₦airaland Forum

http://www.waado.org/urhobohistory/Addresses_Lectures/Ogiso-Oba.htm
OGISO TIMES AND EWEKA TIMES:
A PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF THE EDOID COMPLEX OF CULTURES (1)


By Peter P. Ekeh
State University of New York at Buffalo, USA


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Fourth Chief Jacob U. Egharevba Memorial Lecture, under the auspices of the Institute for Benin Studies, at Oba Akenzua II Cultural Centre, Benin City, on 14 December, 2001. I thank the Institute for Benin Studies for its kind invitation and for honouring me with the opportunity of delivering this distinguished lecture. I thank Professor Omo Omoruyi, currently resident in Boston, USA, for an insightful conversation on the subject of pockets of dialectic variations in modern Benin language. I am grateful to Dr. Igho Natufe, now resident in Ottawa, Canada, and Engr. Onoawarie Edevbie, currently resident in Detroit, Michigan, USA, for their careful reading of a draft text of this paper and for offering several important comments and suggestions.

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In many ways, this lecture is a celebration of the uniqueness of Benin and its culture. Let me hurry to say, however, that I have not come here to praise Benin history, but to analyze it. I have come before you in the hope that I will be able to highlight certain features of Benin history and culture in an academic fashion. I cannot claim to know Benin in any degree that is close to your intimate knowledge of your own folkways and your command of the history of Benin royal legacies. What I can do as an academic is to foster a level of analysis of Benin history and culture that will enable you to weigh your experiences and acquaintance with the Benin past and its traditions on a scale of knowledge that is different from that to which you are used.

Let me begin that analysis by clarifying my assertion concerning the uniqueness of Benin history and culture. I will discuss a premier element of Benin's uniqueness as my introduction to this lecture. Benin is unique in bridging the African past with our present world. Ancient Africa experienced an abundance of civilizations and state formations. They stretched back to ancient Egypt of some five millennia removed from our times through Kush, Ethiopia and other Nilotic traditions of civilization to the triple state formations of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai and the Hausa and Yoruba states of West Africa. Except for the more ancient instances of Egypt and Kush, which existed long before the Christian era, most of these state formations were contemporaries of Benin. Remarkably, with the single exception of Ethiopia and Benin, all the significant civilizations and state formations of ancient Africa ceased to exist before the arrival of European imperialism introduced a new era in African affairs. Both Ethiopia and Benin had strong royal traditions, even after the advent of European imperialism in Africa. In the 1970s, Ethiopian royalty collapsed, leaving Benin monarchy as the sole survivor and exemplar of royalty from ancient times of African history.

In this respect, within the compass of recent and contemporary Nigerian affairs, let me recall to your memory that royal traditions have changed dramatically in the last century of our history. The British sought to control our royal traditions, supplanting those occupants of thrones that did not readily accept their imperial overtures. That was how such a formidable royal presence of the nineteenth century as Muhammadu Attahiru dan Ahmadu, Sultan of Sokoto, lost his throne, allowing an occupant of that throne, Muhammadu Attahiru dan Aliyu Baba, whose appointment by the British in 1903 was dictated by their own imperial needs (See H. A.S. Johnston 1967, Chapter 23). The intense animosity between the British and the Benin at the close of the nineteenth century, leading to the fiercest war fought by the British for any territory in Nigeria, was so palpable that the British were clearly intent on changing the line of succession to the Benin throne. The pragmatic British changed their mind and accepted the verdict of the Benin people who insisted on continuity of Benin royal succession by way of primogeniture.

Let me remind you further that during the first blush of civilian control of Nigerian affairs in the 1950s, we in this country witnessed the quick removal of the Alafin of Oyo and Emir Sanusi of Kano, both of whom were not readily compliant with the wishes of the ruling Action Group in Western Nigeria and the ruling Northern Peoples Congress of Northern Nigeria, respectively. If there was one stable source of opposition to the ways of the Action Group from Midwestern Nigeria in the 1950s, it was led from the much beloved and tough-minded Akenzua II, the Oba of Benin during the decade of campaign for Nigeria's independence from British rule. Yet it would be unthinkable for the Action Group to interfere with Benin royal traditions, even when their bearer was not in its support. We should pose the following question as a matter to attend to in this lecture: Whence did Benin royalty gain such strength?



TWO BENIN DYNASTIES: OGISO AND EWEKA RULING HOUSES

Answering that question may require further characterization of Benin and its royal traditions than what we have so far noted about their uniqueness. Royal institutions have been at the center of Benin history and culture for centuries, probably closer to some two millennia than most current estimates allow. There is a feature of royal traditions which are readily identified with the histories of China and of Europe, but which are rare in Africa, for which Benin should be well noted. A sequence of reigns or rule by members of a single royal family constitutes what is referred to as a dynasty. We are probably much more familiar with the dynasties of English history. The Tudors (1485-1603) provided England with an impressive line of succession of Kings and Queens that witnessed a great deal of progress in English history. They were followed by the much-maligned Stuarts who brought England and Scotland together in a union that bore the name of Great Britain. Most European kingdoms recorded several dynasties. The Chinese historical record is longer, and it also witnessed a good number of dynasties.

Dynasties are, however, quite rare in African history. Aside from the famed dynasties of Egyptian history, Ethiopia and Benin again provide us with the most distinguished instances of dynasties in African history. The Benin case is quite remarkable. Benin's long history has been dominated by two ruling houses. Jacob Egharevba and other students of Benin history have given estimates of up to thirty-one Ogisos who ruled Benin in its earlier period. That is an outstanding line of succession that would be difficult to replicate in other corners of African history. While respecting that range of figures of ruling Ogisos as indicating a broad accurate estimate, we should be more circumspect with respect to the duration of the Ogiso era of Benin history. Converting events counted in African indigenous calendars into the Gregorian calendar of reckoning is not an easy task.

If estimates that date the beginning of the Ogiso era to the sixth or seventh century were upheld, ancient Ghana and Benin would have begun their experiments in building kingdoms about the same time. My own suspicion is that the Ogiso era spanned a larger canvas of time than that allowed by the learned Egharevba and other scholars of Benin history, generally estimated to cover some six centuries. My reason for saying so is that the kingdom built by the Ogisos was a pristine state. Pristine states were original political constructions that did not have other examples and templates, from their past histories or from elsewhere, on which to model their behaviours. They were living experiments, making mistakes and correcting their systems of rulership along the way at a pace of development that was liable to be slow. Pristine states, such as Egypt and Ghana, to cite two prominent instances in ancient African history, spanned much longer periods of time than states that followed them. The Ogisos began an experiment in statecraft in circumstances that were elementary and their ascent to maturity must be assumed to have taken a longer period of time than their apparent achievements would indicate. It was upon their accomplishments that the succeeding kings in the ruling House of Eweka built a formidable city-state and then an empire, at a much faster pace.

In any comparative assessment of dynasties, the existence of two Ruling Houses in the total span of Benin history is most conspicuous. Let us stay with the example of English history because many of us are much more familiar with it than other cases in comparative world history of royalty. English history boasts seventy one Kings and Queens, who have ruled England from 827 C. E. to the present time, that is for about twelve centuries. That time span is obviously shorter than the history of Benin royalty. Yet, counting the earlier Anglo-Saxon Kings together until the epoch-making arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066, English Kings and Queens are grouped into eleven dynasties. It is fair to say that in the comparative history of royalty, the Benin historical experience of two ruling Houses of the Ogiso and Eweka for more than one and a half millennium is spectacular.

Whatever doubts there might be regarding the centuries in which the House of Ogiso ruled, the record is much clearer in the second dynasty of the Obas from the House of Eweka who succeeded the Ogisos, following an interregnum that the nobleman Evian presided over, in the 12th century. So strong is the sense of oral history in Benin and so secure is the entrenchment of the House of Eweka that the names of the Obas have been ingrained into Benin history and folklore with remarkable clarity. Beginning in the 12th century, there have been thirty-eight monarchs from the Ruling House of Eweka. In the reckoning of dynasties, these records for the Ogisos and for the Ewekas are quite impressive.

Such features of Benin history and royalty are commonplace facts with which many in this hall are thoroughly familiar. They may appear slightly different because I have stated them in comparison to other instances of royal history in the ancient world. But we must now move beyond statements of historical facts to the more demanding task of explaining them. We must ask difficult questions of those facts in the attempt to understand why and how Benin history evolved along its own special way. Stating what happened in Benin history is important and even challenging. However, we are liable to exaggerate or mystify historical developments if we are not guided by the desire to understand and explain the facts of history as events that have their own boundaries of probabilities within the limits of human achievements.


TWO KEY PRINCIPLES OF BENIN HISTORY

I offer two key principles as avenues for understanding the nature of Benin history and culture. The first may be stated as follows: The Kingdoms of the Ogisos and of the Obas of Benin were established by the people of these lands on the theory that monarchy would best protect their interests. The people who lived under the Ogisos and the people of Benin who have lived under the Obas of the House of Eweka were never conquered by any of their kings, although they expected their kings to conquer other lands. Whereas most other kingdoms in the ancient world were presided over by dynasties that claimed their right to rule from their conquest of the lands of the people, the ancestors of the Benin people, whom the Ogisos and the Obas ruled, could rightly claim that they and their culture willed and then designed the kingdoms over which these enduring dynasties governed the affairs of the people.

Permit me to elaborate on the essence of this first principle of Benin history, which accounts for a great deal of the special features of Benin history and culture. The men and women who lived through various segments of at least a millennium and a half of Benin royal history took active part in the design and construction of Benin monarchy. In a vital sense, they believed that they owned the social institutions that housed their kingdom. Having collectively invested so much in the building of their state, they have acted as its owners. They rewarded those kings who advanced the fortunes of the state with adulation and high praise -- rarely matched anywhere else in the ancient African world. But they were also known to have meted out severe punishment to those of their Kings who degraded their state and threatened the people's welfare. Benin kings were powerful people within their domain and outside of it. But their power was a result of their paying close attention to the affairs of the state and their unmatched ability to listen to the complaints of even the littlest man and woman in the kingdom. Kings who failed in these respects have occasionally suffered disgrace from actions of the people.

That was how the first dynasty of the Royal House of Ogiso was terminated. The following epigrammatic passage from Jacob Egharevba's A Short History of Benin tells us at once the role of the people in the dissolution of the old Ogiso dynasty; in their rejection of attempts by a non-royal aristocrat to be their king; and in the creation of a new dynasty by way of the deliberate invitation by the people to a neighboring kingdom for a royal prince to help out with their crisis of governance:


It was some years after Evian's victory over Osogan [the monster] that Owodo was banished for misrule by the angry people, who then appointed Evian as an administrator of the government of the country because of his past services to the people. When Evian was stricken by old age he nominated his eldest son, Ogiemwen as his successor, but the people refused him. They said he was not the Ogiso and they could not accept his son as his successor, because as he himself knew, it had been arranged to set up a republican form of government. This he was now selfishly trying to alter.
While this was still in dispute the people indignantly sent an ambassador to the Ooni Oduduwa, the great and wisest ruler of Ife, asking him to send one of his sons to be their ruler, for things were getting from bad to worse and the people saw that there was need for a capable ruler. (Italics added.)


