Blessed to Serve

Dr. Jonathan Durojaiye Soleye is a Yoruba man from Offa; one of the three main ethnic groups in Nigeria. The Yoruba homeland is in the south-western part of Nigeria. Yoruba belongs to the Kwa group of West African languages and is related to Igala, Igbo, Edo, Igbira, Idoma and Nupe among others. Each of these languages is spoken in an area which is roughly wedge-shaped, with the thin end of the wedge in each case pointing to the Niger-Benue confluence. The glotto-chronological evidence suggests that these languages separated between 2,000 and 10,000 years ago. The documented history of the Yoruba people begins with the Oyo Empire which became dominant in the early 17th century. Older traditions of the formerly dominant Ife kingdom are sparse and unreliable. The African peoples, who lived in Yoruba land, at least by the seventh century B.C.E, were not initially known as the Yoruba although they shared a common ethnicity and language group.