Oyo, Yoruba Kingdom of

The Ife model of government is adapted at Oyo, where a member of its ruling dynasty consolidates several smaller city-states under his control.

A council of state, the Oyo Mesi, eventually assumes responsibility for naming the alafin (king) from candidates proposed from the ruling dynasty and acts as a check on his authority.

Oyo develops as a constitutional monarchy; actual government is in the hands of the basorun (prime minister), who presides over the Oyo Mesi.

The city is situated one hundred and seventy kilometers north of Ife and about one hundred kilometers north of present-day Oyo.

Unlike the forest-bound Yoruba kingdoms, Oyo is in the savanna and draws its military strength from its cavalry forces, which establish hegemony over the adjacent Nupe and the Borgu kingdoms and thereby develop trade routes farther to the north.

Oyo and Benin surpass Ife as political and economic powers during the fifteenth century, although Ife preserves its status as a religious center even after its decline.

Respect for the priestly functions of the oni of Ife and recognition of the common tradition of origin are crucial factors in the evolution of Yoruba ethnicity.

The oni of Ife is recognized as the senior political official not only among the Yoruba but also at Benin, and he invests Benin's rulers with the symbols of temporal power.

Benin was already a well-established agricultural community in the Edo-speaking area, east of Ife, when it became a dependency of Ife at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

By the fifteenth century, it takes an independent course and became a major trading power in its own right, blocking Ife's access to the coastal ports as Oyo had cut off the mother city from the savanna.

Political power and religious authority reside in the oba (king), who according to tradition is descended from the Ife dynasty.

The oba is advised by a council of six hereditary chiefs, who also nominate his successor.

Benin, which may have housed one hundred thousand inhabitants at its height, spreads over twenty-five square kilometers that are enclosed by three concentric rings of earthworks.

Responsibility for administering the urban complex lies with sixty trade guilds, each with its own quarter, whose membership cuts across clan affiliations and owes its loyalty directly to the oba.

At his wooden, steepled palace, the oba presides over a large court richly adorned with brass, bronze, and ivory objects.

Like Ife and the other Yoruba states, Benin, too, is famous for its sculpture.

Unlike the Yoruba kingdoms, however, Benin develops a centralized regime to oversee the administration of its expanding territories.

By the late fifteenth century, Benin is in contact with Portugal.

Igbo society, as argued by most scholars, was "stateless" and the Igbo region did not evolve centralized political institutions before the colonial period.

According to this theory, the relatively egalitarian Igbo lived in small, self-contained groups of villages organized according to a lineage system that did not allow social stratification.

An individual's fitness to govern is determined by his wisdom and his wisdom by his age and experience.

Subsistence farming is the dominant economic activity, and yams are the staple crop.

Land, obtained through inheritance, is the measure of wealth.

Handicrafts and commerce are well developed, and a relatively dense population characterizes the region.

Despite the absence of chiefs, some Igbo rely on an order of priests, chosen from outsiders on the northern fringe of Igboland, to ensure impartiality in settling disputes between communities.

Igbo gods, like those of the Yoruba, are numerous, but their relationship to one another and to human beings is essentially egalitarian, thereby reflecting Igbo society as a whole.

A number of oracles and local cults attract devotees, while the central deity, the earth mother and fertility figure, Ala, is venerated at shrines throughout Igboland.

The weakness of this theory of statelessness rests on the paucity of historical evidence of precolonial Igbo society.

There are huge lacunae between the archaeological finds of Igbo Ukwu, which reveal a rich material culture in the heart of the Igbo region in the eighth century CE and the oral traditions of the twentieth century.

In particular, the importance of the Nri Kingdom, which appears to have flourished before the seventeenth century, often is overlooked.

The Nri Kingdom is relatively small in geographical extent, but it is remembered as the cradle of Igbo culture.

Finally, Benin exercises considerable influence on the western Igbo, who adopt many of the political structures familiar to the Yoruba-Benin region.

Benin, at its apogee in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even encompasses parts of southeastern Yorubaland and the small Igbo area on the western bank of the Niger.

Dependencies are governed by members of the royal family, who are assigned several towns or villages scattered throughout the realm rather than a block of territory that can be used as a base for revolt against the oba.

As is evident from this brief survey, Yoruba and Benin history are interconnected.

In fact, areas to the west of Nigeria, in the modern Republic of Benin, are also closely associated with this history, both in the period before 1500 and afterward.

The Atlantic Slave Trade is the result of labor shortage in the New World, among other causes.

Western Africa (part of which, a fertile and densely populated region of coastal Western Africa along the Bight of Benin, is to become known as 'the Slave Coast'), and later Central Africa, has become the source for enslaved people to meet the demand for labor.

European guns, exchanged for enslaved people, give the West African forest kingdoms new power over their neighbors and assist the rise to power of Benin and ...

...Oyo along the Gold Coast and smaller states to the west and north.

Westernization will soon follow.