Cultural Landscapes of the Yoruba of South-Western Nigeria Demystified as Solidified Time in Space

Introduction

The trio of culture, time, and space are symbolic of a complete system of intermingling orders found in nature. While the embodiment of the way of life of a people is encapsulated as their culture, the time of the existence of that culture is domiciled in space as physical historical documents. Accordingly, cultural landscapes are the material evidence of the interaction of the people with the environment, the repository of nature. Mitchell, Rössler, and Tricaud (2009) assert that “cultural landscapes are those where human interaction with natural systems has, over a long time, formed a distinctive landscape” (p. 6). According to Sauer (1929),

The cultural landscape is fashioned out of a natural landscape by a culture group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result. Under the influence of a given culture, itself changing through time, the landscape undergoes development, passing through phases. (p. 46)

Environmental three-dimensional space is thus the physical medium containing the immaterial cultural-life of a group of people who have flowed through a time-continuum. Jahoda (2002) argues that there is no clear-cut demarcation between culture and nature and that the two are intermingled planes in human development. In a similar way culture has been sought to be substituted for nature by Frank Lloyd Wright (Lin, 1991), who believed that “culture might be realized by calling for learning from nature” (p. 15). Therefore, in both homogenous and heterogeneous human settlements, the influence of culture cannot be overemphasized as determinant of built forms (Adedeji & Amole, 2010; Fadamiro & Adedeji, 2012), and cultural landscapes are spatial entities of culture. According to Rapoport (1992), cultural landscapes can be conceptualized as organizations of space, time, meaning, and communication. He argues that “the impact of human action on landscapes occurs over time so that a cultural landscape is the result of a complex history” (p. 35). In this way, “the attributes of cultural landscapes become the property of groups: it is this link to culture, as defining groups, that makes them cultural” (Rapoport, 1992, p. 35), and they should be understood as material–culture complexes (Vink, 1983).

Vogeler (2010) argues that a proper reading and understanding of cultural landscapes considers “the social processes which shaped them” since “critical analysis is fundamental to landscape analysis” as material and spatial manifestations of “societal characteristics.” According to him, these include “racial and ethnic categories, gender roles and economic classes,” which “express themselves in the material world of cultural landscapes.” Cultural landscapes thus documents the characteristics of a group of people who identifies themselves as one culture, culture being the totality of all that can be socially transmittable (Alderman, 2008; The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 2000; Bird, 2002; Cresswell, 2004; Hoelscher & Alderman, 2004; Tilley 1994; Vogeler, 2010).

Thus, the culture of a people has both geography and history as spatial and temporal entities, respectively, and the domains of space and time are essential to understanding the civilization of any group of people. All these are “written” on cultural landscapes as environmental monuments that are documentations and metaphoric symbols of the different periods of the population. As such, “landscapes as outcomes of different social practices are always cultural” (Tilley, 2006, p. 7) and “time is envisioned as the accumulation of social practices layered in cultural space” (Song, St. Clair, & Wang, 2008, p. 22). Because the mind is the medium for the experiences of everyday life, and “culture should not be viewed as a super-organic entity or a collective consciousness existing outside of human experience,” cultural landscapes are the tangible meeting points between nature and mind (Naveh, 2011; St. Clair, 2007).

Landscapes are concrete systems in their own right with different scales, serving as the spatial matrix for organisms, populations, and ecosystems (Allen & Hoekstra, 1992). They are subjected to change through the dynamism of human interactions with them as a system of temporal and spatial mechanisms, much like the “sedimentation theory of time in space” in which

the dynamics of change in a cultural space occurs in the co-present, a place where the reconstructed past is linked with the co-present. It is [in] this co-present space that the social construction of cultural space takes place. Some events are retained and defined as belonging to the past and are designated as the old present; other events are modified, redefined, or reconstructed in the present and function as the new-present. (Song et al., 2008, p. 23)