Putting aside for now the historical nuances in the reasons for the invitation to Ife, there can be no doubt whatsoever of the people's role in terminating the Ogiso dynasty and in launching, by their election, of a new dynasty that began with Eweka I, the royal reward of the people's efforts to govern their affairs effectively.

There is an important corollary of this first principle of Benin history. It is that the people, during Ogiso times and under the succeeding ruling House of Eweka, fought strenuously to protect the monarchy whenever it was threatened by hostile forces. Just compare from our recent history in Nigeria the reaction to the British imperial invasion of Benin and of the Fulani Empire of Sokoto, the two leading states in our region of West Africa in the nineteenth century. The Benin fought with determination until they fell, earning the respect of history for their loyalty to their king and to their state. In the Sokoto Caliphate, the British, having anticipated much opposition, surprisingly rode into the once mighty Fulani state with ease. The Hausa, whose kingdoms the Fulani had liquidated a century earlier, were pleased to see the new conquerors. (2)Conquered subjects of kingdoms, such as the Hausa in the Sokoto Caliphate of the 19th century, could never fight for the survival of their kingdom and their King with the same amount of resolve as the Benin displayed in February 1897. The Benin were fighting to protect their kingdom, a state which their ancestors had helped to build.

Let me now turn to the second principle of Benin history which, I claim, has made Benin history and culture what they are. It may be stated as follows: Dynastic struggle between the Ruling House of Eweka and the defeated House of Ogiso has had the intended and unintended consequences of consolidating and greatly expanding the small state that the House of Ogiso experimented with and built in the course of many centuries. In exploring this region of Benin history, we are approaching a line behind which it is not historically responsible to talk about authoritatively. Indeed, our knowledge of the era of the Ogisos is murky for two principal reasons. First, dynastic struggles in world history include a determination by the succeeding dynasties to diminish and control the knowledge of the events of the dynasties that are being overtaken. This has been the case in Benin history. Second, the historical events of the Ogiso era occurred in relative isolation, at a time when the people of these lands did not have much contact with outsiders. One reason why historians have been able to talk with privileged authority about the later dates of Benin history, under the dynasty of the Obas, is that its events can be measured in time against outside incidents. The arrival and activities of Europeans in our region in the later half of the fifteenth century had opened up the historically pristine political territories of what historians have labelled the forest states of West Africa (see Connah 1987 [2001 edition: 144-180]).

Dynastic struggles are by their nature ideological. They are waged against departing royal ruling houses, which no longer exist, by new ruling houses, which seek to establish their own legitimacy. Dynastic struggles are intrinsically double-handed. On the one hand, a major tool of dynastic struggle is the diminution in the stature and achievements of the failed dynasty. Sometimes, the extinct dynasty was so powerful that the succeeding dynasty rules under its predecessor's shadows. That was what happened in English history to the Scottish Stuarts whose achievements were always unfavourably compared to the grounded achievements of the pragmatic Tudors. In the Benin case, the native Ogisos were disgraced and hounded out of their reign by the people. Their diminution rituals, during the successful dynasty of the Obas of the House of Eweka, continued under various guises. On the other hand, dynastic struggles involve efforts by the new ruling houses to glean and claim the successes of the extinct dynasties and then to build on them. Here, in the Benin case, we have an example of one of the most successful instances of achievements, by the House of Eweka, that were built from the history and culture of the previous dynasty of the House of Ogiso.

Having stated these two principles of Benin history in more or less general terms, let me now move on to discuss each of them in the context of the events of Benin history. I will handle them in reverse order.


THE OGISOS AND THEIR TIMES

The earlier portions of the reign of the Ogisos constitute what historians like to call prehistory. Historical scholarship can shed some light on a great deal of the events of the prehistoric era from various sources, provided we are modest enough to admit that we are reconstructing probable events from a period about which there are no clear records. Unfortunately, two fallacies have beclouded the studies of prehistoric portions of our existence in Nigerian history. In order to render a responsible and truly probable interpretation of the Ogisos and their times, it is necessary to comment on, and then correct, these two fallacies in Nigerian scholarship.

First, Nigerian historiography is infested with what I would like to label as the fallacy of the regal origins of societies and cultures. It is the false assumption that societies and cultures have grown from kingdoms that were built by immigrant princes. This habitude and preoccupation with kingdoms as sources of cultures and societies probably began with the Reverend Samuel Johnson's tortured acceptance of the view that Oduduwa, the progenitor of the Yoruba, was a fugitive prince who fled religious persecution from Muslim devotees in Arabia. In his famous The History of the Yorubas, Johnson initially rejected any suggestion that the Yoruba were Arabians in their origin:

The Yoruba are certainly not of the Arabian family, and could not have come from Mecca -- that is to say the Mecca universally known in history, and no such accounts . . . are to be found in the records of Arabian writers or any kings of Mecca; an event of such importance could hardly have passed unnoticed by their historians (Johnson 1921: 5)

Having so wisely denounced this thesis of Arabian origins of Yoruba, Johnson was nonetheless swayed by the "only written record . . .on this subject" from the much learned Sultan Bello of Sokoto who sought to link the origins of the Yoruba to the Biblical story of Noah's curse on the children of his youngest son, Ham. According to Sultan Bello, the Yoruba "originated from the remnant of the children of Canaan, who were of the tribe of Nimrod [Ham's descendant]. The cause of their establishment in the West of Africa was, as it is stated, in consequence of their being driven by Yar-rooba, out of Arabia." That is to say, the Yoruba mysteriously adopted the name of their persecutor, Yar-rooba. The Reverend Johnson creatively adds that Nimrod was probably the same ancestor of the Yoruba whose name had been corrupted from Nimrod to Lamurudu {Namurudu). (See Johnson 1921: 5-6). The late Professor Saburi O. Biobaku (1979) added the weight of his scholarship to these claims of Yoruba migration, suggesting "that the Yoruba were probably the last Sudanic people to migrate to their present territory." (cited in Otite 1978: 20). (3)

While we all must be intrigued and amazed at the fertile intellectual imagination that enabled brilliant scholars to reach such fanciful conclusions, it is much more bewildering that modern academics should endorse these self-deprecating stories as appropriate material to be taught in Nigerian schools. The result has been imitation of migration stories in other areas of Nigeria, ignoring traditions of origins of our people that do not incorporate migrations from distant places. For example, Robin Law, the British historian who is an authority on Oyo, has noted the existence of other traditions of Yoruba origins, which have apparently been ignored: "there exist among the Yoruba numerous origin legends which, while agreeing in tracing descent from Oduduwa and Ile-Ife, do not refer to a migration from elsewhere" (Law, 1973: 30). There should be little doubt that the original intention of these fabulous migration stories was to establish the specious point that all Nigerians were after all migrants, as the Fulani overlords of the Sokoto Caliphate undeniably were, and that rival groups like the Yoruba and the Edo had no superior indigenous claims to their own lands.

When compared to the age of human existence on the African continent, Mecca and Islam, and indeed Christianity, are late instances of human history. Such knowledge does not seem to hinder this type of improbable mythology dressed up as respectable prehistory. Mohammed was born in 580 C. E., by which time African states like Ghana and Ethiopia were already well established. He died in 632 C. E. Seven years later, in 639 C. E., Arabs began to pour into Africa, on a mission of converting Christian Africa and Christian Europe to Islam. Since then, there are clear records of the movements of Arabs in Africa. None contains any mention of this fantastic connection between Yorubaland and Arabia. This distortion is a troubling aspect of our scholarship because it insults our claim to be some of the oldest humans on earth.

The fallacy of the regal origins of societies and cultures seems to have influenced some students of Benin history to assume that the Ogisos founded the societies which they then ruled. Such land has retrospectively been named after the first Ogiso as Igodomigodo (see Oronsaye 1995, Bradbury 1957: 19; Otite 1978: 19)). However, it is much more probable that the Ogiso dynasty arose from clan and village societies that were already in existence for thousands of years. That would not make their accomplishments smaller. Bringing various clans and villages under the control of a ruling family must have been a major challenge for the Ogisos, a challenge that they seemed to have met magnificently until the mismanagement of their own successes overthrew their long era of dominance. Our region of humankind is not young, certainly not as young as the last two millennia within which the House of Ogiso built their kingdom. We must acknowledge the contribution of these village and clan communities in the evolution of what eventually became the Kingdom of Benin. It is to their credit that out of the numerous indigenous communities that existed for tens of thousands of years in our corner of humanity, it was their culture that began the process of state building which mushroomed into a powerful kingdom many centuries later.

A second troubling fallacy in Nigerian historiography, which affects our appreciation of the Ogisos and their times, is what Professor Reinhard Bendix from the University of California, Berkeley, many years ago labelled as the fallacy of retrospective determinism. It surfaces in the assumption that the themes and features that characterize our modern societies and history also applied in ancient times. In effect, this fallacy is the process of falsely levelling our history backwards into antiquity. I will give an example from within our subject matter. One of the great achievements of the kings in the House of Eweka is the founding of the City of Benin, which then nurtured an urban ethos among the Benin. Some historians of Benin seem to imply that the Ogisos did the same thing. Actually, not all dynasties build cities and there is no evidence that the Ogisos built one. Certainly, their contemporaries did not seem to be as urban as modern Benins have become.

Aware of the dangers in these two fallacies, let us now explore the Ogisos and their times. What type of kings were the Ogisos and what type of societies did they preside over? Here our exploration must take the route of discovering the distant past from their reconstructed refractions in our own existence. But understanding that the Ogisos, like the Stuarts of English history, have sometimes been maligned in Benin folkways, we will need the help of other fragments of the culture that the Ogisos influenced in their times. Just consider the appearances of the Ogisos in Benin and Urhobo folktales. In Isidore Okpewho's (1998) comprehensive and scholarly study of Benin folklore, there is a Benin folktale concerning the Ogiso, which ends as follows:

Ogiso goes back on his word. Whereupon heaven and earth threaten to convulse the nation, forcing the Ogiso to capitulate. >[His rival] became the Oba, and the Ogiso became his sword-bearer. (p. 67)
This kind of degradation ritual is quite common in dynastic struggles. But such treatment of Ogisos in Benin folktales would be thoroughly baffling, probably annoying, to the Urhobo. In Urhobo folktales, the Ogiso has a different imagery. The Urhobo, even modern educated Urhobo, have not studied Benin monarchy in the way that it has understandably occupied the Benin. But the Ogiso was the King whom the Urhobo know and understand thoroughly. The Ogisos were ruling when many communities left these lands, which later became known as Benin, to sojourn southeastwards to establish new communities or else to join indigenous people who were already established in the western Niger Delta. In doing so, they took away fragments of the culture that was in existence at the time of the Ogisos. It is difficult to estimate what centuries these were. But it was most probable that these migrations were serial. Rather than taking place in one fell swoop, they probably covered a course of several centuries in the first millennium of the Christian calendar.
Urhobo understanding of kingship was shaped by the political culture that was in existence at the time of the Ogisos. It included a complex imagery of the Ogisos in Urhobo folklore. That composite picture was of a king who was most argumentative. He had a troublesome first wife, Inarhe, who would not brook much from the demands of the Ogiso. Ogiso could be harsh in his ways, but he clearly attended to the needs of ordinary people, including the proverbial yaws-infested man, okpufi, whose needs could not be neglected in the society in which Ogiso was king.

