The oughtness of the politics and culture of 'created' identities for teaching Nigerian history: a case study of the Egbe Ото Oduduwa

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The oughtness of the politics and culture of 'created' identities for teaching Nigerian history: a case study of the Egbe Ото Oduduwa

Olajumoke Olufunmilola Olaiya

History education has been able to give a flowing account of how various cultures have been co-existing prior European encounter. The historical account has evolved from the mythical stage into the scientific stage with evidence adduced and coming forward to revise and even correct initial assumptions. In the face of these revisions and corrections, it is not in place to demand: how do we teach African history to students? What is the connection between religion and culture in the making of a people? Using Kwame Appiah's cosmopolitan perspective as my theoretical framework and through the method of philosophical analysis, I tender that the idea of an identity that is distinct or peculiar to a particular people cannot be reliable. To make my point lucid, this research uses the Yoruba of south-west Nigeria as paradigm. I contend that the emergence of Egbe Omo Oduduwa is not tied to a special or peculiar identity, but a surge in the need to emphasize common grounds over differences in order to establish a common cause for a perceived identity. The point that has been established thus far is that all the small kingdoms and mighty empires that claim to share the Yoruba identity in contemporary times, were hitherto sworn enemies who hardly perceive things from a similar perspective. It is however interesting to note that it was during the colonial era and the press for political independence that informed the need to coalesce and create an identity from that which cuts across all of them to initiate a common denominator. From the exploration of the Yoruba peoples from earliest times to the present times, it is the case that there was no perception of common ground prior 1945. The factors that led to the recognition of a common ground are tied to the struggle for liberation from foreign powers. It is on this that note that this research submits that identities are human creations and they neither primordially original nor pure.

Keywords: Culture and Religion, Egbe Omo Oduduwa Identity, Kwame Appiah, Yoruba.

Оладжумоке Олуфунмілола Олайя

Історична освіта змогла дати повний опис того, як різні культури співіснували до зустрічі з європейськими. Історичний облік перейшов з міфічної на наукову стадію із наведеними доказами, які висуваються для перегляду і навіть виправлення початкових припущень. З огляду на ці перегляд та виправлення, чи не виникає вимога: як ми навчаємо студентів африканській історії? Який зв'язок між релігією та культурою у формуванні народу? Використовуючи космополітичну перспективу Кваме Апіа як свою теоретичну основу та за допомогою методу філософського аналізу, я заявляю, що ідея ідентичності, яка є відмінною чи властивою певному народові, не може бути надійною. Щоб зробити свою думку зрозумілою, у цьому дослідженні в якості парадигми використовую приклад йоруба на південному заході Нігерії. Я стверджую, що поява Егбе Омо Одудуви пов'язана не з особливою чи нетиповою ідентичністю, а зі сплеском необхідності наголошувати на спільних підставах щодо відмінностей, щоб встановити спільну причину сприйманої ідентичності. Дотепер встановлено, що всі малі королівства та могутні імперії, які претендують на спільність йорубської ідентичності в наш час, були досі заклятими ворогами, які майже не сприймають речі з подібної точки зору. Однак, цікаво зауважити, що саме під час колоніальної ери та руху за політичну незалежність було проінформовано про необхідність злиття та створення ідентичності на тій основі, яка нібито пронизує всіх їх, щоб ініціювати спільний знаменник. З часу вивчення народів йоруба з найдавніших часів до наших днів, з'ясовано, що до 1945 р. не було сприйняття спільної точки зору. Фактори, що призвели до визнання спільної точки зору, пов'язані з боротьбою за звільнення від протекторату іноземних країн. Саме на цьому зазначається, що це дослідження стверджує, що ідентичності - це творіння людини, і вони не є ані первісно оригінальними, ані чистими.

Ключові слова: культура та релігія, ідентичність Еґбе Омо Одудува, Кваме Апіа, йоруба.