This dynamism makes culture metamorphose during periods of civilization of populations. Head (2000) argues that culture is spreading in both space and time and it is a complex multidimensional idea that has both material and symbolic expression, while landscapes are “transformations of social and political ideologies into physical form” (Duncan & Duncan, 1988, p. 125). This transformation is implicit in the “dualism of culture/nature and mind/body with temporal dimension having deep time being dominated by nature and human agency gradually increasing until the present” (Head, 2000, p. 5). According to Basso (1996), there is a relationship between geographical location, cultural symbolism, and place-names. He emphasizes that places are not merely geographical but social and the historical imagination of a people creates “place” and modifies it over time. Thus, the interaction among a group of people and their geographic spaces transformed into social “places” and their established behavioral patterns suggest the best “wisdom” in studying cultural landscapes (Basso, 1996).

The preceding paragraphs suggest that cultural landscape consists of material aspects of culture that characterize the Earth’s surface. The very ideas and behaviors of a population that have been committed to material reality are thus called cultural landscapes (Barrett, Farina, & Barrett, 2009; Vogeler, 2010). This article focuses on the cultural landscapes of the Yoruba of South-Western Nigeria. It documents the civilization periods of the Yoruba nation as implicated on the selected cultural landscapes. This becomes necessary in view of the relationship between memory and landscape in the political dynamics in the region (Ogundiran, 2003). It reveals the interaction of the cultural value-system of the people with landscapes over time in space.

Geographical Space and Cradle of the Yoruba Nation

The geographical space of Yoruba homeland is South-Western Nigeria (Figures 1 and 2), which lies between the parallels 5.86⁰ and 9.22⁰ north, and between 2.65⁰ and 5.72⁰ east (Fadipe, 1970) with an estimated area of about 181,300 km² (Atanda, 2007). However, Yoruba people are also found in lower Niger northwards into Nupeland, other parts of Nigeria, and African countries notably Togo, Northern Ghana, and also the eastern part of The Republic of Benin (known as Dahomey in the past). They are also found outside Africa: some are in Brazil, others in the Caribbean and the West Indian Islands (Aderemi, 2009). As of 2006, of the 46 million people living in the South-Western Nigeria, 39.8 million were Yoruba (National Population Commission, 2006). By 2009, based on the average Nigerian annual population increase of about 3% (Federal Office of Statistics, 2009), the Yoruba population must have risen to about 40.9 million.

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Figure 1.

Map of Africa showing location of Yorubaland, 2006.

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Figure 2.

Map of Nigeria showing location of Yorubaland, 2006.

The historical account of the origin of the Yoruba nation is divided into two: the mythological approach and the migratory legend. In mythology, it is believed that Olodumare, the Creator equivalent in Yoruba linguistics, created the whole world by sending his son Oduduwa as the progenitor of the whole human race at Ile-Ife as the point of origin. According to legend, the migratory school of thought believes that “Oduduwa, a legendary warrior, migrated with others as the leader to the location of Ile-Ife from the far east of Arabia” (Johnson, 2001, p. 15; see also Obateru, 2006). This migration probably started at some time “between AD 700 and 1000” (Davidson, 1965, p. 118). They were not Arabians but descendants of Cush who settled there. They were forced out of Arab towns for refusing to give up their religious faith, their deep mysticism, paganism, and idol worship after Islam was introduced to those places by the Prophet Mohammed in 600 AD (Johnson, 2001).

Yoruba Nation in Time and Space

The social, political, and economic civilization of Yoruba nation started with Oduduwa dynasty at Ile-Ife around 850 AD (Fagg & Pemberton, 1982; Gillon, 1988). According to archaeological findings through carbon dating from potsherd pavements extracted from Ile Ife, Oduduwa’s sons dispersed from the established Ife kingdom to form other kingdoms at the end of the 8th century or the beginning of the 9th century (Akinjogbin & Ayandele, 2000). The potsherd paving of all the streets in Ile-Ife politically symbolizes the end of rule by female King, the period of Queen Oni Luwo.