Urhobo language yields clues to the profile of the society and culture which the Ogisos ruled. To begin with, the Urhobo know this king by his straightforward name, Ogiso, without any other titles. He was their king. On the other hand, the Urhobo know the kings of the House of Eweka more distantly as Oba r' Aka, the King of Benin. Of course, Urhobo language does not contain the word Benin. Nor does it have Edo. Benin and Edo were names that were introduced by Ogiso's powerful successors into the culture that the Ogiso once ruled. By the time these words of Benin and Edo, by which the culture is now known, were introduced in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Urhobo had left these lands.

If any of the Ogisos were to be called back from the Great Beyond to our modern world, they would be baffled by these new names. They were not there in their times. The reawakened Ogisos would probably understand the Urhobo word for Benin, namely Aka, and might well understand the word Uhobo by which modern Benins know the Urhobo. But the resurrected Ogisos would not be aware that the lands they once ruled are now known by the names Benin and Edo. They might be lost in complex Oredo, the City of Benin, which was built long after they left the scene. According to Urhobo folklore, Udo would be the town that the Ogisos would know well. There is little doubt that the shades of the Ogisos would be much more comfortable among the modern Urhobo than with the modern Benin. There certainly would be greater mutual respect and understanding between the Urhobo and the shades of the Ogisos than anything the Ogisos could expect from modern Benin.

Any of the Ogisos might also have difficulties understanding modern Benin language. A language changes over time, especially when a new powerful dynasty emerges in its society. Just consider the vast changes from the English of Chaucer's era in the 14th century to the English language spoken nowadays -- a bare separation of some seven centuries, certainly less than what separates us from the Ogiso times. There is always a temptation to assume that any language has remained constant over centuries. But languages do change. Let me illustrate this aspect of probable changes in the language spoken at the time of the Ogisos and modern Benin. It is well known that Urhobo shares a host of words with Benin, because the two cultures were joined by their common experiences of the culture over which the Ogisos presided. But it would be a mistake to assume that the meanings of all of these common words have come from the times of the Ogisos. Take the word ohwo (plural ihwo). It is common to Urhobo and Benin as well as Ishan. But what does ohwo mean in these languages?

In Benin and Ishan, ohwo means woman. In Urhobo, ohwo means human being. Obviously, the two usages are related. Which of these was in use in Ogiso's times? I rather suspect that the Ogiso usage of this word would be closer to its Urhobo meaning. I say so because there is a pattern in cultural migrations that favours immobilities in fragments of a master culture that have undergone migration to other climes, while changes tend to be much more profound in its original habitat. As Louis Hartz (1964) put it somewhere else, modern French is spoken in Paris, but in Canada's Quebec an 18th century version of the French language is spoken.

By far the more manifest refractions of Ogiso times in modern Urhobo is in its organization of society and culture. Despite the geographical and cultural proximity between Benin and Urhobo, there are deep-seated differences in the cultural organization of these fragments of what has been called Edoid complex of cultures. (4) Urhobo exemplifies a segmentation in its cultural ensembles that has sometimes been called clan organization. Urhobo is certainly segmented into smaller cultural groupings that are all linked together into the Urhobo cultural whole. Each of these constitutive cultural groupings is organically linked to the wholeness of Urhobo culture. None of them would feel complete without their linkage to the whole of Urhobo culture. But none of them would feel whole without their singular distinction in the wider framework of Urhobo culture.

By contrast, clan identities are minuscule in Benin culture. If there is one area in cultural organization where modern Benin can claim a uniqueness, it is in the fact that kinship organizations are weak in Benin culture and society as compared to its significant neighbours, Urhobo and Yoruba. With respect to a comparison between Yoruba and Benin, the British anthropologist R. E. Bradbury has noted the "absence of large lineages with continuing rights in offices" in Benin culture, in contrast to the Yoruba where they are abundant (Bradbury 1973: 15).

We may therefore ask the following question: Was the political organization of these lands during Ogiso times more like those in Urhobo land or were they closer to the centralized political system, which is relatively free of strong subcultural loyalties, that has come to distinguish Benin political organization? I would suggest that the Ogiso political system was closer to the Urhobo pattern. The Urhobo, in all probability, took away with them the pattern of clan organization in place under the Ogisos, while the Benin experienced important transformations under the succeeding dynasty of the House of Eweka.


TRANSFORMATIONS IN BENIN CULTURE AND SOCIETY
UNDER THE OBAS OF THE ROYAL HOUSE OF EWEKA

The prominence and power of the Obas of the House of Eweka were derived from the transformations that they wrought in the post-Ogiso era. In the cultural sphere, the elementary society of villages and clans that existed under the Ogisos were transformed into a city-centered culture. There is need to characterize what this means, lest it be confused with the related urban culture of the neighbouring Yoruba. The city-centredness in Benin culture was unique because it was based on the notion that all Benin citizens had space within the political culture of the City in the same way as the Greek City-states were run. In one sense, all Benins were citizens of the City. In other words, Benin was a City-state.

In another important sense, Oredo, the City of Edo, which is another name for Benin City, had the same ritual significance for the Benin as Ile-Ife had for the Yoruba. But there was an important difference between the two. While Ile-Ife conveyed a symbolic significance for the Yoruba, Oredo provided a substantive meaning in the lives of the Benin because it was at once the religious and political headquarters of their existence. The tremendous authority that the Obas of the House of Eweka wielded for many centuries in the affairs of Benin derived from their management of the affairs of the City of Benin as the centre of Benin culture as well as their control of the relationships between Benin City and the rest of the city-state of Benin. In this transformation from the elementary clan-based state and society that the Ogisos ruled, Benin culture achieved a uniformity that is absent from Benin's significant neighbours. Consider, for instance, the variations in language. Each of Yoruba, Igbo, and Urhobo has far more internal variations within their languages than what exists in Benin, although significant pockets of dialectic distinction remain entrenched in a few areas of Benin. We must assume that the spread of a common urban Benin language, which has overridden major dialects in Benin culture, is a product of the transformation that followed from the works of the new dynasty of the House of Eweka.

There is a second area where the transition from the Ogisos to the ruling House of Eweka led to major changes in the fortunes of Benin. It is in the sphere of empire-building. The Ogisos were not empire-builders. Nor was it clear from the early Obas that the new dynasty would embark on empire-building. The change probably came with the famed five Obas of the middle fifteenth and the whole of the sixteenth centuries -- Ewuare the Great, Ozolua, Esigie, Orhogbua, and Ehengbuda -- whose reigns in close proximity established Benin as a foremost imperial power in West Africa. But it is easy to overstate the achievements of these great Obas relative to earlier ones. Their achievements became clearer because they began their reign at a time when European presence in the Western Niger Delta allowed historical records to be established. It is entirely probable that the earlier Obas had laid down the groundwork for the achievements of Oba Ewuare the Great and his successors.

Whatever the case was, history has rewarded Benin's achievements handsomely. It is striking that Benin built its empire in the same centuries as the brilliant Songhai who composed, from the little state networks that they took over from Mali, a huge empire of several states in what historians, using an Arabic term, call the Western Sudan. Songhai's empire was vast, stretching from modern Mauritania to the Hausa states of modern Northern Nigeria. Yet, today no single significant land or water mass bears Songhai's name. The presence of Arab powers nearby, in the Maghreb and in the Sahara, was Songhai's nemesis and misfortune. Benin's good fortune is the absence of Arab or even European imperial powers at the time it was expanding. Today, judging by the number of institutions, lands, and waters that are named after Benin, we all must acknowledge that out of the ancient states of West Africa and the Nile Valley history has been most kind to Benin. Togo's national university is named as the University of Benin. In the 1970s, following disputes among its ethnic groups, some of which objected to the name Dahomey as being too local and parochial, the country to the west of Nigeria changed its name from Dahomey to the Republic of Benin. European cartographers joined in the tribute to Benin's influence. An important river in the Western Niger Delta is named as Benin River. Then, consider the significance of that huge section of the Atlantic Ocean bordering West Africa that is called the Bight of Benin -- especially in view of the fact that the Atlantic coastline is some distance from Benin itself. All of these namesakes must be seen as tributes to Oba Ewuare the Great and his successors.

However, I believe that the Ogiso era deserves a share of Benin's recognition for preparing the groundwork for these achievements. This is so for two significant reasons. First, it has been claimed by many that the stability and eminence of Benin's rulership owes a great deal to the institution of primogeniture (see, e.g., Ekeh 1976), which is the principle that authorizes succession by the first male child. Despite the contention by Jacob Egharevba that this principle dates back to only about the seventeenth century, it must be clear that the tradition of primogeniture was already strong during the era of the Ogisos. That principle is probably as strong among the Urhobo as among the Benin -- a clear indication that it dates back to Ogiso times.

Primogeniture of course existed in the histories of many other monarchical traditions, across the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe -- especially in antiquity. But the Benin case was special in its practice. I can see no other instances in history in which was practiced the ritual separation between the King and the heir apparent in the manner in which primogeniture in royal succession was historically enforced in Benin culture. This ritual separation occurred at birth, following the performance of rites that established the succession rights of the infant heir apparent. The severity of this custom was unmatched anywhere else. Where did it come from? Clearly, it was a cultural imposition on the Kings, not their choice. We must search into Benin history and culture for the origins of this uncommon cultural practice that portended to safeguard the monarchy --even when it was enforced at the cost of denying the King the right to interact freely with his first male child.

What was the purpose of this custom of the ritual separation of King and his infant heir apparent? Actually, no meaningful answer usually emerges in response to questions about the purpose of customs. But we can search into Benin history for clues. The end of the Ogiso dynasty came as a result of arbitrary behaviour of the last Ogiso, Owodo, towards his first -- and, as it turned out, his only - son. He banished him and then wanted to recall him, leading to much bloodshed. That was a harsh lesson in Benin history. I suggest to you that Benin culture responded to such royal behaviour by taking over from the King the sole authority to decide on the fate of his successor. The ritual separation between the King and his infant heir apparent allowed Benin culture to protect both the infant heir apparent and the line of succession designed by Benin culture against any royal whims that could resemble Owodo's behaviour. In other words, it is my contention that Benin culture instituted a principle of socialization for Benin kingship that embodied lessons learnt from the era of the Ogisos.

There is a second leftover from the Ogiso era that informed subsequent developments in Benin history. At its height, what is popularly known as the Benin Empire had three portions. There was the eastern Igbo Province, essentially made up of what is today Western Igbo. This was an area that was won by way of warfare, the most important wars being those with Agbor (1577) and Ubulu-Ukwu (1750). Benin imperialism met with considerable resistance, resentment, and bloodshed in Igboland (see Ohadike 1994 and Okpewho 1998). Then there was Benin's Yoruba Province that was won on the platform of military action, but with much less resentment and acrimony than the Igbo case. Towards the end of the nineteenth century this area was being harassed by aggressive Fulani expansionism from its Sokoto Caliphate base.

