king lists.