“Emir of Yorubaland”: A sociolinguistic analysis of the term “Emir”

the emir’s palace, is called Oja Oba,’ which translates as “the market of the Oba.”

“So ‘emir’ is rarely used in Ilorin-as in other northern Muslim places-outside official communication and in Englishmedium conversations. A more appropriate question for the old man should have been “do you want an Oba who is Yoruba rather than this Oba whose ancestors are Fulani?” I actually did rephrase my question like that after realizing that the old man couldn’t relate to the term ‘emir.’”

5. The roots of Islam in Iwo go back to several centuries. The town had sharia courts and was the center of Islamic scholarship several decades before many northern Muslim communities. Perhaps it is the basis for the Oba’s decision to bear the title “emir.” The colonialists who imposed the term “emir” on northern Muslim traditional rulers could have called Muslims obas in Yorubaland “emir” if they wanted to, and it would have stuck.

Consider this: The very name “Yoruba” isn’t native to the Yoruba people, as I’ve written in several columns; it’s a colonial imposition, which Ajayi Crowder helped to popularize. The colonialists actually toyed with the name “Nago” (the name of a Yoruba subgroup in Benin Republic) but later chose “Yoruba,” which is the corruption of Yariba, the Songhai exonym for people in the old Oyo Empire.

Even the Oduduwa myth of origin that Yoruba people cherish about themselves came about as a colonial project to foster a sense of oneness among members of the cognate but nonetheless disparate language groups that now fancy themselves as Yoruba. (The colonialists wanted to reduce Nigeria’s ethnic and linguistic complexity to just three ethnic groups, which was unsuccessful. They also promoted the Bayyagida myth and several other myths of origin in Nigeria. I know this will be hard to accept, but it’s true).

Anyone who chose your very collective name and fostered a collective identity where none existed before could have done anything. The colonialists (although it’s the Portuguese) called Eko “Lagos,” and that’s what we still call it today. The colonialists decided that Yoruba people in parts of what is now Kwara and Kogi would be northerners, and that’s what they are today. So don’t discount the power of colonialists to shape identities. Had they chosen to call obas emirs, that’s what they would have been.