Olumide Akpata, the Labour Party’s candidate for governor of Edo State, has cleared up any misunderstandings over his ethnicity because Yoruba is his first name. Although Akpata is from Benin City in Edo State, he has Yoruba ancestry, he stated on a Twitter account run by Obidient movement members. He went on to explain that during a specific point in history, many Benin people departed the Benin Kingdom at the order of one of the Kings. He asserted that with the collapse of the Benin Kingdom in the fifteenth century, those Benin people moved and lived among the Yorubas, returning with their Yoruba families and Yoruba names.
He said, “The issue of my ethnicity, I’m at my wits end sometimes because you know when you now have to start proving your Beniness. It becomes sometimes quite tedious. I am Benin, my father is Benin, my mother of blessed memory was Benin. We are from Oredo local of Edo State.
Now, my first name is Olumide, a Yoruba name. And my surname, Akpata is spelt with a ‘K’. The Yoruba version of that name is spelt ‘Apata’.
The Benins spell their own version ‘Akpata’ because in the Benin alphabet, you have what they called the expletives. So the expletives ‘KP’ is in my name but the Yorubas don’t spell it with a ‘K’.
So I belong to a group of Benin people who have Yoruba connections heritage. And everybody knows that there is an inextricable link between the Benin and the Yorubas. Even my royal father, my royal majesty, Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku’ Akpolokpolo Ewuare 11, at his coronation even alluded to the fact that there is a connection between the Benins and the Yorubas. So there are many of us families in Benin who still bear Yoruba names today. It has nothing to do with ethnicity, it is just an accident of history.
Many of us moved away from Benin at the behest of the King of the day, went over to Akure, Ijesha, traded there, lived there, married there and then after the fall of the Benin empire in the 15th century, some of these families returned home and they came with their Yoruba families and Yoruba names. ”
