28/11/2025
I'm Yoruba and I daresay thay Yoruba and 'accommodating' should not be in the same sentence. I had a 4-month stay in Obosi as a young girl in 2008 and I was treated like a princess by the villagers. I served in Jigawa for 1 year, and without the religious intolerance, it would have been the best year of my life. Everyone genuinely loved and looked out for me without judgement and gossips.
No condescending remarks or tribal slur. Unlike my people who have a slur for every tribe. People know about the malo, Isobo, nyamiri, and ajeokuta ma mumi but Agatu was a slur for an incomprehensible idiot person all my life until 'Agatu massacre' of 2016 when I realised it was a town in Benue state. 'Igbira' was a slur for a nonentity and never do well until I studied in University of Ado Ekiti from 2002-2006 and realised that Ebira was a tribe of one the most hardworking and beautiful people ever.
Even among the Yorubas, the faux sense of superiority is unbelievable. The Oyos think they are superior to the Ondos and Ekiti people (who are the aggresive, cantankerous people)
Not so long ago, the Ijebus and Egbas were the fe**sh, occultist and lavish people that Oyo and Osun people won't want their children to marry. The Ijeshas were the 'Oshomaalos'.
There is a town called Ijebu-jesha in my state and it is common to hear "Ijebu o dara, Ijesha o suwon, iwo wa ni iwo Ijebu-jesha'. šš (Ijebu people are not good, Ijesha people are horrible, yet a man says he is Ijebu-Jesa). Growing up, elders around me would say that Lagosians were half-baked Yorubas because of their "mi de, ke de" inflections .
I thought this was an older generation problem until 2015 elections. Since 2023, we have seen full-blown bigotry, and as a Yoruba woman, I'm sad to see that young people have inherited the bigotry of their parents.
You hide under the guise of tribal solidarity to support hooligans, criminals, and thugs into political leadership and bully people with dissenting voices by calling them bastards. You jettison the virtues of "omoluabi" and reward people of questionable character with power, all because they are Yoruba.
Everyone keeps telling us that we have a problem on our hands, rather being retrospective and fixing up, we bully and threaten them.
There is an adage that says : "when we point one finger at other people, the remaining four will point back at us.