What is "oyibo"

Oyibo or Oyinbo is a word used in Nigerian Pidgin, Igbo and Yoruba to refer to a westernised people. In Nigeria, it is generally used to refer to a person of European descent or people perceived to not be culturally African. The word is pronounced oyinbo in Yoruba speaking areas and oyibo in Igbo and in Nigerian Pidgin. Olaudah Equiano, an African abolitionist, claimed in his 1789 narrative that the people in Essaka, Igboland, where he claimed to be from, had used the term Oye-Eboe in reference to "red men living at a distance" which may possibly be an earlier version of oyibo. Equiano's use of Oye-Eboe, however, was in reference to other Africans and not white men. Gloria Chuku suggests 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 westerly Igbo people referred to other Igbo people. R. A. K. Oldfield, a European, while on the Niger River near Aboh in 1832 had recorded locals calling out to him and his entourage "Oh, Eboe! Oh, Eboe!" meaning "White man, White man!" linked to modern 'oyibo'.

Oyibo is also used in reference to people who are foreign or Europeanised, including Saros in the Igbo towns of Port Harcourt, 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 or "native foreigners" by the people of Onitsha in the late 19th century.