CULTURAL LEGENDS AND MYTHOLOGY IN YORUBA NATIONALISM

The creation of a pan-Yoruba political identity in the early nineteenth century, which later became a strong nationalist agenda, can be situated in the long-range of history within which local heritages later translate to patrimonies. These patrimonies subsequently act as the agencies of contemporary Yoruba identity, nationalism, and local politics. Culture and civilization, which the diverse Yoruba sub-groups built over a long period of time before its British colonialism and maintained in the face of colonial occupation, became their heritage and legacy through which they constructed nationalism and civil politics.^{Footnote 15, Footnote 16} One of these legacies is the people’s pride in the villainy and prowess of their ancestors, many of whom have been recognized as gods and goddesses.^{Footnote 17} Yoruba is a hierarchical society with a centralized political system. The people are not only fond of ancestral cult, but are also engaged in reworking local history to suit their political expediencies. Thus, the political power of the ancestors is often perceived to be reincarnated in the living persons. As the people respect their ancestors, creating an idea of common ancestry binds the people together and political elites use this for their nationalist projects. Among the Yoruba ancestors that are still imbued with divine trans-Yoruba political powers are Oduduwa and Oranmiyan (both pre-colonial images) as well as, more recently, Awolowo (1909–1987) and Moshood Abiola (1937–1998). The belief in these ancestors cuts across all Yoruba sub-groups and diverse social and economic backgrounds. Yoruba mythological history traces the people to one ancestor—Oduduwa,^{Footnote 18} whose origin is still a subject of historical speculation and diverse interpretations.^{Footnote 19} Some believe that Oduduwa migrated from Mecca in Saudi Arabia down to Ile-Ife, the ancestral home, passing through Hausa land in northern Nigeria. Others think that Oduduwa descended directly from heaven to Ile-Ife, which was initially inhabited by the sixteen Yoruba principal divinities and their worshippers.^{Footnote 20} The first thesis was supported mostly by Yoruba Muslims who wanted to be actively involved in Yoruba cultural works and establish a cultural link with northern Nigerian Muslims who have dominated Nigerian politics since the 1960s.^{Footnote 21} The second thesis tends to insist on the hegemony of Yoruba autochthonous traditions and civilization, which Johnson, among others, propagated.^{Footnote 22} While the contested origins of Oduduwa have both political and religious connotations and serve as the basis for diverse interests in nationalism and politics, its registration as Yoruba patrimony that continues to drive Yoruba nationalism remains incontestable figure 1.

Figure 1.

A bronze figurine head of Oduduwa. Photograph ©The Trustees of the British Museum.

Many contemporary Yoruba political elites believing in Oduduwa’s Muslim link drew political support from mostly northern Nigerian Muslims, the Nigerian political bloc believed to have strong political influence in Nigerian federal political power due to its demographic constitution and colonial and post-colonial power influence. Case in point is Moshood Abiola who himself became Yoruba political heritage and patrimony considering his reference and relevance in Yoruba day to day politics; the erection of his statue in the major Yoruba cities of Lagos (Ikeja and ikoyi), Abeokuta, and Ibadan; and above all, the naming of major streets after him in many Yoruba cities. This was possible because Abiola became recognized as a symbol of Yoruba political emancipation—a situation that made it possible for a Yoruba man to become the President of Nigeria through civil politics in the early twenty-first century.

On the other hand, Yoruba Christians and traditional religious worshippers mostly believe in the Yoruba autochthonous history and support a progressive political ideology. They themselves, like Obafemi Awolowo, another Yoruba political ancestor, acted upon their perceptions to draw local and grassroots political support among the Yoruba. Nonetheless, the religious division in politics and nationalism is not as prominent as the shared emphasis on political heroes as cultural patrimony.

