Oyo Is "Yoruba"
Prior to 1919 when the colonialists convened a conference and implored every tribes that would later comprised the Western region to adopt a common identifier, Yoruba, various tribes in the region had always identified by its individual names. Some may want to argue that the tag "Yoruba" predates 1919 far back to the era of Ibn Batuta, who mentioned the name in his work. Well, my contention is not when the name itself came into existence but the false revisionism that it has always been used to refer to the good people occupying the geographical space of the South West today and affiliated areas. No it wasn't. This was why Ooni Ademiluyi, the 1919 king of Ife, refused the Yoruba tag until he was prevailed upon to accept the tag. This is why today, only the Alaafin of Oyo can give out a title and designate such as "of Yoruba land" but other Obas in the so called Yoruba land cannot do the same. This was why FFK was rejecting the tag few years ago and instead chose to be addressed as "Anago". This was why Reno Omokri claimed the original name of the language known by Yoruba today was "Edekiri". This was why Adelabu penkelemesi, an Ibadan man in the 50s, campaigned heavily against Awo, an Ijebu, citing his non Yorubaness to the Ibadan people then who gave their votes to IPP, Adelabu's party. This was why Adelabu later formed Egbe Omo Yoruba that metamorphosed into a political party just to counter Awo who had earlier founded Egbe Omo Oduduwa. Egba is Egba, ijesa is Ijesa, Akoko is Akoko.............................. and Oyo is Yoruba.
