Ochi_Agha:

I would go that far if I was you. Ancient Kemet (Egypt) put Africa on the map, followed by Nubia and the ancient kingdom of Axum. A few kingdoms and empires that are the oldest in the world. And that was one person's view. Historians like to exaggerate from time to time. Do not get me wrong, the Ife sculptures are one of a kind. But to say that they put Africa on the map is quite laughable.

Dede1:



Pal, I must say that your intellectual deterioration is latent in nature and irreversible. It is widely known that stup.idity can not be fixed. If this silly object is an example of your peoples’ ingenuity, [s]may I ask why your not-so-smart lineages have jettisoned the facial mutilation as depicted on the object? [/s]                   

oyinda.:

what's it with these small boys of nowadays. do you guys not sleep?

The myth of Igbo evolution
By ONWUKWE ALAEZI
Monday, April 6, 2009


Photo: Sun News Publishing
More Stories on This Section
This is a reaction to the article titled “Igbo were on Earth before Adam was created” by Professor Acholonu, published in Saturday SUN dated March 21, 2009 page 38. There is no doubt in my mind that what the Igbos (the Ebos, Igbos or Ibos) of Nigeria need most in their present state of political and socio-economic deprivation and marginalization in the country that they have contributed more than any other ethnic group to build is Professors, intellectuals and the like who will write on the said Igbo problems and the way out, not those like Professor Acholnu writing on Igbo legendry of widest imagination, ridiculously saying that “Igbo were on earth before Adam”;

“Adam was actually the scion of a people who lived before he was made” and that” these people were the progenitors of the Igbo”; Adam was a test tube baby, that Adam was not created but rather recreated; Adam and eve were half earthling, half god; Egypt rather than Israel is the blessed land; the god who created Adam was a Nephilim; Enki mated secretly with the wife of Lamech and Noah was born; and other stuff like that too bizarre and frivolous to occupy the mind of child in a 21st century science and technology driven society talk less of a an intellectual of the highest order. The professor, to prove her case quoted Enuma Elish, an epic story of ancient Babylon and the Lost Book of Enki, This brings to mind the controversial ‘sky-being’ theory of the origin of the Igbo by Professor Afigbo. Professor Afigbo’s legend is that the Igbo fell from the sky and landed in Eastern Nigeria where they have dwelt ever since.

Professor Afigbo’s main argument hinges on the presumptions that Igbo as a Negro race is “a ‘sky being’ for he descended from the sky in the first place” (Afigbo, 2001:24), that “it was during this phase of Igbo experience (i.e., during the universalistic period) that the basic framework of what we know as Igbo culture and civilisation was laid” (p. 25), that “the experience which makes a segment of the migrants of 6000 years ago Igbo was developed in situ in what is today Igboland. It was not brought in by them from wherever…Thus any similarities, real or imagined, found between their experience and the experience of any other population aggregate in any other part of the world is accidental… a fatal blow at the root of the hypothesis of Hebrew origin of the Igbo (p.9).

Actually, the issue of the Hebrew origin of the Igbo is now a known fact; it is not a fairy tale in the moon light like that of the Igbo falling down from the sky to settle on earth or the Igbo being half earthling and half god existing on earth before Adam and even being partakers in getting Adam into existence as a test tube baby. It is a truism that the Jewish origin of the Ibos (Igbos) of Nigeria is as real as the Oduduwa (of ancient Babylon) origin of the Yorubas or the Saudi Arabian origin of the Hausa-Fulanis of Nigeria, without, of course any prejudice to their (the Ibos’) full Nigerian citizenship.

“The ‘history of the history’ of the search for the Lost Tribes of Israel actually makes fascinating reading in itself. The list of candidates is long, particularly since the 17th century, both of groups claiming themselves to be the Lost Tribes and groups identified by travelers or researchers as those Tribes. Some of the better known claims have been: the Ethiopians; the Ibos of Nigeria; the Berbers of North Africa; various Armenian, Afgan, and Persian groups of the Black and Caspian Sea regions; the Chiang-Min of Tibet; the Khazars; and the Karaites.

Researchers have claimed to locate the Tribes all over the globe: the Masai of southeast Africa; the Yemenis; the Abyssinians; the Ganges Indians; the Kareens of Burma; the Shindai tribe of Japan;…”
Every Igbo intellectual interested in self-realization and self-actualization of the Igbo through ancestral cultural awareness should first avail himself with the facts of the Hebrew origin of the Igbo as contained in the above quotation and many more others written by the Jews themselves about the lost tribes of Israel in all the four corners of the earth, including, of course, Nigeria and the Biblically predicted rediscovery and restoration in the last days. Such knowledge will serve as an impetus to the much needed ancestral and cultural awareness of the Ibos – a missing link in the solution of the problem with the Ibos (Igbos) of Nigeria.

The knowledge of the origin of the Ibos, may not immediately remove the pangs of Igbo living under the psychology and burden of defeat or automatically change the status of Igbo society in identity crisis, socio-cultural disorientations, political paralysis and economic impoverishment, and place them back in their former lead position in politics, education, commerce and industry; but surely it will serve as a major way forward; as a psychological cushion against which the average Ibos (Igbos) will lean to better understand and then launch themselves as effectively as, if not more effectively than, their counterpart major tribes in Nigeria – the Hausas and Yorubas - into national and international politics, and be on the right track to correctly deal with the above highlighted Ibo nightmare in Nigeria as well as the usual complexities of the country’s socio-economic and political game, in which the Igbo has always been the pitiful loser.