The rest of what was called the Benin Empire was hardly won by war and its lands experienced far less military control from Benin. These were areas where Benin enjoyed cultural ties with surrounding communities. The oldest of these communities were Isoko and Urhobo that were partially peopled by those who migrated from Ogiso's lands and therefore had cultural and linguistic ties with Benin. The expansion of Benin influences in Isoko and Urhobo countries were the harvest from Ogiso's era. These territories had more people than Western Igbo. If the Benin had to fight any imperial wars in these areas, as they did in Igbo country, the Empire would have been sapped of much of its energy. The influence of the Obas of Benin in those areas was important, but it was based on mutual needs. That this was so could be seen from the fact that the relations between Benin and Urhobo continued on a voluntary basis even after British imperialism severed the ties between Benin and the lands where Benin Obas once exercised influence, whereas the Igbo relationships were hurriedly and permanently ended. There were other Edoid areas whose communities were peopled by groups that migrated from Benin lands when the Eweka dynasty was already in place. Such more recent emigrants as the Ishan, who left Benin under the Obas of the House of Eweka, were much closer to the rule and control of Benin City than the older communities in Isoko and Urhobo countries in the Niger Delta whose cultural ties with modern Benin were more indirect, because they were rooted in their common experiences during Ogiso times.


THE PEOPLE AND THE BENIN KINGDOM

Of the two propositions that I enunciated at the beginning of this lecture as key principles of Benin history, namely, the dominant role of the people in the making and design of Benin kingdom and the dynastic struggle of the House of Eweka against the defunct House of Ogiso, I may appear to have paid more attention to the latter than to the role of the people. In fact, however, the people's presence and influence were present, in implicit ways, in the affairs of Benin, as much in the second dynasty as they were robust in Ogiso's era. In coming to the conclusions of this lecture, I must now turn to an explicit examination of the role of the people in the design of Benin kingdom and in its nurture.

In doing so, we need not go much further than Jacob Egharevba's brilliant A Short History of Benin. If that book deserved another title, it would be: The People of Benin and Their Kings. For it was a narration of how the interests and needs of Benin people were well promoted and protected by their kings and their institutions. The Benin were people whose needs could not be ignored. Great kings, like Oba Ewuare, listened to their voices.

I will illustrate this thesis on the relationship between the people and the kings of Benin by examining two puzzles in Benin history. The first of these puzzles concerns the deep trenches, also called moats, that surrounded old Benin City. They are unparalleled in tropical Africa. Like the Great Zimbabwes of southern Africa, these moats represent something of a puzzle. Historically, ramparts, such as the Benin moats, are built for protection against perceived foreign enemies. Adiele Afigbo, the influential Nigerian historian, is reported as having quipped on one occasion as to why the Benin needed a deep moat. At the time these trenches were constructed, in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, Benin was under no threat from its neighbours. There was no power of Benin's size whose attack Benin kingdom feared. Why spend so much labour and time building terrifically deep trenches from Benin's hard and red soil?

Egharevba provides us with intriguing answers to those questions, which attest to Benin's complex history. In The City of Benin, Egharevba (1952) offers two explanations for the building of the moats. The first reason for undertaking the horrendous task of building these gigantic ramparts was to protect the City of Benin from its internal Benin enemies, clearly indicating that the notion of Benin City was not universally popular at the beginning and that it had to be defended, not against foreigners, but against its internal Benin detractors. Egharevba writes, thus: "There are three main moats or ditches surrounding the City. The first and the second were [sic] dug by Oba Oguola about 1280 and 1290 A. D. as barriers to keep off the invaders in the time of war. Especially against Akpanigiakon, the Duke of Udo, who was then harassing the City" (Egharevba 1952: 11).

The explanation for the building of the third portion of the moat reverses the logic of the first two sections. Having built earlier regions of the moats to keep some troublesome Benins from the City, two centuries later, there was an urgent need to keep Benins inside the City, barring them from fleeing from the onerous duties of empire building. Egharevba tells us that Oba Ewuare's vindictive policies enforcing a prolonged mourning period for the loss of his two favorite sons were the final push factor, the final straw as it were, that led to renewed emigration from Benin. Egharevba (152: 11) writes:

The people therefore cried out in a melancholy mood,, Ewuare, o! gi Edo gha bun, meaning Ewuare let the City of Benin be increased. The Oba then hysterically [sic] dug the third moat to prevent his few remaining subjects from further desertion. He [sic] began to tattoo their bodies so that they might be known and identified amongst the people of other tribes. This was the origin of the Benin tribal mark.
Sensitivity about the loss of population in the Benin of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was, in all probability, a distant playback to Ogiso's times. The Ogiso dynasty suffered considerable hemorrhage from migrations from its realm in ways that do not now appear obvious to us, modern people. But it must have been clear to ancient Benins of those distant centuries that there was danger of repeating the Ogiso debacle of earlier centuries if citizens left Benin City in large numbers. Their Kings listened to them. The extraordinary extent to which they went in order to ensure that there were enough people to perform the functions of the state and to manage its economy, as well as engage in an expensive enterprise of empire building, is the result we see in the Benin moats. We are not told what other reforms were undertaken in order to make the affairs of the state attractive to its citizens. But we must assume that there were such measures. Clearly, the value of people for the ancient Benin Kingdom is the clue to solving that first puzzle of moats and ramparts that were not built for fending off foreign enemies but rather in response to exigencies of internal Benin policies and pressures.
The second puzzle of Benin history is no less intriguing. It concerns Benin's role in the Atlantic Slave Trade. That evil trade, spanning several centuries, devastated the Western African region. Unlike the Arab Slave Trade from eastern and central Africa, in which Arabs undertook the slave raids directly, the West African Atlantic Slave Trade by European traders relied on African states and African slave raiders for their human victims. Throughout the region, many states embroiled themselves in the slave trade. Asante, Oyo, Dahomey, the Rivers states of eastern Nigeria, were all involved in the evil trade. In the nineteenth century, the Sokoto Caliphate joined this train of West African states that traded on fellow Africans, causing the depopulation of the Benue Valley in this instance (see Dike 1956: 27).

What about Benin and its empire? Clearly, Benin had important trade connections and political ties throughout the region that would have put it in a place of considerable advantage in the competition of the slave trade. How much did Benin press its advantages in pursuit of the Slave Trade? The puzzle is that Benin did not press its advantages to engage in the Slave Trade. Indeed, Benin's role in the Slave Trade was minor. It seems fair to say that Ryder's (1969:198) conclusion on this score has been well accepted by historians. He says: "There is no evidence that Benin ever organized a great slave trading network similar to that which supplied the ports of the eastern delta, or that it ever undertook systematic slave raiding . . . Benin either could not or would not become a slave-trading state on a grand scale" (also see Davidson 1971:65). Don Ohadike, the Anioma historian whose region of western Igbo would have been grievously impacted if Benin had played a large role in the slave trade, concurs with Ryder:

Slavery was neither an economic necessity nor a vital component of the entire political and social life of [Benin] society . . . even after the rise of Benin as a large kingdom, its involvement in slavery was limited. Ryder has demonstrated that Benin's participation in the Atlantic slave trade or the European trade generally was minimal. Ryder's thesis is confirmed by the fact that the Edo political structures were not particularly affected by the European trade as was the case with Dahomey and the Gold Coast (Ohadike 1994: 42; also compare Igbafe 1979: 27).
Benin's policies forbidding any large commitment to the slave trade is a puzzle for two main reasons. First, it makes Benin the sole exception among West African states in their full-scale participation in the European Slave Trade. Second, Benin had a strong institution of slavery in its culture and internal social organization. Benin's abstinence from the evil trade could not fairly be attributed to some humanitarian inhibition on its part. How then does one explain this rare phenomena in African history?
The Caribbean scholar Walter Rodney offers one good clue that will help us to solve this puzzle of Benin history. Rodney argued that many African states craved to refrain from the slave trade but were afraid to do so. They were so weak that the European traders could imperil their power and survival if they failed to participate in the slave trade (see Rodney 1972: 80-82). The reverse logic in Rodney's postulate was that only strong African states could make deliberate decisions to participate in the evil trade or else to refrain from it. Benin was a strong state that could say no to European powers and not be threatened with punishment that would destroy it. Apparently, from the outcome of history, Benin took the calculated decision not to involve itself in the slave trade in the manner of other states and not to encourage slave raids such as those for which the Aro were notorious in the Igbo hinterland in eastern Niger Delta.

But why did the Benin decide not to involve the resources of their kingdom in slave raids and slave trade, as so many other African states did? This is where to bemoan the absence of literacy in the civilizations of Benin and the other areas of tropical Africa. How one wished there were written records to reveal the arguments that were advanced for and against Benin's involvement in the slave trade, with menacing pressures from European traders and rival state organizations all across West Africa to cope with. But no such records exist. However, from its history, we can offer two speculative strands of reasoning for Benin's abstinence in the Slave Trade. First, it was entirely possible that policy makers saw the futility of the slave trade. The payback to the participating African states was miserable. But its disruption in their social structures was horrendous. Such was the fate of Oyo that destroyed its state institutions and civilization from the slave trade and a catastrophic civil war that the slave trade instigated in Oyo. A second reason is that Benin needed growth in its population for the management of its state affairs and for its external imperial engagements during the centuries of the Atlantic Slave Trade. There is always the temptation to believe that a large Empire, such as the one that the Benin managed, was being run by a huge population. But that was not the case. Benin was a nation with a small population who ran a big empire -- just as a small Songhai nation sustained a huge empire in the Western Sudan. Involvement in the slave trade would not help in the battle against population decrease that various Obas of the House of Eweka fought to reverse. The policy of abstinence that resulted on this score of the slave trade accords with the imperatives of Benin history of that time.

Whether these explanations for the absence of Benin from large-scale participation in the slave trade are correct or not, the policy forbidding such involvement paid handsome dividends for Benin. Its social structure and political system did not suffer from the destruction which the slave trade wrought for Dahomey, Asante, Oyo, and a host of other African states in the centuries of the slave trade. Moreover, out of the total area of the West African Atlantic coast impacted by the slave trade, the region of the western lower Niger Delta, in which the Benin Empire held sway, was the least disrupted.


SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In concluding this lecture, let me reflect slightly on the nature of history that we inherited from colonial times. I went to colonial schools for my elementary and secondary school education. I am from a cohort of Nigerians who were fed from what was then labelled as History of the British Empire. It was a brand of history in which British imperialists could do no wrong and in which their enemies could do no right. History of the British Empire was severe on enemies of British imperialism, whether they be Americans victorious from their revolt against the British in 1776 or the Benin in West Africa defeated by the British in a vicious campaign of 1897. Nigerian historiography has fought back by seeking out fresh spots in our historical actors of the nineteenth century as being praiseworthy for their "resistance" to British imperialism. Unfortunately, Nigerian historiography will continue to be hopelessly indebted to the methodology of British imperial historiography for as long as it concentrates its attention on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in which Europeans set the agenda of historical events in the region.

The nineteenth century was cursed in African history. It was a century of which the Benin cannot be proud. One major value of Jacob Egharevba's historical scholarship is that he strongly scolded the behaviour of Benin policy makers in the nineteenth century (see Egharevba 1952: 14-15). Indeed, if we were to limit Benin history to the events of the nineteenth century the harsh judgement that British propaganda and arrogant imperial history have handed over to generations of Nigerians might have some degree of validity. But Benin history is much more than the nineteenth century. When the historian goes back to earlier centuries and then fairly assesses the achievements that elevated a small population to such great heights, then I am convinced that the historical judgement of Benin and its empire is liable to be positive.

