ヨルバ都市の伝統的政治組織

エキティ=ヨルバの事例と比較の試み

抄録

The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria have been known as an ‘urban people’ because of their unique settlement pattern. They have traditionally lived in large, dense, permanent settlements, some of which had populations more than 50, 000 in pre-colonial period. These traditional towns (ilu) were independent political units comparable to Greek city-states. The towns were enclosed by a high wall and ditch, with the palace of a sacred ruler at the center. Yoruba kingdoms such as Ife, Oyo, Ijesha, Ijebu, Ondo were the confederation of these towns. The aim of this paper is to reconsider the political organization of this unique urban settlements, referring to the data of Ayedun-Ekiti, a small town where the present author has conducted a research from April 1982 to January 1983, and comparing it with the society of the Igbo in Eastern Nigeria.
Ayedun-Ekiti is located at the northeastern corner of Ekitiland. The town has a segmentary structure composed of wards (ona), quarters (ogbon), and patrilineal kin groups (ebi) (see Figure 1). The chieftaincy system and age-grades constitute the main political organizations of the town. The chiefs have councils at each level of quarters and wards, ascending to the ‘town council’ (ijo agba ilu). The chiefs are ranked in accordance with the rank of respective segment which they represent, and the senior chief of the lower level (e.g. quarter) becomes the head of the upper level (e.g. ward). In this way the Alaaye, the head of the whole town, is at the same time the head of Olootu ward and Irutu quarter. One notable feature of the Alaaye is that he is not a sole authority above the chiefs as is often the case with Yoruba kings, but one among the chiefs. This could be accounted for by the historical process of town formation. The data on religious organization, land holding, and oral tradition suggest the formation of Ayedun as follows. Originally present quarters had been independent villages scattered around the present site. These villages moved spontaniously to the present site in need of defence under the pressure of war, forming federative organization, and the Alaaye whose group was the largest became the head of the whole groups probably without any quarrel. The agee-grade is deviled into three sets, i. e. Amuyeye, Boronje, and Elegbe. The former two are of boys and youths whose tasks are to do communal work, to keep the order of the community, and to be soldiers in case of war, under the control of the third grade whose members are titled men and merge into the chieftaincy system as lower chiefs.
The society of the Yoruba and that of the Igbo have often been regarded as having quite opposite characteristics such as the residence pattern (large urban settlement/dispersed small hamlets) and political system (centralized government/egalitarian unilineal segmentary system). But the comparison of Ayedun and Igbo reveals much similarity as summarized below.
(i) The average size of village groups, which is the largest political unit among the Igbo, compares favorably to the wards of Ayedun which once was the federation of villages. Most of Ekiti towns are similar in size and structure to the wards of Ayedun, so that we can not say that the Igbo have not developed the large political organization comparable to that of Yoruba.
(ii) Constituent institutions of the political organization in both societies such as age-grade, cult association, title system and their functions are quite similar. (iii) Both societies have federative segmentary system, though it is based on the unilineal descent leaving the title system as the secondary institution in case of the Igbo, while it is based on chieftaincy system restricting the function of kin group at the lowest level of segments in case of Ayedun. But this contrast is not absolute. We can find village groups with unilineal segmentary organization like that of the Igbo in Kabba area, northe