About two days ago, a friend of mine was playing this Army "morale" song on his phone, this song is normally used during training sessions at military depots (this particular guy was a Man-O-War member so such things really fascinated him). It got to a point that the commander (in the audo track) chanted "Hoo-She-Bay!!!" and out of curiousity, i asked this friend of mine what the meaning of that phrase was (i previously had the notion that it was probably of Igbo origins), but he couldn't give me an answer. Another guy who had been sitting besides us all this while then told me that the phrase "Hoo-She-Bay" was actually a corruption of Apes Obey.

he further said that this words were u

he further said that these words were used by the colonial masters to cheer black african workers up during labour. Initially, i snubbed the guy because i thought saw that question as an opportunity to play pranks on ,me..(since he himself was an half-caste), but after i made further researchs on the internet, i learnt that all he said was unfortunately true. It's quite painful when u see members of the armed forces yeling proudly and delightfully at the call of O-She Bay!! By their commanders.. No knowing that they are actually being called Apes

now my question is why did the educated elites not do anything to pressure the government to abolish the use of such words in military training sessions since It's obvious that they knew the meaning of that phrase

O-she Bay and 'apes obey' do not sound exactly familiar to me.

Could you cite your references where you saw the confirmatory material online?

this is the source.. Bigfrancis21, 1stshortblackboy www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/forum/inkpots/30127-apes-obey.html

Where I grew up, a part of Enugu, we heard it as 'Eh-shey-bey', rather than 'O-...'. I don't think it's far-fetched for it to be a mangled pronunciation of 'Apes obey' by 'uneducated' labourers who couldn't speak English. In fact, I think deriving it from 'apes obey' makes a lot of sense, though I don't think the evidence for it is at all conclusive.