₦airaland Forum

School boys lounging in a classroom. Lagos 1940s

Hausa Gentleman dressed in Mohammedan gear. 1900s

Market Scene, 1900s

Nigerian Aristocrats, 1912

An unknown family photographed in 1914

Diasporic Heroes #4
Adechina Remigio Herrera (Obara Meji)
Adechina (“Crown of Fire”) is credited as being one of the most important founding fathers of Ifa in Cuba. A Yoruba born in Africa and initiated as a babalawo there, he was enslaved and taken to Cuba as a young man in the 1830s. Legend has it that he swallowed his sacred ikin ifa used in divination in order to take them with him across the ocean. An intelligent and gifted man, he later bought his freedom and became a powerful property owner in the Havana suburb of Regla. In addition to his large African and Creole religious family he had many influential godchildren from Havana’s Spanish, white elite and had important high society connections. He set up a famous religious institution, the Cabildo of the Virgin of Regla (the Cabildo Yemaya) in around 1860, which became a powerful centre of Ifa and Orisha worship. Along with his daughter, the famous Ocha priestess Echu Bi, he organised the annual street procession on the feast day of the Virgin of Regla, every September 7th. Each year seminal Afrocuban drummers like Pablo Roche Okilakpa would sound the mighty Ilú batá in honour of Yemaya as they processed around the town. Incredibly, Adechina is also reputed to have returned to Africa, the land of his birth, in order to acquire the sacred materials needed to initiate babalawos. He returned again to Cuba with these sacred items in order to build Ifa there.
All the mojubas (prayers and recitals of lineage to honour the ancestors) of babalawos in Cuba include Adechina.
A great man who helped carry African profound spiritual knowledge to the Americas, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather in Ifa, I salute you.
Mo juba Oluwo Adechina Obara Meji, ibae bae tonu.
For the fathers we choose, and who accept us.

oga lalasticlala not fair ooo

The Benin Expedition of 1897 was a punitive expedition by a United Kingdom force of 1,200 under Admiral Sir Harry Rawson in response to the defeat of a previous British-led invasion force under Acting Consul General James Philips (which had left all but two men dead).[1] Rawson’s troops captured, burned, and looted Benin City, bringing to an end the west African Kingdom of Benin. As a result much of the country’s art, including the Benin Bronzes, was either destroyed, looted or dispersed.

September 9th, 1897, Omo n’Oba Ovoramwen is taken out of Benin by a NCPF: unit of sixty men commanded by Captains Carter and Henniker to Gele-Gele port, and transferred on to a Protectorate yacht on the final journey (exile) to Calabar.

Phillips’s objectives, as stated in a letter dated the 16 November 1896) were finally achieved. The city had been ‘visited’ (invaded and captured), the 'obstruction’ (Omo n’Oba Ovenramwen) had been removed and the `ivory’ (treasuries of Benin kingdom: Artworks, sacred and religious items, mnemonics and visual history, including personal effects) in his Palace stolen.

Some of the ivory was shipped to England, and a fraction of it finally auctioned in Paris to pay for the 'visit’. A reference book has it that a large collection of art from Benin is brought to France; these works influence the artistic and formal concerns of modern artists, especially Pablo Picasso and the Cubist.
Source: British museum

A view of the city of Oshogbo, Nigeria. 1950s

jln115:
Just read the bolded!

take a look at your brain with the bolded did we ever say we are perfect but we will surely be better...

Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther 1809-1891
A former Nigerian slave who was rescued and converted to Christianity. He later became a missionary worker, and in 1864, was ordained as the first African Bishop of the Church of England where he translated the bible to Yoruba
His grandson Herbert Macaulay became one of Nigeria’s first Nationalist and played an important role in ending British colonialism in Nigeria. Photo taken in 1861

Two men in southern Nigeria, 1890s

Yoruba people in 1898

Bishop Ajayi Crowther and his native clergy (1890c). Source: The Black Bishop

Lagos Ladies Recreation Club - 1902

The Alake and some of his officials. (1910)

A school in the Niger Delta region. 1909

Nigerian soldiers leaving Kaduna for a second tour of service with the United Nations in Congo

Nigerian soldiers leaving Kaduna for a second tour of service with the United Nations in Congo

Police College Lagos, 1972


and i ask what went wrong

King Duke IX ( middle) of Old Calabar , 1890s

Marriage Ceremony Bonny, 1900

Agbolo’s sons; Great native hunters.

Interior of a European textile store, Nigeria 1930s.

Massey street, Lagos, Nigeria 1910s.

Horse Market, 1894

Entrance to the compound of the Igbo deity Eke, Ifite Nnokwa, Nigeria

Nigeria Before Colonisation.
Seventeenth-century engraving illustrating a court ceremony. In the foreground is the king of Benin on horseback, surrounded by musicians, dwarfs, and attendants with tamed leopards, and leading a procession of chiefs and warriors, also on horseback. The middle ground shows the royal palace, which has high turrents surmounted by large cast-brass birds with outstretched wings. In the background, separated by a wall, is the town of Benin. Presided over by the oba, or king, the city was both a major trading center and the religious and political capital of the Edo people.

Water carriers. Bauchi, (1911)

Oba Eweka II the Oba of Benin. Reigned as Oba from 1914-1933.

6 Nov 1905. Ikot-Udaw-Ntaw-Ide. Spirit-house in town place.

Unknown, probably Tiv, woman, with skull pattern belt. Turn of the 20th century. Unknown author, postcard. From what is now east central Nigeria.

Women Dance The Night Away At a Yaba Nightclub.
The Popular club owner said: “We don’t care What Part Of The World you are From, we are all friends. Yoruba’s, Hausa’s, Ibo’s, Bini’s All Come To my Club To drink Together As Friends”
Lagos 1967.

Nigerian woman and parties it is hereditary