Yoruba people


The Yoruba people are a West African ethnic group who inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, a region collectively called Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute more than 50 million people in Africa, and over a million outside the continent, and bear further representation among the African diaspora. The vast majority of Yoruba are in today's Nigeria, where they make up 20.7% of the country's population according to Ethnologue estimates, making them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. Most Yoruba people speak the Yoruba language, which is the Niger-Congo language with the largest number of native or L1 speakers.

Geography

In Africa, the Yoruba are contiguous with the Yoruboid Itsekiri to the south-east in the northwest Niger Delta, Bariba to the northwest in Benin and Nigeria, the Nupe to the north, and the Ebira to the northeast in Central Nigeria. To the east are the Edo, Ẹsan, and Afemai groups in Mid-Western Nigeria. To the northeast and adjacent to the Ebira and Northern Edo, groups are the related Igala people on the left bank of the Niger River. To the south are the Gbe-speaking Mahi, Gun, Fon, and Ewe who border Yoruba communities in Benin and Togo, to the west they are bordered by the Kwa-speaking Akebu, Kposo of Togo, and to the northwest, by the Kwa-speaking Anii, and the Gur speaking Kabiye, Yom-Lokpa and Tem people of Togo. Significantly Yoruba populations in other West African countries can also be found in Ghana, Benin, Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone.
Outside Africa, the Yoruba diaspora consists of two main groupings; the first being that of the Yorubas taken as slaves to the New World between the 16th and 19th centuries, notably to the Caribbean and Brazil, and the second consisting of a wave of relatively recent migrants, the majority of whom began to migrate to the United Kingdom and the United States following some of the major economic and political changes encountered in Africa in the 1960s till date.

Etymology

The oldest known textual reference to the name Yoruba is found in an essay from a manuscript written by the Berber jurist Ahmed Baba in the year 1614. The original manuscript is preserved in the Ahmed Baba Institute of the Mamma Haidara Library in Timbuktu, while a digital copy is at the World Digital Library. Mi'rāj al-Ṣu'ūd provides one of the earliest known ideas about the ethnic composition of the West African interior. The relevant section of the essay which lists the Yoruba group alongside nine others in the region as translated by John Hunwick and Fatima Harrak for the Institute of African Studies Rabat, reads:
"We will add another rule for you, that is that whoever now comes to you from among the group called Mossi, or Gurma, or Bussa, or Borgu, or Dagomba, or Kotokoli, or Yoruba, or Tombo, or Bobo, or K.rmu – all of these are unbelievers remaining in their unbelief until now. Similarly Kumbe except for a few people of Hombori"

This early 1600s reference implies that the name Yoruba was already in popular demotic use as far back as at least the 1500s. Regarding the source and derivation of this name, guesses were posited by various foreign sociologists of external sources. These include; Ya'rub by Caliph Muhammed Bello of Sokoto, Goru Ba by T.J Bowen, or Yolla Ba etc.
These guesses suffer a lack of support by many locals for being alien to the traditions of the Yorubas themselves. In his work, Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains c.1863, the English ethnologist Richard F. Burton reports of a Yoruba account in 1861, noting that the name "Yoruba" derives from Ori Obba, i.e. -The Head King. It was applied ex-situ originally in reference to the Yoruba sociolinguistic group as a whole. Centuries later however, it evolved to be applied exclusively to the Ọ̀yọ́ subgroup when this subgroup rose to attain imperial status, particularly at its apogee until in the mid-1800s when this trend was reversed back to the original context.

Names

The name Yoruba is the most well known ethnonym for the group of people that trace a common origin to Ife, but synonymous terms have been recorded in history such as; Nago/Anago, Lucumi/Olukumi and Aku/Oku.
Some Exonyms the Yoruba are known by across West Africa include; Alata in southern Ghana, Eyagi in Nupe which produced descendant terms such as; Ayagi and Iyaji in Igala.
The Yoruba people also refer to themselves by the epithet "Ọmọ Káàárọ̀-oòjíire", literally meaning, "The People who ask 'Good morning, did you wake up well?". This is in reference to the mode of greeting associated with Yoruba culture. Through parts of coastal West Africa where Yorubas can be found, they have carried the culture of lauding one another with greetings applicable in different situations along with them. Another epithet used is, "Ọmọ Oòduà", meaning "The Children of Oduduwa", referencing the semi-legendary Yoruba king.

