Yoruba people

The Yoruba, Omoluabi children of Oduduwa, number over 50 million across Nigeria, Benin and Togo, with a million more abroad and millions more in the Brazilian and Cuban diaspora: one of Africa's greatest peoples. Their Niger-Congo language has the continent's most native speakers. Yorubaland's walled cities, Ife the holy city of bronze and terracotta heads, Oyo the cavalry empire, Ijebu the merchant republic, farmed yam and kola under divine kings, the Ooni and the Alaafin, checked by councils of chiefs. Ifa divination with sixteen palm nuts, the orisha pantheon carried to the Americas in Candomble and Santeria, Gelede masks and talking drums order a world where proverbs govern. Colonial rule and civil war tested but never broke the cities; Lagos markets, Nollywood studios and the Osun festival keep Yoruba modernity loud. Ife bronze heads gaze from museums on four continents, Oyo cavalry once rode from savanna to forest edge, and twenty percent of Nigerians speak Yoruba as a first tongue.