The Yoruba people are a West African ethnic group who inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, which are collectively referred to as Yorubaland.
Map of Yorubaland in West Africa
The Yoruba constitute more than 50 million people in Africa and are over a million outside the continent, bearing further representation among the African diaspora. The vast majority of Yoruba are within Nigeria, where they make up 20.7% of the country's population according to Ethnologue estimations, making them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. 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.
The Yoruba people (YORR-ub-ə; Yoruba: Ìran Yorùbá, Ọmọ Odùduwà, Ọmọ Káàárọ̀-oòjíire) are known for their rich cultural heritage and significant contributions to West African history.
Origins and Early History
The oldest known textual reference to the name Yoruba is found in an essay (titled - Mi'rāj al-Ṣu'ūd) 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. This early 1600s reference implies that the name Yoruba was already in popular demotic use as far back as at least the 1500s.
Read also: "Ire": A Deep Dive into Yoruba Meaning
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. 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. 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.
Urban Centers and Kingdoms
The Yoruba people have centuries long tradition of living in large urban centres. They are a people who have a propensity for living in cities and their settlement pattern usually tend towards concentric nucleation, making them one of the most historically urban ethnic groups on the African continent.
Prior to the era of colonialism, the Yorubas existed as a series of well structured large kingdoms and states with an urban capital core (Olú Ìlú) sharing filial relations with one another. These urban capitals were built to encapsulate the palace of the Oba (king) and most of the kingdom's central institutions such as the premier market (Ọjà Ọba) and several temples. Many of these city-states had extensive defence structures such as moats and trenches (Iyàrà) such as those of the Ife Empire and the better known Eredo Sungbo that completely circumferenced the nascent Ijebu Kingdom, while others had tall walls and ramparts such as Oyo ile, capital of the Oyo empire, reported to have ten gates in the outer wall which was more than 20 feet high.
These Yoruba urban centres were historically some of the most populated not only in West Africa, but also on the continent. Archaeological findings indicate that Òyó-Ilé or Katunga, capital of the Yoruba empire of Oyo (fl. between the 16th and 19th centuries CE), had more than 100,000 inhabitants. For a long time also, another major Yoruba city, Ibadan which expanded rapidly in the 1800s, took the title.
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, during which Ile-Ife grew into one of West Africa's largest urban centers. In the period around 1300 CE when glass bead production reached an Industrial scale, floors were paved with potsherds and stones. The artists at Ile-Ife developed a refined and naturalistic sculptural tradition in terracotta, stone, and copper alloy - copper, brass, and bronze many of which appear to have been created under the patronage of King Obalufon II, the man who today is identified as the Yoruba patron deity of brass casting, weaving and regalia.
Read also: International Law and Nationality
The dynasty of kings at Ile-Ife, which is regarded by the Yoruba as the place of origin of human civilization, remains intact to this day. The urban phase of Ile-Ife before the rise of Oyo, which represented a peak of political centralization in the 14th century, is commonly described as a "golden age" of Ife. Ife continues to be seen as the "spiritual homeland" of the Yoruba.
The Oyo Empire under its Oba, known as the Alaafin of Oyo, was active in the African slave trade during the 18th century. The Yoruba often demanded slaves as a form of tribute of subject populations, who in turn sometimes made war on other peoples to capture the required slaves.
Political and Social Organization
Most of the city states were controlled by Obas (or royal sovereigns with various individual titles) and councils made up of Oloye, recognized leaders of royal, noble and, often, even common descent, who joined them in ruling over the kingdoms through a series of guilds and cults. Different states saw differing ratios of power between the kingships and the chiefs' councils.
Monarchies were a common form of government in Yorubaland, but they were not the only approach to government and social organization. The numerous Ijebu kingdom city-states to the west of Oyo and the Egba people communities, found in the forests below Ọyọ's savanna region, were notable exceptions. These independent polities often elected a king though real political, legislative, and judicial powers resided with the Ogboni, a council of notable elders.
During the internecine wars of the 19th century, the Ijebu forced citizens of more than 150 Ẹgba and Owu communities to migrate to the fortified city of Abeokuta. Each quarter retained its own Ogboni council of civilian leaders, along with an Olorogun, or council of military leaders, and in some cases, its own elected Obas or Baales. These independent councils elected their most capable members to join a federal civilian and military council that represented the city as a whole.
Read also: Yoruba Word "Ika"
Traditionally kingship and chieftainship were not determined by simple primogeniture, as in most monarchic systems of government. An electoral college of lineage heads was and still is usually charged with selecting a member of one of the royal families from any given realm, and the selection is then confirmed by an Ifá oracular request. The Ọbas live in palaces that are usually in the center of the town. Opposite the king's palace is the Ọja Ọba, or the king's market. These markets form an inherent part of Yoruba life.
