Alliance of Yorubas in Jamaica (AYJ) will be launched inside St Andrew High School’s Margaret Gartshore Hall at 10 Cecelio Avenue, off Half-way Tree Road on Saturday, July 15 at 5 p.m. Dr Maureen Tamuno, Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Jamaica, will be in attendance.
Also, the event will consist of Yoruba cultural exposition which features Yoruba delicacies, music, dance, and fashion show; a mock coronation of a king; a mock wedding, and ewi, a modern poetic practice which can be properly appreciated in light of the dynamism and integrative capacity of Yoruba culture. It promises to be an evening of socializing, networking and reconnecting.
The Yoruba is the second biggest ethnic group in Nigeria. The other ethnic groups are Hausa and Igbo. Nigeria is located in West Africa with a population of over 200 million people. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and the sixth most populous nation in the world.
Hundreds Yorubas were transported from the early 1500s to 1838 to Jamaica to work on European-owned plantations in the brutal slavery institution. Without a doubt, the present-day black Jamaicans are descendants of West Africans who were brought to Jamaica forcefully. Also, after Emancipation in 1838, West Africans, including the Yorubas, found in Western Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Togo, Ghana and Benin, kept coming.
According to Wasiu Abayomi, president of the AYJ, Yorubas are also in Cuba, Chile and Brazil. But, the biggest population seems to be in Jamaica and they are mainly medics and educators that are massively contributing to the GDP of Jamaica’s GDP in what Abayomi referred to as “brain gain”. Jamaica is benefiting immensely from educated professional Yoruba ex-patriots who are working all over the country with no constant contact with one another.
But COVID-19 changed that. Abayomi said it has been a “blessing” as people started meeting online and widening their communication reach due to the lockdown policies and protocols. He said the idea to “come together and support one another” was born. As such, an association, related to what the Igbos in Jamaica have, was needed. That was last year, and now the association with a constitution is a reality.
While talking to The Gleaner, Abayomi, who has lived in Jamaica for 22 years, said it is “to bring us together to promote unity, cohesiveness among Nigerians and beyond … to assist one another, to promote the image of the Yorubas, to creative awareness in the wider world, especially with the growing of the Nigerian community in the Caribbean.
The preamble to the AYJ constitution says: “We, the Yorubas in Jamaica, desiring to trust and enjoy the fellowship of one another, desiring to promote the interests and welfare of one another, committed to and guided by deep sense of justice and honesty, individually committed to excellence in performance, and convinced that we can build a stronger economic, political, and social community in Jamaica, and around the world, do pledge to promote the unity, progress, and empowerment of the Yoruba in Jamaica, and for the peaceful coexistence based on justice. We hereby resolve to constitute the Alliance of Yorubas in Jamaica.”
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