ANCESTORS AS YORUBA PATRIMONIES FOR NATIONALISM

Oranmiyan, the grandson of Oduduwa, another Yoruba heritage and patrimony who extended the Yoruba frontiers to the Edo people in midwestern Nigeria, founded the Oyo Empire that became an imperial kingdom between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries.^{Footnote 23} It was through Oranmiyan’s influence that many city-states, such as Ijaye, Ogbomoso, Ibadan and Ede, so characteristic of Yoruba pre-colonial society were founded. This mythological history of Oranmiyan and the Oyo Empire helped to establish a pan-Yoruba identity starting from the 1900s. Johnson, one of the chief architects of this history, whose work The History of the Yorubas is foremost in Yoruba literary patrimonies,^{Footnote 24} noted that the main source of his history was the traditional kings’ ballads of Oyo that transmitted the Yoruba history through oral traditions.^{Footnote 25} Today, the political heritage of Oduduwa and Oranmiyan appeals to many Yoruba people. Both Obafemi Awolowo and Moshood Abiola drew on the Oduduwa and Oranmiyan legacies and acted in their cultural work to create and strengthen a pan-Yoruba political identity that Johnson had started.^{Footnote 26} Since the late nineteenth century, the initial cultural project has over time transformed into a political project in the form of locally-conceived nationalism, amidst the contestations surrounding the imagination of Yoruba as a nation. With the constant recreation of images and memory of both Oduduwa and Oranmiyan in the construction of nation and nationalism among the Yoruba, nationalist agencies, such as local nationalist movements, political groups, cultural associations, and Yoruba political personae, draw their identities and formations from these patrimonies. Through this construction, these agencies rely on their patrimonies to expand their frontiers and develop the consciousness of the larger Yoruba people across class and gender.

As nationalist movements became stronger, consciousness of ethnic commonality was established among the Yoruba, doing so through the symbolic recreation of Oduduwa as a Yoruba symbol of cultural, political, and economic unity. At first, during the era of slavery in Latin America, Yoruba slaves created a cultural awareness that connected with the descent of Oduduwa. Together with Christianity and colonial politics, as other sets of patrimonial instrumentation, Oduduwa patrimony was engaged in building a stronger Yoruba political identity and nationalism of the later era. According to Matory, the Yoruba who were exported to Brazil, North America, and the West Indies became increasingly aware that they came from the same descent traced to Oduduwa and also from the same slave depots in West Africa and were culturally similar.^{Footnote 27} When slavery was abolished, many of them were returned to Sierra Leone where they formed a group known as the Creoles. Eventually, they were taken to Lagos in an attempt to re-settle them within their areas of origin.^{Footnote 28}

Among these newly freed slaves were some lucky ones who had benefited from Christianity and Western education—factors that later contributed to their becoming the elite of Lagos and Egba. It was these individuals who formed the first African clergy in Nigeria that pioneered early Yoruba nationalism as a cultural project beginning from 1896,^{Footnote 29} which eventually developed into political nationalism during the colonial era and sustained as “ethnic nationalism” in post-colonial Nigeria. Since its invention as cultural nationalism, Yoruba nationalism has been propagated and strengthened by both cultural and political patrimonies in southwestern Nigeria.

As of the late 1940s, the above began to crystallize into ethnic nationalism among the Yoruba. They cultivated pride in a primogenitor that became a pan-Yoruba god and symbol of the people’s identity. Thus, cultural movements were established and driven by the Yoruba consciousness of a united “nation” even though there are 22 distinct sub-ethnic groups that constitute the so called Yoruba nation in Nigeria. Notable among the movements were the Egbe Omo Oduduwa (Association of Oduduwa Descendants) which was established by Obafemi Awolowo and nurtured into a political party in 1951—which was the political spirit of the Yoruba people until 1964, when another socio-cultural group Egbe Afenifere replaced it—and Egbé Omo Olófin ^{Footnote 30} (Association of Olofin) established in the 1960s.^{Footnote 31} Both associations used an image of Oduduwa as their symbol, drawing membership across the Yoruba land. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw the emergence of many of these patrimonial associations: Oduduwa Peoples’ Congress established in 1995; O’odua Youth Movement (OYM) founded in 1994; Bashorun Rock founded in 1995; O’odua Liberation Movement (OLM) founded in 1997; United Self- determination Platform for O’odua (USEPO) founded in 1999; The O’odua Assembly (TOAS) founded in 2000; and O’odua Republic Front (ORF) founded in 2001. All these socio-cultural groups were visible in Yoruba nationalism and politics in Nigeria.

LOCAL MEDIA AS LITERARY PATRIMONY AND YORUBA NATIONALISM

YORUBA POLITICAL ELITES AS PATRIMONIES FOR NATIONALISM AND POLITICAL IDENTITY

In Yorubaland of southwestern Nigeria, local approval and popularity have been crucial to political and nationalist campaigns and access to the grassroots. Thus, through popular acclamation or counter-acclamation, Yoruba political elites have engaged in securing local approval and popularity that cut across social and religious boundaries. Hence, only Yoruba political elites who secured local approval and popularity among the Yoruba in southwestern Nigeria have dominated the nationalist struggles and mobilized grassroots support. Especially in the later nineteenth century, they have also defined their political characters and contextualized their experiences against the backdrop of national Nigerian politics to garner sympathy from local people in support of their nationalist aspirations and struggles. Thus, due to their political influence in both colonial and post-colonial Nigeria, employed in building political images and imaginations that command respect for the Yoruba in Nigeria, they are regarded as Yoruba political heritages and can be classified as the people’s patrimonies.

