bigfrancis21:


Igbos don't know what is Iru, Iru is popular in Yorubaland. Igbos only know Ogiri, which happens to be used in some parts of Yoruba land too, thus indicating a borrowing somewhere down the line in the past.

respectively. Iru/Dawadawa is one of the most important traditional food condiments in the Savanah region of West and Central Africa where the locust / soy bean tree grow abundantly.

AjaanaOka:


So having Yoruba of Igbo descent in your oriki has become a yardstick for determining whether Igbos left their villages or not? Perfect argument.

Share that link about Nupe and Onitsha.

bigfrancis21:


Ugu is now popular all over Nigeria. Even till today, I do not even know what the English name is.

YonkijiSappo:


Not entirely.
He is just saying if there were igbos that reached as far west as the Eastern Yorubas before the era of colonial power play, where are they or remnants of their culture today?
Yorubas of exogenous origins usually have the history of their lineages embedded in their orikis. For example in lagos, we all know the Yorubas from Tapa (Nupe), Benin, Ijebu, Igala, Portuguese, Egba. and Fon lineages.
In Akure, they know the families from Oshodis who are said to be Benin migrants, The Ebira, Tapa, Ekiti, Owo, Ijesha etc Origins.

Did those Igbos who reached the Siluko river return east?

lawani:
On Nollywood, it cant be disputed that it was an Igbo trader that pioneered selling videos on the streets, prior to that we used to watch seasonals on TV stations mainly. What Igbos pioneered is selling on streets and the industry was not known as Nollywood back then but taking it to the streets was a commendable innovation. However proffessional film making was pioneered by people like late Hubert Ogunde, Isola Ogunshola, Duro Ladipo and co. Then theatre artists like Profs Ola Rotimi and Soyinka had worldwide audience, though they were not business men, yet Prof Soyinka got a Nobel prize because of his European audience. These people contributed to film making in Nigeria in no small measure. Hubert Ogunde's films Koto Orun, Aye Akamara remain evergreen cinema classics. Never forget them too but the traders are also important for their daring. Traders who plough their money in can not be discounted. They did for film makers what record labels had earlier done for people like Osadebay, KSA, Fela and etc.

somegirl1:


A weak attempt that rewriting recent history.
Nollywood started with Living in Bandage, Circle of Doom, Evil Passion and the likes which weren't sold on the streets. Pirated copies became available on the streets much later.

lawani:


So you want to discount the works of Duro Ladipo, Hubert Ogunde, Isola Ogunsola, Baba sala and etc. All film malers? Baba sala produced the first block buster and infact if we dont go back to cinema, the Nollywood products will remain low quality and downrated. Nobody is saying Igbos are not trying but it will be wrong to write the history of Nigerian film making without the people I mentioned. There are also Igbos among those set too.

somegirl1:


I've checked it and there's no mention of any other group starting nollywood, which is the bone of contention. Pre- nollywood there were plays and movies which you have referred to.
Some Igbo productions pre-nollywood include - Akaraka, Dilemma, Boy- o - Boy, Ugonma, The Cause and Things fall apart, with mainly Igbo actors, depicting Igbo culture.
These weren't considered nollywood movies.

Nollywood started in 91/92 with Living in Bondage, Circle of Doom, Evil Passion etc - produced, directed and acted by Igbos in Igbo language.
Don't even attempt to rewrite recent history.

somegirl1:


I've just remembered that this has already been addressed. See below.
The emboldened statement might be true but even those Igbos that produced movies prior to Living in Bondage are not the pioneers of Nollywood.

lawani:


Small budget 50,000 copies films after which pirates take over are not the ultimate. We will go back to screens. A Yoruba country can have two thousand screens even more making at least 2 billion naira a month to start with. There were films made by Yorubas that were sold on the streets before living in bondage but living in bondage was the first to be very successful on the streets but not the first film or first block buster. Where do you want to put Hubert Ogunde, Baba Sala, Duro Ladipo and etc. That is the issue. I for one do not believe in low budget made for the streets movies. I believe in screens. Hollywood style.

somegirl1:


This a debate about the beginning of Nollywood. Distort all you wish, "Nollywood" not film making in Nigeria started with Living in Bondage, an Igbo movie.
What you believe in is inconsequential in this argument.

lawani:


You fail to see that the current trend of no screens and low budget movies is a setback and not a progress. Most of the productions can not compare to any of Hubert Ogunde's works produced decades before living in bondage and never made into DVDs. Stay there and be celebrating mediocrity when Living in bondage was not even the first to be made into DVDs!

Drchristian:

Oyibo is simply out of d word Oyinbo which is a yoruba word. oyibo has no direct meaning in igbo.

