₦airaland Forum

2 ezeagu

What these DNA surveys you refer to look for are small regulatory genes called microsatellites that vary from individual to individual. They do not exhibit group variation, an impossibility according to the known laws of genetics. A certain individual may exhibit frequencies of them that are common to some restricted populations. There are no distinctive Igbo microsatellites, however. And also, as I argued, microsats always resemble those of neighbors. Therefore I would argue that microsatllited in Nsukka resemble those of the Igala than they do those of Owerri.
Your problem however is that you are a bigot and no amount of evidence can ever convince a bigot.

@ ezeagu

Yeah, genes can be used to identify the exact continents where people came from but the exact region. I do not argue with that. Those figures are only probabilities however. There’s enough of a margin of error to include the neighbors of those other groups. The geens used to make the identifications come down to only about 0.01% of the total complement of the 30,000 or so genes that make up the human genome.
Fighting a war because of 0.01% of 30,000 is still stupid by any definition. Do the calculation and see what it adds up to.

@ ezeagu
You replied to my statement

Tribe however is a fallacy. I can raise an Igbo child in America, England, or Bangladesh for that matter, and there will be nothing Igbo about that kid.

By writing
Except his entire Gene structure. . . . .

Thank you for steering yourself into the trap I had been hoping you’d go for. Genes have to do with science, and that’s an area where I have some expert knowledge.
Before I start, I’d like to note that the Internet, with its lack of centralized control and its interactivity, has provided a wonderful forum for groups formerly too marginal to make a dent in the mainstream media, groups such as pornographers, white supremacists, Islamists, racists, tribalists and Biafra fanatics. I’ll always be glad to do battle with them all, because, when the Nazis started out with their racial theory people thought they were some colorful and harmless eccentrics. When those eccentrics won power the world burned. Prejudice is ignorance, and in a war against them, the best weapons are rationality and more rationality, and critical thinking, and the stern facts of science.
Well, here we go.
From the low level of sophistication of your argumentation and the grammar of your sentences, it is clear to me that you are not qualified to argue with me about genetics. Apparently, you are young, or not very well educated, or you went to a Nigerian university, which increasingly is only another way of saying a person is not well educated, or a combination of these. Well, use the Internet for something better than spreading tribal mythology. Go read some Mendel and then the Wikipedia article on DNA.
You talk of an Igbo genetic structure. Well, that is a fallacy. There is no such thing as Igbo genetic structure. You might be interested to know that there is no Igbo gene structure different from Igala, Tiv, Ibibio, Efik, Yoruba or even Hausa gene structure. We cannot point to or identify any gene or group of genes that define the Igbo or that segregate the Igbo from their neighbors, an indication of a common origin in a past far more remote than the mythical past of most Biafra dreamers and ethnic chauvinists, and indicative of genetic admixture among the ethnic groups over thousands of years. Yup. What I’m saying is that for millennia before the Portuguese and then the British arrived, the Nigerian ethnic groups were here fucking each other and having mixed babies and enslaving each other and raping the slave girls and mixing even more. Slavery is morally wrong, but it is very good for mixing genes. There’s nothing exceptional about that. That is human history. The Nigerian jumble is a salad only because