₦airaland Forum

I thought this thread was intended to make up insane stories and crackpot theories? I only stuck with the theme of the OP.

Or was he truly serious in proposing such a theory? An outlandish theory like that is just as plausible as the Yorubas secretly being behind all recent evils that have occurred in mankind's history.

Anyway, I think my point has been made. Carry on.

I'm running from the Yoruba. They are trying to kill me. That is what they seek to do, destroy any goodhearted and kindly individual. They hate happiness and seek only to destroy it.

Don't your remember how the Yoruba killed Jesus too? And how they enslaved the Israelites in Egypt? Moses said, "Let my people go", but the Yoruba refused

Also, remember how they started WW2 by invading Poland? And how Awolowo killed all those European Jews? And how they nuked Japan, twice?!

I hate Yoruba people, truly evil bastards.

EzeUche0:
DapoBear,

Yoruba conspiracy? The writing is on the wall. Who else is trying to bring the man down, but Yoruba names? I do not see any Igbo names, nor do I see any Hausa names either. Only the usual Yoruba names, so tell us how we are suppose to view this?

Yorubas already see the Igbos as rivals, even though we do not even care about you all. We only care about business and other entrepreneurial endeavors. Yet, your people continue to hate on us.

If you lived in Nigeria, you would know that it is the Igbo man who is blamed for every social ill in this country, not you Yorubas.

Lol, when on earth do you see Hausa names in ANYTHING? 90%+ of the names you read online are going to be Yoruba or Igbo ones.

Anyway, I completely agree. It is the Yoruba man's fault, just like he tried to bring down Rosa Chinyere Parks and Martin Ukwukechi King. Those Yoruba are racist bastards, in my opinion. Hatin' @ss, racist @ss Yoruba man. Plus, remember how they colonized North America and killed all the Native Americans? And they invaded Mexico too!

Cork is hating

I think it is conspiracy of the Yoruba man. We know that they hate to see an Igbo man do well. It is discrimination! Racism! Didn't Rosa Chinyere Parks and Martin Ukwukechi King fight against racism of this sort by the Yoruba man againt the Igbo man?

Remember how in 1955 in Enugu, Rosa Parks refused to get out of her seat, despite the Yoruba bus driver telling her the front of the bus was reserved for Yoruba only?

And who could forget Martin Ukwukechi King's peaceful protests, and how those evil Yoruba policemen set dogs on the innocent and unarmed Igbo marching with MUK.

More recently, remember how OJ "Ikechukwu" Simpson was falsely accused of killing his wife (though, there is that pesky civil court case he settled for millions.)

Haba, think about how about better the world would be if the Yoruba man would stop oppressing people. . .

Well, I happen to have a very good handle on statistics, for professional reasons. So if you use statistics in a shady manner (as Aloy+Emeka did), I will absolutely bust your @$$ for it.

Just amazed that the bar is so low these days, that a forum post is what one will cite. Even in college, I would never cite Wikipedia as a source, and this is for a simple class essay. Yet some feel comfortable citing forum posts authoritatively, lol.

Ah well, carry on, to each his own

fstranger:
The review was not written by Falola.  .  .  .  .  Epic fail!

You are mistaken, quite rarely do I fail. And never in an epic manner like this, that I would completely ignore the name you wrote and add a different one.

In any case, my attention was drawn to the product description from Amazon.com:

“Professor S. A. Akintoye links the Yoruba past with the present, broadening and transcending Samuel Johnson in scope and time, and reviving both the passion and agenda that are over a century old, to reveal the long history and definable identity of a people and an ethnicity, one of the most important in Africa and the African Diaspora. Here is an accessible book, with the promise of being ageless, written by the only person who has sustained an academic interest in this subject for nearly half a century, providing the treasures of accumulated knowledge, robust encounters with received wisdom, and mature judgement about the future.” Toyin Falola, The Frances Higginbotham Nalle Professor in History, University of Texas at Austin.

http://www.amazon.com/History-Yoruba-Stephen-Adebanji-Akintoye/dp/2359260057

Suck a lemon? Are you a child? You are practicing bad science that would be laughed at even at the high school statistics level, and your response is to tell me to suck a lemon?

Read a bit about statistical methodology in the social sciences, it is an entire field of its own. In particular, you cannot make the wild leaps (poorest SW state -> least educated SW state) without some significant caveats. Hell, it is moronic to simply ASSUME something like that; the variables are likely correlated, but there is no reason to believe that the rankings will be exactly the same.

