Never settle for less may be taken as against compromise in any relationship.

Whenever girls meet a nice guy, they abuse his kindness and whenever guys meet a nice girl, they abuse her kindness.

My fear is that once a lady has been abused, some of them pay back a nice guy. But some also enjoy the company of bad boys and we all know.

As much as I empathize with you, nice guys always fear those that would take out their grouse on them. But I certainly agree with you that a happy single life is better than unhappy relationship.

We have to be careful. Every Anti-Racist does not have to support every liberal or Left doctrine.

Do not forget that we also have anti-Africa Blacks worse than racist whites.

Even Reparations divide Blacks on what to demand, in USA or Africa. Abiola and others demanded Reparations to Africa.

Late Justice Osgood Marshall, U.S Black Supreme Court Justice warned Africans about who to replace him.

He was right. Replaced by far Right Justice Clearance Thomas.

What is legendary is how rude, uncultured, uncouth and unlettered you are.

What has genital mutilation got to do with the filthy mouth you have developed over the years as demonstrated by your lack of respect and training

Namaster:
Dumb people who have ZERO knowledge of biology wants to control female libido by butchering vaginas.

Africans are generally dumb. But our politicians take it to a whole new level
.

The reason Nigeria will never get off it's butts is that no matter how much is stolen, there are people willing to defend rogues, even when it will not benefit them or their ethic group.

Beggar mentality.

Is this the new attraction to japa

One year rent may give both tenants and landlords time to devote to other problems as long as you have a roof over your head.

It also cut down on old monthly fights between tenants and landlords, clogging up the courts.

It may be different with rooming houses but boils down to the same thing.

What if those that cannot afford one, two or three bedrooms flat, take advantage of monthly initial low payments?

PROFORCE NIGERIAN COMPANY PRODUCES ARMOURED VEHICLES 🇳🇬

Nigeria is now officially the first African country to start exportation of Military Hardware to Europe. United Nations and other African countries like Tchad etc.
#PROFORCE has secured a deal to supply Armoured Vehicles and MRAPs to Belarus.

Africa should go into direct competition with Western and other developed countries, We have an added advantage because Africa has cheap labour, cheap natural resources and a ready market of about 1.3 billion people.

-Marka Danladi Kpokpo
@Political Affairs Int

Google is your friend nah.

Putinofrussia:

Evidence.

Nigeria needs exports of high class and profitable products to generate foreign income.

Profoce from Ogun State in Nigeria and South African companies are doing that.

How many companies generate foreign income in a big way in Nigeria?

As we get older and wiser, we realize no man is an island.

Me, Myself and I lost as we become matured.

So almost all manufacturers import raw materials to the Continent where every rich and developed country source their raw materials.

Only Amadioha, your god, knows who gave you guys warped mentality.

BlueRayDick:


For educational purposes , let me break it dow8n for u.

For ur information, almost all manufacturers import raw materials to use in the manufacture of their product and that's why Peter Obi is advising the government to tone down on the continued increase in dollar rate for customs duties or else prices of goods will keep going up .

Including importers of junk from the high seas, importer of used electronics, used clothes, chalk, toothpicks etc. which most of you are involved in.

Do o, you hia.

Any African reading your comment should cry. Your problems and reasons for imports are:

Chalk
Markers
Whiteboards
Eraser
Corn beef
Sardines
Window blinds
Roofing materials
Zinc from Cameron

Any African with your retarded mentality must sink or swim. A disgrace to humanity.

No wonder you were walking naked until recently.

Nice2023:
U are smart in the area of economics.

Let me educate u a bit.

Look around u and first ask yourself why should we import.

The marker in ur children schools are imported no company is producing it here,same with whiteboard.

Can Nigeria produce cornbeaf,even eraser to clean books na wahala.

The most annoying part,we can't even package sardine...rather we left our seafront for foreign Chinese vessels (to encroach )and clean up all our sardines in all the seas around the Atlantic oceans bordering us.

Window blinds we can't produce yet u need all this for home decorations. They are things we could produce if we have a good government.

Roofing materials are foreign including Cameroon zinc.

U need this foreign goods whether u like it not until u guys start moving from consumption to production just like Peter Obi kept saying it during the last elections.

Who were protesting from your side of the Niger when you had military and civilian Presidents.