In this lecture, I have gone behind the nineteenth century, which was dominated by the British and other Europeans in West Africa, to earlier centuries. What we have is a history of a people in West Africa that husbanded its cultural resources carefully, enabling them to value their culture internally and to gain strength therefrom for embarking on the risky business of empire-building. It is my conclusion that, on balance, the resulting empire did more good than harm to its region of impact in the western lower Niger. I have gone back to Ogiso times because the complex of cultures that resulted from dispersals in those distant centuries is historically significant, in the annals of the ancient world and in the surviving cultural and social ties that those dispersals generated.

These are conclusions that would be impossible to arrive at if we concentrated on the nineteenth century. I dearly hope that the result of this preliminary exploration of the history of what has been labeled as Edoid complex of cultures will encourage others to move behind the European presence in West Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to more distant centuries of our history and prehistory.

I thank you all for your kind attention.




NOTES

1. Fourth Chief Jacob U. Egharevba Memorial Lecture, under the auspices of the Institute for Benin Studies, at Oba Akenzua II Cultural Centre, Benin City, on 14 December, 2001. I thank Professor Omo Omoruyi, currently resident in Boston, USA, for an insightful conversation on the subject of pockets of dialectic variations in modern Benin language. I am grateful to Dr. Igho Natufe, now resident in Ottawa, Canada, and Engr. Onoawarie Edevbie, currently resident in Detroit, Michigan, USA, for their careful reading of a draft text of this paper and for offering several important comments and suggestions.
2. Consider the views of Baba of Karo (in Smith 1954: 67): "[The Europeans came when] Yusufu was the king of Kano. He did not like the Europeans, he did not wish them, he would not sign their treaty. Then he saw perforce he would have to agree, so he did. We Habe [Hausa] wanted them to come, it was the Fulani who did not like it. When the Europeans came, the Habe saw that if you worked for them they paid you for it, they did not say, like the Fulani, 'Commoner, give me this! Commoner, give me that!' Yes, the Habe wanted them; they saw no harm in them."

3. What is a "Sudanic people"? "Sudan" is the Arab term of reference to the "Blacks in Sub-Saharan Africa with whom they had established contacts. Walter Rodney (1972: 56) probably offers the best definition of the term: "To the Arabs, the whole of Africa south of the Sahara was the Bilad as Sudan -- the Land of the Blacks. The name survives today only in the Republic of the Sudan on the Nile, but references to Western Sudan in early times concern the zone presently occupied by Senegal, Mali, Upper Volta, and Niger, plus parts of Mauritania, Guinea, and Nigeria." It seems clear that those who use the term in these migration stories confuse the Republic of Sudan with the wider area that the term, as the Arabs used it, originally referred to.

4. See the following definition that I offered elsewhere of Edoid: "In this paper I will use the italicized termEdoid to refer to the cultural and linguistic ensemble that includes the following ethnic fragments: Bini, Ishan, Owan, and Etsako, in Benin land and northern zones; and their more distant cultural relatives: Isoko and Urhobo in the western Niger Delta" (Ekeh 2000: ).





REFERENCES

Biobaku, S. O. 1979. "Taditions of Origins of Nigerian Peoples: The Yoruba." Paper presented at a Workshop on the Traditions of Origins of Nigerian Peoples. Department of History, University of Ibadan. (Cited in Otite 1978: 25.)

Bradbury, R. E. 1957. The Benin Kingdom and the Edo-Speaking Peoples of South Western Nigeria. London: International Africa Institute.

Bradbury, R. E. 1973. Benin Studies. London: Oxford University Press.

Connah, Graham. 1987. African Civilizations: Precolonial Cities and States in Tropical Africa: an Archaeological Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Davidson, Basil. 1971. "Slaves or Captives? Some Notes on Fantasy and Facts," in Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience, Nathan Huggins, Martin Kilson, and Daniel M. Fox, eds., 54-93. New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich.

Egharevba, J. 1934. A Short History of Benin. 4th ed. Ibadan: Ibadan University

Egharevba. 1952. The City of Benin. Nendeln (Germany): Kraus Reprint.

Ekeh, Peter P. 1976. "Benin and Thebes: Elementary Forms of Civilization," vol. 8 of The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, Werner Muenstenberger, Aaron H. Esman, and L. Bryce Boyer, eds., 65-93. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Ekeh, Peter P. (1990) "Social Anthropology and Two Contrasting Uses of Tribalism in Africa." Comparative Studies in Society and History, 32(4): 660-700.

Ekeh, Peter P. 2000. "Contesting the History of Benin Kingdom." Research in African Literatures. 33(3): 147-170.

Hartz, Louis. 1964. The Founding of New Societies: Studies in the History of the United States, Latin America, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.

Igbafe, Philip Aigbona. 1979. Benin Under British Administration. The Impact of Colonial on a Western African Kingdom 1897-1938. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.

Johnson, Samuel. 1921. The History of the Yorubas. Lagos [Nigeria]: C.M.S. Books


Johnston, H. A. S. 1967. The Fulani Empire of Sokoto. London. Ibadan. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.

Law, R. C. C. 1975. "Traditional History." Pp.25-46 in Saburi O. Biobaku, editor, Sources of Yoruba History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Law, Robin. 1977. The Oyo Empire, c1600-1836: A West African Imperialism in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Ohadike, Don C. 1994. Anioma : A Social History of the Western Igbo People. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Okpewho, Isidore. 1998. Once Upon a Kingdom. Myth, Hegemony, and Identity. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Okpewho, Isidore. 1998. "African Mythology and Africa's Political Impasse." Research in African Literatures 29(1):

Oronsaye, D. N: 1995. The History of the Ancient Benin Kingdom and Empire. Benin City: Jeromelaiho

Otite, Onigu, ed. 1978. The Urhobo People. Ibadan: Heineman Educational Books (Nig.) Limited.

Rodney, Walter. 1972. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press.

Ryder, A. F. C. 1969. Benin and the Europeans, 1485-1897. New York: Humanities Press.

Smith, Mary F. 1954. Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Moslem Hausa. London: Faber and Faber.

The Royal English Monarchy. http://www.scotlandroyalty.org/kings.html



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RETURN TO CONTENTS | RETURN TO JACOB EGHAREVBA MEMORIAL LECTURE

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Bokoboko,

Sorry, you do not know your history. You do not even know why Oba of Benin still rents from from Ogiso ancestor up to today. You need to read from Benin great historian - Chief Jacob Egharevba and Urhobo Prof. Peter Eke.

Why did the Ogiso become the sword bearer of his reival Oba after his people turned against him?

By the way, if you don't speak Yoruba or have a Yoruba name, you are not from the royal blood.

bokohalal: You really know nothing. We do not identify as Yoruba.Benin/Bini is what some people call us .Yet others say Ado,Idu, Aka and so forth.
The lingua franca at the palace of the Oba N Edo,I hope this will eternally sink into some thick skulls,is Edo!
The Oba of Benin is buried whole in a sitting position on his throne in a chamber(not a grave) and in the surrounding chambers where places for his servants that followed him to the other side.
Oba Eweka as a child was brought up by the Yoruba servants that Omonoyan left behind and thus spoke Yoruba.

Edo and Benin are already explained. Ogiso means God of the sky which Ekaladerhan(Izoduwa Oduduwa)would have been in Igodomigodo if not for crcumctances. Anyway, he became one in Yoruba mythology.
I do not understand the last part.

Here we go again with Benin view of the world.

Where does Benin itself come from?
What is the lingual fraca in Benin palace?
Where was the head of Benin Oba buried?
What does Eweka means?
What is the differece between Edo, Beni and Ogiso
Can a river be greater or deniy itself of it source?

Please do not translate a mixed dialet of Yoruba with other Nigerian languages as Igbo for us. We know your source in Ife and Oyo as Oranmiyan. Deny it all you want, Oba of Benin and royal language must remain Yoruba or lose your identity.

Finally, it is sinking in that all the glory and acceptance Africans are looking for claiming they belong to other continents, other people, they are from Egypt or Israel are symtons of inferiority complex.

Civilization and its spread started right here at home and not far from home in Nigeria. I hope more studies will be done on Iwo Eleru 10,000 years before Christ and Nigerians and their neighbors will realize they are one and the same people only cultured by their different environment.

Looks great and uncrowded. The old gets boring.

Another way of making the best out of reality of Naija life

It is very interesting that people do not realize that poundo yam is not yam but potato mixed with flour and other stuff.

Minimum Wage: We’ve Started Paying - FG •No, It’s A Lie - Labour

TRIBUNE

Written by Soji-Eze Fagbemi Saturday, 25 February 2012


A major controversy is raging over the payment of the N18,000 national minimum wage

by the Federal Government as labour leaders, on Friday accused the Federal Government of not implementing the new Minimum Wage Act.

But, the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chief Emeka Wogu, said the government had indeed commenced the payment of the wage.

The labour leaders publicly confronted the minister on the issue at the commissioning of the Lagos corporate office of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) to signal the commencement of the Employees Compensation Scheme.

The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Abdu-wahed Omar and the President-General of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Peter Esele, frowned at what they termed as the refusal of the government to pay the wage.

While acknowledging the efforts of President Goodluck Jonathan in ensuring the implementation of the Employee Compensation Scheme based on the Employee Compensation Act, Omar charged him to ensure that he extend a similar gesture to the implementation of the minimum wage.

He said it was surprising that the government had not paid the wage after the president had signed the enabling law.

“Those of us in the labour circle commend this scheme (ECS) because it is clear, purposeful and transparent.

“The Federal Government must also ensure that it is transparent in fulfilling all the promises it made to workers, especially in the payment of the national minimum wage,” Omar said.

Also, Esele, who had expressed serious concern over the non-implementation of the wage, said it was disheartening that it had not been paid to workers by now.

He, however, blamed this on the bureaucracy in the civil service, adding that Jonathan was amazed when labour complained about the non-imple-mentation of the new wage during one of their meetings over the fuel subsidy removal crisis.

Esele also stated that the president was surprised to hear that federal workers had not started receiving the wage when labour told him at one of the mee-tings.

“We want to hear today something tangible and significant on the payment of the new mini-mum wage from the minister,” Esele told Chief Wogu.

In a swift reaction, the minister said Jona-than had given a directive that the wage should be implemented fully.

He said the president had said that the implementation should begin in earnest and in fact stressed that the payment had begun at the federal level.

The minister added that from information available to him, some states had started implementing it, citing Lagos State and his home state, Abia State as two of such states.

He said the president was worker-friendly and would do everything to protect the interest of the workers, noting that his interest in workers’ welfare had shown clearly in the numbers of things already done by the president for the workers.

According to the miniseers, the urgency at which Jonathan signed the National Minimum Wage Act into law and the present Employee Com-pensation Act was a pointer to this fact.
Share

Seriously, there must be something wrong with these fools.

The rich needs government's help to build their own houses? This is government miss road while the poor and the very few middle class suffer.