of different languages. The genes are identical. An illustration of this is the fact that we have fat Igbo and thin Igbo, fat Northerners and thin Northerners. We have dark complexioned Igbo and dark complexioned Northerners, light-skinned Igbo and light-skinned Northerners. We have that confusion because weight and skin color are largely genetically determined, and in Nigeria we have the same genes coding for these traits distributed around the national territory, mostly with no consistent pattern of regional variation and no directional clines. I went to a Federal Government College and so I should know something about Nigerian genetic variation. When new kids came to the school in JS 1 at the start of the session, once they changed into their uniforms it was impossible to tell what part of the country they were from.
In other words there are no “Igbo” genes and most Nigerian groups are genetically indistinguishable. Genes in Nigeria’s ethnic groups cluster according to patterns that do not correspond with culture. Hausa, for instance, is a language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. That means it is a relative of North African and Mediterranean languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Ancient Babylonian, Akkadian, Maltese, the extinct languages of Canaan, Phoenician, the Ethiopian languages, and Coptic, the language of the Ancient Egyptians. (I wonder what Igbo fanatics who believe they came from Israel would have to say about that, given that in terms of its sources, Igbo is a typical Niger-Congo language, which means that it is in the family of almost all the languages spoken south of the Sahara Desert.) What that means in simpler language is that Igbo is more closely related to Swahili than it is to Hebrew. Given that the Hausa people look very different from the speakers of the other Afro-Asiatic languages, it can only have been the case that the Hausa acquired the language from invaders while keeping their genes, the same way that black Americans acquired English from European compatriots but mostly stayed black. On a genetic level, although the Hausa show clear evidence of admixture with North African peoples and with peoples of the Sahara, the genetic core or genetic base of the Hausa stock is mostly the same as that of southern groups like the Igbo. The Hausa were probably some people from the same core West African stock as the Igbo or Yoruba who migrated north and mixed with a lanky Sudanic people, as well as North Africans and some Fulani. Note that I am talking about the pure Hausa. In Nigeria anybody from north of the Niger river or the Benue is called Hausa. Actually, the authentic Hausa are a small group restricted to Sokoto, Kebbi, Kano, Zamfara and Katsina states. People like the Kanuri are not Hausa. A girl from Kebbi state I had an affair with at the Youth Service camp bristled when I asked her if she was Hausa. She made it clear that her ethnic group was not Hausa.
In other words, if we line up the DNA of a group of Igbo people and a group of Hausa people, we might find genes from North Africa in the Hausa group, but aside from those we would find mostly identical DNA systems. Moreover, some individuals among the Hausa could pass for Igbo on the genetic level. Meanwhile we would find no distinction between Igbo and Edo genes, for instance, and Igbo genomes from around Arochukwu would be closer to those of Akwa-Ibom state than those of people from Awka. More importantly, we would not be able to isolate any gene in a sufficiently large Igbo group that we would not find in an Edo or Hausa group.
So “Igboness” for lack of a better word, is about culture, and culture is fully erasable. I knew a Nigerian Igbo family in America when I was a kid. Today the daughters are married. They have American names from their husbands. I’m sure they cannot carry out a conversation in Igbo.

