Source:

The Yoruba Page: Information about the Yoruba People ("The Yoruba Page - Information about the Yoruba People") [ID 14965]

Document(s): The Yoruba Page - Information about the Yoruba People

Source:

Background information on the ethnic group of the Yoruba [ID 15466]

Quoted after:

"The Yoruba area includes most of the southwestern area of Nigeria. There are 20 to 30 million people in this region. There were seven separate Yoruba kingdoms in the area, often fighting among themselves for dominance. The Yoruba language, which has many dialects, is part of the Kwa group of the Niger-Congo family. It is related to Idoma and Igala, southern Middle Belt languages based south of the Benue River. The state of Ilorin is an Islamic one and forms a bridge between north and south. The Yoruba have had the longest contact with the outside world. In the 19th century, returned slaves from Brazil brought a style of architecture that still marks Yoruba housing. It is a region that is highly westernized: It had Nigeria's first university, the University of Ibadan (1948); first publishing house; first radio and television stations; a Nobel Prize laureate (Wole Soyinke); and in many other ways led the nation in its "modern" orientation. About half of Yoruba are Christians and half are Muslims. (Levinson, 1998, 158)"