The monarchy of any city-state was usually limited to a number of royal lineages. A family could be excluded from kingship and chieftaincy if any family member, servant, or slave belonging to the family committed a crime, such as theft, fraud, murder or rape. In other city-states, the monarchy was open to the election of any free-born male citizen. In Ilesa, Ondo, Akure and other Yoruba communities, there were several, but comparatively rare, traditions of female Ọbas. The kings were traditionally almost always polygamous and often married royal family members from other domains, thereby creating useful alliances with other rulers.
In more recent decades, Lagos has risen to be the most prominent city of the Yoruba people and Yoruba cultural and economic influence.
Cultural Identity
Yoruba people have a sense of group identity around a number of cultural concepts, beliefs and practices recognizable by all members of the ethnic group. Prominent among these is the tracing of the entire Yoruba body through dynastic migrations to roots formed in Ile-Ife, an ancient city in the forested heart of central Yorubaland and its acceptance as the spiritual nucleus of Yoruba existence.
Following this linkage to the ancient city of Ife is the acknowledgement of an historic crowned king, Oduduwa, a personage nominally considered the 'father' of the Yoruba people. Beyond the historical accounts surrounding Ife and its ancient rulership, more cultural markers which unite the Yoruba people as members of the same ethnicity include the universal recognition of a number of spiritual concepts and chief divinities (Orisha), who have achieved pan-Yoruba statuses. These divinities are venerated as embodiments of natural forces and divine power.
They are also the mediators between the common people and Olodumare, God. They include some now well-known divinities such as Obatala, Ogun, Orunmila, Osun, Eshu, Olokun, Yemoja, Osanyin, and Shango, among others. These are now recognizable in the New World as divinities brought across the Atlantic by people of Yoruba descent. There in their new ex-situ environment, they serve as a mechanism of maintaining group identity, as well as a powerful connection to the Yoruba homeland among people of Yoruba descent and others.
Linguistically, the Yoruboid languages, and in particular the Edekiri subgroup, form a closed group of mutually intelligible dialects which strongly bound the people who speak them together as members of the same linguistic community. This dialectal area spans from the lands of the Ana-Ife people in central Togo and eastern Ghana eastwards to the lands of the Itsekiri people in the western Niger Delta around the Formosa (Benin) and Escravos river estuaries.
This span of land, inhabited by geographically contiguous and culturally related subgroups, were divided into separate national and subnational units under the control of different European powers as a result of the Berlin Conference in 19th century Europe and the resultant administration. The Yoruba also notably developed a common identity under the influence of Oyo, a regional empire that developed in the northwestern savanna section of Yorubaland as a result of a kingdom founding migration from Ife.
Various other cultural factors which bind the Yoruba people include historic dynastic migrations of royals and the micro migrations of people within the Yoruba cultural space has led to the mixing of people evidenced by the duplication and multiplication of place names and royal titles across Yoruba country. Today, places with names containing; Owu, Ifon, Ife, Ado, etc., can be found scattered across Yorubaland regardless of subgroup. The same can be observed of certain localized royal titles, e.g. Ajalorun, Owa, and Olu.
The Yoruba 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 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 (NWY) is spoken corresponds to the historical Oyo Empire.
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.
Family Structure
Among the Yoruba, men can marry more than one wife. The practice of polygamy allows men to marry more than one woman. They behave as sisters, especially the children. He provides for all their needs. The Yoruba cherished family tiers so much. The family is of the same father and mother, they show family relationships.
Kinship Terms
To show family relationships the Yoruba language has a system of kinship terms and their usage. For example, an older sibling is regarded as egbon or senior, while a younger sibling is regarded as aburo or junior.
Family is central to Yoruba culture, with extended families often living together in large compounds. The compound is headed by the baale or head of the family. Ground or oju-oori of his predecessors are well taken care of. He is sure that the family deities are worshipped as at when due. He settles scores and disputes that may arise. He is a custodian of tradition and knowledge. The extended family lives a community based life. Someone’s business is everybody’s business.
Marriage is a family affair in Yoruba land. Traditionally and contemporarily acceptable among the Yoruba people. It is a welcome development. A man’s wealth is measured based on the number of wives and children he has. They live harmoniously within the same compound.
The Osu Caste System in Igbo Culture
The Osu Caste System: A Dark Secret of Igbo Tradition
The Yoruba people have a distinct culture and identity from the Igbo people, however, the Igbo culture also has its own complex social structures. Within Igbo society, the Osu caste system is an ancient practice that discourages social interaction and marriage with a group of persons called Osu (outcasts). Osus were dedicated to the deities (Alusi) of Igboland; they were considered as inferior beings and were usually separated from the Nwadiala or Diala (freeborns).
Traditionally, there were two classes of people in Igboland - the Nwadiala and the Osu. The Nwadiala meaning, ‘sons of the soil’. They were the masters while the Osu were the people dedicated to the gods; so, they were regarded as slaves, strangers, outcasts and untouchables.
