Word: yoruba
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...last November Bernard Fagg, director of antiquities in Nigeria, paused on a cross-country journey to make a courtesy call on the Oni of Ife. The Oni, the Hon. Sir Adesoji Aderemi, King and spiritual leader of 4,500,000 Yoruba tribesmen, was delighted by the visit. An hour earlier, workmen, clearing a site for a new building, had uncovered a few delicately wrought bronze relics, and the Oni was eager to show them off. After one look at the find-two bronze statues, two egg-shaped staff finials, two solid brass staffs, and a decorated drinking vessel-Fagg rushed...
...present Oni says that at his coronation in 1930 he was decked out in an identical costume. ¶ A 10-in. tall work showing two figures. Though one head is still to be found, they are obviously a man and a woman, clothed in the style of a Yoruba tribe wedding ceremony. With his left leg wrapped around the right leg of his partner, the male seems to squirm in anticipation. Their arms are linked like square dancers on promenade. The Yoruba believe the lovers to be Oba Tala, the first...
...achieved by agreement among the colorful chief delegates: tall, aristocratic Alhaji Ahmadu, the Islamic and potent Sardauna of Sokoto, an Arabian Nights figure in a billowing green turban and red velvet robe, whose Moslem Hausas consider the pagans of the South no better than savages; boyish, chubby-faced Yoruba Chieftain Obafemi Awolowo, one of the shrewdest political minds in Africa and an ardent champion of regional self-government for his own people; scholarly and ambitious Dr. Nnamdi ("Zik") Azikiwe, the rich and demagogic U.S.-educated favorite of some 3,000,000 Ibo tribesmen in the East; and last...
...loosely conjoined nation split in a hundred ways by personal, tribal, religious and economic rivalries and jealousies, no two of them went to the conference agreed on what independence should mean. Each anxious to be top dog in the government that emerges, Awolowo, Prime Minister of the Yoruba West, and Azikiwe, Prime Minister of the Ibo East moved into town with all the fanfare of hopeful candidates at a U.S. national convention. Each installed a huge staff in a top Mayfair hotel and hired a pressagent to get the bandwagons going. Meanwhile, as spokesman for the proud and feudal Moslem...
...counter the Sardauna's majority, the leaders of the South hoped to gerrymander a "Middle Belt" out of the Moslem North, consisting of some 6,000,000 pagan tribesmen who since slave days have hated the Moslems. Zik himself nurtures a private plan to carve some non-Yoruba areas out of his chief rival's Western territories, while his opponents want to set up a new state among the non-Ibos in Zik's own Niger River delta...