Yoruba in Modern Nigeria
The Western Region and self-government, Obafemi Awolowo and the Action Group, free primary education from 1955 and the first television station in Africa (1959), the Yoruba in the First Republic and the civil war period, the south-west states today, the language and its media, music, literature and film, and current debates.
From region to states
The colonial Western Region became one of Nigeria's three (later four) regions; under Awolowo it used cocoa revenue for schools, roads and the University of Ife (founded 1962, now Obafemi Awolowo University). The 1962 crisis in the Western Region and the violent 1965 election were among the conflicts leading to the military coups of 1966 (Modern Nigeria and Africa P5). After the region was divided into states, the south-west became Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti states, with Yoruba communities in Kwara and Kogi.
Obafemi Awolowo, Awo: The Autobiography of Chief Obafemi Awolowo (1960); Richard Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties (1963); Toyin Falola and Matthew Heaton, A History of Nigeria (2008); Ethnologue and census-based estimates for speaker numbers (which vary).