I can understand how people feel when some of these diseases become regionalized. Let us face it, some diseases are more edemic to one region than another. In the case of HIV, as a virus, some many strains have developed.

Before you blame the white man, because they brought it in the first place, check out your areas for what is edemic and not just HIV. There is no doubt that HIV was spread worldwide by gays from California. Anyone that watched Tony Brown Journals on PBS in the 70s and 80s would have noticed the prediction that HIV is going to become Blacks disease because of less or lack of medical care.

My advise is to take whatever you are told, research it before condemning it. Your health comes first before anything else. So yes, there are strains of HIV for every region including Europe and America. Even at the same infection rate, the ease of treatment and medical care reduce incidents comparatively.

Some have refused Africans blood donations because of Hepatitis B as well.

Prices of yam, perishables fall

Written by Olayemi R. Ibrahim Thursday, 02 February 2012 05:00

Prices of food stuff  like yam and other perishable crops across some market in Abuja have dropped.
Some of the markets visited by our correspondent yesterday witnessed high patronage as buyers were seen buying food items at cheap prices.

At the regular Karmo Tuesday market, a heap of yam which used be sold for between N25,000 and N30,000 now goes for N12,000 to N15,000 depending on the size while a basket of tomatoes now cost N2,500 for the big size while the medium size now sell for N1,800.

Mallam Saidu who sells yam said they are able to sell at cheap price because this is the harvest season.

“Around November and December, I used to sell five tubers of yams for N2, 200 but it is now N1, 200 while the medium size now goes for N600 and N800. We even have the size we can sell at N200 depending on what you want,” he said.

Despite the fall in price, Saidu said he is still making his profit, “the fall in price is not affecting my sale in anyway because we even have lots of patronage. You can see how customers are patronizing us. In the past when it was expensive, we used to come to the market without selling all our stock but hardly do we return home these days without selling all,” he said.

Mrs. Abiodun Mary who said she came all the way from Garki II to buy yam said she was in the market when she heard that prices are falling. “I normally buy yam during this season to make ‘elubo’ (yam flour) because it is very expensive when new yam is out.  I bought 40 tubers for N6,500 and by the time I dry it, it will last my family for a long time,” Abiodun said.

In the same vein, perishables like tomatoes and peppers are also experiencing cut in prices. A big basket of tomatoes which was initially sold for N5,000 and N6,000 is now N3,500 while small basket which was initially sold for N600  and N650 is now N350 or N450.

A big basket of onions is now N5,500 as against the initial price of N7,000 while a small basket goes for N400 as against the initial price of N500.

http://dailytrust.com.ng/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=153782:prices-of-yam-perishables-fall-&catid=3:business&Itemid=3

ZOMBIE IF I QUENCH YOU QUENCH


Those who fight and run, live to fight another day, we have not seen the last protest. Whoever sends you to take human lives, tell them to start with themselves if you are not a zombie. The consequences must not be by your wish for 42 virgins or jungle justice. Nigeria is all you have. Tired of being shot by police and soldiers, bombed by Boko Haram, hunger crossing the desert, or resisting deportation; it is better to fight corruption and insecurity at home. Nigerians are mindful of exploitation of our causes by ethnic and religious indoctrination but are not cowards.

Some Northern governors are paying Boko Haram what Southern governors are paying militia to keep peace. The proportional basis of our corruption, religious and militia violence is equal to the amount of political thugs in your state. The thugs Leaders recruited graduated into religious and ethnic zombies. Adedibu in the West started as a thug before he became the grandfather of violence asking governors for their security votes if they want peace. Governor Obi rejected the call of MASSOB and transport workers to leave local taxes to them or face mayhem.

Many leaders claim they fought for and are ready to die for Nigeria, religion and ethnicity, are nothing but liars. They fought for their selfish ends taking risk stealing resources just like armed robber, that know they can be shot to death for invading private homes. If they are not in business to make a decent profit but do convert 75% of peoples’ recurrent budget into their own pockets, they are nothing but daylight robbers. No matter how trained you are from wherever, if you cannot use that training locally as an antidote to our problem, it is a waste.

We know the solutions to our problems. Instead of training ethnic and religious militants at home and abroad, we could have used our money wisely training students playing by the rule on how to seize control of our primary industry in agriculture and oil from exploration to the finest products. Even our crude oil production is limited by OPEC quota but the products of our refineries that could be used for our own benefit at home and exported to other countries in return for foreign exchange is unlimited. After Civil War we are yet to corner that technology.

We have politicians and planted World Bank and IMF self-aggrandizing Africans that negotiated 47 to 53 percent of our crude oil away but no scholars and technicians that can take control of natural resources or steal technology from Europe and America like China, Russia, Venezuela, Malaysia and India. Yet highly educated Nigerians are at home under the yoke of SAP, all over Europe and America whose hard earned foreign money has been diluted by highly inflated prices of materials and housing corrupted at home by those that have never earned foreign money but spend it freely. Even if technocrats want to pass on their expertize for free, they cannot not afford primary living in their homeland. But foreign “experts partners” can.

If we want success, that we must call Ijaw to be in forefront to confront Ebele because is Ijaw, is revolting to many. But it is not sickening to them to call on Muslims in the North to confront Boko Haram. Rightly they claim: after all he is the President of all Nigerians. The reason Ebele got to where he is right now is for no other reason than being Ijaw. He was planted to appease Niger Delta, pure and simple. But Boko Haramites must not undermine him just to appease them. A good place to learn is how Ebele turned the recent strike into his ethnic solidarity or how Boko Haram turned against their paymasters including Christians in the North.

Ebele Azikiwe played the ethnic card to his advantage during the strike and we cannot blame him because many in his position would do the same. There is a difference between a military coup and a civilian coup. Military use ballots under the gun. Civilians use ballot by persuasion either by false and deceptive high-tech public relation or by competent facts to counter and gain majority votes. Only military, not civilian can enforce a coup or overthrow a government by encouraging Igbo officers to overthrow Yoruba and Hausa officers to overthrow Igbo as could Berom or Ibibio.

It does not work under civilian setting. If Hausa is in power, send Hausa after him and if Ijaw is in power, send Ijaw after him. By the same token, if Boko Haram kicks because they lost power, let Northern Muslims put fatwa on them. The arduous duty is that it will take much more to persuade most Ijaw to go after Ijaw and most Yoruba to go after Yoruba. In order to get most in the ethnic group to go after their own or against religious masqueraders, the massagers must have been as virulent as Boko Haram. It gets to a point when your own people say enough is enough. Obasanjo got that message while seeking Third Term.

What we see in Ebele is a President that is not comfortable because of so many sharks around him. He was forced to dole out benefits, bribe or privilege to king makers so that the military or Boko Haram masqueraders would not force him out of office. The fact that he says his doubters have invaded every level of government buttress this fact. Unfortunately, while he can dole out all the Federal income from oil, he cannot punish them like Babangida, Abacha or Obasanjo.

Babangida would dole out bribes or punish anyone out of grace. Abacha from Kano, disciplined Maitatsine and dethroned Sardauna of Sokoto with muted challenge. Indeed, Obasanjo retired all the militricians and renegaded on his agreement with the Northern power brokers. Buhari, hate corruption but because his weakness for special privilege for royalty and religion, cost him the election last time around. What they all have in common is their military background.

However, military background is irrelevant in today’s Nigeria. Anyone can buy weapons at the international market, so any full scale confrontation that unites the ethnic militias will be protracted and counterproductive compared to one week strike betrayed by ethnic loyalty. Indeed, his ethnic militia turned it into an attempt to overthrow Ebele. Mind you, there are opportunists that would not blink an eye to do so, especially the Ciroma group.

Since Ebele got in, he has reshuffled the shakers of petroleum industry with his own people. He has to do more than that. Once Nigerians realize that a corrupt Nigerian is a corrupt Nigerian no matter where he comes from, we would expect people in Niger Delta as other Nigerians to demand answers from their people in charge. Indeed, all the savings that were accumulated under the previous regime is gone and the infatuation with their leaders may turn sourer.

Ebele may be one of the best antidotes for Nigeria’s problems. Niger Delta will tear itself into pieces at the rate they are spending oil money, unless Ebele stops it. If we leave the North to themselves Boko Haram will tear them into pieces. If we leave the South to themselves, they will tear one another into pieces along different tongues. Our different ethnicity is our greatest strength in moderating one another. The best peacekeeping force is within Nigeria, not from the United Nations. They cannot wait to split us into pieces. But each of the ethnic or religious leaders must lead to cure its own cancer.

So far only a couple of ethnic groups have disowned the notorious Judas in their midst. Not too many Nigerians have lynched their local council man, chairman, representative or senator. They may wage war and curses on Obasanjo, Shonekan, Tafa Balogun etc. to the glee and approval of other Nigerians. As soon as the table turned, most of the people in other ethnic groups become defensive but those willing to call corruption within their ethnic groups, are labeled traitors. It is our history and we must accept it as our weakness. We all have excuses for defending our own. In the same way solution for Boko Haram must come from Northern religious leaders and sponsors.

The goal here was not to replace Ebele with Boko Haram but to call all sides to order before they tear Nigeria apart since each sponsors their constituencies. We have to force them to see reason that there are too many politicians and advisers in Nigeria and we cannot generate enough income to pay or bribe them all for loyalties, more than the owners of presidential or parliamentary system. We want to cut waste and return most of the income from our resources to the states. If we cannot convince the Ijaw to demand that much from Ebele or from Boko Haram paymasters; we have failed to rescue our Country from corruption and insecurity.

Farouk Martins Aresa
http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/farouk-martins/zombie-if-i-quench-you-quench.html

Do not forget Ester Smart, the peace keeper soldier sentenced for protesting denial of their earned money.

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-286487.0.html

They came from Bin Laden post  in Pakistan and thought they were in Lagos where Joe is still looking for Boko Haramites.

143 people killed in co-ordinated sect attacks in Nigeria: reports

January 21, 2012

Jon Gambrell The Star
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1119192--143-people-killed-in-co-ordinated-sect-attacks-in-nigeria-reports?bn=1

People watch as smoke rises from the police headquarters after it was hit by a blast in Nigeria's northern city of Kano January 20, 2012.
STRINGER/REUTERS

LAGOS, NIGERIA—An official at a hospital in northern Nigeria says at least 143 people have been killed in co-ordinated attacks in the nation’s second largest city claimed by a radical Islamist sect.

The official said Saturday that the figure represented those in a mortuary at Kano’s largest hospital, as well as those whose bodies have already been claimed by families for burial.

The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

The sect known as Boko Haram claimed the attacks Friday in the city of more than 9 million people.

Any Nigerian that wants to know what is going on about our economy in general must read or study this oil information very well and make a sensible deduction out of all the submissions floating around.

My submission is this. Crude oil like any other raw material is only valuable to Nigeria is when we develop the technology and related education towards our natural resources. Since we do not but are more interested in higher education that are marginally relevant to our needs, we will always be taken for a ride.

Even the about of crude we can export is limited by agreement. But the amount we can use and refine at home and abroad is not. We need to think hard.

