Fani-Kayode claims that he is not Yoruba. Apparently, the word ‘Yoruba’ was a term of abuse, or an insult, corrupted from the word ‘Yarriba’. According to Fani-Kayode, anyone who continued to call himself Yoruba was dumb and lost, ‘affirming and confirming an insulting label that had deep sinister, mystical and spiritual connotations’. According to Fani-Kayode, the word ‘Yoruba’ did not even exist until the 18th century. Fani-Kayode claims that he is instead Anago. What means ‘Anago’, Fani-Kayode does not actually say. Let us educate him.
First, ‘Yoruba’ is a word of antiquity, a civilisation and a people well known to the ancient scholars. The Berber, Muhammad al-Idrissi (1099 - 1165) wrote about the Yoruba in ‘The Book of Pleasant Journeys to Faraway Lands’. Ibn Battuta (1304 - 1370) was another Berber who wrote about the Yoruba in his ‘Book of Journeys’. Ahmad Baba (1556 - 1622) described the Yoruba as ‘unbelievers, remaining in their unbeliefs’. Fani-Kayode’s obvious lack of scholarship in this regard should be a source of embarrassment for him.
Second, Anago or Nago is closely associated with two things: Ketu and the Transatlantic Slavery. Ketu was a Yoruba Kingdom, located between the South-Western corner of Yorubaland and the South-Eastern corner of Benin Republic. The term ‘Nacao Ketu’ is used in the oldest temples in Brazil to describe their Yoruba heritage, meaning that to the Brazilian slaves ‘Nago’ and ‘Ketu’ were one and the same. Nago was a variant of the Yoruba language that the Ketu spoke. Nago was a dialect of Yoruba just like Egba or Ondo is a dialect of Yoruba. Fani-Kayode would be Anago if his forebears came from Ketu, and even then he would still be Yoruba!
Third, Clapperton, a Scottish traveller in the Western Yorubaland, and Clapperton alone, was the source of the association of the word ‘Yoruba’ with the word ‘Yarriba’. Clapperton travelled northwards from Badagry via Shaki and Ilorin to reach Sokoto. At no time was he certain of where he was because there were no maps to guide him. Indeed, Clapperton set sail from England believing that Sokoto was located on the West African coast; the River Niger had been mistaken for the Atlantic Ocean. It was on arrival at Badagry that Clapperton learnt and realised that Sokoto was somewhere up north, weeks and months of travel away. Fortunately for Clapperton, there existed a trade route that the Yoruba created, and had been using for centuries, as they shuttled from market to market, between, in the south, Okun (the Yoruba name for the Atlantic Ocean) and, in the north, Oya (the Yoruba name for the River Niger). Clapperton described these Yoruba ‘trade trains’ in his book. The Yoruba ‘trade trains’ did not just go northward, they went westward as well along the West African coast, leaving Yoruba colonies in its wake at Benin Republic, Togo and Ghana.
When Clapperton landed in Badagry in 1825, the British already knew of the existence of the Yoruba-speaking peoples. The British found no link between the northerners and the Yoruba as made clear in the Amalgamation story. And weeks and months of travel in Yorubaland (300 miles from Badagry to Ilorin via Shaki), Clapperton did not encounter a single person who was not Yoruba until he reached the banks of the River Niger where he encountered a mix of traders of various ethnic origins, including Bariba, Fulani, Hausa and Nupe. Clapperton spoke and understood only English; to his untutored ear, ‘Yoruba’ and ‘Yarriba’, a corrupt form of Hausa greeting, would have sounded exactly the same.
Fani-Kayode spent his formative years in England where he picked up the English habit of pontificating on something you knew absolutely nothing about. The more ignorant Fani-Kayode is, the more authoritative he tries to sound. Sad!
The Yoruba have a name for a child who points to his father’s house with his left hand. Fani-Kayode has gone way beyond that. Fani-Kayode denies that his father even has a house. What name would the Yoruba have called him?
Baasegun (Dr) Olusola Oni
Leader of The Yoruba Party in the UK