On the one hand, it is a traditional religious belief in Igbo land that certain people should be discriminated against. No theory is generally and unanimously accepted regarding the origin of the Osu caste system as there are several different conceptions and explanations about its origin. One resounding written record of a theory about the origin of this system in Igbo land is the view that the system originated from the Nri Kingdom.
The Nri Kingdom existed as a sphere of religious and political influence over a third of Igboland and was administered by a priest-king called an Eze Nri. It is said that in the early days, Nri people possessed some hereditary powers and rights to proclaim cleansing on any kingdom where and when abominations were committed in the past. Of which any community, village or kingdom that rebuffed or was unable to meet up with the requirements needed for the cleansing by the Nri spiritualists, would be henceforth considered as impure and such community would be hence referred to as an Osu (untouchable).
In a book titled ‘Nri Dynasty’, the author, C.M Ezekwugo noted “Nri descendants possessed certain hereditary rites to perform traditional and cultural ritualistic functions. The Osus were treated as inferior human beings and kept in a state of permanent and irreversible antipathy. They were subjected to various forms of abuse and stigmatisation. They were made to live in seclusion from the considered Freeborn, they stayed very close to shrines and market places.
The Osus were not allowed to dance, drink, hold hands, associate or have a sexual relationship with the Nwadiala. They were not even allowed to break Kola Nut at meetings or pour libation or pray to God on behalf of a freeborn at any community gathering as it was believed if allowed, such prayers would bring calamity and misfortune.
Under slavery, Igbo society was divided into three main categories: diala, ohu, and osu. The diala were the freeborn, and enjoyed full status as members of the human race. The ohu were taken as captives from distant communities or else enslaved in payment of debts or as punishment for crimes; the diala kept them as domestic servants, sold them to white merchants, and occasionally sacrificed them in religious ceremonies or buried them alive at their masters’ funerals. The osu were slaves owned by traditional deities.
One of the most significant forms of modern discrimination occurs in the realm of marriage. Freeborn individuals, who have no Osu lineage, are customarily prohibited from marrying someone of Osu lineage. Should they do so, both they and their offspring permanently become Osu, facing the same discrimination.
Another form of discrimination nowadays is social exclusion. In Igbo villages, Osu live in segregated quarters and are barred from social interactions with freeborn community members. They face barriers to accessing certain public amenities, attending community events and participating in communal decision-making processes.
G. Ugo Nwokeji is an Igbo cultural historian who studied slavery in the Igbo region. He estimated that the Osu represented 5%-10% of the Igbo population. With an ethnic population of about 30 million Igbos in Nigeria, this suggests that between 1.5 and 3 million Igbos suffer from this discrimination. The vast majority of Osu are found in Imo State, which has about 5.2 million people.
In 1956, Nnamdi Azikiwe, then the premier of Eastern Nigeria and later the first president of Nigeria, spearheaded the passage of a law aimed at abolishing Osu and its social disadvantages. But the practice continued. No arrests were recorded.
One reason why eliminating discrimination has been difficult is that identifying an Osu is relatively straightforward for Igbos. They often reside in their own distinct quarters. Therefore, simply mentioning one’s village or family name can reveal one’s Osu status. This situation is a result of a combination of Igbo culture and colonial policy from the 1920s.
One of the leading groups in this new movement is the Initiative For the Eradication of Traditional and Cultural Stigmatisation in Our Society, a network of campaigners led by Ogechukwu Stella Maduagwu. Recognising that the Osu system is often viewed as having spiritual significance, the initiative places greater emphasis on the advice of cultural custodians, including traditional rulers.
Another leading campaigner is Nwaocha Ogechukwu, a scholar and researcher specialising in religious and cultural discrimination. He has established a platform named Marriage Without Borders to assist young people who face marriage discrimination due to being labelled as Osu.
We recommend that the movement align itself with broader human rights campaigns within Nigeria, across Africa and internationally. The Osu system bears resemblances to Ghana’s Trokosi system.
The Osu Caste System designates some individuals as second-class citizens, denying them certain privileges enjoyed by those considered freeborn. Various opinions and viewpoints have arisen on this contentious topic, making it challenging to ascertain the precise evolution of the Osu Caste System in Igbo land.
Osu Caste System in Igboland
Table: Comparison of Yoruba and Igbo Social Structures
| Feature | Yoruba Culture | Igbo Culture |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic Location | Southwestern Nigeria, Benin, Togo | Southeastern Nigeria |
| Social Structure | Kingdoms and city-states led by Obas and Oloye councils | Nwadiala (freeborn) and Osu (outcasts) |
| Urban Centers | Ile-Ife, Oyo, Ibadan | Smaller village communities |
| Language | Yoruba | Igbo |
| Family Structure | Extended families in large compounds | Patrilineal and patrilocal |
| Discrimination | Historically, slaves existed, but not a rigid caste system | Osu caste system leading to social exclusion and marriage restrictions |
Popular articles:
tags:
