 The town was occupied by the British Gold Coast Brigade on 27 March 1941, who had pushed north from Dolo.The British colonial unit found that the Italians had abandoned the settlement 10 days before they arrived, and in the time between the buildings had been looted and destroyed by the neighboring Borena Oromo.By the time David Buxton visited Negele Borana in 1943, he found that a battalion of the Ethiopian Army had garrisoned this "half-built Italian settlement".