As originally published by the. National Association of Yoruba Descendants in North America.
Who Are The Yorubas?
The first obvious answer to this question is that the Yorubas are a nationality, numbering over 25 million,
the majority of whom live in the South Western part of Nigeria in West Africa.
Obvious as this answer is, it is not wholly explanatory,
and certainly, it is not without its own controversy.
The Yoruba are a black people, of Negro stock and they speak a common language, Yoruba,
which belongs to the Kwa group of the Niger-Congo language family.
Yoruba is a dialect continuum, i.e. it has many dialects, and the dialect at one end of the continuum
is not intelligible to speakers at another end of the continuum,
which is why the Ondo dialect is not immediately understandable by someone from say, Lagos or Oyo.
If you travel from one part of Yoruba land to another,
you will notice slight differences in accent, word for items, etc.
The Yoruba are a well urbanized group with genius in arts as symbolized in the famous “Ife Bronzes”.
The Yoruba people are also found in neighboring Togo, Benin Republic.
Because of the slave trade,
the Yoruba can also be found in other parts of the world,
including Brazil, Cuba, Trinidad, and the United States.
What makes the Yoruba a nationality, or a nation, not a tribe or clan,
and how does one then mark a distinction
between Yorubaland and Nigeria?
To this last question, there is no better answer than the one provided by Obafemi Awolowo in 1947,
to which a later section of this presentation will return.
For now, it is necessary to answer the question:
“Who are the Yoruba?”
by focussing on some critical moments in Yoruba history and thought.
Let us address these and other issues by focussing on some critical moments in Yoruba history.
The Oduduwa Dynasty and the Founding of the Nation.
Oduduwa is the legendary progenitor of the Yoruba.
There are two variants of the story of how he achieved this feat.
The first is cosmogonic, the second, political.
The cosmogonic version also has two variants. According to the first variant of the cosmogonic myth,
Orisanla (Obatala) was the arch-divinity who was chosen by Olodumare, the supreme deity
to create a solid land out of the primordial waters that constituted the earth
and of populating the land with human beings.
He descended from heaven on a chain, carrying a small snail shell full of earth, palm kernels and a five-toed chicken.
He was to empty the content of the snail shell on the water
after placing some pieces of iron on it,
and then to place the chicken on the earth to spread it over the primordial water.
According to the first version of the story, Obatala completed this task to the satisfaction of Olodumare.
After creating land, he planted the palm kernels,
growing a palm tree with sixteen branches - the original sixteen kings of Yoruba land.
Obatala was then given the task of making the physical body of human beings
after which Olodumare would give them the breath of life.
He also completed this task and this is why he has the title of “obarisa” the king of the orisa.
When he completed the task of creating land, he called it “Ile Ife” “This wide / large land”.
In this version of the story, Ile Ife is claimed as the ancestral home of the Yoruba.
The other variant of the cosmogonic myth does not credit Obatala with the completion of the task.
While it concedes that Obatala was given the task,
it avers that Obatala got drunk even before he got to the earth and he was unable to do the job.
Olodumare got worried when he did not return on time, and he had to send Oduduwa to find out what was going on.
When Oduduwa found Obatala drunk, he simply took over the task and completed it.
He created land.
The spot on which he landed from heaven and which he redeemed from water to become land is called Ile-Ife
and is now considered the sacred and spiritual home of the Yoruba.
Obatala was embarrassed when he woke up and, due to this experience,
he made it a taboo for any of his devotees to drink palm wine.
Olodumare forgave him and gave him the responsibility of molding the physical bodies of human beings.
The making of land is a symbolic reference to the founding of the Yoruba kingdoms,
and this is why Oduduwa is credited with that achievement (Idowu, 1962).
According to the second version of the myth,
there was a pre-existing civilization at Ile-Ife prior to its invasion by a group led by Oduduwa.
This group came from the east, where Oduduwa and his group had been persecuted on the basis of religious differences.
They came to Ile-Ife, fought & conquered the pre-existing Igbo
(unrelated to the present Igbo) inhabitants
led by Oreluere (Obatala).
Obviously, there is a connection between the two versions of the story.
The political one may be the authentic story of the founding of Ife kingdom through conquest.
However, the myth of creation lends it a legitimacy that is denied by the conquest story;
just as it appears that it is lent some credence by the fact that,
as a result of the embarrassment it caused their deity,
the followers of Obatala are forbidden from taking palm wine.
Indeed the second version of the cosmogonic myth also appears to foreshadow the political variant.
The claim that Obatala got drunk and the task of creation had to be performed by Oduduwa
already has some political coloration which is now explicit in the political version of the tradition.
What is crucial in both variants of the story is the role of Oduduwa as the founder of the Yoruba nation
which is why the name cannot be forgotten.