Before Malaysia, Brazil, and Venezuela took control of their resources, their priorities were students sent all over the world on their primary sectors. China sent students to US and Russia to study and steal technologies. We sent militants abroad and neglected students in the same areas that play by the rules.

Our agriculture and mineral resources is being taken over by land deals with foreigners and politicians that should be crying but are laughing to foreign banks. We do not know how to asses oil going out, they tell us what to grow as raw material and take control.

Thanks all for your contribution. We need to learn from one another and grow.

I am just worried that he may tell MEND to invade Niger for their new refinery before they invade Nigeria for more crude oil, apart from theirs.


[quote author=Sisi_Kill link=topic=850185.msg10003946#msg10003946 date=1327014590]We're Fighting them over in Iraq is so we don't have to fight them here at home". George Bush on Reasons for the Iraq War -June 9, 2005.

We're are Fighting them over in Lagos where they are not, so that we don't have to fight them in the North where they are" Jonathan Goodluck on Deploying Soldiers to Lagos where there is no record of Boko Haram attack. - Jan 19, 2012

Three guesses on how this is going end. . .the first 2 don't count. [/quote]

Unfortunately, every internet site has been invaded by paid informants. There are too many of them trying to change public opinion on what is obvious to most sensible people. This is how they shift focus and bend causes that most Nigerians agree on.

Why is the obvious questions hard to Answer?

Your rep, Gov. and local chairmen are equally responsible. Why don't we hold their throats but conveniently go for the only one at a distance?

Let us face it Nigerians prefer to point fingers away from ourselves, our relatives and those that give us a bag of rice just before elections.

Beaf:
I would love to know if you have asked similar questions about your LG chairman, your governor, rep member and senator. Or have you conveniently forgotten that they exist? I find that to be a very common problem.

Sending MEND to Joe to purge corruption or face calabash will be more powerful than Boko Haram fanatics messengers of Ciroma and will be resisted MASSOB and OPC.

Nigeria strike unites classes in populist By JON GAMBRELL


The Associated Press

LAGOS, Nigeria — The protest first drew Nigerians who live hand-to-trash, scavenging through mountains of garbage to make a living. Now, long lines of cars and expensive motorcycles are parking near demonstration that is drawing more than 10,000 people angry about life in Africa's most populous nation.

Angry youths protest on the third day of nationwide strike following the removal of a fuel subsidy by the government in Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012.Nigeria's government is warning that a paralyzing national strike risks "anarchy" in the oil-rich nation, as demonstrations over spiraling fuel prices and government corruption entered their third day Wednesday.(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Angry youths protest at Lekki road on the third day of nation wide strike following the removal of a fuel subsidy by the government in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012. Nigeria's government is warning that a paralyzing national strike risks "anarchy" in the oil-rich nation, as demonstrations over spiraling fuel prices and government corruption entered their third day Wednesday.(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Angry youth protest at Lekki road on the third day of nation wide strike following the removal of a fuel subsidy by the government in Lagos, Nigeria, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012. Nigeria's government is warning that a paralyzing national strike risks "anarchy" in the oil-rich nation, as demonstrations over spiraling fuel prices and government corruption entered their third day Wednesday.(AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

.The nationwide strike first began over gasoline prices more than doubling, but now it encompasses criticism of all Nigeria's failings. People shout to anyone that will listen about the country's cratered roads, dilapidated schools and the government corruption that leaves politicians wealthy and the people largely poor in the oil-rich nation.

And protesters say they want a permanent change in Nigeria, a move away from leaders who send their families abroad for schooling and medical checkups while the rest subsist on less than $2 a day.

"They want to cut us off," said Anthony Abang, a 32-year-old unemployed man who helped close down a Lagos highway. "They want to kill our future."

President Goodluck Jonathan removed subsidies on Jan. 1 that had kept gasoline prices low for more than two decades. Overnight, prices at the pump more than doubled, from $1.70 per gallon (45 cents per liter) to at least $3.50 per gallon (94 cents per liter). The costs of food and transportation also doubled.

Jonathan insists the move was necessary to save the country an estimated $8 billion a year, which he promises will go toward badly needed road and public projects. But to the Nigerians marching through the streets in all parts of the country, government promises only enrich politicians who routinely swindle budget money from promised public works as electricity and clean drinking water remain out of reach for many.

That anger has seen some protesters confront police, set burning roadblocks and attack government offices, violence that has left at least 10 people dead so far. On Wednesday in Minna, the capital of the central Niger state, youths attacked the governor's house, forcing him to flee by helicopter. A mob killed one police officer.

Attorney General Mohammed Bello Adoke has warned the government "will not hesitate to bring to bear the full weight of the law" against violent protesters. He also described the strike by major labor unions as illegally violating a court injuction.

"Continuing disregard of that order is (dangerous) to the public interest as it constitutes an open invitation to anarchy," Adoke said in a statement issued late Tuesday.

Adoke also warned public workers that the government would implement a "no work, no pay" policy for those who join the strike. However, public workers sometimes go weeks without pay in Nigeria, where corruption and mismanagement has plagued government for decades.

In Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital of 15 million, several hundred protesters on Wednesday took over a major highway leading to the islands where the wealthy live. One protester carried a signed that read: "We are ready for the civil war."

Fears about violence were heightened as the leader of a radical Islamist sect challenged the authority of Nigeria's president in an online video. The video by Imam Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the sect known as Boko Haram, will only aggravate existing religious and ethnic tensions in Nigeria, a nation of more than 160 million.

Unrest could affect oil production in Nigeria, which pumps about 2.4 million barrels of oil a day and is a top crude supplier to the U.S. However, most fields remain unmanned and offshore oil fields provide a share of its capacity.

Babatunde Ogun, president of one major union representing oil workers, said Wednesday his group planned to escalate their strike.

"It means in the short term, there will be no export of (natural) gas, there will be no power," Ogun said. "Everything will be at a standstill."

___

Associated Press writers Ibrahim Garba in Kano, Nigeria; Yinka Ibukun in Lagos, Nigeria and Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria contributed to this report.



http://www.ajc.com/business/nigeria-strike-unites-classes-1299168.html#fadetoblack

Why are we missing the point? A former oil mister Tam David West said only one or two oil company was refining crude oil, sending it back to Nigeria and selling the surplus by putting more money in Nigeria pocket, without loss.

Many cabals have taken the position as middle men each jacking up the price to make obscene profit. Simply tell them to back off and go back to one or two companies that actually have refineries. Not middle men without refineries that have to go to those with refineries. How simpler can that be?

This is really shameful, how low can we get?

An innocent man woke up at the hospital in the midst of peaceful protest and people are jubilating. This man could have died just caught in peaceful protest.
Press show students and people that were pepper sprayed in the countries these bastard carry their loot, and people were mad. It caught the attention of the whole country. But in Nigeria, that a man almost died is nothing.

Yes, only Nigerians can save Nigeria. God is not coming down for your insensitivity.

HEAR THE POOR & VOICELESS CAUGHT IN LEKKI SHAKEDOWN

You have heard the voices of the educated demonstrating, the purchasing power of the rich that cannot be bordered but not the powerless voices of those poorer than the minimum wage earners whose take home pay cannot pay the toll. We were living here before Maroko became Lekki and some of us were brought here by Jakande as home owners for the first time in our life. Who do we call or beg for relief since we are lumped and stuck at home without toll tax.

Since the time of Jakande, we have not witnessed government presence in our life. The school was built by Jakande. Like our rich and educated new neighbors, we provide our own electricity and security. But unlike our educated and rich neighbors, we cannot afford their private schools and shopping centers. In order to get to the market, schools, health centers and work, we depend on private transportation that will pay toll and increase our fare.

Many of us miss Maroko where life was simpler but that is history now. Those of us from fishing villages, houseboys and girls, drivers, cooks and cleaners are on the verge of losing our jobs because Oga will not pay minimum wage, not to think of paying for our transportation that will certainly be increased by the toll tax. Since Jakande turned us into home owners, some of us have been able to buy old jalopies our neighbors discard. Who will pay our toll?

Those of us living past Ajah into Ijebu where glad when a road was finally built linking us to our kin and neighbors. The same road is now used to strangle and curtail our activities and freedom of movement from and to our homes. When we were told they were going to build upon it, we thought it was because of the power of the rich. They could have constructed a brand new road that would be faster and more attractive to those that want to save time and pay toll.

There are some of us that have lost the income we used to have, the jobs we used to have, the houses we are left with are occupied by our children that graduated from university without jobs and we are too old and gray to support them. We are not dare-devil and cannot steal, we are not connected nor can we get into politics. We have no access to President, Governor and Chairmen of local councils. Some of us may be house rich but have no new income.

Another group of us are very educated, used to be wealthy but struggle these days with the little we have left. It is not that we did not prepare for our old age, but after structural adjustment we lost our purchasing power since our naira became useless. We sold some our belongings, properties but we are down to our last houses and our last cars. If we had sold those and outlive the returns, we would be on the streets today.

The only cars we have left are old and battered visiting mechanics whenever we card afford it. We are now stuck at home because we cannot tell or cry to everybody that we cannot afford toll to visit children, relatives and friends. We cannot even wait at the toll for too long. As for our pensions, we are not immune to the delayed and erratic long lines of all levels of the governments. Indeed, some of us have died on the lines waiting.

Our children told us there is no place in the world where toll road is built in a residential area. Well, there is always a first in Nigeria. We do not know why they will plant flowers on existing road since the time of Jakande and start shaking us down like the police, omo-onile, areas boys and mafia asking for ransom before we leave and enter our homes.

Why have you forsaken us because we have no voice, no education or no money? There must be somebody somewhere that will hear our cries. Poor people in Nigeria have learned not to depend on governments. Government only takes care of the needs of the rich. They share whatever there is amongst themselves and tell us to close our eyes and pray for better days while they disappear with our money.

We have pleaded with Federal Government to come to our aids with a bridge to link us to the Mainland ready to pay toll. All we get are promises and ceremonies upon commissions that have not produced anything. Anyway, there are more urgent needs than ours. Federal roads, projects and Festac Town are still on hold. Before they attend to us, those will probably take precedence to our little needs in Lekki.

The Lagos State Government shows us all the projects they have accomplished and dare us to show any other state that has done as much. Yes, we know the Governor of Lagos State, his father and grandfather. It was our first stop for relief. However, this Lekki toll is beyond the Governor. Anyone that thinks he has free hand and complete control of his State is a dreamer. He never had before now or until now. Some of you must have heard about his power struggle.

Who then do we go to? If anyone knows where we can reach the almighty power of Lagos State, please point us to the way. We have no connection, no access and no control. We have been told he is the Asiwaju of Lagos. The one and only powerful that has Fashola at his grips. We beg you in the name of whoever you worship to suspend these tolls until alternate road or bridge is built that will attract paying customer.

Tinubu, we beg you in the name of Iragbiji, Omo-Amoda, Omo-Yekini, Omo-Ogunlere to release your choke on Lagos State. Please let us breathe. By the time you make all your money, our children and grandchildren will still be in debt. By the time you live long, dead and gone, our children will be in perpetual debts trying to pay off all the debt you have incurred in your lifetime. Yet no State in the whole of Nigeria makes as much money as Lagos State.

Tinubu, na God we take beg you O. Ebe la nbe osika ko ma balu je.