Introduction

In a scene of the audio-visual rendition of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Son, Odenigbo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), in a state of liquor-inspired frenzy pronounced: “My point is, the only authentic identity for an African is his tribe. I am a Nigerian because the white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity and I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different from his white as humanly possible. But I was Igbo before the white man came” [Bandele 2013]. In a quick fashion, Okeoma (Babou Ceesay), his colleague retorted: “But you became aware that you were Igbo because of the white man” [Bandele 2013]. Okeoma's response is not only apt but captures the fact that the Nigerian identity has a colonial undergirding, otherwise the chances of various yet distinctive ethnic identities such as the Igbo, Yoruba, Efik, Edo, Hausa, Idoma, coalescing willingly for the political space called Nigeria will be nearly impossible. The fore-rendered transaction had been captured well by Chinua Achebe especially as it concerns the Igbo:

In my area, historically, they did not see themselves as Igbos. They saw themselves as people from this village or that village. In fact in some place “Igbo” was a word of abuse; they were the “other” people, down in the bush. And yet after the Biafran War, during a period of two years, it became a powerful consciousness. But it was real all the time. They all spoke the same language called “Igbo,” even though they were not using that identity in any way. But the moment came when this identity became very very powerful...and over a very short period [Achebe 1982].

The foregoing attests to the point that any discourse on African identity must begin from the premise that “race and history and metaphysics do not enforce an identity.” [Appiah 1992: 176]. In places where these seem to wield influence what persists are nothing but “invented histories, invented biologies, invented cultural affinities” with perhaps a fortuitous yet undisclosed agency “that has to be scripted, structured by conventions of narratives to which the world never quite manages to conform” [Appiah 1992: 173]. The inference is that identity, as it relates to culture, values and development of a people is persistently and relentlessly evolving. It is also striking that nearly all of the ethnic identities that constitute Africa did not perceive themselves as a people prior to colonialism. As Chinua Achebe renders, it was the Biafran War that initiated the idea of the Igbo as a consciousness - a consciousness that was hitherto otiose. Similarly, the Lingala and Swahili-speaking peoples of modern Zaire are, consequent of “spheres of political and economic interests were established before the Belgians took full control and continued to inform relations between regions under colonial rule” [Fabian 1986: 42-3]. It is according to Appiah “a product of recent history, an outcome of worker stratification imposed by the Belgian administration” [Appiah 1992: 62]. In

Ghana, an Akan identity surfaced as an opposition to Ewe unity. In Nigeria, the idea of a Yoruba people did not evolve until 1945 through the cultural nationalism captured by Egbe Omo Oduduwa.

The point being underlined here is that prior contact with Europe, the various sub-cultures in Africa did not perceive themselves as they do presently. To amplify, the idea of “Yoruba nation”; “Ijaw nation”; “Hausa nation” and other ethnic identities in Nigeria, as lauded by Kola Ogundowole (2013) is a [post] colonial creation, motivated largely by politics and economics. The motivating factors for initiating distinct identity in present times are not dissimilar from the pre-colonial periods. Three factors have been adduced by Kwame Appiah. Firstly, being a complex affair, identities improve and expand from a status quo of “economic, political, and cultural forces, always in opposition to other identities” [Appiah 1992: 178]. Secondly, identities are enmeshed but flourish in myths and lies especially as it concerns their origins. The third factor which follows from the first two, for Appiah accounts for “no large place in reason in the construction - as opposed to the study and management - of identities” [Appiah 1992: 178].

In the pages that follow, and though the method of historic-philosophical analysis this study forays into the evolution of the Yoruba identity from pre-historic times to the present times. The point is to argue that there were political and economic interests which played pivot role toward the present identity expressed by the peoples as Omo Oduduwa. Within Yoruba history, instances of slave trade between/among Yoruba towns and kings persisted, just as intra-ethnic and internecine wars or conflicts were commonplace. All these were in play while Otto von Bismarck and his allies at the 1884-5 Berlin Conference were partitioning Africa for themselves. Their invasion of the African space would at worse - toss further into oblivion or - at best confuse what it means to be African. Since this study intends to disclose the fleeting characteristics of identities, taking Appiah's three factors already stated above as axiomatic, the next part of this study will explore the various myths and histories provided to explain away the origin and identity of the Yoruba. Within the section, one discerns how Appiah's first two claims are vindicated. The thrust of the last claim will be explored in the light of the four ways through which attempts have been made to foster an African identity [Falola 2018: 273-276].