History

Yoruba emerged in situ, from the earlier Mesolithic Volta-Niger populations. by the 1st millennium BCE. By the 8th century, a powerful city-state existed in Ile-Ife, one of the earliest in Africa. This city's oral traditions link to figures like Oduduwa and Obatala, and it would become the heart of the Ife Empire, the first empire in Yoruba History. The Ife Empire flourished between 1200 and 1420 CE, had influence across much of what is now southwestern Nigeria, eastern Benin and Togo.
Oral history recorded under the Oyo Empire derives the Yoruba as an ethnic group from the population of the City State of Ile-Ife. Ile-Ife, as the capital of the former empire, held a prominent position in Yoruba history. The Yoruba were the dominant cultural force in southwestern and west-central Nigeria as far back as the 11th century.
The Yoruba people were historically one of the most urban ethnic groups in Africa. They usually settled in a concentric nuclear pattern. Before colonialism, the Yoruba existed as a series of structured large kingdoms and states with an urban capital core sharing filial relations with one another. These urban capitals were built to encapsulate the palace of the Oba and most of the kingdom's central institutions such as the premier market and several temples. Many of these city-states had extensive defence structures such as moats and trenches such as those of the Ife Empire and the better known Eredo Sungbo that completely surrounded the nascent Ijebu Kingdom, while others had tall walls and ramparts such as Oyo ile, capital of the Oyo empire, reportedly had an outer wall over 20 feet high with 10 gates. These cities were some of the most populated in Africa. Archaeological findings indicate that Òyó-Ilé or Katunga, capital of the Oyo empire, had more than 100,000 inhabitants. For a long time, the largest city Ibadan expanded rapidly in the 1800s. Today, Lagos has become the largest Yoruba city and on the continent, displacing Ibadan to second place with a populace of over 20 million.
Archaeologically, the settlement of Ile-Ife showed features of urbanism in the 12th–14th-century era. This period coincided with the peak of the Ife Empire, when Ile-Ife grew into one of West Africa's largest cities. Around 1300 CE, glass bead production reached industrial scale and floors were paved with potsherds and stones. Artists at Ile-Ife developed a refined and naturalistic sculptural tradition in terracotta, stone, brass and bronze. Many of those traditions appear to have been created under the patronage of King Obalufon II, who today is identified as the Yoruba patron deity of brass casting, weaving and regalia. The Yoruba regard Ile-Ife as the place of origin of human civilization. Its urban phase represented a peak of political centralization in the 14th century, and is commonly called a "golden age" of Ife. Ife is still considered the Yoruba spiritual homeland. Its dynasty remains intact today. The oba or ruler of Ile-Ife is called the Ooni of Ife.

Oyo, Ile-Ife and Lagos

In the 11th century, the Oyo Empire surpassed Ile-Ife as the dominant Yoruba military and political power.
In the 18th century, the Empire under oba Alaafin of Oyo, participated in the African slave trade. The Yoruba often demanded slaves as tribute of subject populations, who in turn sometimes attacked other peoples to capture the required slaves. Some of the slaves sold by the Oyo Empire entered the Atlantic slave trade.
Most of the city states were controlled by obas and councils. The councils were made up of oloye, recognized leaders of royal, noble and, often, even common descent, who joined them through guilds and cults. The power of the king versus the councils differed between states. Oyo's kings had almost total control, while the Ijebu city-states had senatorial councils with more influence than the Ọba, called the Awujale of Ijebuland.
In recent decades, Lagos rose as the most prominent city of the Yoruba people and Yoruba cultural and economic influence. Noteworthy among the developments of Lagos were uniquely styled architecture introduced by returning Yoruba communities from Brazil and Cuba known as Amaros/Agudas.
Yoruba settlements are often described as primarily one or more of the main social groupings called "generations":
  • The "first generation" includes towns and cities known as original capitals of founding Yoruba kingdoms or states.
  • The "second generation" consists of settlements created by conquest.
  • The "third generation" consists of villages and municipalities that emerged after the internecine wars of the 19th century.

    Ijebu Kingdom

Language

The Yoruba culture was originally an oral tradition, and the majority of Yoruba people are native speakers of the Yoruba language. The number of speakers was estimated to be about 30 million as of 2010. Yoruba is classified within the Edekiri languages, and together with the isolate Igala, form the Yoruboid group of languages within what we now have as West Africa. Igala and Yoruba have important historical and cultural relationships. The languages of the two ethnic groups bear such a close resemblance that researchers such as Forde and Westermann and Bryan regarded Igala as a dialect of Yoruba.
The Yoruboid languages are assumed to have developed out of an undifferentiated Volta-Niger group by the first millennium BCE. There are three major dialect areas: Northwest, Central, and Southeast. As the North-West Yoruba dialects show more linguistic innovation, combined with the fact that Southeast and Central Yoruba areas generally have older settlements, suggests a later date of immigration into Northwestern Yoruba territory. The area where North-West Yoruba is spoken corresponds to the historical Oyo Empire. South-East Yoruba was closely associated with the expansion of the Benin Empire after c. 1450. Central Yoruba forms a transitional area in that the lexicon has much in common with NWY, whereas it shares many ethnographical features with SEY.
Literary Yoruba is the standard variety taught in schools and spoken by newsreaders on the radio. It is mostly entirely based on northwestern Yoruba dialects of the Oyos and the Egbas, and has its origins in two sources; The work of Yoruba Christian missionaries based mostly in the Egba hinterland at Abeokuta, and the Yoruba grammar compiled in the 1850s by Bishop Crowther, who himself was a Sierra Leonean Recaptive of Oyo origin. This was exemplified by the following remark by Adetugbọ, as cited in Fagborun : "While the orthography agreed upon by the missionaries represented to a very large degree the phonemes of the Abẹokuta dialect, the morpho-syntax reflected the Ọyọ-Ibadan dialects."