The most prominent example of these elites turned political patrimony is Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Born in 1909, Awolowo rose from a chain of ups and downs, which started shortly after his birth due to the untimely death of his father, to become a political colossus and a Yoruba political deity whose images were claimed to have appeared in the moon in the 1960s and the 1980s. The Ikenne-Remo born politician, Awolowo read law in London, where he imbibed the European idea of nation based on linguistic and cultural sameness. In 1947 while in London in his effort to start his pan-Yoruba political project, Awolowo established a pan-Yoruba socio-cultural group called Egbé Omo Yorùbá. On his return to Nigeria as a successful Ibadan-based lawyer, between 1948 and 1949, Awolowo re-launched the group in Lagos and Owo respectively as Egbé Omo Odùduwà drawing from Oduduwa’s mythological strength as Yoruba patrimony. The rise of Obafemi Awolowo as a Yoruba political nationalist in the 1950s, and his subsequent emergence as a Nigerian nationalist in the 1960s, lent a powerful force to Yoruba politics in Nigeria. Awolowo developed his political career from his personal aspirations to be a Yoruba hero. For him to be so, he needed to entrench himself in Yoruba consciousness of emphasizing belongingness to a common descent and valuing Yoruba cultural values and ideals, and translating such into ethnic domination and hegemony in Nigeria. Therefore as he established his political ground around the mythological personality of Oduduwa, the Yoruba progenitor, all Yoruba embraced him and launched his image, vision, and action into Yoruba patrimony. The people saw in him the virtues of Oduduwa as a redeemer and re-inventor of the people’s historical consciousness. Translating this into Yoruba nationalism and politics, Awolowo used Egbé Omo Odùduwà as a platform to establish his Yoruba-based political parties in 1951(Action Group) and 1978 (Unity Party of Nigeria) headed by Awolowo. ^{Footnote 36}

Although Awolowo did not win a presidential election in Nigeria, his opposition leadership in Nigeria between 1960 and 1966, and later between 1979 and 1983, increased popular recognition of Yoruba rhetoric of marginalization and outcry for socio-political emancipation in Nigeria. Thus, the Yoruba have been vocal in their political expression, even after Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s death in 1987. They have persistently called for socio-political restructuring in Nigeria following Nigeria’s socio-economic crises and the country’s elongated military regimes between 1964 and 1979, and again between 1984 and 1999. The two phases of military regime in Nigeria were characterized by civil war declared by the Ibos in 1967, turbulent ethnic political violence in 1983, and revolts following the annulment of general election in 1993.

Many other Yoruba political elites, including Chief Micheal Ajasin, Abraham Adesanya, Bola Ige, Moshood Abiola, Fredrick Faseun and Gani Adams, have significantly acted as agents of grassroots mobilization for Yoruba nationalism. In their pursuit of Yoruba nationalism, Ajasin, Adesanya, and Ige are difficult to distinguish from Awolowo’s nationalist ideas, especially in bridging the religious and political ideological camping on Yoruba nationalism. However, Abiola and Adams brought more inclusion to Yoruba nationalism. Abiola, a Muslim of the An sar udeen denomination, drew the attention of more Muslim elites to Yoruba nationalism and politics. Abiola’s agitations against the 12 June 1993 presidential election annulment endeared him in the political heart of the Yoruba and fostered him as Yoruba political heritage and patrimony. Faseun and Adams founded O’odua Peoples’ Congress (OPC) in 1995, a militant pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organization that legitimized the metaphoric and symbolic political strength of Oduduwa. To further entrench these political elites as political patrimony, upon their deaths, some, including Awolowo, Samuel Ladoke Akintola, and Abiola, have roads, public utilities, and educational institutions named after them. Statues of Awolowo, Akintola and Abiola have been erected as public monuments in many Yoruba cities and towns in southwestern Nigeria. Similarly the University of Ife in Ile-Ife was renamed Obafemi Awolowo University, Oyo State University of Technology, Ogbomoso renamed Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, and a polytechnic is presently named after Moshood Abiola in Abeokuta. Thus, legitimizing these political elites as never-to-be-forgotten Yoruba nationalist political symbols and, above all, heritages and patrimonies among the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria.