Yoruba

The Yoruba are among the largest ethnolinguistic groups in Africa, numbering between 25 million and 40 million. The Yoruba are a nationality. Today, they are to be found mainly in southwestern Nigeria, West Africa. They constitute the majority ethnic group in about a third of Nigeria's federal republic of 36 states. Their current homeland is also known among the Yoruba people as He Yooba, or Yorubaland. The Yoruba at home share borders and are culturally contiguous with other Nigerian ethnic groups such as the Nupe, Ibariba, Igbirra, and Igala in Kwara State (northeast of Yorubaland); and the Itsekiri, Esan, and Edo in the Niger Delta area. To the northwest of Yorubaland are related groups such as the Egun, Fon, Mahi (Benin Republic), and Ewe, as well as other Gbe-speaking people in Togo and Benin, and the Ga in Ghana.

Outside of Yorubaland, there are sizable communities that collectively form a Yoruba diaspora. Historically, the European slave trade has been the main contributor to the emergence of that diaspora because a great percentage of Africans taken into slavery from the western coast of Africa were of Yoruba stock. It is estimated by scholars that more than 50% of captured Africans came from or through southwestern Nigeria, home of the Yoruba. This area formed part of the region known as the “Slave Coast,” from the early 16th century to the 19th century. It used to be and still is one of the most densely populated parts of the African continent. It became a major export center of African men, women, and children. For example, a third of Africans enslaved in Cuba were reported to be Yoruba. Also, in the precolonial period, towns such as Porto Novo, Badagry, and Lagos were important ports for this infamous trade, and control of the trade routes into the interior was a major issue in [Page 738]Yoruba kingdoms' politics. Today, Brazil has the largest number of Yoruba and Yoruba-descended people outside of Africa (with an estimated population of about 5 million), Cuba has about 1 million, and Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and the rest of the Caribbean have about half a million. In the United States and Canada, there are an estimated 3 million Yoruba, while there are equal numbers in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. In Asia, it is estimated that there are several hundreds of thousands of Yoruba residing in various parts of the region. The Yoruba are reputed travelers: There is virtually no country in the world without a Yoruba community, no matter how small.

The origins of the Yoruba people are shrouded in mystery. However, three clear narratives are discernible from several contending versions. The first is from the Yoruba oral tradition and creation myth. God (Olorun, or Sky God) let down a chain at Helfe, by which Oduduwa the progenitor of the Yoruba people, and indeed, of all men, descended, carrying a rooster, some earth, and a palm kernel. Oduduwa threw the earth into the waters and the rooster scratched it to become land, out of which grew the palm tree with 16 branches, representing the 16 original kingdoms. There are several versions of this myth. Also, every Yoruba town, lineage, and deity has its own myth of origin. Yet in all of them, Ilé-Ifè is regarded as the spiritual center from which all Yoruba dispersed to their present abodes. The second narrative of origin has it that the Yoruba are descended from the offspring of Lamurudu, or Nimrod of Biblical and Near Eastern legend, who had been banished and finally settled in present-day Yorubaland. Thus, some trace the origins of the Yoruba all the way back to ancient Mesopotamian Uruk or Babylon (modern-day Iraq). A final narrative of origin has the Yoruba present in their modern homeland from as early as 10,000 BC. According to Robert S. Smith in his Kingdoms of the Yoruba, archaeological digs have confirmed the existence of a human population in the Idanre area of Yorubaland since prehistoric times.

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