According to legend, Oduduwa’s eldest son called Okanbi had seven sons who were renowned princes and princesses afterwards. The various subethnic groups of the Yoruba nation sprang from them and were led by the following: Olowu of Owu (ancestors of the first princess); Alaketu of Ketu (ancestors of the second princess); king of Benin (ancestors of the first prince); Orangun of Ila (ancestors of the second prince); Onisabe of Isabe (ancestors of the third prince); Olupopo of Popo (ancestors of the fourth prince); Oranmiyan (the seventh and the last), the progenitor of the Oyos.

These dispersed grandchildren of Oduduwa established their individual empires in different parts of the South-Western Nigeria (Figure 3). They include the following:

The Egbados: This division includes Otta and Lagos near the sea coast, forming a belt of country on the banks of the lagoon in the forest, to Ketu on the border of Dahomey on the West; then the Jebu on the East on the border of Benin; then the Egbas of the forest now known as the Egbas of Abeokuta. Then comes Yoruba proper northwards in the plain; Ife, Ijesa, Ijamo, Efon, Ondo, Idoko, Igbomina, and Ado near the banks of the Niger. (Johnson, 2001)

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Figure 3.

Political enclave of old Ọyọ empire under Alaafin.

Of these kingdoms and empires, the cultural landscapes of the following broad categories are selected for detailed examination in the next section in view of their prominence and representativeness of their typologies: Ife, Ijesa, Egba, Oyo, Ekiti, Ibadan, Lagos. These will be examined on four principal domains of Yoruba cultural value-system: religion, politics, economy, social system. It is important to note that the morphology of Yoruba settlements, such as cityscapes and townscapes, are culturally determined and can be read through cultural semiotics (Fadamiro & Adedeji, 2012). For instance, the townscapes and cityscapes are usually abutted by “sacred” sites as cultural landscapes for the worship of the Yoruba deities. Despite the onslaught of urbanization on these sites, they have been optimally preserved through generations.

Yoruba Cultural Landscapes, Value-System, “Spirit-of-Place,” and Time Significance

Throughout Yorubaland, Ile-Ife is referenced as the cradle of the Yoruba nation and its origin is probably lost in antiquity (Osasona, Ogunshakin, & Jiboye, 2013). According to Biobaku (1955), “the town was probably founded between the 7th and 10th centuries AD” (p. 21). Jeffrey (1958) opines that “it had become a flourishing civilization by the 11th Century” (p. 21). Carbon dating appears to endorse these views, as it establishes that Ife “was a settlement of substantial size between the 9th and 12th centuries” (Willett, 1971, p. 367).

Ife settlement had a monarchical form of government run by the Oduduwa dynasty, political and constitutional development, and high level of cultural attainment. Ile-Ife as the father-kingdom and Yoruba national headquarters had no fear of attack from any quarter and did not produce an army; rather, as the spiritual-father of the nation, it produced over 400 national gods. (Johnson, 2001). In view of this, recourse was always made to Ile-Ife from all other empires and kingdoms of the Yoruba nation. This is usually paramount at the coronation of new kings of those empires whose sacredness is symbolized by their beaded crowns whose fringes hid their faces. Also, the remains of kings of the kingdoms were brought to Ile-Ife and some of them deified (Akinjogbin & Ayandele, 2000; Isichei, 1999).

The symbolic cultural landscapes of Ile-Ife include: the Oduduwa Gardens (Figure 4), popularly called Enuowa Square (Owa being one of the children of Oduduwa and founder of Ijesa empire); Oke-Mogun (Figure 5) containing the shrine of Ogun; Oranmiyan Staff, Oranmiyan being the last child of Oduduwa and founding father of Oyo empire; and the Oke-yidi War ground, the space that soaked the blood of mighty warriors in the Ife and neighboring Modakeke (who are Oyos) hostilities. Oduduwa Garden is a city square, in a quadrangle located opposite the Oni’s Palace and contains the statue of Oduduwa satisfying cosmological considerations typical of Yoruba settlements. The bounding routes to the Palace and the Garden had an orientation such that they coincided with the cardinal points, with the east-facing one associated with Sango (the god of thunders); the west one, Esu (the Devil); the one to the north, Obatala (the god of creation); and the southward one, Ogun (the god of iron), all being local deities (Obateru, 2006).

