Oyinbo

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There are numerous other instances recorded by scholars in history acknowledging that, despite Oyinbo being used by many people in the modern times of southern Nigeria, it finds its origin in the Yoruba language. For instance, Ugo Nwokeji and Romanus Aboh in separate books came to the same conclusion, positing that the term "Oyibo" used by the Igbo is borrowed from the original Oyinbo used by Yoruba. Oyibo was also used in reference to people who are foreign or Europeanised, including Saros in the towns of Onitsha and Enugu in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sierra Leonean missionaries, according to Ajayi Crowther, a Yoruba, and John Taylor, an Igbo, descendants of repatriated slaves, were referred to as oyibo ojii by the people of Onitsha. Olaudah Equiano, an African abolitionist, claimed in his 1789 narrative that the people in Essaka, Igboland, where he claimed to be from, used the term Oye-Eboe in reference to "Stout (strong, powerful), mahogany-coloured men from the south west of us". Vincent Carretta suggested that this might be an earlier version of the term Oyibo, however as he and Gloria Chuku later point out, Equiano's use of Oye-Eboe, was in reference to other Africans and not Caucasians. Gloria Chuku suggested that Equiano's use of Oye-Eboe is not linked to Oyibo, and that it is a reference to the generic term Onitsha and other more western Igbo people used to refer to other Igbo people. Both Paul Lovejoy and Vincent Carretta identified Oye-Eboe as a reference to the Aro.

See also Toubab Mzungu Oburoni

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