[3][4] Abiola Irele was born in Igbo-Ora, Nigeria, and moved to Enugu very early in his life.
However, after returning to Lagos in 1944 to live with his father, he began predominantly to speak Yoruba and maintained it as his ethnic identification.
[5] Irele's first encounter with literature was through folk tales and the oral poets who recounted "raras" in the streets.
[3][4] Irele helped to expound upon the understanding of Négritude first theorized by Aimé Césaire in the magazine L'Étudiant noir and then in his groundbreaking book Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939), in various articles, such as "A Defence of Negritude" in Transition (1964)[7] or in the article[where?]
In his collection of essays Négritude et condition africaine, Irele explores the question of African thought.