Assuming that the legends of Afigbo and Acholonu stand then it stands to reason that the people being referred to in Afigbo’s work could be the same godlike people who existed before Adam, according Acholonu, people that I believe are just the aborigines of Iboland (normal human beings, not sky beings or half god, half human) - the Allokoo, Ituri, Kwa and Pigmy races with whom the exiled Nigerian Hebrews (Ibos) lived and intermarried on arriving from the Lake Chad area. And, according to Jewish custom, as many of these aborigines as were properly married into the Nigerian Hebrew families and abided by the Jewish customs as practised by the Ibos automatically became Jews too.

The challenge that these narratives pose for all Igbo intellectuals are (1) more research on the origin the Igbo. However, there is none denying the fact that there were aborigines of Ibo nation. Yoruba nation and Hausa/Fulani nation before the different people that now made up the Igbo, the Yoruba and the Hausa migrated from the Middle East. The Yorubas have their own story of Oduduwa descending from ancient Babylon to settle finally in Ife before spreading to the parts of Yorubaland, the Hausas coming from Saudi Arabia to conquer and settle among the aborigines of Northern Nigeria and parts of Western Nigeria.

These aborigines were known for their different legendaries of very wild guess which had no bearing on truth or any verifiable assumption – some said their ancestors together with their wives came from water to inhabit their land; some claimed their ancestors were once spirit beings who lived under the earth but were forced by one strange reason or the other to abandon the spirit world beneath the earth to come and live in their present place of abode; others claimed their ancestors were sky beings or spirits who for some strange reasons landed with thunder and lightening, or quietly with the wind unnoticed to their present places of abode, and so on.

It is not surprising that the Igbo aborigines had their own story of descending to earth from the sky, just like the other aborigines among the other 250 ethnic groups of Nigeria. What is surprising is that Igbo intellectuals should now make their own fairy tale/legendary origin a theme for serious discussion in the present scientific and technological driven age that call for identification and solution of human problems through scientific methods.

If the effort of these intellectuals are on tracing the origin of the Igbo among known people of the world, like the Hausa did among the Saudis, rather than among the gods of the sky or the before Adam creatures or the Amphins of Noah age, I would not be worried. In treating a similar matter just in passing in my book Ibo Exodus, I acknowledged the existence of the aborigines of Igboland, the Allookos, the Ituris and the pigmies many of whom are now extinct or migrated out of the then Ibo nation and pointed out that the remaining few of the aborigines have now been interwoven into the Ebo, Ibo and now Igbo who came with much more advanced knowledge and civilisation from Israel via Egypt to live among them.

The fact that the Nigerian Hebrews (Ebo, Ibo and now Igbo) migrated from Israel into Nigeria to live with and get assimilated into the culture of a group of Negroes who according to their mythology and religious belief fell from the sky and migrated into Southern Nigeria some 6000 years ago (Afigbo, 2001) - a story that all Jews in Judaism and Christianity alike will regard as an anti-scriptural African legendary of wild guess. Such a story is a serious antithesis to the Holy Scriptures of Israel, the Torah and the Bible. To ignore these Holy Scriptures is to ignore or even ignore God, the source, the origin and the fountainhead of all lives on earth.

However, there is the need to re-examine the Afigbo’s story of the Igbo falling from the sky and settling here in Eastern Nigeria origin of fact the aborigines of Igboland, the history of whom people like Acholonu is yet to be properly put in its correct perspective and of whom Afigbo referred to as ‘sky beings’ has been enriched by some words and names, like Ivite (Ivrit), Eri, Asa, Nebo, Nara, Uzzi, Ono, etc., which the exiled Nigerian Hebrews (Ibos) brought with them from Israel some three thousand years ago; and finally the need to further examine the Nigerian Hebrew (Ibo) case in the context of the World Jewry.

oyinda.:

what about your alter ego sefago? hehn?

akoraye:

i dnt know why we like deceiving ourselves,is heaven a mango tree that smbdy can jump down frm? oduduwa!!!

strangerf:

BTW, nice set of teeth!

akoraye:

i dnt know why we like deceiving ourselves,is heaven a mango tree that smbdy can jump down frm? oduduwa!!!

ROSSIKE:

strangerf said:

This writer is the epitome of ignorance. He clearly lacks the capacity to see beyond his little world of inherited certainties,  derived primarily from his colonial experience.

doyin13:

can someone get strangerf, omongbati, dede1 and sunny-bobo  a room please.

So they can sleep with themselves silly. 

SEFAGO:

Igbo people wanna jack our swagger

But no one can get our swagger

ode remo:

pls let run this joke to the new yr.
igbo ppl are frm ISREAL/JERU-NNEWI.

ode remo:

pls let run this joke to the new yr.
igbo ppl are frm ISREAL/JERU-NNEWI.

akoraye:

i dnt know why we like deceiving ourselves,is heaven a mango tree that smbdy can jump down frm? oduduwa!!!

tpia1:


of course heaven is not a mango tree.


people can still jump from it however.

How did Oduduwa fall from the sky?
With his head, hands, legs or mouth?  With his buttocks
Was he pushed (by devil, God) or did he fall of his own volition? Ofcourse, by God. He was no longer needed you know the reason
What language did he speak when he first landed on earth? None, only screemed OPAMI OO!
Did he land with a wife or alone? If alone, how did he give birth to his offspring? Nope, stole one from the natives
Did he not meet people (for e.g., Binis, Igbos) already occupying the land when he landed? Don't know 
An inquiring mind wants to know.

Obiagu1:

Who told you it was a humour? I only gave a reply

Ileke-IdI:

Oh. Cant even tell the diff between their joke and "intellectual" reply anymore

Obiagu1:

. . . but gave it an interpretation because you liked it, don't you? say the truth