Yoruba Is Not a Tribe!
Dear Mr. Onakoya,
Thank you for your patriotic and nationalistic outing at the Musée du Louvre. Your outfit was not 'retarded' in any way, shape, or form. It was regal, celebratory, and eye-catching. Of course, such an outfit would intimidate people. In psychology, Sigmund Freud has shown that people who are intimidated often hide it by casting aspersions on the one who inadvertently intimidates them. It is classic fight-or-flight behaviour.
It is easier to blend in and takes more strength to refuse to surrender your culture to another. Your actions show strength of character. Kudos!
Everything you say here is valid and correct, except your use of the word tribe.
Permit me to assert that Yoruba is not a tribe. That is a misnomer. Yoruba is an ethnic nationality, not a tribe. Within the Lukumi Yoruba ethnic nationality, you have tribes such as Egba, Gbagura (a sub-tribe within Egba), Igbomina, Ekiti, Awori, Ikale, Ilaje, Owu, Itsekiri, Remo, Okun, etc.
When you misidentify Lukumi Yoruba as a tribe, you belittle your people, ancestors, and yourself.
Belgium has a total population of just 11.8 million people. However, you will never see or hear Belgians refer to themselves as tribespeople. Both Flemish and Walloons refer to themselves as ethnic nationalities within Belgium.
As a Lukumi Yoruba, you come from a people with a population in Nigeria of over 40 million and globally of approximately 60 million. The adult literacy of the Lukumi is comparable to that of Belgium. As such, the word tribe ought to be beneath you.
The term tribe connotes some form of primitiveness and backwardness. Yet, the Lukumi Yoruba have a higher collective adult literacy than that of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia.
It does the ethnic nationality much good to be granularly specific. You hail from a tribe within the Lukumi Yoruba ethnic nationality. A nationality that had an advanced system of government, with monarchs, guilds, and a judiciary long before colonialism.
Ibn Battuta, the famous Maghreb scholar and traveller, mentioned your ethnic nationality as far back as 1352, when he referred to Yufi, which is Ifẹ̀ in Arabic.
This was at a time when many nations in Europe did not exist. Belgium, which I aforemention, is less than 300 years old as a nation. It is not possible for a tribe to be that organised and have such staying power.
Thank you, Tunde, for being a good ambassador of Nigerian culture and the Lukumi Yoruba ethnic nationality. Tens of millions worldwide are indeed proud of your cultural ambassadorship.
Reno Omokri
Ambassador Designate to Mexico. Gospeller. Deep Thinker. #TableShaker. #1 Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years. Hodophile. Hollywood Magazine Humanitarian of the Year, 2019. Business Insider Influencer of the Year, 2022. 21st Most Talked About Person in Africa, 2024.
I am so in love with precolonial Yoruba architecture. I don’t know, but when I look deep into these pictures something tells me I have lived a life in these types of houses before in a distant past that I cannot remember.
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