Abeokuta - Town under rocks, (actually refuge amongst rocks) today a sea of corrugated iron roofed houses situated in the southwest of Nigeria is capital of the Federal State of Ogun. The town used to be a former place of refuge for slaves who escaped their own kings at the time when rivalling tribes fought one against another. Conquest and expulsions were rampant. Eventually a small number of Egbas under their leader, the hunter Sodeke, found shelter in a little village. Other groups of refugees also settled here. 
The refugees, who at that time found refuge in this village, called it due to its situation under gigantic rocks, Abeokuta (refuge among rocks). Those refugees formed little groups in which they reorganized their lives according to their tribes and families. Sodeke was recognized as their chief. 1830 - Abeokuta was founded and under Sodekes leadership, the small village developed into a town in which people of varying descent and tribes lived peacefully together. 
Chief Sodeke, acting Alake (king), died in January 1845. The first official Alake (Oba Okukenu) was elected in 1854 in Abeokuta.

The Methodist priest Thomas Birch Freeman visited Abeokuta in 1842 when approximately 50 000 inhabitants lived their.
Most of the the approx. 370 000 inhabitants of today's Abeokuta belong to the tribe of the Yorubas.
Abeokuta has a railway connection with Lagos and is used as a transfer trade centre of agricultural products of is surroundings such as cocoa, palm kernels and palm oil. Numerous factories have specialised in the dying of hand-woven textiles.

In the town on the banks of the holy river Ogun, towered over by gigantic rocks (town under the Rocks), is situated the Sacred Heart Hospital, a Catholic Mission Hospital, under the direction of German and Nigerian doctors and Irish nuns.
Father Jean Marie Coquard a Roman Catholique missionary from Alsace founded the Sacred Heart Hospital in 1895.
The leprosarium, which is a part of the hospital, still takes care of needy people of this region. Furthermore there is, since 1981, a department for tuberculosis patients with 120 beds, as well as a dental clinic and a part time eye clinic (once a week).
Since 1950 the Sacred Heart Hospital trains qualified nurses and midwifes, who work within and outside Nigeria. There are various facilities for doctors and pharmacists who wish to specialise.

Abeokuta is where Wole Soyinka, one of the greatest contemporary writers of Africa, was born, as well as the king of African beat Fela Kuti

...and my children were born here too.