Yorùbá - History, Identity and the In-Between

The word “Yoruba” is everywhere today — in language, diaspora culture, and political identity across three continents — yet in the early 19th century it barely existed as a shared label. Most people understood themselves through kingdom, lineage, or town, not as members of a single Yorùbá people.This episode asks the question at the heart of the entire series: how does a people become a people? It traces how “Yoruba” shifted from a Hausa external label into an identity consciously claimed, reshaped, and institutionalized by Lagos intellectuals, Christian missionaries, and political actors under the pressure of colonialism.We examine the foundational Ilé-Ifẹ̀ origin narrative, not to test its literal truth, but to understand the work it performs: how it weaves together scattered histories, legitimizes authority, and offers a common beginning for different communities. Using Hobsbawm and Ranger’s idea of “invented tradition” and Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities,” the episode shows that collective identity is always constructed through stories, institutions, and power.Far from making it fake, that constructed nature is precisely what makes Yorùbá identity powerful, adaptable, and real in the lives of millions who now claim it.Researched & Written by Zack Shittu | Produced by Femi ShittuFull list of sources → patreon.com/zackShittu

Yorùbá — History, Identity & the In-BetweenEpisode 2Season 1The Rise of IbadanOut of the ruins of Oyo’s collapse came one of the most extraordinary political experiments in 19th-century West Africa. Ibadan began as a temporary war camp — a gathering point for refugees, soldiers, and displaced communities with nowhere else to go. Within decades, it had become the largest city in Yorubaland and its dominant military power.This episode examines how Ibadan developed a radically different political model: authority earned through military achievement rather than inherited by lineage. No hereditary ruler. No fixed nobility. A system that was unstable, brutal, and, in its own way, honest.But Ibadan’s meritocracy had limits. What happens when a culture built entirely on survival has to become something more? That question would follow Ibadan all the way to the colonial encounter.From refugee camp to military state — Ibadan rewrote the rules of Yoruba power.Researched & Written by Zack Shittu  |  Produced by Femi ShittuFull list of sources → patreon.com/zackShittu

Yorùbá — History, Identity & the In-BetweenEpisode 1Season 1The Fall of OyoThe Oyo Empire was one of West Africa’s most powerful political formations — a cavalry state that dominated the region for over a century, commanding trade routes, vassal kingdoms, and tribute networks stretching across the savanna. But by the early 19th century, it was hollowing from within.This episode traces the structural collapse of Oyo: the constitutional tensions between the Alaafin and the Oyo Mesi council, the unchecked rise of Afonja and the military faction, the Fulani jihad pressure from the north, and the slave trade’s corrosive effect on internal loyalty.This wasn’t a story of defeat by superior enemies. It was a story of a system that stopped maintaining itself — and the catastrophic displacement it unleashed across Yorubaland.The fall of Oyo is the engine that drives all of Season 1.Researched & Written by Zack Shittu  |  Produced by Femi ShittuFull list of sources → patreon.com/zackShittu