| Chapter : | Introduction |
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politically challenge the usual display of this Horn of Africa peninsula as a country of a homogeneous people, speaking the same language, holding the Islamic faith, and sharing the same nomado-pastoral culture. They also challenge the perceived “egalitarianism” system of the society and the notion of a “pastoral democracy” as constituting the social structure.
Discrimination is not predominantly a racial or national phenomenon. People who share similar historical and cultural roots also discriminate against one another. Saheed Aderinto's chapter examines the nineteenth-century origins of discrimination against Ijebu settlers in colonial Ibadan, Nigeria. The Ijebu, a Yoruba sub-ethnic group whose legendary home is at Ijebu Ode, are Ibadan southwestern neighbors. Between 1830 and 1893, when colonial rule was established, the Oyo-Yoruba, one of the major sections of the town, through wars, diplomacy, and politics dominated the affairs of the town and laid down the principle of its citizenship. As variegated as the principle of citizenship of the town was, all other groups including the Ijebu were to be treated as strangers. The author argues that the relations between the Ibadan and Ijebu reveal that historical antecedents play a significant role in determining how groups relate to one another. Intra-ethnic bigotry or prejudice sometimes presupposes that the majority is superior to the minority or that the memory of unpalatable relations in the past should be invoked for present-day realities. He traces the tenuous relationship between Ibadan and the Ijebu settlers during the colonial period to the unpleasant nineteenth-century political and economic relations between Ibadan and Ijebu Kingdom.
IV
The contact with Europeans from the nineteenth century in particular often helped to build upon such myths and preconceptions of the Other. Europeans in particular were fascinated by ethnic differences, some of which built upon their preconceived perspective about Africans and issues of race. These notions of difference would play significant roles in African-European relations as well as the perception of the worth,