Who are the Yoruba?

As published by National Association of Yoruba Descendants in North America

The first obvious answer to this question is that the Yoruba 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 and fought and 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” 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.