OMAR12:
how well do u know Igbo language, close ur mouth if u don't have anything to say. onyibo means foreign, that why u hear obodo onyibo(foreign land). while light skinned is onye ocha. stop saying what u don't know I repeat.

lawani:


Onye ocha means white man, since ocha means white just like Onye Ibadan means Ibadan man. Oyibo in Yoruba means Oyi the air peeled his skin or depigmented him. Oyi means air while bo means peel. It was an Ife chief that explained it to me.

OMAR12:
we don't call the white oyibo, we call them onye ocha, oyibo means foreign in Igbo language.that why u hear obodo oyibo like I explained before. there is nearness in similarity BT it not the same. BT begin in a complex society and the fact that the similarity is of two big tribes with overwhelming influence we tag it as one and equal. we don't call white men oyibo in the east.

Igboid:

I think Oyibo means "relating to Whiteman" in Igboland.

Not just foreign.

And mind you, to an average Igboman, foreign means " non black".

Aki Oyibo- White man's Aki( Palm kernel)

Obodo Oyibo- White man's town. Also white man's country in broader sense.

* Obodo Oyibo in southern Igboland = Ala Bekee.

Oyibo- White man's language. Eg o na-asu Oyibo ( He speaks White man's language.
Just we might say, o na asu Igbo( He speaks Igbo )

But when it comes to the white man himself, he is addressed as " Onye ocha" or "Bekee" .

Either way, Ndiigbo never borrowed the word "Oyibo" from the Yorubas, moreover, what Yorubas use is "Oyinbo" or Oyingbo", and nit Oyibo.

Oyibo is of Igbo origin.

Oyinbo/Oyingbo is of Yoruba origin.

lawani:


There is nothing like Oyingbo to mean white man in Yoruba vocab. Oyibo is the word but some people misspell it as Oyinbo. The etymology is as explained above. Oyi means air or breeze and bo means peel. Ask any Yoruba around you. Oyingbo is a market in Lagos. Someone said it was a market for honey where people used to bring honey to sell in the past. Honey is Oyin in Yoruba and Oyingbo can mean Everything honey or All honey but I am not sure of the etymology. You can ask the people from there. Just like Alawusa, Ikeja was an Awusa market.

bigfrancis21:


This is new to me. I'm not sure where you're getting this from but I know Yorubas use 'Oyinbo' and Igbos use 'Oyibo'. There is documented evidence of the usage of 'Oyibo' amongst Igbos as of the 18th/19th century pre-Christianity times. Some missionaries had been to Igboland to spread the gospel and the natives, on sighting them, repeatedly called them 'oyibo', 'oyibo'. Olaudah Equiano, the Igbo ex-slave, in his book wrote of his Igbo people referring to light-skinned men from a distance as 'oyeboe'. Mind you, Olaudah was born around 1745 or the 18th century, at a time before the arrival of westernization or Christianity. Mind you, this was a village of Olaudah located deep in the middle of Igboland, with little influence to the outside world. Your coming now to claim 'Oyibo' as used by Igbos since time immemorial as 'Yoruba' is obviously false as it may come. Mind you, no documented evidence so far has shown the usage of 'oyinbo' by the Yorubas before or as of the same time Igbos were using 'Oyibo', which leads any researcher to conclude that Oyinbo may be a borrowed and corrupted word from the Igbo 'Oyibo'. Mind you also that most of the tribes in the south (Binis, Igalas, Idomas etc.) also use the same word, 'oyibo' as Igbos except the Yorubas that say 'oyinbo' instead, indicating an adoption somewhere and the nasalization of the word to 'oyinbo', Yoruba being a nasal language. For example, Ebonyi would be Eboyin in Yoruba, Egwugwu masquerade is Egungun in Yoruba, Ogwu (charm) in Igbo is Ogun in Yoruba, Onye in Igbo is to Eyin in Yoruba, and so forth.

Please try to do some research as to the use of 'oyibo' or 'oyinbo' in Yorubaland and come up with tangible sources. Trying to ascribe yoruba meanings to a word is not conclusive evidence of ownership of a word. Thousands of Yoruba words have meanings in Igbo (Abeokuta or Ebe okwute in Igbo meaning a place of rock/stones, Ibeji in Yoruba which could mean place of yams or yam barn in my dialect of Igbo etc), but it would make no sense for Igbos to try to claim those words as Igbo words simply because they have meanings in Igbo.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/equiano1/equiano1.html

bigfrancis21:


