Who are the Yoruba people?
Introduction
Yoruba people have their land geographically located in the south west of Nigeria in west Africa. They are composed of several kingdoms that pre-date the independence and colonial era. Some of these kingdoms are shown in the map below:
Today, they are divided into the following states; Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Ekiti, Kwara, Lagos, Osun, Okun area of Kogi state and in Warri (Itsekiri areas). Prior to state creation that begun around the time of the Biafra civil war (1967–1970), some of the Yorubas existed in the Western region of the country and those in Kwara and Kogi were located within the Northern region political zones.
Nigeria at the time operated a regional system of government that begun in the 50’s and ended after the military coup of Major Nzeogwu (January, 1966), which truncated the democracy in the first republic. This division was created by General Gowon who became head of state in July 1966, after the Northern officers in the army conducted a counter coup feeling aggrieved by the killings of their leaders the previous January in the first coup.
The idea behind the state creation was to weaken the regional system of government and to reduce the power of the Eastern region under Ojukwu on the minorities in that area. As a policy, it succeeded in reducing his support in the war in the coastal area which made it easier for the Nigerian army to enact a blockade of Biafra.
The Yoruba acknowledge Ile-ife as their spiritual home and point of migration to new areas, even the ones in Benin still refer to Ife as their ancestral home. This is remarkable despite the division across borders by the Berlin conference. Had the Berlin conference not happened, all Yoruba would be in one singular region or country today in 2022.
Yoruba people speak a language that is refered to as Yoruboid and the Igala (Kogi state) are also part of this family group even though parts of their language has evolve in a different path. The language is tonal in character and sound and written accordingly. There are over 100 million of us in the world, in places as far as Brazil, Trinidad, Cuba, Haiti, America, Ghana, Ivory coast, Togo, and Benin republic. In fact, the Yoruba of Brazil are one of the largest populations outside of Nigeria. Today, they still celebrate the Orishas like Sango and also infused Odu-Ifa and various other concepts from the culture into their new homes.