Here is a quote from Wikipedia:
The concept that discrimination can be based on “race” presupposes the existence of “race” itself. However, the US Government’s Human Genome Project has announced that the most complete mapping of human DNA to date indicates that there is no distinct genetic basis to racial types. Based on this evidence, “racial characteristics” logically cannot exist either, such as group differences in eye color or human hair color.
According to the Human Genome Project, skin color does exist as a matter of science. So, that which is commonly referred to as “racism” could be more scientifically referred to as “skin color-aroused discrimination”. The term “skin color aroused discrimination” has the benefit that it is based on verifiable science, is not based on disproved notions of science, and does not perpetuate a false belief in the disproved concept of biological “race”.

Given that the US Government is the single organization on this planet with the best record for the funding of scientific and technological research we can take that statement to the bank.
If “race” has no objective existence, “tribe” must have even less validity. I mean the quote described racism as skin color-aroused discrimination. We could call tribalism linguistic-based discrimination, since it is impossible to tell a Nigerian’s tribe based on physical appearance alone, and on a molecular genetics level, the tribes are indistinguishable. Therefore, tribe will eventually vanish as a problem in Nigeria, if Nigerians don’t wipe each other out first, or the country breaks down to such a point that the United Nations has to come run it. War is not the natural state of Nigeria. There wouldn’t have been a Civil War without Ojukwu and his advisers, who singlehandedly maneuvered everybody into that war because of Ojukwu’s personality clash with Gowon.
Human beings have a hard-wired instinct for learning language, as demonstrated by children who quickly pick up the language of the society they live in without formal classes or dedicated teachers. This can be any language. An English child does not have an instinct for learning English. A Russian child does not have an instinct for learning Russian. An Igbo child does not have an instinct for learning Igbo. What the children have is an instinct for learning any language they are exposed to, whether the child’s ancestors have been speaking that language for thousands of years or its parents cannot speak it at all or not. It is wrong therefore to be killing people or to be discriminating against them because of the language they happen to speak.
It’s time to lay aside the polite talk. A more sophisticated and rational people would not have resorted to tribalism, slaughter and war the way Nigerians have. That only bolsters the argument that you are not ready to run your own country. The African problem is a complete lack of a cultural understanding of rationalism, a lack of value of human life and a lack of respect for liberal values. You still have no running water. Americans have forgotten that problem. Your electrical grid is moribund. Fixing it will call for more money, technological skill and managerial competence than Nigeria has. In spite of the hype that accompanied them, the failed attempts to do so have already produced a group of millionaires. You have not produced a single world-class industry. Your much-hyped oil would sit under the ground without Shell and Schlumberger and all the foreign companies that extract it. there is no oil in France yet TotalFina Elf is a colossus in Nigeria. Your universities look and smell worse than the American ghettoes Dr. Dre rapped about, and, given the obsession of Nigerian students with secret cults, would probably be too dangerous for a Dr. Dre or Tupac to come near.
What this country needs is white rule. Across Sub-Saharan Africa the single most important factor for the advancement of a country is whether it has a resident white population or not. That factor outweighs all the others: population, natural resources, education. Four million whites in South Africa achieved what 700 million Africans south of the Sahara could not. 250,000 whites in Zimbabwe out of a population of 12 million controlled 98% of the land at the height of their power and not only fed the country but also made it a major exporter of food. Mugabe has ruined all that. Western civilization put a man on the moon (actually fifteen men, from 1969 to 1972). It has probed into the interior of the atomic nucleus and gone beyond that, and now contemplates subatomic strings. It has worked out the processes of life down to the molecular level. It has given the world modern technology. It has given the world the only economic system that works. It continues to pioneer in the development of technology, such as the computer and Internet ezeagu uses to promote the mythos of a primitive Igbo race that did not know the wheel until the white man brought it to Africa in 1871 and that was happily killing twins well into the 20th century. European imperialism was the best thing that ever happened to Africa. The white man set you all free in 1960, and now you’re all clamoring to go to the white man’s country. The lines start forming in front of the US embassy at 3 in the morning. The American Diversity Visa Lottery has become a national obsession in Nigeria. Meanwhile when Americans want to go to Nigeria their government issues them travel warnings. Doesn’t that say something? You are voting with your feet, and your plane tickets, for the system that has worked. Africa has meanwhile failed, and failed spectacularly. From that perspective your pathetic little tribes, with their primitive superstitions and their masquerades, like the ones in the pathetic pictures ezeagu showed me, are all failed cultures and since they have clearly demonstrated their unsuitability and irrelevance to the modern world they should make way for something better, something more advanced that can offer mankind a better tomorrow.
Happy New Year.

Face it kids, Biafra was an artifact of a particular time and place and that time is past: an artifact of the four regional system that Gowon ended on May 27 1967. It’s over.

@ezeagu
Well, maybe the guy's Mom is Igbo. I know a lot of Ijaw. I can't see them bleeding for the Igbo in a war.

Speaking roughly, tribe is something we feel in the bones, or the gut, to use the American English colloquialism. Nation is however far more abstract and involves concepts of legalism and rights that are profoundly alien to African thought. Tribe however is a fallacy. I can raise an Igbo child in America, England, or Bangladesh for that matter, and there will be nothing Igbo about that kid. That is the reason why Nigerians slaughter each other. I wish you Africans luck.
Personally, the best thing for all of you is the recolonization of Africa by the West. You guys made a mess of everything. Western rationality and vigor will make Africa bloom. While they’re at it, I would suggest that those new imperialists raise new generations of Africans so they know nothing about the tribes of their forefathers. Anything else and you’ll just keep killing each other, as in Biafra.

By the way, 200 years ago europe was the most advanced and sophisticated part of the world. They were far from being like Africans.