This is new to me. I'm not sure where you're getting this from but I know Yorubas use 'Oyinbo' and Igbos use 'Oyibo'. There is documented evidence of the usage of 'Oyibo' amongst Igbos as of the 18th/19th century pre-Christianity times. Some missionaries had been to Igboland to spread the gospel and the natives, on sighting them, repeatedly called them 'oyibo', 'oyibo'. Olaudah Equiano, the Igbo ex-slave, in his book wrote of his Igbo people referring to light-skinned men from a distance as 'oyeboe'. Mind you, Olaudah was born around 1745 or the 18th century, at a time before the arrival of westernization or Christianity. Mind you, this was a village of Olaudah located deep in the middle of Igboland, with little influence to the outside world. Your coming now to claim 'Oyibo' as used by Igbos since time immemorial as 'Yoruba' is obviously false as it may come. Mind you, no documented evidence so far has shown the usage of 'oyinbo' by the Yorubas before or as of the same time Igbos were using 'Oyibo', which leads any researcher to conclude that Oyinbo may be a borrowed and corrupted word from the Igbo 'Oyibo'. Mind you also that most of the tribes in the south (Binis, Igalas, Idomas etc.) also use the same word, 'oyibo' as Igbos except the Yorubas that say 'oyinbo' instead, indicating an adoption somewhere and the nasalization of the word to 'oyinbo', Yoruba being a nasal language. For example, Ebonyi would be Eboyin in Yoruba, Egwugwu masquerade is Egungun in Yoruba, Ogwu (charm) in Igbo is Ogun in Yoruba, Onye in Igbo is to Eyin in Yoruba, and so forth.

Please try to do some research as to the use of 'oyibo' or 'oyinbo' in Yorubaland and come up with tangible sources. Trying to ascribe yoruba meanings to a word is not conclusive evidence of ownership of a word. Thousands of Yoruba words have meanings in Igbo (Abeokuta or Ebe okwute in Igbo meaning a place of rock/stones, Ibeji in Yoruba which could mean place of yams or yam barn in my dialect of Igbo etc), but it would make no sense for Igbos to try to claim those words as Igbo words simply because they have meanings in Igbo.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/equiano1/equiano1.html

lawani:


I heard from the mouth of an elderly person, an Ife chief. Which research is more than that? Then ask a Yoruba person what Oyi and bo means.

RedboneSmith:



It is strange how you insist that Equiano's Oye-Eboe is Oyibo when there are other explanations that make better sense.

First, it could also be Onye Igbo. We all know how in the old days, some Igbo clans would call other Igbos 'Nwa Onye Igbo', but would not use the same designation for themselves. Equiano's people may have been using 'Onye Igbo' in a similar way to describe these traders who came from a distance.

Second, it could be Onye Aboh. That is someone from Aboh. Abo was often also written as Ebo or Eboe in travelers accounts. Some clans still call them Ebo today. And they traded in the kind of merchandise that Equiano described in the book.

The Oyibo explanation which you have been pushing to explain 'Oye-Eboe' is by far the least tenable.

Oyibo (white man) is most likely to have originated in Yorubaland and reached the Niger by relay trade maybe early in the 19th century. I have snapped this page from Equiano's Travels edited by Paul Edwards where the writer briefly analysed the explanations for 'Oye-Eboe'.

bigfrancis21:


Lol. If an Nri chief told me Oyibo is Igbo vs what your Ife chief told you, where does that leave us at?

lawani:


There is nothing like Oyingbo to mean white man in Yoruba vocab. Oyibo is the word but some people misspell it as Oyinbo. The etymology is as explained above. Oyi means air or breeze and bo means peel. Ask any Yoruba around you. Oyingbo is a market in Lagos. Someone said it was a market for honey where people used to bring honey to sell in the past. Honey is Oyin in Yoruba and Oyingbo can mean Everything honey or All honey but I am not sure of the etymology. You can ask the people from there. Just like Alawusa, Ikeja was an Awusa market.

lawani:


I broke it down for you as the old man did. It is a compound word. Igbos call white people Onye ocha while Yoruba call them Oyibo. You just like unnecessary debate. Igbos in the past were like the Koma people discovered not long ago in Adamawa. They never saw a white man until relatively recently whereas Yorubas have known white people since forever hence the name Oyibo which means those depigmented by the breeze. Yoruba use many Igbo words like Una, fufu and many others but Oyibo is not one of them. A word we have been using for thousands of years!.


Yorubas have been dealing with Europeans for over 500 years, going back and forth between West Africa, Americas and Europe. We have been dealing with Arabs since forever. There were normally Arab residents in Yoruba cities. Yoruba were traders, going to North Africa and etc dressed as Arabs. They dealt with Celts, Tuaregs, Moors and etc. So they were using that word all that time that no single free Igbo was outside Igbo land.

Then we differentiate between Oyibos, Oyibo Geesi is British, Faranse is French, Potogi is Portuguese. Portuguese was spoken well by many Yoruba in the past up till the 19th century. I will say the Germans were the Agudas. Arabs are Larubawa and etc.

Igboid:



Now, this was clearly written by a mind suffering from grandiose delusions.