Seriously, this is academic malpractice, and you are spouting it out as fact.

If any nairalanders have made legitimate studies that have explored this issue, then they need to submit the study to a sociology or statistics journal. Somehow, I doubt that some random posts in a forum are likely to pass the scrutiny required to be accepted (and thus incorporated into the common consensus.)

Seriously, this is just bad science.

Aloy+Emeka:
None, only the fact that Ekiti has the poorest set of individuals in Yorubaland and the state itself is impoverished and as such illiteracy follows suit. Which Yoruba state in your opinion can Ekiti and its indigenes measure up with in anything?. Anything apart from crime.

In other words, you pulled it out of your ass. No offense, but that is not the methodology legitimate social scientists use to make statements like that. If it is pure speculation, then say so. If original research, write it up somewhere so we can see the methodology you use to come to your conclusion. If published research, reference it.

Aloy+Emeka:
TSame is applicable to polygamy: The poverty rate in Yorubaland today is only 2nd to Northerners and the common culture  predominant between these two ethnic groups is polygamy.

Dude, you've really to provide references for things you claim. Which study demonstrated this?

ROFL

Look at the Wikipedia entry for Prof Falola:

Before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 1991, Falola taught history at the University of Ife in the 1980s, and also held short-term teaching appointments at the University of Cambridge in England, York University in Canada, Smith College of Massachusetts in the United States, The Australian National University in Canberra, and the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos, Nigeria. In addition, he has given numerous lectures on all continents.Falola is best known for disparaging and maligning Nigerian achievers who are not of his native Yoruba tribe. He has attempted to tarnish the images of celebrated Nigerian scientists Philip Emeagwali and Professor Gabriel Oyibo[3][4].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyin_Falola

The Biafrans have struck again! 

Who knows what they'll next revise on Wikipedia, lol. Maybe North America was discovered by the Biafrans

Aloy+Emeka:
And FYI: when you talk about illiterate Yoruba women, Ekiti women are number 1.

Data to support this?

As far as it is possible for one race to be characteristically like
another, from which it differs in every physical aspect, the Yorubas
— it has been noted — are not unlike the English in many of their
traits and characteristics. It would appear that what the one is
among the whites the other is among the blacks. Love of inde-
pendence, a feeling of superiority over all others, a keen commercial
spirit, and of indefatigable enterprise, that quality of being never
able to admit or consent to a defeat as finally settling a question
upon which their mind is bent, are some of those qualities peculiar
to them, and no matter under what circumstances they are placed,
Yorubas will display them. We have even learnt that those of
them who had the misfortune of being carried away to foreign
climes so displayed these characteristics there, and assumed such
airs of superiority and leadership over the men of their race they
met there, in such a matter of fact way that the attention of their
masters was perforce drawn to this type of new arrivals! And
from them they selected overseers. These traits will be clearly
discerned in the narratives given in this history. But apart from
the general, each of the leading tribes has special characteristics
of its own; thus dogged perseverance and determination character-
ise the Ijebus, love of ease and a quickness to adapt new ideas the
Egbas, the Ijesas and Ekitis are possessed of a marvellous amount
of physical strength, remarkable docility and simplicity of manners,
and love of home.

Making my head swell!

Anyway, this is looks like a wonderful book, looks like I'll be quite busy reading it over the next few days.

Some selections from this book:

Physical features. — ^The country presents generally two distinct
features, the forest and the plain ; the former comprising the
southern and eastern portions, the latter the northern, central and
western. Yoruba Proper lies chiefly in the plain, and has a
small portion of forest land. The country is fairly well watered,
but the rivers and streams are dependent upon the annual rains ;
an impassable river in the rains may become but a dry water-course
in the dry season.

There are a few high mountains in the north and west, but in
the east the prevailing aspect is high ranges of mountains from
which that part of the country derives its name, Ekiti — a mound
— being covered as it were with Nature's Mound.

The soil is particularly rich, and most suitable for agriculture,
in which every man is more or less engaged. The plain is almost
entirely pasture land. Minerals apparently do not exist to any
appreciable extent, expect iron ores which the people work them-
selves, and from which they formerly manufactured all their
implements of husbandry and war and articles for domestic use.