@ ezeagu and only truth,

I think part of the Igbo response to the colossal scale of their defeat in the Civil War and the humiliation they suffered while being defeated, has been among other things, a denial that they lost, complaints about marginalization, and a continuing wish for another Biafra. It’s an understandable human response from an ethnic group that has exhibited a higher level of enterprise and energy than any other group in Nigeria and also suffered the most. 1966-1967 was a story of Igbo slaughter. In other words, most Igbo think: we’re so good. How could we have lost? Well, as Obama said, I don't believe in dumb wars. The Igbo fought a dumb war. Next question.
Well, the war was lost because of a lack of weapons, a lack of international support and the inherently poor geostrategic position of the igbo territory.
As for this harping on and an about marginalization I don’t know if most Igbo realize that the Igbo enjoy the highest average standard of living among any Nigeria group. Northerners are famous around the country for polishing shoes and being gatemen and water carriers in spite of their ruling the country for most of the post-independence period. Igbos do none of those things. As for what the Yoruba gained from eight years of an Obasanjo regime, I must note that I encounter a Yoruba speaking beggar almost every day in Lagos. I did my NYSC in Osun state and was startled at the meanness and antiquity of the buildings there compared to what you could see in any Igbo village. The Igbo have not produced a president since the war, but then, rebels are always sidelined, at least for a while. The US South did not produce a president for 100 years after losing the American Civil War. In the Clinton administration both the president and the VP were from the South. As for the lack of Igbo in the military regimes of the 80s, history explains that. Igbo that could have filled those posts were wiped out in the second coup of 1966. It’s sad, that coup, but I think reacting to a coup that killed around 213 Igbo officers and to the pogroms in the North that a reliable estimate says killed 7000 people by fighting a war that kills 2 million is the height of stupidity, but then, in the period from January 15 1966 to January 15 1970, whenever the script called for an Igbo man to do something stupid one or several showed up on cue: Ifeajuna and Anuforo murdering almost the entire Northern contingent in the army high command in cold blood; Ironsi and Decree 34; Ojukwu’s seccession, and etc.
Now to specific rebuttals.
1. Ibos love comparing themselves to Israel, one of their more popular fallacies. The Ibo did not come from the middle east. Their DNA places them firmly in Subsaharan Africa, as just another African population. As for how Israel has held off its Arab neighbors, well it receives 6 billion dollars in aid from the US and billions from Germany. Jewish people have also demonstrated an unusual proficiency in technology, one that dwarf anything the Igbo have achieved.

2. I will continue to maintain that NO country in the world is 100% ethnically homogenous, even famous cases like Japan.

3. One of you says the Americans are English. Well, they speak English but apart from that I don’t know what that means. America has been one of the world’s great theaters of cultural fusion. If Nigeria doesn’t break up a similar fusion of its cultures and people and genes is inevitable. Something like a fifth of all southern marriages are now inter-tribal.

4. I continue to maintain that pulling Biafra out in May 1967 was easy because the Eastern region was already constitutionally defined and unified. Doing that today will require getting five to twelve states with different governments to move together.

5. As a rule big armies beat small armies. Better-armed armies beat poorer armed armies. Biafra enjoyed none of those advantages. Ezeagu’s fiddling with this historically demonstrated fact is irrational. Another Igbo pullout will have the Igbo fighting from an ever weaker position.

6. The minimal definition on the ground for cultural differences is the mutual unintelligibility of their languages. Ijaw is not a close relative to the Igbo language. And Ijaw don’t answer the name Ebere. If the Igbo start or get sucked into another war the typical Ijaw man will say, ‘Why should I get killed for Igbo’ and stay at home.

Europe was the place where the concept of the nation-state consisting of people of one culture and one language was invented. Europe then went on to carve nation-states out of Africa, unifying tribes that had nothing to do with each other. That was bad for the people concerned. I’m not denying that. With its formation of the European Union, however, Europe is the place where the nation-state is being historically destroyed. Maybe Nigeria should borrow a leaf from the unification of Europe. Meanwhile there never was and never has been a 100% ethnically pure nation-state anywhere since history began.
My argument is that since Nigeria’s ethnic groups have always lived in their various tribal regions, for thousands of years, and since we can’t all escape to America, Europe or South Africa, it is our responsibility to find a way to live peacefully here. We should not despoil our nests. We have nowhere else to go. I promise you that another Nigerian war involving one or more of the large ethnic groups will produce at least 30 million refugees and kill at least 10 million people.
Go figure.