Yorubas are a funny bunch, they never stop to amaze me with this their claim to civilization.
The same people that couldn't evolve enough to live in Peace with each other, but were busy fighting tribal fights like savages so much that they needed and gladly welcomed the white man to colonize them, if only to bring Peace to their region.
This your post coming from same Yorubas I described above, linking Ndiigbo to Koma tribe is quite comical, and I would advise you thread carefully from here onwards, cause actions often elicit reactions and in a blink of an eye, this thread goes south and end up in tribalism section.

lawani:


Abeg shut up. Are Koma people not human beings? How are you better than them? You have no sovereignty over your land, non Igbos gang up to kill you there. In many ways, Koma people are better off than you. Many mumu Igbos say irritating things. The Yoruba have no other word for white man than Oyibo and we have been using it for thousands of years. So how is it possible we learnt it from Igbos who were like the Koma people as at the 19th century? Meaning they were grounded in their villages. They were known mainly to their immediate neighbors only. So how can the only word we have for whiteman have come from Igbos?. I hate deliberate stupidity.

The Japanese civil war that led to the Meiji period was as long if not longer than the Yoruba civil war. It was a war to foster unity.

lawani:


I broke it down for you as the old man did. It is a compound word. Igbos call white people Onye ocha while Yoruba call them Oyibo. You just like unnecessary debate. Igbos in the past were like the Koma people discovered not long ago in Adamawa. They never saw a white man until relatively recently whereas Yorubas have known white people since forever hence the name Oyibo which means those depigmented by the breeze. Yoruba use many Igbo words like Una, fufu and many others but Oyibo is not one of them. A word we have been using for thousands of years!.


Yorubas have been dealing with Europeans for over 500 years, going back and forth between West Africa, Americas and Europe. We have been dealing with Arabs since forever. There were normally Arab residents in Yoruba cities. Yoruba were traders, going to North Africa and etc dressed as Arabs. They dealt with Celts, Tuaregs, Moors and etc. So they were using that word all that time that no single free Igbo was outside Igbo land.

Then we differentiate between Oyibos, Oyibo Geesi is British, Faranse is French, Potogi is Portuguese. Portuguese was spoken well by many Yoruba in the past up till the 19th century. I will say the Germans were the Agudas. Arabs are Larubawa and etc.

bigfrancis21:


In Igboland, we have different ways of referring to the white man or any person light skinned - oyibo, bekee, onye ocha, etc. depending on the region in Igboland. Upland Igbos (Anambra, Enugu, Delta Igbo) tend to use 'oyibo' and downland Igbos (Imo, Abia etc.) tend to use Bekee (from a white missionary man in Igboland whose last name was Baike). Onye Ocha is more of modern standardized Igbo way of referring to a white person or light-skinned person. My paternal grandmother born around 1920s was named Oyibo. The Sierra Leonean missionary and Bishop Ajayi crowther on their missionary visit to Igboland were referred to as 'oyibo ojii' (black foreigners), meaning that the Igbo natives knew the difference between oyibo proper and oyibo ojii.

Surprisingly, the Igalas that share linguistic affinity with Yorubas say 'Oyibo' instead of 'Oyinbo'. The binis say 'Oyibo' as well. Specifically, Igbos use Oyibo, Yorubas use Oyinbo. It is totally absurd that you are the only Yoruba person leaving 'oyinbo' used among Yorubas to claim 'Oyibo' as used by Igbos.

In academic research, oral traditions are noted but are not given much credibility as written traditions due to the very fact of subjectivity - the tendency for a story to be changed or modified as it is passed down from generation to generation due to the subjectivity of the human mind. Thus, wielding some story by some Ife chief holds no credence in this level of discourse. In other words, just because it is an oral history does not necessarily mean it is 100% valid, owing to the subjectivity factor of the human mind. Rather, furnishing academic evidence of the usage of 'oyinbo' in Yorubaland dating back to the 18th century or earlier would yield more credence to your claim in this discourse.

https://books.google.com/books?id=J0P6rmhhP6IC&pg=PA189&lpg=PA189&dq=oibo+igbo&source=bl&ots=9WXyXoiwsD&sig=yFSuTpNfik3C0w2Y8LIKHQ5miIc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwio5sL81oDPAhXG5xoKHWGiAKcQ6AEIODAF#v=onepage&q=oibo%20igbo&f=false

lawani:


But we have no other word for white man and there was no Igbo man on Yoruba land in 1895, so how did we learn it from Igbos? Would you say we learnt it from Igalas who learnt it from Igbos? We dont really deal with Igalas, they have been cut off for centuries, we dealt more with Nupe, Ebira, Bariba and Hausas than Igalas. So what do you think the Germans, English, Portuguese that traded with the Oyo in Togo, Benin republic and Ghana were called. No big deal in learning a word from Igbos, we learnt many but the word Oyibo can not be among. Cant you reason with that? Abeg jo. I wont respond again.