The Ifole of 1867: Expulsion of the Missionaries
On October 13, 1867, Egba authorities expelled the European missionaries at Abeokuta and destroyed the mission press — a political response to British encroachment from Lagos.
Less than a decade after Lagos was annexed by Britain (1861), tensions between the Egba authorities at Abeokuta and the colonial government on the coast turned violent. The flashpoint was a perception that the European missionaries — closely associated with the CMS station at Ake — were acting as a fifth column for the Lagos Colony.
On October 13, 1867, an event remembered as the Ifole (Yoruba: "the breaking of houses") saw mission compounds ransacked, the printing press destroyed, and Townsend and other Europeans expelled from the town. Yoruba clergy, including those trained by Crowther, largely remained.
The Ifole did not end Christianity in Abeokuta — local Christians kept services going and the CMS returned in the following decades — but it marked the first major rejection of European mission control in Yorubaland, and forced a longer-term shift towards African-led church leadership.