REV. SAMUEL JOHNSON,24TH JUNE 1846-29TH APRIL 1901.

                                                  He was an Anglican priest and historian of the Yoruba.He was born a re-captive creole in Freetown,Sierra leone.Johnson was an Omoba of the Oyo clan as a descendant of the Alaafin Abiodun of Oyo.He completed his education at the church missionary Society {cms} Training institute and sub-sequently faught during what became known as the Yoruba civil war.Johnson and Charles Philips,also of the CMS,arranged a ceasefire in 1886 and then a treaty that guaranteed the independence of the Ekiti towns.Ilorin refused to cease fighting and the war dragged on.In 1880,he became a deacon and in 1888 a priest .He was based in Oyo from 1881 onward and completed a work on Yoruba history in 1887.This event is said to have caused by him fearing that his people were losing their history,and  that they were beginning to know European history better.Ironically,this work was misplaced by his British publisher.After his death,his brother Dr Obadiah John recomplied and remote the book using the reverends notes as a guide.In 1921,he released it as a history of the yorubas from the earliest times to the beginning of the British protectorate.The book has since been likened to the rise and decline of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.