Yoruba Identity and the History of Lies and Falsehoods (Dateless Beginning to 1945)

In a staggering fashion, Appiah accentuates the seemingly sacrilegious that “we would need to show that race and national history are falsehoods but they are useless falsehoods at best or - at worst - dangerous ones...”[Appiah 1992: 175]. These are the words that ring through when one decides to take a historic-philosophical exploration of the trajectories of identities within the Africa. Owing to space-time limitation, this study will reduce its scope to the “Yoruba nation/identity,” as an instance that validates the prong that histories and myths are mostly falsehoods that vitiate honest effort to initiate an identity in a multicultural world. The proper starting point will therefore be toward providing an accurate response the poser: Who are the Yoruba?

As easy as the foregoing question seems, the answers are not as straightforward. Someone born after Nigeria's political independence will point mostly to South-west Nigeria as the aboriginal abode of the people. Another who was born perhaps prior the 1900s will expatiate that the peoples occupying that geopolitical zone of present day Nigeria did not perceive one another as someone born at the turn of the 21^st century will be tempted to admit. The reason for this is not far-fetched - human identities are constantly evolving, migrating and adapting. If this were not the case, one will not find a historian relaying that “The Yoruba constitutes one of the major ethnic groups of modern Nigeria. They effectively occupy the whole of Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Ekiti, Lagos, and a substantial part of Kwara State” [Atanda 1990: 1]. Aside from Nigeria, the Yoruba are also found in sizeable numbers in the south eastern part of the republic of Benin, Togo, and Dahomey in West Africa, in West India and in South Africa. There is also a thriving Yoruba culture in South America and the Caribbean, especially Brazil and Cuba, where the descendants of the unwilling immigrants to the New World have been able to maintain their identity and preserve their cultural heritage [Balogun 2009: 44]. And for each of these, there are slight variations in dialect. Given the fleeting nature of identities, the onus of this section is to disclose the evolution of the Yoruba from primordial times to the present day. To begin with, this section explores the narratives concerning the origin of the peoples as chronicled by historians and the peoples' folklores. Secondly, the internecine wars and factions among the peoples will be exposed with the inherent idea that there was no Yoruba identity prior colonial rule. Thirdly, this section brokers the political and economic factors that engendered for the first time, the urgency to `band' together and unite to initiate what has been tagged as the Yoruba identity/nation. It is from the last of these propositions that contemporary scholarship explore what has been tagged as the Yoruba identity as they pay lesser attention to the history of the peoples before this time.

Regarding the origin of the Yoruba, there are two competing narratives: the one divine; the other migration. Under the migration narratives, there are proposals linking the people to: (1) Mecca; (2) ancient Egypt; and (3) Northeast Africa. Granted, these migration narratives are not exhaustive, it is the case that they are actually the foremost proposals on the subject.

Before delving into the discourse on the origin of the people it is important to disclose the parameters put in place by social scientists to ascertain group or individual identity. Some of these paradigms are religion, nationalism, ethnicity, and language [Capozza, & Brown, 2000; Castells 2004]. These factors have ben adduced to hint, partly or wholly, the processes involved in identity formation among peoples. Of all these qualities however, it is important to stress that culture too plays a pivot role. This is because “In Africa and elsewhere, culture shapes the perception of Self and the interaction between the people and their environment....It is the basis of identity and ultimately development” [Falola 2018: 266]. It is therefore not incorrect, the locus that “cultural identity involves the multiple issues of history, environment, values, social stratification, knowledge, power, and wealth, which are also the domain of development” [Falola 2018: 266]. The thesis of Falola's claim is demonstrated when one explores the history replete in Yoruba folklore that concerns their divine origin.

