This book is a collection of 27 papers presented at a conference on Yoruba history and culture held in 2004. Overwhelmingly, the papers are by Yoruba scholars, a substantial majority of them based in Nigerian universities. The disciplinary range is wide, ranging from literature to law and the social and environmental sciences, with only a handful of papers from historians. The papers are also extremely heterogeneous in subject-matter: Yoruba newspapers, urban politics in Lagos, the Bamidele Muslim sect, Awolowo's political philosophy, precolonial law and dispute settlement, ‘419’ cybercrime, OPC vigilantism, road traffic accidents, AIDS, proverbs in relation to health events, abortion, food storage and processing, Yoruba agriculture, women in Yoruba culture, age stratification and marriage, domestic gender roles, Yoruba associations, dual residence patterns, school curricula. While a good many (it has to be said) are rather slight, there is also much interesting material scattered about them, particularly when the focus shifts from the pan-Yoruba level to particular communities and locales.

In their introduction, Falola and Genova valiantly try to draw out some overarching themes. They see the Yoruba as now standing at a historical crossroads. Behind them stands what they call ‘elite history’: the creation of a modern Yoruba identity, to which Western education is central, initiated by the pioneer Christian elite in the nineteenth century. The Revd. Samuel Johnson's great History, the classic studies of J. F. A. Ajayi and of E. A. Ayandele (to whom this volume is dedicated), and the political program of Chief Awolowo are key moments in its realization. Since Awolowo's death in 1987, and particularly since the falling-out of his political heirs and the disappointment of Yoruba hopes under the Obasanjo presidency (1999–2007), the sense of ‘Whither next?’ has grown in intensity. Its further backdrop is a widespread loss of faith in the Nigerian state (to which the turn to Shari'a in the Muslim North is also a response). These issues are addressed in two highly symptomatic chapters, which read less as academic analysis than as engaged advocacy, though they are full of historical references. Jare Ajayi articulates the frequently heard demand for a ‘national conference’ to re-frame the Nigerian state. J. B. B. Ojo, in a strongly polemical vein, expresses the widespread view that, in addition to their own internal factionalism, the particular enemy of the Yoruba project has been the Hausa-Fulani establishment of the North, privileged in the British construction of the Nigerian state. Both Ojo and Ajayi view contemporary conflicts through mytho-historical templates, notably the betrayal of the legitimate Yoruba leader (Alafin Aole, Awolowo) by a disloyal subordinate allied to the North (Afonja, Akintola). Complementary to, but in some tension with, the notion of the Yoruba as firmly wedded to a ‘progressive’ politics is the idea (expressed by several contributors) that the moral deficiencies of the present are due to the abandonment of ‘the wisdom of our ancestors, our traditions, our family values’. But there is not enough attention to the conflict of values here, nor to those – such as the Bamidele Muslims – who clearly don't buy into the ‘enlightenment’ narrative developed by the Christian elite. This makes me wonder how widely and fully it is shared by Yoruba Muslims more generally; but the answer cannot be divined from the several essays in this volume by self-evidently Muslim contributors. The reader closes the book with a sense that much remains to be said.