Farouk Martins Aresa

Source: Story from The Nigerian Voice News:

Published: Saturday, December 24, 2011

FASHOLA TRUE FACE: PRICING NIGERIANS OUT OF MARKET

Farouk Martins Aresa

On the minimum wage of 18K, there is nothing left by the time we pay tolls at Lekki or fees at Lagos State University. Ouch, gas deregulation nko! Some of us just cannot understand why these have to be during the reign of a bona fide Lagosian. There are some fears in Lagos circles that a plague has been place on Fashola intentionally to undo and eclipse his goodwill or whatever he has done in Lagos. You can bet your last 100 naira that his backers today will come out in future disowning him, saying we warned him.

Nigerians are very sensitive when it comes to one of their own and the Fashola family is well known in Lagos. There is not much more in taxes Lagosians can pay without sacrificing everything they have worked for in their young or old age. Lagos is now made up of all walks of life, even non-Africans but when it comes to planning for the future of the State, how many average Nigerians are taken into consideration?

http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/guest-articles/fashola-true-face-pricing-nigerians-out-of-market.html

Those of us that have not seen other places beyond our nose, at least know that toll roads are constructed to attract motorists looking for faster and more efficient ways of getting to their destinations. In spite of the fact that people have to pay to use it, they are attracted by the amount of time they can save traveling on it, not forced by some government bureaucrats and lack of primary roads to use it. It is not built on existing road paid for by taxpayer and decorated with flowers. Side roads for convenience of residents have turned into alternate new tolling centers.

We all dream of a megacities and star wars but only if it can benefit Nigerians. Lagos, like the rest of the Country is now being priced out of the pockets of the average Nigerians. We are not ruled by colonialists or the new lenders from Far East of West but the policies by our own governments can hardly be for the benefit of Africans. When we can no longer afford local universities because we are asked to name any world university that charge the same rate or travel from our homes without paying more than minimum wage, we are in trouble.

It is increasingly difficult to separate Fashola from Tinubu and we are reminded: we told you so! How much money is enough for one man, one family or one tiny class of people? No state in the Country generates as much tax as Lagos but none of them generate as much debt as Lagos. Even if this is taken as an investment, in order to pay back, we have to import high income earners from abroad since the ordinary Nigerians lack the means to pay for the projects governments embark on. Not even Diaspora Nigerians can afford homes built by some governments!

Lagos has already priced itself out of local market. Indeed, Nigerian mega cities are pricing themselves out of local markets. When products and services are so expensive that majority of people that live in that city cannot pay for them, we are digging a hole for ourselves. Reacting to higher prices, unions rightly call for living wage to meet this demand. Unfortunately, it is like chasing a ghost because prices rise faster than wages.

We need not fool ourselves, the only conscientious investors in Nigerian markets are Nigerians at home and abroad. If the local people cannot afford Lagos and other mega cities as Diaspora abroad purchasing capacity has been eroded by ever increasing prices, we must look for others to pay. If they pay, they want returns on their money, on their investments and their technical skill. Unlike Nigerians that money will be taken out. Whatever remains, they use their discretionary power to manipulate Nigerians that must succumb. Africans selling out Africans in Africa.

Which government anywhere in the whole world prices their average citizens out of the market? These are fundamentals our planners need to take into consideration before demanding and taxing the average man to death in Nigeria. This is the same reason conservatives fight to limit the role of government. The government is used in Nigeria as money making enterprise to suck as much money as they can out of ordinary folks into the pocket of vultures.

The role of government is to do what individuals cannot do but can collectively be achieved. It is the reason we expect government to provide good roads to facilitate travel, communication and commerce. We expect government to provide police and fire fighters to avoid damage to the liberty of individuals and properties. Even a highly skilled work force, need adequate training and education provided by governments. Nigeria has abundant energy but greed does not allow us to provide power and infrastructure for commercial and domestic use.

As soon as it comes to how to exploit the masses, our governments jump in for the money they can make into individual pockets. It is even worse in Nigeria because our local and Federal governments are mostly interested in projects that can generate foreign currencies, not the one that will strengthen the value of naira at home making manufactured products for export. But then, the Central Bank makes foreign currencies available for every Sule and Tunde that wants it.

There is no government in Lagos State that has not made money because it is the center of Nigeria commerce where products and people exchange commercial transactions. Out of all these governments in Lagos, Jakande still stands out as the most productive. Contracts and commercial businesses were transacted during his time as any other reign. The difference is that each contractor knew the amount of profit he could make before going in.

What we have these days in Nigeria are dare-devils that are willing to screw a hot shaft through their mothers’ asses in order to make obscene profit. If it is profit alone they are willing to make, fine. They make a killing. You will not find many Lagosians that think Fashola belongs to any of these unscrupulous elements. He was never brought up as a desperado and his family compound show no resemblance to the old bootleggers.

However, you can never trust a finger dipped in oil not messing up the rest. It is sad that people can now hardly differentiate Fashola from Tinubu. Most politicians do not realize that their reigns are limited to certain number of years, even as a dictator. What good is power when it is gone and what good is money you cannot spend when you die. It is our legacy in life that transcends our grandchildren. What we do with each when we are still hale and hearty matters.

Politicians cannot hide behind politics to inflict pain on people. When we cry, we cry out of pain and misery, not out of spite. The poorer we get the more all levels of government and every reign want from us, telling us to bear the pain a little longer, while they party in Dubai. It is not their fault; it is the fault of the other guy. But only a dying man knows the pinch of death.

Where in the whole wide world does a government install toll in a residential area that you have to pay toll to come out and get into your own house?

Only in Nigeria.

Where else are people forced to pay toll either in front of their houses or at the side roads?

Only in Nigeria.

Please where is Boko Haram when needed to Occupy Bourdillon Road in front of Asiwaju Ole

Another loss, another dream not fulfilled.

He did his best and left the rest.

Both the medicine man and OPC leader are foolish.

All the medicine man had to do is buy oyibo bullet proof vest and cap, decorate them with charms and sell them at triple price. That my friends is what we call real ekurube. Do not deal with all these yeye medicine man. If you need my service let me know.

Which is the best rehabilitation for him after the case is over?

1. Send him to jail

2. Come out a worse criminal

3. Let him complete his final exam

4. Satisfy their stereotipical wish - a criminal always a criminal

5. Give him another chance

Odumchi,

You have very valid points.

The problem is we always look at those that are lucky in the U.S, like you have to play loto to win. It is a difficult country and many times inhuman to its own people too.

On the other hand, we also look at the worst in Nigeria. If you can stay middleclass, there is no place like Nigeria. But if you are dirt poor, any place but Nigeria. So it depends on how you look at it.

People will never believe you until they try and some of those that try also lie. One should know in advance what is waiting for them in the USA. No place like home.

odumchi:
Have you always dreamt about going to America? Many Nigerians envision America as a land of gold and honey. A land where the government showers you daily with piles of cash, and a land where everything is free. Well, they are wrong. There is nothing of that sort in America, and recent studies and accounts have shown that it is actually better for you to stay in Nigeria than it is to go to America. Here are five reasons why.

1. Debt: The mirage that anything and everything is possible in America is a lie. Worst of all, to new immigrants, the amount of credit offered in America is so attractive that by the time you know it, you will be chin deep in Debt. Debt that will most likely take you the rest of your natural life, and half of your children's to pay off.

2. Stress: America is the capital of stress. With 12 hour shifts and continuos work, the labour takes a heavy toll on its people, unlike in Nigeria. In Nigeria, you are the boss. You decide when to work and for how long. There is not a widespread practice of 24hour shifts and round the clock work, making it much better for your health and etc. The Stress in America might cause diseases previousl unexperienced by the average Nigerian. Diseases such as High-blood pressure, Hyper tension, and Arthiritis.

3. Professional Devalue: America can be a welcoming place for highly educated and well-off immigrants but also a nightmare for others. It is often known as the "graveyard of occupations" meaning that one's previous education and occupation can easily be rendered worthless in America. There was a woman who was very well off in Nigeria. She was the head chef of a 5-star hotel back in Nigeria and upon her arrival in the US, her degree and occupation was declared worthelss. She was turned down by many other hotels and had to assume a job as a frycook at McDonalds. There is also another account of a Local Governor from Nigeria who held many outstanding degrees from Universities in Nigeria, but was denied a reasonable job in America. In short, their lives were restarted.

4. Prices: Things have become very expensive for Americans. Things ranging from household items to entire homes, and combined with the constant devalue of the Naira, the US can be a financial nightmare for Nigerians. An ordinary 4-bedroom, single family house in the US will cost atleast $500,000 which is N83,000,000, More than enough to errect a 10 bedroom mansion with a boys-quarters and a gate in Nigeria. A brand new jeep in the US can easily cost $40,000 which is N6.6 million, more than enough to buy TWO jeeps in Nigeria.

5. Cultural Diffusion: The thing that every Nigerian regards with utmost importnace is his/her cultural background. America is a slaughter house for African cultures. People emmigrate form Nigeria and give birth to their children in the US. As their children grow up, the parents avoid teaching them their native language, and from then on the children are at a loss. Then, their parents avoid teaching them about their culture and tradition. Lastly, with all this not given to them, their children effectively turn into AAsand are estranged form the culture sand tradition of their homeland, ultimately deciding their destiny in life.

With this in mind, Ill be glad to recieve your feedback and thoughts on this

[quote author=alj_harem link=topic=705689.msg8670507#msg8670507 date=1310048391]jara, ok I am a real lagosian and i hope u would not mind me asking which lagosian are you

are you awori,ijebu, egba etc thanks but if u do not feel like replying just ignore it thanks once again [/quote]My dear brother Alj-harem,

I was going to stop responding to that Edo transplant before I saw your post.

Lagosians are very few and in many cases related to one another. All you have to do is mention your name and they will trace you to your father and mother.

Ijebu and Egba are not Lagosians and they will be the first to tell you because they also have a history that trace them back to their father or compound. Nevertheless all Yoruba relate to Ife and Oyo. So some Lagosians from Ijebu, Egba and other Yoruba land that returned as free slaves also settled in Lagos close to people with the same culture and language.

As for me personally, a mixture but with well recognized name in Lagos.

There are Omo-Eko and Ara-Eko. You may qualify as Ara-Eko my brother.

[quote author=Negro_Ntns link=topic=705689.msg8666768#msg8666768 date=1310006850]My friend if you have to read a book on lagos to know your roots in Eko, then you are not a son of the soil Jara.

We appreciate your sharing but don't confuse our history with inaccurate written records.[/quote]Which one is "our history"? Could that be the one you claimed are two Omo-onile, one from Lagos and another from Benin?

Nobody, not even the revisionist historians from Benin has ever said that. Lagos belongs to Omo-onile that are the children of Ogunfuminire and nobody has ever argue that fact until I saw your version on internet. Are you sure you are a Lagosian or part of Benin from Ife that bear Yoruba name and speak Yoruba in Oba palace?

More reference: Professor Ekeh an Urhobo man on Ogiso years and their relationship to Benin. You may also want to read Prof. Ade Ajayi on the same.

A real Lagosian knows his history with or without books, a real Yoruba knows his history with or without archeology. I know Lagosian, you are not one of them.