@ezeagu,
You criticize me for citing only events that did not happen. Well, the study of history also calls for analyzing what did not happen. History is about past events. It’s also about the forces and actions that led to those past events and there is no limit to the level of abstractness we may deploy as long as we arrive at an understanding of the forces at play.
So, suppose Biafra had somehow won its war. Nigeria would quietly go and lick its wounds and assemble a bigger army. To undermine Biafra it would start to support rebellions in X River and Rivers. I have lived in Port Harcourt. The people there, including Ikwerre, who speak a dialect of Igbo, don’t particularly have anything to do with Igbos. Remember, half of Biafra’s land area consisted of non-Igbo areas. When the shooting started the Igbo fought and died alone.

@ezeagu,
You say being landlocked does not mean anything. That displays your historical and geographical ignorance. A person as ignorant as you should not be a warmonger. You’re too dangerous. Being landlocked was one of the principal reasons Biafra lost the war. Cut off from the sea, it could only be supplied through the Uli airstrip.
That’s a historical fact you can go check up.
I saw a map of what one of the posters says he thinks Nigeria should be split into. I ask for a map and all you Biafra fanatics can come up with is that pathetic farce. It shows, for instance, Yorubaland expanding beyond Nigeria’s borders and absorbing the Benin Republic. Well, anybody stupid enough to try that will face war with France. Meanwhile, the same map shows Igboland once more cut off from the sea. That only illustrates my argument that geography has dictated that Biafra cannot work.

@ ezeagu,
Why stop at 4 or 5 countries? If living in their own ethnically homogeneous state is good enough for the Igbo why shoouldnt it be good enough for the Kuteb, Bachama, Ogoni, Andoni, Abonnema, Tiv, Igala, Nupe, Igbirra, Jukun, Birom, Ngas, Edo and all the other groups that make up Nigeria? Why prescribe who deserves independence and who doesn't. If we apply the logic of etnic homogeniety to the Igbo then why stop there. Let everybody go free.
That is why only four African countries recognized Biafra in the 1967-70 war. Every African country has one or two or more Biafras in its own backyard.
Be realistic people. If only because peace is better than bloodshed people have to learn to live together. Even if we did spilt up war would probably increase. The chief function of a sovereign country is making war.

Nigerians, Igbos included, are an incredibly thoughtless and irrational people. In the midst of all the calls for Nigeria to split up no one has ever made any clear definition of what he or she hopes to split Nigeria into. Is it three, or thirty six or seventy or 250 countries (going by the common number given for Nigeria’s ethnic groups. Most of these people who are refighting the Biafran war in cyberspace have never looked at a map and probably can’t understand one. The Igboland is landlocked and resource-poor region. Biafra was and still is impossible.
Also, it ought to be clear that had Biafra somehow won, that would not have ended the violence. Nigeria and Biafra would have fought at least two more wars by now, while the Igbo would probably be fighting Niger Delta militants and the Efik and Ibibio till today.
The illiteracy people are exhibiting here is amazing: illiteracy in the English language but also illiteracy when it comes to history, geopolitics and military science.

People forget that the only reason ojukwu and his benighted and ignorant gang of civilian enablers were able to pull the Eastern Region out of Nigeria was that there already existed a constitutionally defined region for that. That was why they were in a hurry to declare independence right after Gowon’s 12 state formation cut off the igbo from the coastline. East Central State meant that Biafra was lost no matter what the Igbo did. The war was therefore nothing but a futile waste of lives and treasure.
What this means is that Biafra as commonly conceived cannot form again and is unworkable. It's not going to happen, kids.
Face it, kids: Nigeria may be an artificial unit. Biafra was artificial as well, however. God does not make countries. Human beings do.

Wow. I'm getting a lot of Biafran hate here. I'm just waiting for you fantasy spinners to start your Baifran War II so you can win back all that oil in Ijaw and Ogoni land that is rightfully yours.