And a very, very sad quote:

The country was at one time very prosperous, and powerful,
but there is probably no other country on this earth more torn and
wasted by internal dissensions, tribal jealousies, and fratricidal
feuds, a state of things which unhappily continues up to the present
time.

When the central authority which was once all-powerful and far
too despotic grew weak by driving the powerful chiefs into rebellion
and internecine wars, the entire kingdom became broken up into
petty states and independent factions as we now know them.

How far we Yoruba have fallen!

Err, if you are in the US, do not buy that copy hercules07 linked too, it is $72.

Buy this reprinted version, $50 by "Cambridge Library Collection" (http://www.amazon.com/History-Yorubas-Beginning-Protectorate-Collection/dp/1108020992/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1).

Btw Hercules07, I read that we used to be very good at horses. Do we still keep horses in Yorubaland? Or has this died out? That is a skill that is not good to lose, in my opinion.

EDIT: A quick Google search has turned up a downloadable copy of this book:
http://www.archive.org/details/historyofyorubas00john

Kind of nice, you can download and read the book yourself for free (and legally, since I think the copyright has expired.)

fstranger:
What else should we reduce? We should reduce the amount of Yoruba language we speak in public, we should also reduce the amount of Yoruba language that is taught in schools, and while you are at it, we might as well reduce our Yorubaness by bleaching our skin, so we can look more British.

I'm not saying this just to copy of the British. . . blindly copying off of people makes no sense. Quite simply, the time of Kings and absolute leaders is dead and gone. In the past, near-absolute leaders were necessary for a functioning society. In today's era, with the complicated issues we face, that much power in the hands of any one man is not only foolish, but counterproductive to building a strong society.

Concentration of power is fundamentally the enemy of the people. If a powerful man's interests go against that of society, then what prevents him from imposing his will? Look, the main lesson we should have learned from this 50+ year Nigeria fiasco is that concentrated power is our ENEMY. If we repeat this mistake, then we've learned absolutely nothing from the failures of Nigeria.

Let us learn from the mistakes of other nations, take the good from their culture and throw away the bad. If the Japanese man has something good in his system, let us take it and incorporate it into ours. If something failed in Brazil, let us learn from it.

Anyway, the Europeans saw how absolute leaders led them into frivolous wars, and how the interest of the leader didn't necessarily coincide with that of the people. Must we repeat the mistakes they made, rather than learning from them? I don't see why we have to repeat the mistakes they made hundreds of years ago. Let's just learn from them and avoid them.

The point here is that the Obas play too significant function in our life to be relegated to mere symbolic roles. They serve important functions in our democracy. They serve as crucial links between the educated elite and the uneducated commoner. I lived in the ancient town of Ife and I saw firsthand how the Obas and the Baales were revered, an eye-opener for me as I wasnt used to this in Lagos. The common man in the street, rightly or wrongly, believes very much in the integrity of the palace. They would do anything for them, as the Obas are regarded as God-sent, and God-anointed.

I am fine with all of that. But how do we guarantee that the Obas not abuse this great power? They are ordinary human beings like you and I, with the same weaknesses, strengths, and abilities as any person has. I wouldn't trust myself with that sort of unchecked power. Why should we trust anyone with it?

And BTW, there is no sure fire way to practice democracy. We dont have to do everything like the British and the Americans. Our culture defers greatly from theirs. And the best way to go about it is to integrate as much as possible, the Obas, Baales, Emirs, and the ever silly Obis, into our polity. By so doing, we will ensure equal representation, and more significantly, informed participation, of all.

I never brought up the American system, though. I brought up the British system for a reason. The British and Europeans ALL had absolute monarchs. The Americans never did. And most of those European countries STILL have monarchs to this day. But they have decided that their government would be more effective if the monarch's power were more symbolic than practical.

As for me and my household, I will never use my left hand to point at my father's house.

A word is enough for the wise.  .   .   .  . Yoruba r'onu.

I'm not disrespecting the Obas. I respect them and their office. But that doesn't mean I want them to have too much power, explicit or implicit.

But let me ask you. . .how much power should Obas have? What type of political system do you see as relevant going forward for the Yoruba people? Let us propose different alternatives and discuss their impact, figure out what will work well for us.

Environer:
No other African has won the Gordon Bell prize, even if it worth 10 kobo. That alone makes Emeagwali an African giant.

The only African who has won the DapoBear Prize is you, Mr Environer. You too are an African giant.