Yoruba
In general, the southern groups of peoples are fragmented. In 1990 the two most important groupings were the Igbo and the Yoruba — both linguistic communities rather than single ethnic units. History, language, and membership in the modern nation-state, however, had led to their identity as ethnic groups. In addition, although not as clearly differentiated, two subunits had strong traditions of ethnic separateness. These were the peoples of the Niger River delta area and those on the border between the Igbo and Yoruba.
Yorubaland takes in most of southwestern Nigeria and the peoples directly west of the Nigerian border in the independent country of Benin. In Nigeria alone, Yorubaland included 20 million to 30 million people in 1990 (about double the 1963 census figures).
Each of its subunits was originally a small to medium-sized state whose major town provided the name of the subgrouping. Over time seven subareas—Oyo, Kabba, Ekiti, Egba, Ife, Ondo, and Ijebu—became separate hegemonies that differentiated culturally and competed for dominance in Yorubaland. Early nineteenth century travelers noted that northern Oyo people had difficulty understanding the southern Ijebu, and these dialect differences remained in 1990. The language is that of the Kwa group of the Niger-Congo family, related to the Idoma and Igala of the southern grouping of middle belt chieftaincies south of the Benue River. The population has expanded in a generally westerly and southwesterly direction over the past several centuries. In the twentieth century, this migration brought Yoruba into countries to the west and northwest as far as northern Ghana.
The Yoruba kingdoms were essentially unstable, even when defended by Portuguese guns and later by cavalry (in Ilorin and Kabba), because the central government had insufficient power constitutionally or militarily to stabilize the subordinate chiefs in the outlying centers. This separatist tendency has governed Yoruba contemporary history and has weakened traditional rulers and strengthened the hands of local chiefs and elected councils. Ilorin, like Nupe to the north, was an exception, an extension of Fulani imperial expansion; in 1990 it was ethnically Yoruba, yet more closely allied through its traditional rulers to the Islamic societies to the north. It thus formed a bridge between north and south.
The region has had the longest and most penetrating contacts with the outside world of any area in Nigeria. Returned Yoruba slaves, the early nineteenth-century establishment of the Anglican Church, and Yoruba churchmen, such as Bishop Samuel Adjai Crowther (active in the 1820s), made the region's religious life, its formal education, and its elites among the most Westernized in the country. The first university, founded in 1948, was at Ibadan in the heart of Yorubaland, as were the first elite secondary schools; the first research institutes for agriculture, economics, African studies, and foreign affairs; the first publishing houses; and the first radio and television stations. Wole Soyinka, Africa's first Nobel prizewinner in literature, claims Yoruba ethnicity. The entry port of Lagos, predominantly Yoruba, is the largest and economically dominant city in the country (and its first capital).
In relation to other Nigerian peoples, the Yoruba have a strong sense of ethnic identity and of region, history, and leadership. In relation to each other, the seven subgroups have inherited prejudices and behavior that could exacerbate animosities should other factors such as access to education or prominent positions create conflict among the subdivisions. At the same time, the longer contacts of the Yoruba with Westernizing influences have created some dedicated nationalists who see their Yoruba identity as a contributing factor in their loyalty to the wider concept of a Nigerian nation-state.
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