Suleiman AbdulRahman AdebayoSidiq Sidikat AhmedAbdulbaki Abdulwaheed SholaAjayi Olalekan Raymond2026-01-072026-01-0720252408-6177https://uilspace.unilorin.edu.ng/handle/123456789/16876The use of charcoal (wooden coal) and firewood intensified worldwide since the Stone Age and Neolithic period. Its usage in ancient times symbolised one of the features of the world's social order. The abundance of wooden materials interfaces with the culture and traditions of the respective regions of the world. Varied intellects, knowledge, politics, and challenges of individual regional people necessitated the applications of wooden coal/firewood to their respective Indigenous industrial, manufacturing, and household productions and consumptions vis-à-vis subsequent transitions. Since the second half of the Eighteenth Century, Western world nations have advanced fossil fuel use during the Industrial Revolution to drastically reduce the need for charcoal/firewood. Such advancement led to the spread of fossil fuel to Africa, but relatively reduced the use of charcoal/firewood in all facets of her production. However, since the beginning of the Twenty-first Century, the sub-regional Africans have been immensely relegated to the great usage of charcoal/firewood. This paper appraised the compelling factors for gross charcoal usage and traditional usage of charcoal among Africans, using the cosmopolitan Ilorin Emirate as a case study. The work examines the fossil fuel cost concerning the Ilorin People’s standard of living to measure why the people converted to charcoal mainly as a source of energy. The method used comprised oral interviews, participant observation, sampling, comparative and text content analysis. The work concluded that while the Ilorin Emirate had relatively sustained the traditional usages of charcoal, varied intellects, knowledge, policies, and costly fossil fuel products have compelled its people to fully embrace the usages of charcoal for production.enCostly fossil fuel productsCharcoaltradition/culturefossil fuelbio-inspired intelligenceArticle