Tag: Yoruba

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Book Collection: Nigeria

Books by Dr. Toyin Falola

I have always been in love with reading. Ever since I was a young lad, I would spend a lot of my free time reading. The advent of the Internet increased the amount of reading that I was doing. Then along came the smartphone. The smartphone has enabled me to read 24/7 wherever I am. I can browse the Internet or read e-books.

When I was a child, we did not have a lot of money. I remember going shopping with Mom and sometimes when I asked for a toy, she would tell me she did not have the money. She promised to buy it the next time she got paid.

As I look back, I realize there was an exception. Whenever we passed by a bookstore, I would ask Mom if we could go in to browse. We would go in and get lost looking at all the books. I don’t remember a single time where Mom declined to buy a book for me regardless of our financial state.

I believe that Mom believed in the power of reading and would make sacrifices if necessary to ensure that her son had access to books. I will forever be thankful for this. I thank you Mom, and I miss you every single day.

Fast-forward to 2022, and after years of research and a few DNA tests, I have finally discovered my African roots. As a present to myself, I decided to purchase some books about my different ethnic backgrounds. My years of study consisted of mostly online articles, university research papers, and books at the library. Now it was time to start building a collection of books.

Prior to my recent buying spree, I had owned the following books about Nigeria:

  • You Must Set Forth at Dawn, A Memoir
  • Welcome to Lagos

During the past 6 weeks, I purchased the following books about Nigeria:

  • History of Yoruba Land
  • The Esan People of Nigeria, West Africa
  • Nigeria, A New History of a Turbulent Century
  • Things Fall Apart, A Novel
  • The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World
  • Igbo in the Atlantic World: African Origins and Diasporic Destinations
  • Loot: Britain and The Benin Bronzes
  • Yoruba-English / English-Yoruba Dictionary & Phrasebook
  • The Yoruba from Prehistory to the Present
  • Encyclopedia of the Yoruba
  • A History of Nigeria

I have watched lectures and interviews by two of the greatest historians of Yoruba history. These two distinguished intellectuals have written perhaps the very best books on the subject, 4 of which are in my list above.

Toyin Omoyeni Falola

Stephen Adebanji Akintoye

These wonderful books may be purchased at the following stores:

Google Play Books

Amazon Kindle

African history is rich and expansive. It can no longer be hidden from us thanks to technology and great historians such as those mentioned previously.

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This Yoruba Guy

I have been researching my ancestral makeup even more since I received the results from my first DNA test one month ago. I thought that everything would end once I received the results. I was wrong. While the results answered a lot of questions, they left me with even more.

I had gone on to run several more tests in addition to reading several books and academic research papers. Everything points to Yoruba making up the biggest part of me. Now it is time to embrace my heritage.

PaulAdogaOgbolo, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I decided to get a Yoruba name. There are several articles and sites about naming Yoruba babies. The names tend to have beautiful meanings. Choosing one was not difficult for me. But I also needed a last name.

None of those sites or articles were for last names. It was not so easy for me to find a last name. I went to one of the Nigerian forums and asked for assistance. The guys were nice and welcoming. One guy suggested a name that I really like. The meaning, when combined with my first name, tells my story.

Ogooluwa Omobowole

This name can be translated as “By God’s glory, the child has returned home.” This adequately describes my long search for my ethnic roots which were stolen from my ancestors. Growing up only knowing that my African side “came from West Africa” left me feeling empty. I had no trouble learning about my non-African roots, but the African roots remained shrouded in mystery.

West Africa is a huge place. There are close to 400-million people residing in West Africa. Just over a decade ago, I had learned that the majority of Africans brought to Jamaica during the Transatlantic Slave Trade were from present-day Ghana and Nigeria. That narrowed things down a bit. But Nigeria and Ghana combine for a population of over 247-million people spread over more than 250 ethnic groups.

My years of research have finally paid off. Thanks to historians and advances in technology, I now know that I am mostly of Yoruba heritage. I also share roots with the Akan from Ghana, Igbo and Edo (Bini), from Nigeria, and Mende from Sierra Leone among others. Of this ethnic potpourri, Yoruba makes up the largest portion of my being by far.

Now that I can trace my roots down to ethnicities, I feel like I have finally found my home. I may not have returned home physically yet, but spiritually, I have returned home. My next plan is a trip to Nigeria! As a matter of fact, since Yorubaland spans 3 nations, I should plan a trip to Nigeria, Benin, and Togo!