The Hausa did not name us Yorùbá.

The Hausa did not name us Yorùbá.

The Hausa cannot even pronounce Yorùbá.

They say they pejoratively called us Yarubawa and we creatively changed it to Yorùbá. Rárá o. It’s the other way round.

We call ourselves Yorùbá and they pejoratively call us Yarubawa.

To be able to pronounce Yorùba correctly, you must understand the nuances of our triptych intonation.

It is a really intricate and delicate intonation that only the Yoruba people can articulate.

Test it.

Ask anybody who is not Yorùbá to say “Yorùbá.”

The American would say “YÒrúbà.”

Others would say, “Yórùbá.”

“Yóròbá.” “Yórùbá” “Yòròbá” etc. These are all common pronunciations of YORÙBÁ by aliens.

Let us not fall into the trap of those say the Hausa named us Yorùbá.

No Hausa, Fulani, or Kanuri can pronounce Yorùbá unless rigorously trained to say it.

But ask a three-year old Yorùbá child to say Yorùbá, and s/he would articulate smoothly.

“Say Yorùbá,” is an easy test to weed out aliens embedded among us.

Many of our historians are colonized entities, and would believe anything they read in books.

There are Ifẹ̀, Ìjẹ̀ṣà, Èkìtì, Ọ̀yọ́, Àkókó, Ìjẹ̀bú, Ẹ̀gbá, Ìgbómìnà and other sub-groups and dialects.

But the common denomination among us is the name YORÙBÁ.

–Moyo Okediji, Sept. 3, 2020

The picture shows my granddaughter.

In a matter of months, she will say “Yorùbá” correctly.