These interviews were arranged by Alh. Saka Aleshinloye, Baba Isale of Ilorin, with the Magaji of Ago Oja. Alh. Saka Aleshinloye held one of the chiefly titles associated with the family of Afonja, pre-Fulani ruler of Ilorin. He had been a pioneer journalist in Nigeria and media adviser to successive military heads of state. My translator during these interviews was Suleiman Ajao, a resident of Okelele area of Ilorin Town, whom I had trained in interviewing. The interviews were conducted with the intention of improving a paper I had written based on colonial records by incorporating grassroots information. The amended paper was published as “Agriculture in Ilorin during the Precolonial and Colonial Periods,” Odu (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria), no. 30 (1986): 67‒97.

      Included here are the following: Much of the text of the interview in Ago Oja, about 30 July 1985; Discussion with the Baba Isale, 1 August 1985; Interview in Ago-Oja, 12 August 1985; Summary of information on extension workers, fertilisers, tractors. The notes presented here give a good impression of the extent to which one village in the dependent Metropolitan Districts had or had not gained from development efforts up to the 1980s.