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Figure 4.

Oduduwa Gardens at Enuwa Square, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, 2005.

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Figure 5.

Ogun Shrine at Oke Mogun, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, 2005.

Till (2005, p. 8) argues that “people mark social spaces as haunted sites where they can return, make contact with their loss, contain unwanted presence, or confront past injustices,” concluding that these places and sites “narrate national pasts and futures through the spaces and times of a city that is itself a place of social memory.” It is in this process that a geographical location transforms into a memorial site that is invested with meaning and invokes rituals of commemoration according to Jordan (2006). Ile-Ife is thus the burial place of the great ancestor of the Yoruba aborigines just as Mumford (1961) noted that

the dead were the first to have a permanent dwelling mid the uneasy wandering of Palaeolithic man and these were landmarks to which the living probably returned at intervals, to commune with or placate the ancestral spirits. (p. 7)

This describes the significance of Oranmiyan Staff. Oranmiyan Staff landscape (Figure 6) has an area of 0.43 hectare at Oranmiyan Street, Ile-Ife. It is the tomb stone of Oranmiyan, the youngest of Oduduwa’s sons and the founder and first Alafin of old Oyo. Johnson (1969) provided a complete description and interpretation of the staff (tomb stone) as follows:

This obelisk is about 20 (twenty) feet in height, and about 4 feet square in width at its base; it tapers to a point, and has upon one face of it several spike nails driven into it, and some carvings as of ancient characters. The nails are arranged in such an ordered manner as to render them significant. First, there are 61 in a straight line from the bottom upwards at intervals of 4 inches on either side of this and from the same level on top, two parallel lines of 31 nails each running downwards and curving below to meet those of the middle. Then in the space between these three rows of parallel lines, and about the level where they converge, is found the most conspicuous of the carvings. What is conjectured as most probable in these arrangements is that the 61 nails in midline represent the number of years Oranyan lived, and that the 31 each on either side indicates that he was 31 when he began to reign, and that he reigned for 31 years, the year he began to reign being counted twice as is the manner of the Yorubas, and that the carvings are the ancient characters Resh and Yod which stand for Oranyan. (p. 146)

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Figure 6.

Oranmiyan Staff and Shrine, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, 2005.

Between the 11th century and 17th century, the Yoruba Kingdom of Ife thus experienced a golden age. It was then surpassed by the Oyo Empire as the dominant Yoruba military and political power between the 17th century and 19th century (Yoruba Creation Myth and Belief, Olorun or Olodumare, 2008). The nearby splinter Yoruba kingdom of Benin was also a powerful force between 1300 and 1850 (Bascom, 1955, 1962, 1969). Oyo was founded by either Oranyan or Sango, and trade was a crucial factor in the rise of the empire. It already existed by 1100 AD and developed into a small kingdom by the late 14th century. The empire arose at the end of the 15th century aided by Portuguese guns and emerged as the dominant political power in Yoruba by the 17th century (Goddard, 1971; Johnson, 2010). It traded various goods in return for horses and salt and conquered much of Yorubaland by the 17th century. The Oyo Empire expanded to its greatest extent between 1730 and 1748. The empire subjugated the kingdom of Dahomey in the west in two phases (1724-1730, 1738-1748) and traded with European merchants on the coast through the port of Ajase, now called Porto-Novo (Oyo Empire, 2015). As slave exports from Oyo through the coast settlement called Badagry in Lagos (Osasona & Hyland, 2006) reached about 20,000 per year between 1680 and 1730, this portion became known as the Slave Coast (Anderson, 2006). However, Afonja started a slave revolt in 1823 and the empire of Oyo collapsed during the first two decades of the 19th century following which Yorubaland plunged into warfare. The abandoned capital city of old Oyo has remained a cultural landscape as Old Oyo National Park.

In sum, Lagos was once a Yoruba settlement called Ekor with the original settlers as Benin and Awori. Portuguese traders visited the area in 1472 naming the area around the city Lagos, meaning lakes. The city of Lagos thus began in the 15th century as a Portuguese trading post exporting ivory, peppers, and slaves, which still exists in the Badagry area of present-day Lagos State (Osasona & Hyland, 2006) as a cultural landscape.