Divine Origin Mythical Narratives

For the exploration of the divine origin of the Yoruba, the study relies on the narrative of Idowu (1962) and Awolalu (1979). According to Bolaji Idowu [Idowu 1962: 18-21] and Awolalu (1979), Olodumare, the Supreme Deity in Yoruba belief, resided in heaven, and below was a watery surface. He delegated the primordial and arch-divinity, Orishanla the god of cleanliness and morality with a snail shell which was filled sand; a fowl; and a pigeon. The main impetus to be gleaned is the entrustment of creation to the primordial deity by the Olodumare. Upon his arrival to the earth, Orishanla poured out the sand while the fowl and the pigeon spread it with their claws on the watery surface so that land appeared. A chameleon was then sent to inspect the work and it brought back a report to Olodumare that the earth was wide enough, Ile- Ife or the land/place of spreading [Olojede 2011: 343]. The folklore signifies that the place where this took place thus became known as Ile-Ife (or Ife), the centre of creation from where human beings, and the Yoruba. The tradition also continues that later, Orishanla was sent back with Orunmila, another primordial divinity, to equip the earth. As part of his task, Orishanla was to mould human bodies from clay and present them to Olodumare to breathe life into the finished forms. For this role, he is known as 'the sculptor divinity' [Idowu 1962: 21]. It should also be stressed that Orishanla was a drunk. In cases of severe intoxication, he started creating misshapen human bodies and it was from these albinos, and other deformed persons such as the lame, the blind, dwarfs, and hunchbacks. These are all considered sacred to Orishanla and are consecrated to the deity [Awolalu 1979: 21; Drewal, 1989: 44]. They are his special devotees and priests and are not to be despised because they also are the products of the sculptor divinity (Babatunde, 1992:60).After casting humans from clay Orishanla “would store them in a place pending the time Olodumare would come and breathe into them” [Bowen 1968: 314]. There is however another twist to the divine origin of the people. This is captured by Funmi Olojede [Olojede 2011: 343] that the “traditions diverge in details.” She proposes an Ife tradition which reveals that Orishanla was a lover of palm wine and he used to drink to the point of intoxication. On his way to carry out Olodu- mare's instruction, he was so drunk that he fell into a stupor. When he delayed, as he would not wake up on time from his drunken sleep, Oduduwa was sent to investigate what had gone wrong. Finding Orishanla in deep sleep, Oduduwa collected his equipment for forming human bodies and just went ahead and fulfilled the task thereby supplanting Orishanla and becoming the creator of solid earth in the place of Orishanla [Idowu 1962: 22; Awolalu 1979: 13].

identity teaching nigerian history

The Arab Connection Narratives

Commonsense however leads one to cast aside these traditions as nothing but myths lacking concrete empirical validations. In the wake of anthropological, philological, archaeological and even historical researches into the identity and origin of the Yoruba, Mecca; ancient Egypt and North-east Africa have been proposed as plausible. The study that concerns Mecca commences with a man called Lamurudu, “a king of Mecca whose descendants were Oduduwa, the ancestor of the Yoruba and the kings of Gogobiri (that is Gobir in Hausaland) and of Kukawa (in Bornu), both of which are in the north of Nigeria” [Olojede 2011: 343]. The period of Lamurudu's reign is presumed to be after the arrival of Islam. Johnson records the account as related to him that: “The Crown Prince Oduduwa relapsed into idolatry during his father's reign, and as he was possessed of great influence, he drew many after him. His purpose was to transform the state religion into paganism, and hence he converted the great mosque of the city into an idol temple...” [Johnson 1921: 3]. The narration further states that “Asara, Oduduwa's priest had a son called Braima. When Braima grew older, one day in the absence of his father, he used an axe to destroy all the idols and the images that were desecrating the mosque” [Olojede 2011: 344]. When this act was discovered, the people ordered that Braima be immolated alive. This resulted in a civil uprising in which the Muslims gained the upper hand and subjugated their opponents [Olojede 2011: 344]. As a result “Lamurudu the King was slain, and all his children with those who sympathized with them were expelled from the town... Oduduwa [and his children]... travelled 90 days from Mecca and after wandering about finally settled at Ile-Ife where he met Agboniregun (or etilu) the founder of the Ifa worship [Johnson 1921:4].

