The Yoruba Nationalist Movements, Ethnic Politics and Violence: A ...

interests into a common force targeted at re-claiming the Yoruba identity that had been lost to
European missionary establishments and colonialism. Nationalist movement thus became a
question of the revival and restoration of the Yoruba tradition and a true Yoruba identity in
terms of language, customs, traditions and dressing. It was more about ethnic superiority,
laying claim that the Yoruba people had a distinct culture, territory and system of production
and that they had been conducting their affairs independently for a long time, even dealing
diplomatically with neighbouring groups.
The postcolonial or transitional period represents the mainstream of Yoruba cultural
consciousness, which is partly ideological. This time, the definition of nationalism is
economic and political. It is not based on the notion of otherness but on access to the control
of resources which the Yoruba people are supposedly entitled to, but denied by overcentralization
of the Nigerian political system that continue to justify inequitable access to
Nigerian political power. Thus, as the Yoruba people feel more affected the historical
consciousness about Oduduwa (the Yoruba progenitor) and other forms of cultural pride built
into the Yoruba identity are not only recreated but re-directed more strongly towards
nationalist projects such as protecting the Yoruba cultural resources, correcting injustice,
fighting social alienation and combating political marginalization which the Yoruba
experienced within the State of Nigeria. 26 From the desire to control what the Yoruba were
supposedly entitled to, springs renewed ideas of ethno-nationalist movements that has shifted
from the colonial perspective which defined nationalism purely in cultural terms to
restructuring of the Nigerian political and economic system that will fit into the framework of
an imagined Yoruba nation. The nationalists’ idea moved from an emphasis on literary
production to self-determination and the actualization of Yoruba control of Nigeria. The
concept of an imagined nation is construed in two senses: first, as the newly independent
Nigeria, and secondly as the possible sovereign Yoruba nation- O’odua Republic (a tentative
name for an imagined nation) that will emerge should Nigeria fails. Thus, the interest is
vested on controlling huge resources and committing such to building the contemplated
Yoruba nation, and competing with other ethnic groups in Nigeria for the control of national
resources.
The exit of the colonial masters, beginning from the late 1950s, marked a change of
order in the Yoruba nationalist movement. Between that time and the early 1960s, the
historical consciousness drawn from the Oduduwa legacy as a cultural object had started to
26
Personal interview with Lawuyi Tunde in Osogbo on 13 September 2005.
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