The oba and furthermore their image had a strong role in the building of a modern yoruba national identity. More than a chronology of the "use" and "utility" of oba, my researches led me to establish a periodisation of the process through which they had changed to adapt themselves to political changes. Accordingly, it appears that the oba's survival strategies were also part of the nationalist process after WWII when the Ooni and the Alake were wise enough to be part of it, and agreed to become national/ethnical symbols of the Awolowo project instead of becoming puppets in colonial hands. Of course the Action Group needed the help of some of the oba but they have done more : they survived as a social group with all financial and material interests related to their prescribed symbolic role. The oba became the central point of each community (D. Laitin) just because of colonial administrative officers or yoruba politicians who tried to “use” them. It gave oba a new strength when they were said to disappear with modernization and democratization. As a matter of fact, the division along ethnic lines in the political process in Africa is neither the entire responsibility of former colonial

masters nor the sole initiative of nationalists. The political choices of the latter were often the product of administrative and political decisions of the former. In the yoruba part of British Nigeria, the policy toward the oba led by the British between 1930 to 1945/47 had two consequences. It settled an ethnical basis for local politics for the mere profit of post-war nationalists because yoruba crowds were devoted to their oba ready to follow them on local and national issues. Thereafter it also created conditions for the oba to regularly renew the forms of their "utility" on the socio-political stage in yoruba cities.The oba had renewed their legitimacy since the 60’s. With military regimes, they were the only possible civilian partners of the administration. Since the 1980's through economic and political crisis, and internal and transboundary migrations, they strengthened their relation with their expatriated people. Meanwhile they had reviewed the forms of their « utility » in society : the election of former scholars as oba shows the new needs of communities.