It is clear that the Mecca narrative is not only contradictory of but falsifies the divine origin proposal. If Oduduwa was in Mecca, then the world already exists before taking the place of Orishanla to create it. Similarly, one may deduce that Ile-Ife was already inhabited at the time of their arrival. What then is the identity of the initial occupants of Ile-Ife prior to Oduduwa's expulsion from Mecca? The Mecca narrative was silent on this, yet concludes that Oduduwa is the progenitor of the Yoruba people, with Ile-Ife as the cradle of their dispersal. These circumspections have led Johnson to offer that nothing of the Mecca connection is to be found in the records of Arabian writers of any kings of Mecca; an event of such importance could hardly have passed unnoticed by their historians” [Johnson 1921: 5]. Similarly, Ulli Beier remarks that, “It is not uncommon for people to link up their history with some other place of renown” and that “it was possible that the Yoruba drummers telling the story of Oduduwa added the name Mecca to their story, after Mecca had become a place of legendary fame through Yoruba pilgrims who had returned from that town” [Beier 1955: 19-20]. Elsewhere, it has also been affirmed that “the claim to origin from Mecca is not an original element of the tradition, but a later elaboration, intended to link the Yoruba to the prestigious civilizations of the east” [Law 1977: 28-9]. Obviously, the Mecca link has no serious basis.

The Ancient Egypt Connection Narratives

Another research, mostly philological, anthropological, aesthetic and archaeological links the people to ancient Egypt. Olumide Lucas (1948) tinkers that the Yoruba must have stayed in ancient Egypt for a long time before moving south of the Sahara. Lucas (1948) informs that about half of Yoruba vernacular has ancient Egyptian origin or root and to illustrate his point, he considers words from five short paragraphs which, according to him, were randomly selected from some Yoruba texts. He tenders that least half of the words in the passages are “survivals of Ancient Egyptian words” (Lucas, 1948: 343). Incidentally, the Yorubas also share belief in immortality, religious practices, and deification of kings among many others with ancient Egypt. He concludes that among other things, elements of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, emblems and other symbols in Yoruba (especially, Ife) art and craft testify to this. He cites as evidence art sculptures known as Ife marbles and the `Phoenician' characters on Opa Oranmiyan, an ancient granite obelisk over 18ft high at Ife [Johnson 1921: 6].

The link to ancient Egypt is even made more manifest to North-east Africa when the German anthropologist Leo Frobenius stresses the semblance of artworks in those regions with the ones at Ile-Ife. In 1910-11, Leo Frobenius was at Ile-Ife on expedition and conducted excavations on some sites. His report on the excavations drew world attention to the historical and archaeological significance of Ife. Consequently, he announces:

I maintain I have re-discovered Atlantis, the Emporium of the culture of the West on the further sides of the straits of Gibraltar, that Atlantis, whose walls, as Solon informs us, held within them Poseidon's Castle, where there was a wealth of luxuriant vegetation... I lay claim to Yoruba, so tropically lush and rank in its vegetation. this Yoruba, I assert, is Atlantis, the home of Poseidon's posterity, the Sea-God by them named Olokun; the land of a people whom Solon declared: They have even extended their lordship over Egypt and Tyrrhene [Frobenius 1913: 345].

The foregoing is based on “Frobenius' hypothesis is that there must have been some Etruscan influence on the Atlantic coast in the thirteenth century BC the relics of which he found at Ile-Ife. The people must have got to the west coast by way of the sea through fleets from North Africa and the remains of that Mediterranean culture can be found in different aspects of Yoruba art and culture such as the use of the handloom, the bow and arrow, and drums with a distinctive North African imprint” [Olojede 2011: 345]. There are other semblances such architecture of water storage facilities and houses made of ridged roofs.

