Word: yorubas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Britain's Westminster, the legislature over which Sir Abubakar presided last week had some of the flavor of a Pan-African Congress. On its benches tall, haughty Hausas, splendidly robed in green and scarlet, sat amongst volatile Ibos draped in white and azure gowns. Across the aisle were Yoruba tribesmen wrapped in gold, yellow and orange with little porkpie beanies on their heads. Between them, they constituted one of the world's noisiest Parliaments. Each speaker was greeted with cries of "Heah, heah" from his friends and derisory shouts of "Sit down, you wretched fool" from his foes...
Under the Y's left arm, in the Western Region (pop. 8,000,000), live the most advanced of all Nigerians-the Yoruba tribesmen, who worship 400 different deities, including Shango, god of thunder, and boast a centuries-old tradition of political organization...
Black Africa's first TV station and Nigeria's first university are in the Western capital of Ibadan, where three-quarters of a million people cluster noisily under a sea of tin roofs. Between them, the Yoruba West and bustling Ibo East dominate Nigeria's commerce and furnish most of the country's bureaucrats. But the real weight of the nation rests on the top of the Y. Here, in the Northern Region, live close to 20 million people, mostly Moslems, who still remember the jihad (holy war), in which, 156 years ago, the Fulani horsemen...
...then Nigerian politics had taken on a permanent three-way stretch. In the Ibo East, Zik's National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons held sway. In the West, the Action Group, headed by shrewd, stodgy Chief Obafemi Awolowo (pronounced Ah-Wo-lo-wo), spoke for the Yoruba people. Northern power then (as now) meant tall, solemn Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna (commander) of Sokoto and boss of the Northern Peoples Congress...
Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah was resisted every inch of the way by the Ashanti chiefs who clearly foresaw the loss of their power in a single nation run from Accra. In Nigeria, the ancient feud between the Yoruba of the west and the Ibo of the east, and their joint contempt for the Moslems in the north, is a major obstacle to peaceful nationhood. Kenya's warlike Masai dread the thought of national power in the hands of the clever Kikuyu; and for the majestic (6 ft. 6 in.) but backward Watutsi of Ruanda-Urundi, education...