A History Of Yoruba Migrants

 

A History Of Yoruba Migrants

 

Abstract

This study attempts to reconstruct the history of Yoruba settlers in Dutsin- ma original government from 1976- 2015. The substance is to interrogate and explain the forms and dynamics of intergroup relations between the Yoruba emigrant group and the host community. The study employed a literal methodology in probing the forms of intergroup relations in the study area. It discovered that the relationship between Yoruba settlers and the host community has been largely cordial. More so, the Yoruba people have impacted appreciatively in spheres similar as the frugality, education and infrastructural upliftment of Dutsin- ma city. The study recommends thatinter-ethnic cooperation is a strategic necessity for development. thus,inter-ethnic admixture should be encouraged. It’s hoped that policy makers will find this study useful.

Chapter One

Background Of The Study

Preface

Yoruba people are seen in every part of the country and in numerous communities of the world, they’re people who have left their homes in South- western Nigeria and have moved to other places to settle either temporarily or permanently. The movement of similar people substantially from their places of origin to a new place occurs due to multiple reasons frequently added up base on lee Everett “ drive ” and “ pull ” reasons or factors of migration. Push factors have tended to drive people out in hunt of better living conditions while pull factors are believed to be socio- profitable and political reasons that have attracted them to a particular place for better means of livelihood across the world. Migration is defined by Eisenstadt as the physical transition of individual or group from one society to another. This transition according to him, typically involves abandoning one social setting and entering another and different one. His emphasis is substantially on leaving a whole set of social life and of a person’s former domestic region and establishing a new set of social life in a ultimate or new region where they migrated, 1 similar people are generally appertained to as settlers. In utmost cases, settlers play vital places towards the development of the communities which they settle while in some other cases, the impacts of the settlers can also be negatively felt in the new surroundings they settled. Because relationship is prone to interruptions due to the fact that occasionally indigenes feel hovered by settlers generally as a result of land hassle or profitable struggle over scarce coffers. Places like Kano, Minna, Kaduna, Benue, Jos and Nasarawa state are exemplifications of where aborigines have felt hovered and this has led to clash between settlers and host communities. Cases like this have led to security pitfalls and relegation of people. Udo explains that settlers to pastoral areas don’t bear special chops to serve effectively as growers or petty dealers, he further ascertain that migration leads to the development of pastoral areas and all ply considerable impact on the frugality of the origin of emigrant itself.2

Among the colorful ethnical groups that have been active in migration processes across Nigeria for a long period are the Yoruba people who are largely mobile, city dwelling people, who erected fiefdoms and conglomerates long before they came into contact with the European.3 They’re among the oldest surviving groups in the timber of the South of Nigeria including the Edo speaking people who have successfully established and maintained vast fiefdoms within the timber surroundings of Nigeria.4

Yoruba people in Nigeria, piecemeal from religion affinity, can be said to be liberal that’s why they fluently go on and settle among other language groups as it’s seen in Northern Nigeria. The Yoruba – speaking people of Nigeria are concentrated in Ondo, Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Kwara, Ekiti and Lagos States. While maturity of the Yoruba live in Western Nigeria, there are also substantial Yoruba communities in the Republic of Benin and Togo as well as in the United States and United Kingdom.5 The Yoruba share a linguistics unity as well as common traditions and traced their decent from a common ancestor called Oduduwa, who’s believed to have established the Ife dynasty.6 The Yoruba were noway united under a common government rather Yoruba land comported of several important monarchical countries similar as Ife, Oyo, Egba and Ijebu etc. still, certain political positions were honored throughout the total of Yoruba land, the most important has been the Oni of Ife, who was regarded as the spiritual sovereign of all Yoruba and the Alaafin of Oyo who was the political leader of the Yoruba people.7