Aside the foregoing, there are other stories that link the Yoruba to the east of River Niger [Bowen 1968: 266]; from across a big river [Beier 1955: 19]; and from a far country (Farrow, 1926: 21). In the end, there is no consensus regarding the historical origin of the people. The excursion into the various accounts of the origin of the Yoruba vindicates the second proposition of Ap- piah that “identities are enmeshed but flourish in myths and lies especially as it concerns their origins” [Appiah 1992: 178]. Upon a critical consideration of how the peoples who are passed as Yoruba relate with one another, prior colonialism, it will be clearer that “identities improve and expand from a status quo of economic, political, and cultural forces, always in opposition to other identities” [Appiah 1992: 178].

Scientific Affirmations of Would-be Yoruba Settlements and Difference

According to a former professor of history, Elizabeth Isichei “there is a sense in which all Yoruba history begins with Ife, as Igbo history begins at Nri, or Birom history at Riyom” [Isichei 1983: 131]. Radiocarbon dating reveals Ife was “a settlement of substantntial size between the ninth and twelfth centuries” [Willet 1971: 367]. Bronze artworks showing an Ooni of Ife; and another one with his consort revealed thermoluminescence dates within the 14^th and 15^th centuries [Calvocoressi, & David 1979: 19]. These attest that Ife was already a thriving culture at this era using the Gregorian Calendar. It is however interesting to note that aside Ife, there were other popular towns in South-West Nigeria that will later make up the original abode of those to be called the Yoruba. Oyo is another very important force to reckon with. Oyo has been radiocarbon dated to around 1100 A.D. [Calvocoressi, & David 1979: 19-20]. Other popular kingdoms are the Ijebu, Ondo, Owu, Morin, Ijesa, Egba, Ekiti, Ogbomosho, Iseyin, and in some cases Benin. It needs to be stated however that Oyo Empire was so colossal that “in the reign of Ojigi, Dahomey was forced to pay Oyo tribute” (Isichei, 1983: 134). It has been as well that it was its expansion that “bred weakness and division, and the state then stood on the brink of collapse” [Isichei 1983: 134].

All the places mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs have evolved and refer to one another as Yoruba people - of one similar identity. This however was not the case historically-speaking. Take the case of Owu, an Egba province, as an instance. Owu is a southern Kingdom which owed allegiance to the Oyo Empire. In 1811/12, Owu sacked a number of Ife towns. During the campaign, they killed several Ijebu traders in Ife. As a reprisal, Ijebu and Ife “besieged Owu, which surrendered in 1816/17 after terrible sufferings from famine. The site was razed and rebuilding forbidden” [Isichei 1983: 216]. Other Egba towns were similarly affected: “Ikija was destroyed because of its support of Owu, and Kesi was destroyed by the fleeing Owu because of an altercation over yams” [Isichei 1983: 216].

Around this time too enslavement of one group by the other was replete. For instance, the Ibadan leader, when asked to give up Ekiti as a subject in 1885 responded crisply: “the Ekiti were there wives, their slaves, the yams, their palm oil etc.” [Awe 1973: 68]. Clearly, the matter of releasing them is not negotiable. As a matter of fact, kidnapping of members of one town by another were so rampant that “a special gag was invented for the mouth of human beings to prevent any stolen from crying out and being discovered...so bad were those days at Ibadan and so callous had the people become that if a woman or child was heard to cry out.O help me, I am taken, the usual answer from indoors was.you can go along with him” [Johnson 1921: 245-246]. It is at this era that slave-raiding now became a trade to many who would get rich speedily [Johnson 1921].

The kingdom of Ilesa was drafted as part of the Ibadan Empire in the 1850s, even as it was an unwilling `amalgamation.' Ilesa fought against Ibadan but fell in 1870 [Isichei 1983: 219]. The wars among the peoples that will soon coalesce to be Yoruba as a shared identity did not abate so effortlessly. In 1916, there was an Iseyin-Okeiho Rising [Atanda 1979]. These conflicts surface spontaneously even after political independence and the fostering of a Yoruba identity. The most recent but very devastating occurred in 1997 between the towns of Ife and Modakeke. In the case of Ife-Modakeke, palpable tension had been generated over the location of the headquarters of the newly created Ife-East Local government. With tension generating beyond peaceful resolutions, indigenes of the two communities engaged themselves in physical warfare [Jekayinfa 2002: 3]. It seems the lessons from the horrors of the past wars and conflicts among these people are slow to be forgotten.