Yoruba Urbanization, Cultural Heritage, and Tourism in Space

In view of the onslaught of urbanization, modernization, and civilization, the cultural value-system of the landscapes have been delimited (Fadamiro, Adedeji, & Ibrahim, 2013). Many of the “sacred” spaces have been encroached upon for building purposes in some traditional urban cores. This is contrary to Yoruba belief that “man is a tenant on God’s earth” (Idowu, 1978, p. 206). However, they are presently enlisted in Nigeria by the National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Federal Ministry of Tourism and are used as cultural and ecotourism sites. Despite their high ecological, economic, social, and political significance, only Osun Groove, which is ecocultural, has been enlisted as an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Those who are archetypal of their typologies but not yet enlisted by the UNESCO include Oramiyan Staff, Ile-Ife which is ancestral, Old-Oyo National Park which is historical, Olumirin Water Falls of the Ijesa and Ikogosi, Cold-and-Warm Spring of the Ekiti which are also ecocultural, Olumo Rocks of the Egba, Abeokuta (Figure 7), and Oke-Ibadan Hills which are geo-historically protective during intertribal wars.

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Figure 7.

Olumo Rocks, Abeokuta, Nigeria.

Furthermore, the relics of the Old Oyo Empire have been preserved as the Old Oyo National Park through legal promulgation, the Decree No. 36 of 1991 (Adetoro, Opebiyi, & Oyeleye, 2012). Before this modern conservation strategy was put in place, the landscape of the empire’s headquarters called Old Oyo is believed to have been a space soaked with memory of autocracy, despotism, and tyranny of the Alaafins who ruled the empire. Therefore, because of the psychological association between place and memory (Fadamiro & Adedeji, 2014), it is not normal for any member of the Yoruba nation to embark on the redevelopment of the site. As discovered in the study by Fadamiro and Adedeji (2014), this is also true of some ecotourism cultural landscapes of Ile-Ife, Nigeria. The Oranmiyan Staff landscape in particular has been preserved through the spirit of ancestral worship. Given that it contains the Oranmiyan Shrine, it is a taboo in Yoruba nation to desecrate the land where the progenitors are buried. Oke Ibadan (Ibadan Hills) is of such a high cultural significance that building on it is taboo despite the high value of land in the highly urbanized metropolis. Furthermore, Olumo Rocks is believed traditionally to offer protection to the Egba people of Abeokuta, while the Slave Trade Port in Badagry, Lagos has been conserved as a cultural museum.

Supernatural beliefs and their associated sanctions have been thus discovered to effectively enforce taboos (Gadgil & Vartak, 1974; McClanahan, Glaesel, Rubens, & Kiambo, 1997). According to Shimrah, Bharali, Rao, and Saxena (2012), taboos contribute to the conservation of habitats and of biodiversity, both temporally and spatially, just as cultural beliefs and superstitions are traditional instruments for conservation and protection of the natural resources. These are established informal institutions that have proved effectual in the history of traditional cultures.

The social activism of Sussan Wenger in relation to the preservation of Osun Grove in particular and its eventual listing as UNESCO Site is very prominent. She was an Austrian, born on July 4, 1915, and died on January 12, 2009. She was given the indigenous cultural name Adunni Olorisa after she indigenized and became a priestess of the Osun goddess. Adedeji and Fadamiro (2011) assert that “between 1968 and 1969 she wrote to UNESCO on the need for the forest conservation of Osun Grove” (p. 76).

