By Oyewopo Zainab
There is a peculiar contradiction in the way some Yoruba people speak about themselves today. We come from a people with a remarkably strong historical and cultural identity, a people whose civilization produced its own systems of governance, philosophy, art, language, institutions and social order long before modern political boundaries were drawn across the land. Yet, in contemporary public conversation, there are moments when some of us appear almost uncomfortable defending the identity to which we belong. The problem is not that the Yoruba lack culture. Far from it. The deeper question is whether enough of us still possess the collective consciousness necessary to recognise, preserve and responsibly represent that culture. This deserves an honest conversation, particularly at a time when questions of identity, language, history and belonging increasingly play out in public spaces and across social media.
Consider what happens when a conversation on social media turns toward an issue involving the Yoruba or a Yoruba-majority environment. It may begin with a legitimate criticism of a social problem, a public decision or an individual’s conduct. But somewhere along the way, criticism of a particular issue can become a sweeping judgment about the Yoruba as a people. And then something interesting happens. Rather than challenge the generalisation, a Yoruba participant may join the argument from the opposite direction, offering an even harsher indictment of the Yoruba. What began as a discussion about a particular matter suddenly becomes an opportunity to condemn an entire people. Part of the answer may lie in the peculiar incentives of social media. There is attention to be gained from saying what people already want to hear. There are likes, reposts, applause and validation. In such an environment, attacking one’s own community can sometimes become a performance of enlightenment. The harsher the condemnation, the more objective, progressive or sufficiently detached from “tribalism” the speaker may appear.
But there is a distinction that should not be lost. Self-criticism is not the same as self-condemnation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a Yoruba person examining Yoruba society and identifying its failures. Every serious society requires people who can look inward. A people that cannot confront its own weaknesses has little chance of correcting them. But self-criticism becomes dangerous when it crosses the line into collective self-indictment. There is a difference between saying, “This conduct is wrong,” and saying, “We Yoruba are the problem.” The first is accountability. The second can become collective condemnation. A person does not become more objective simply because he is harsher toward his own people, nor does condemning one’s own people automatically make an argument more credible. A Yoruba person should be able to condemn corruption committed by another Yoruba person without accepting that corruption is therefore a Yoruba characteristic. We should be able to criticise failures in a Yoruba community without turning those failures into evidence of some inherent defect in the Yoruba character. We should be able to examine what happens in Lagos, for instance, without allowing a particular controversy to become an indictment of the Yoruba people as a whole.
This distinction matters because once a people loses the ability to separate criticism of itself from condemnation of itself, it begins to surrender control over the story told about it. And when a people surrenders that control completely, others will gladly write the story for them. This is where collective consciousness becomes important. Collective consciousness does not mean defending every Yoruba person simply because they are Yoruba. It does not mean excusing wrongdoing, shielding incompetence or pretending that our society has no problems. It means understanding that belonging to a people carries a certain responsibility. It means knowing that the failures of individuals do not automatically become the character of an entire people. It means being able to correct one’s own without despising one’s own. Most importantly, it means knowing who you are before allowing others to define you.
There is, however, a deeper concern beneath all of this: cultural disconnection. Cultures rarely disappear with a funeral. They erode quietly. First, knowledge becomes weaker. Then language becomes less important. Historical memory fades. Indigenous institutions become distant. Stories that once travelled naturally from grandparents to parents and from parents to children begin to stop at one generation. Eventually, people can inherit a culture without truly understanding it. What happens when a young Yoruba person knows the latest internet trends but knows little about Yoruba history? What happens when the language increasingly becomes something understood by grandparents but abandoned by their grandchildren? What happens when indigenous knowledge is treated as primitive while everything foreign is automatically regarded as sophisticated? These questions are not about nostalgia. They are about continuity. A people survives not merely because its name remains in existence, but because its memory, values, language and consciousness continue to move from one generation to another.
Perhaps one of the most dangerous developments is the growing suspicion that cultural consciousness itself is something embarrassing. There is nothing inherently strange about a people having a strong attachment to its own. Human beings have always formed bonds around ancestry, language, culture, history and shared experience. The Yoruba are not required to apologise for having an identity. Yoruba consciousness does not need an apology. It needs responsibility. The question is not whether the Yoruba should care about the Yoruba. The question is whether enough of us still care consciously, confidently and responsibly. Can we defend our people without defending wrongdoing? Can we criticise ourselves without allowing our criticism to become ammunition for those who seek to reduce an entire people to the failures of individuals? Can we preserve our language without embarrassment, study our history without romanticising it, and embrace our identity without believing that doing so requires hostility toward anyone else?
These are not questions of superiority. They are questions of survival. A people can lose territory and recover it. It can lose political influence and regain it. But when a people loses confidence in its own identity, when its historical memory becomes faint and its descendants become strangers to the inheritance they received, the damage is far more difficult to repair. This is why cultural consciousness must not be reduced to slogans or occasional displays of heritage. Identity requires work. It requires parents who teach children their history, schools that take indigenous knowledge seriously, communities that preserve their language, writers who document their experiences, institutions that protect cultural memory and young people who understand that modernity does not require them to become disconnected from where they come from.
The Yoruba have never lacked a culture worth preserving. What we must ask ourselves is whether we are preserving merely the symbols of that culture, or whether we are preserving the consciousness behind them. It is easy to celebrate festivals. It is easy to wear traditional clothes. It is easy to post Yoruba proverbs and praise the beauty of the language. The harder task is to know our history, understand our worldview, teach our children where they come from, speak our language, recognise when our people are being unfairly reduced to a stereotype, correct our own without despising them, and possess enough confidence in who we are that criticism does not automatically become shame.
That is the consciousness a people needs. The Yoruba do not need blind loyalty. We need memory, confidence, discernment and responsibility. We need a culture strong enough to tolerate internal criticism without turning that criticism into self-hatred, and confident enough to engage with other cultures without treating our own as an embarrassment. Self-criticism can strengthen a people because it forces society to confront its weaknesses and improve. But self-erasure cannot do the same. A people that remembers who it is can examine itself honestly without losing itself in the process.
By Oyewopo Zainab