"Most times, I feel a rebellious prompting to indicate 'Yoruba' in such column than 'Nigerian'."
The response vividly instantiates what Arjun Appadurai once aptly characterized as the paradox of constructed primordialism. Shina, your "Yorubanness" is inextricably linked to your "Nigerianness." There probably won't be "Yoruba" if there was no Nigeria. Yoruba is as much a constructed identity as Nigeria is. People in what is today southwest Nigeria never collectively referred to themselves as "Yoruba" until relatively recently. The contemporary manifestations of "Yorubaness" is a colonial creation--just like most of other contemporary collective ethnic identities in Nigeria. You should probably more correctly refer to yourself as "Ibadan," Ijesa," "Egba,"Ekiti," or such other identities that actually predated the idea of "Yoruba," which is actually a word Hausa people used to refer to people in present-day Oyo, Osun, parts of Lagos and parts of Kwara state..
Farooq
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
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"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 5:04 AM, <shina73_1999@yahoo.com> wrote:
Most times, I feel a rebellious prompting to indicate 'Yoruba' in such column than 'Nigerian'.
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