These cultural landscapes have been preserved through mythological strategies of the forbidden in the relationship of the Yorubas with nature which they dogmatically reference. For instance, the Yorubas personified the natural forces and phenomena of hills, mountains, rivers, rocks, caves, trees, brooks, lakes, and thick forests as deities. The primary thick forest of Osun Groove is forbidden for hunting and fishing. The Oke-Ibadan (Ibadan Hill) is a place set apart for the spirit of the hill which the people believe had offered them help during periods of war. The same operates among the Egba of Abeokuta, where the “Olumo Rock is dedicated to the spirit of the rock believed to have offered them assistance in war days” (Awolalu & Dopamu, 1979, p. 73). Currently, legal frameworks have been put in place to safeguard the continual preservation of the landscapes because of the inherent weaknesses of the mythological strategies in view of modernization, where some parts of the modern generation believe less in mythology as a result of imbibing western religion.

This has ensured the use of the cultural landscapes as ecotourism and cultural tourism sites. On Osun Grove UNESCO World Heritage Site and its annual festival, Falade (2000) observed that

the yearly celebration rituals have transcended the levels of the spiritual flavour. There is a wide range of artistic and cultural activities that attract people from as far as Ghana, United States of America (USA), Germany, England, Brazil, Cuba and the Caribbean. (p. 174)

and

On the 13th August, 1999, during an Osun festival celebration final, one Dutch journalist, Morio Mols has this to say: I haven’t seen anything as colourful as this. Apart from the celebrations, I have seen very exquisite marks of art from sculpture to painting and I have also been made to have a direct feeling of African rhythms, straight out of Africa and unblemished by western musical influences. You can’t get anything than this. (p. 188)

The mythological strategies are essentially taboos that have emerged from historical antecedents of negative occurrences that happened to members of the population who did the forbidden to the spirits of the sites. They were believed to be inflicted with punishments ranging from mysterious sickness and affliction to outright death by the gods and goddesses of the sites. Occasionally, this is in the form of ritual killing as human sacrifices to the gods, which were believed to be aggrieved by such trespasses. For instance, according to legend (Falade, 2000), the Osun Osogbo World Heritage Site (Figures 8 & 9) and its River Osun (Figure 10) are said to be inhabited by the “wizard” of the forest who once warned the founding hunters in an audible voice to move away from the forest during one of their hunting expeditions. According to Falade (2000), they “were much afraid” and “later came back to offer the goddess of the river sacrifices” (p. 65), which has since become an annual worship by “Ataoja of Osogbo.” Hunting, fishing, farming, and building construction thus became taboos on the site and therefore exist to this day as primary rainforest and natural habitats of animals like monkeys (Figure 9). Because of the blend between cultural artworks and traditional religions, where the gods and goddesses are deified as statues, only artworks are installed at specific nodes along the natural paths and points of sacrifices on the site. This mythology has been rhetorically conveyed from generation to generation in the cognomen of successive Ataojas and recited during the annual festivals.

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Figure 8.

Tourists’ Reception Centre, Osun Grove UNESCO World Heritage Site, Osogbo, Nigeria.

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Figure 9.

Linear path showing greenery and monkeys in Osun Grove UNESCO World Heritage Site, Osogbo, Nigeria.

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Figure 10.

River Osun in the Osun Grove UNESCO World Heritage Site, Osogbo, Nigeria.

On the other hand, although the legal framework for the protection of antiquities in Nigeria dates back to 1939 as draft Bill, the Antiquities Ordinance of 1953 otherwise referred to as Ordinance 17 was the first legislation to preserve the cultural heritage, otherwise referred to as Ordinance 17 (Osuagwu, 2009). Consequently, Osun Grove Osogbo (Figure 11) was first declared a National Monument in 1965. This original designation was amended and expanded in 1992 to protect the entire 75 hectares. After that, the National Commission for Museum and Monuments (NCMM) Decree 77 of 1979 was promulgated. In its Part II, Section B, sub-Section 3, it states that (Osuagwu, 2009):

It is an offence to destroy, alter, remove or excavate or transfer the possession of the antiquity to which the Commission has put out a notice to be declared as a National Monument except with the permission in writing of the Commission. (p. 58)

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Figure 11.

The first palace of Osogbo and the site of first settlement in the Osun Grove UNESCO World Heritage Site, Osogbo, Nigeria.