It has been relayed that strangers in Ibadan and other parts of modern day Yoruba land in the 19^th century provide vivid accounts of towns and kingdoms ravaged by the aftermaths of conflicts: the nightly lamentations for the dead, the compounds falling into ruin [Wood 1885: 546; Isichei 1973: 221]. Elsewhere, one gleans that “it is hardly possible to think of the sufferings which have been endured by the Ondos without a feeling of the deepest pity and sympathy...The sufferings of the Ijeshas have been greater than those of the Ondos, and still they continue. Town after town, in the Ijesha country is passed which has but the merest handful of a population, as compared with what it was formerly” [Wood 1885: 851].

The point that has been established thus far is that all the small kingdoms and mighty empires that claim to share the Yoruba identity in contemporary times, were hitherto sworn enemies who hardly perceive things from a similar perspective. It is however interesting to note that it was during the colonial era and the press for political independence that informed the need to coalesce and create an identity from that which cuts across all of them to initiate a common denominator. This denominator was developed by the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo as Egbe Omo Oduduwa, which transliterates as “peoples or descendants of Oduduwa." There is an element of truth in this assertion since “a number of Yoruba kingdoms and Benin have traditions that they were founded by sons or grandsons of Oduduwa" [Isichei 1983: 132]. It is also disclosed that the number of such polities range between six and sixteen in various accounts [Law 1977: 27]. Awolowo capitalized on the unverifiable stories and folklores of the peoples for economic and political purpose under the auspice of Egbe Omo Oduduwa.

Egbe Omo Oduduwa and the Birth of a Yoruba Common Ground

It was in 1945 that the Nigerian political unit of Egbe Omo Oduduwa entered the political fray of the country. This was when Chief Obafemi Awolowo and some other prominent “Yoruba" elites in London [Sklar 2004: 67; Reed 1982: 25]. The group “had provided a new identity and a joint umbrella for the Yoruba-speaking group [Ekundayo 2012: 9]. This identity was however flawed since it “deprived Dr. Azikiwe of substantial Yoruba followership" [Ayoade 1985: 170]. This is the case since Egbe Omo Oduduwa “was advertised as a non-political, cultural society for men and women of Yoruba nationality and promised to build a virile and efficient Yoruba state of Nigeria" [Ayoade 1985: 169]. The group metamorphosed in the Action Group when the MacPherson Constitution announced democratic elections in Nigeria in 1951.

As novel as the Egbe Omo Oduduwa movement seems, there is no doubt, that what persists are nothing but “invented histories, invented biologies, invented cultural affinities" with perhaps a fortuitous yet undisclosed agency “that has to be scripted, structured by conventions of narratives to which the world never quite manages to conform" [Appiah 1992: 173]. It is therefore not an error that identities of the diverse ethnic groups coalesced in each of the contemporary African states emerge from the “rough-and-tumble of the transition through colonial to postcolonial status” [Appiah 1992: 177]. In the case of Nigeria, “the idea that there was a single Hausa-Fulani tribe...was a largely political claim of the NPC [Northern Peoples' Congress] in their battle against the South...Many elders involved in rural Yoruba society recall that, as late as the 1930s, `Yoruba' was not a common form of political identification” [Laitin 1986: 7-8].

Conclusion

The motivation of this research has corroborated, through history, Appiah's [Appiah 1992: 178] first proposal that: being a complex affair, identities improve and expand from a status quo of economic, political, and cultural forces, always in opposition to other identities. The thrust of this section has also validated the Second proposal which offers that identities are enmeshed but flourish in myths and lies especially as it concerns their origins [Appiah 1992: 178]. From the exploration of the Yoruba peoples from earliest times to the present times, it is the case that there was no perception of common ground prior 1945. The factors that led to the recognition of a common ground are tied to the struggle for liberation from foreign powers. It is on this that note that this research submits that identities are human creations and they neither primordially original nor pure.

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