Oduduwa is the symbol of the nation, the rallying point for all those who subscribe to the Yoruba identity.
The name Yoruba itself,
according to historians Smith, Atanda and others,
was fixed on us by our northern neighbors and later popularized by colonial publications.
Before then, “Anago”, was used to refer to most of the people called Yoruba today.
“Anago” is also the name by which some Yoruba in the present Benin Republic
and others in the new world still use to refer to themselves.
A common origin and language, as well as common political and religious cultures made the Yoruba a nation
long before any contact with Europeans and the advent of colonialism.
Moremi ‘s Patriotism and the Survival of the Nation
Upon the death of Oduduwa,
there was a dispersal of his children from Ife to found other kingdoms.
These original founders of the Yoruba nation included
Olowu of Owu (son of Oduduwa’s daughter),
Alaketu of Ketu (son of a princess),
Oba of Benin,
Oragun of Ila,
Onisabe of Sabe,
Olupopo of Popo,
and Oranyan of Oyo.
Each of them made a mark in the subsequent urbanization and consolidation
of Yoruba confederacy of kingdoms,
with each kingdom tracing its origin to Ile-Ife.
After the dispersal, the aborigines, the Igbo, became difficult,
and constituted a serious threat to the survival of Ife.
Thought to be survivors of the old occupants of the land before the arrival of Oduduwa,
these people now turned themselves into marauders.
They would come to town in costumes made of raffia with terrible and fearsome appearances,
and the Ife people would flee.
Then the Igbo would burn down houses and loot the markets.
Then came Moremi on the scene - like Deborah of the Old Testament.
When no man could dare the Igbos, Moremi asked the Esinminrin river for help
and promised to give offerings if she could save her people.
The orisa told her to allow herself to be captured and to understudy the Igbo people.
She did, and discovered that these were not spirits;
only people with raffia for dress.
She escaped, and taught her people the trick.
The next time that Igbo people came to sack the town,
the townspeople set fire on their raffia costumes,
and they were roundly defeated.
Moremi then had to go back to Esinminrin to thank the gods.
Every offering she offered was refused.
On divination, she was told that she had to give Oluorogbo, her only son.
She did.
The lesson of Moremi is the lesson of patriotism and selflessness.
The reward may not be reaped in one’s life time.
Moremi passed on and became a member of the Yoruba pantheon.
The Edi festival celebrates the defeat of the Igbo and the sacrifice of Oluorogbo till today.
The Oranmiyan Adventures, , Internal Division, Enslavement and the Fall of the Nation.
Oranmiyan was the last of the Oduduwa offspring.
But he was the most adventurous and the founder of Oyo Kingdom.
On some accounts, he was the third ruler of Ife, as successor to Oduduwa.
But he later decided to avenge the expulsion of his father from the East, and so, he led an expedition.
After many years on the road, and as a result of disagreement between him and his people,
he could not go further.
Feeling too ashamed to go back, he appealed to the King of Nupe for a land to found his kingdom.
He was obliged, and that land became the nucleus of Old Oyo Kingdom.
Oranmiyan, taking the title of Alafin,
succeeded in raising a very strong military and effectively expanded his kingdom.
His successors, including Sango, the mythical god of thunder, Aganju and Oluaso were also as strong.
Peace and tranquility prevailed during the reign of Abiodun, though it also experienced the decline of the army.
Awole Arogangan was Abiodun’ s successor and it was during his reign that trouble started for the kingdom.
He was forced to commit suicide;
but before his death he was said to have pronounced a curse on all Yoruba,
that they will not unite and that they will be taken captives.
Afonja Treachery
Afonja was the Kakanfo, the generalisimo of the Army, in the northern Yoruba town of Ilorin,
during the reign of Awole and his successor.
Afonja refused to recognize the new king,
and invited the Fulani who were then leading a jihad to the south,
to assist him against the king.
They did, but he did not survive himself,
because the Fulani, after helping him defeat the Alafin also turned against him.
They fired numerous arrows at him and his dead body was stood erect on those arrows as they stuck into his body.
The treachery of Afonja marked the beginning of the end of the Oyo empire
and with it the decline of the Yoruba nation.
Civil war erupted among the various Yoruba kingdoms:
Oyo, Ijesa, Ekiti Parapo, Ijaiye, Abeokuta and Ibadan.
As this was going on,
Dahomey on the west and the Borgu on the north were also posing trouble for the Yoruba kingdoms
until the intervention of the British and the imposition of colonial rule.
Those who argue that
there was no consciousness of a common Yoruba identity
until the 19th century may be referring to these civil war episodes in the life of the nation.
But they forget that the Yoruba people, in spite of the civil war, share a sense of common origin and common language.
And it is to be noted that the so-called peace that was imposed by the British
could not have lasted
had there not been a sense of consciousness of coming from a common origin.