This decree was followed by The Nigerian Cultural Policy of 1988, which states that “The State shall preserve as Monuments old city walls and gates, sites, palaces, shrines, public buildings, promote buildings of historical significance and monumental sculptures” (Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, n.d.). Under the Land Use Act of 1990, the Federal Government of Nigeria conferred trusteeship of Osun Grove to the Government of Osun State.

Furthermore, Decree No. 36 of 1991 was promulgated, which led to the establishment of the National Parks Governing Board. The Federal Ministry of Environment, Housing & Urban Development supervises the Park Service as its agency. In view of this development and in recognition of its cultural value, the Old Oyo was listed as one of the seven national parks in Nigeria as Old Oyo National Park with the area of 2,512 square kilometers. The Park derives its name from the ruins of Oyo-Ile (Old Oyo) the ancient political capital of Yoruba Empire. It is made up of two previous Native Administrative Forest Reserves, the Upper Ogun (1936) and Oyo-Ile (1941) Forest Reserves. The landscape is made up of four major components: the plain lowland between 330 and 508 meters above the sea level, the rock out-crops (for mountaineering), Ikere Gorge Dam/River Ogun (for water recreation), and the archaeological endowments of Oyo-Ile (for historical preservation; The Old Oyo National Park, 2013).

At the international level, the World Heritage Convention of 1992 in Santa Fe, USA, was the first international legal instrument to recognize and protect cultural landscapes. Nigeria has been actively involved in the execution of the Convention (Mitchell et al., 2009). Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove is also part of National Tourism development Master Plan that was established with World Tourism Organization (WTO) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The New Sacred Art movement to challenge land speculators, repel poachers, protect shrines, formed by the Austrian-born Suzanne Wenger, was eventually instrumental to the enlisting of Osun Sacred Grove as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005 (Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, n.d.).

Generally, these legal frameworks have inherent weaknesses. For instance, Decree 77 of 1979 did not provide for traditional management and enforcement systems in the maintenance and protection of immovable cultural heritage (Osuagwu, 2009). Also, the stipulated penalties of fines or imprisonment or both, with the highest as 100,000 Nigerian Naira and 5 years imprisonment, are not effective deterrents. Sometimes, evasion of the law is a common practice as a result of the low and therefore insufficient legal jurisdiction of the Magistrate Courts involved in the administration of the law. The local communities are not carried along in the process of promulgation of the laws and formed the opinion that they are not deemed significant and are therefore passive in its executions. They do not cooperate with the various government agencies in charge of the cultural landscapes and heritages generally to protect the sites from looting and vandalism (Osuagwu, 2009).

Recommendation and Conclusion

Traditional conservation strategies like mythological approaches and legal frameworks should be strictly enforced to ensure sustainable conservation of the landscapes. In the process of exploring the tourism potentials of the sites, the negative ecological impacts of tourism activities should be minimized despite the economic, political, social, and cultural gains. Since the sites are currently used for cultural, religious, and ecotourism purposes, they could be profaned by littering the shrines, tampering with the sacrificed materials that are believed to be accepted by the spirits, or speaking against the ancestral spirits, the gods, and goddesses that are traditionally believed to inhabit them. To minimize such impacts during festivals, tourists are excluded from the core religious aspects of the ceremonies. This is suggested to be continued.

To achieve the best conservation results, there is a need to involve the local communities in the evolution, promulgation, and implementation of the legal frameworks of the cultural landscape sites. In this way, the mythological strategies can be incorporated into the legal framework through which the strengths of the two are enhanced and their inherent weaknesses neutralized. This can be achieved by embarking on step-wise review of the law through the setting up of committees, including members of the local communities, and calling for memoranda.

On the whole, the time implication of cultural landscapes as historical documents in space has been highlighted in this study. In a chronological manner, this concept has been used to examine the time–space relationship in the civilization periods of the Yoruba Nation of South-Western Nigeria from cradle to the 20th century. Of significance is the rise and fall of empires in the Yoruba nation and the remains of the interaction among culture, nature, and time as cultural landscapes. Results of the analysis of this qualitative data suggest that the Yoruba nation is socially, economically, and culturally powerful in time and space.