Four simple things could have saved Nigeria in 1966-67, and saved Ironsi's life:
1. Putting all Nigerian military armories under the control of British or NATO quartermasters for an emergency period of at least five years.
2. Bringing the conspirators of January 15 to trial, both in military tribunals and also in civil courts, since they killed civilians.
3. Creation of more states, to reduce the power of the four regions and make secession impossible.
4. Absolutely no Decree 34.

Get a map kids. Biafra would be practically impossible now as a military proposition. Any attempt by the Igbo to breakaway again would mean fighting on at least three fronts. or fighting three wars at the same time: One against federal armies and at least two against a Niger Delta rebelliion and another against the Efik-Ibibio. Without the delta and the Efik-Ibibio areas any Biafran republic would be landlocked. I dont know if these Biafra dreamers have ever looked at a map of Nigeria and a map of Nigeria's ethnic groups.
As for the First Biafran war, I beleive it was a stupid and tragic mistake.
Anyway, at the rate Nigeria is going you guys probably won't have to wait very long for the chance to fight again. This country's spiraling down toward utter ruing and fragmentation anyway. The CIA gave it 2015. Well, I hope you Baifran warriors are all getting your guns ready.

Okay, I get it!
The Biafrans came from Mars by way of Isreal and if it wasnt for Satan Gowon they'd be walking on the Moon right now, because it was their destiny to leave the solar system because their Jewish and Ojukwu is a god. QED.
Look at a map.
And please stop calling me an idiot. I'm smarter than fifty copies of you acting together.

Ezeagu,
Wait, aren't those so-called Igbo pyramids Dogon pyramids from Mali. Make sure you find out the country they're from. There are lots of other ethnic groups in Africa.

ezeagu,
That thing ain't no pyramid, the way I look at it. It's a pile of mud.
Yeah, I think for myself and my mind tells me you can't compare that to the Egyptian pyramids. Meanwhile, you Igbo-Biafra fanatics are winning the Biafran war all over again in cyberspace. I just hope your little republic stays in cyberspace. The last time it worked in the real world 2 million people starved.

ababda: Hello,
I think that more research will show that in ancient times there was little difference between Egypt and Sudan, and the Nubians did build great monuments. What I cannot agree with are all the Igbo myths that fill this forum. If the Igbo built all those things, where the hell are they? We're still digging up 100 million year old dinosaur fossils. Why can't we see any of those Igbo monuments that are far more recent?

I don't support mythology. The Igbo did not build any pyramids. The earlier we embrace objective fact in Nigeria the better it will be for everyone.

I might also add that the Igbo DID NOT COME FROM ISRAEL. We must destroy that myth because it's nonsense. Genetically the Igbo are a typical African population. On the level of molecular genetics they are essentially indistinguishable from the Efik-Ibibio and Igala and Idoma, and almost identical to most Northern groups, including the Hausa.
It turns out that Nigerians have been killing themselves for nothing.

Wonderful. Where do you tribalists get these fancy stories. It's clear where you do: the layer of your subconcious that paints pictures it hopes are true and then believes them.Egypt's peyramids are so old that the Ancient Greeks used to go visit them as anceint tourist attractions. The Great Wall of China was started around 300BC. We still find dinosaur bones from 120 million years ago. Why isnt there any identifiable trace of these Igbo pyramids.
Next you'll tell me how Igbos came from Mars, therefore Biafra will succeed. QED.
I'm sick of you Igbo fanatics. Get a life.

What ignorance? You’re the one who’s ignorant. The Biafra leadership used a propaganda machine to keep its people fighting an unwinnable war. Biafra was suicide, pure and simple, and it actually ended up more firmly entrenching the Hausa-Fulani leadership. It was a strategic blunder of the Igbo. Cry all you want.

Yes, the men who fought for Biafra were heroes. By the way my uncle died fighting for Biafra.
I must note however that they fought mostly out of fear that if they did not Nigerian forces would wipe out the Igbos. That however was a bit of propaganda the Biafra government cooked up. The Biafra government also exaggerated the amount of weapons it had. Alexander Madiebo himself said that if the people had known the extent to which Biafra had no weapons they would have called for a stop to the war.
It may perhaps be noble to take up arms in self defence. Biafra was suicidal, and based on a lie.
And onlytruth, please stop calling me an idiot. I’m smarter than fifty of you.