Kudo to the Yoruba women and their people that were honest enough to protest against their son as President.

It has not stop night buses dumping people in Lagos on a daily basis for generation.

Nor has it stopped Talikawa trooping to the West.

What is your problem?

People are taking advantage of Nigerians even when local goods and services have nothing to do with dollar or euro.

Dollar is not Nigerian currency. Nigeria still has the cheapest food in Africa and labor is still relatively cheap. Why are importers asking Central Bank for dollars when most raw materials are abundant in Africa, if not for laundering?

So why are you increasing the cost of local food based on the rate of dollar to naira if not for share greed and avarice?

There is no doubt that minimum wage should be increased but the loudest cry are coming from professionals who think they are entitled to the same salaries as professionals abroad.

Until Nigerians understand that importers and their preference for exotic tastes is their enemies, this Country that relies on past management of the economy when restrictions on imports and currencies were what made Naira strong:

Will never get off its behind.

You can spot them from a distance by their illogical answers and spurting labels out to cover ignorance.

criuze:
We thought we've seen it all until this garbage picker grabs a smartphone

God help people in your neighborhood

You have a depleted thinking capacity

You must be typing from an asylum

So many k legs in our country because there are no safe guards, effective regulatory bodies, law, order and deterrent.

When crowds welcome convicted looters back into the country with parades, celebrate crooks and whataboutism, we deserve the crooks we get.

Poor people have to get their share by hook or crook

The spike of dollar against naira is self inflicted. How can any reasonable person think he can satisfy the hoarding and saving of foreign currencies when Nigerians yearn for foreign goods?

The fear of scarcity of dollars alone is enough to drive up the exchange.

Until the average and poor Nigerians realize that everything they want can be purchased in Naira, there will be no need to clamor for dollars.

People forget that Americans revolted against foreign cars and Covid-19 brought back manufacturing jobs and exports back to America.

Led by United Auto workers revolt, foreign cars manufacturers started building plants in the USA and you cannot tell the difference between cars made in Asia or America.

Nigeria actually killed it's budding car industry when Army changed from locally assembled Peugeot to imported Mercedes as official cars.

Covid-19 taught Americans that you do not leave small goods industries to Asia because of cheap labor. They started making simple masks at home instead of importing.

It so easy to personalize this issue because retail petty traders depend on imports.

But the big boys that ship big containers in come from all over Nigeria. A good example was when Buhari closed the Southern borders but left Northern borders wide open.

Do you realize that lace and rice are sent to neighboring countries, labelled and repacked as imports?

thunderfireyour:


so what is your president waiting for? why are you not angry with him for not doing it since that is Nigeria's problem? why are you angry with those who are doing their importing business legally? answer me, why are some people brainless in this country?

Here we go again. Smugglers/Importers that should be thrown into jail for sabotaging the economy for self interest.

criuze:
We thought we've seen it all until this garbage picker grabs a smartphone

God help people in your neighborhood

You have a depleted thinking capacity

You must be typing from an asylum

Do not let all Pseudo Economists fighting for Importers of everything including junks on high seas, used goods like electronics, clothes, exotic foods advocate for more by preaching Importers are not the problem.

You all know no country can import more than it exports and balance. The law of demand for import and lack of supply of export still holds by high school economics.

They export nothing and import everything since Shagari was warned about Open Market no country in the world practice.

They are willing to kill Nigeria. Importers of junks and exotic foods only need petty retailers to survive, pay no taxes and brag about the empty vessels of containers nobody can fill for export.

Declare war on these Importers if you want to restore the naira to the days when foreign money was illegal and people jailed for violations.

Tinubu has never got most of the Yoruba support. But haters that cooperated and join him to overthrow the first Lady Yoruba Speaker of the House now hate him.

The more they hate him, the more support he gets.

Melagros:
COMRADES, cheapest without security abi?

You are right, security is very important. But try living in the ghetto of USA or slums of Europe where gunshots are heard everyday and dead bodies common.

A Nigerian in a camp outside overcrowded refugee house in Mississauga Canada, sadly died like a goat in the cold.

There are P O S operators on city streets in Nigeria. If dem born anybody well, let them try and steal their cash. He would get instant justice.

But why can't we work hard like South Africans to liberate ourselves from oppressors instead of invading other countries trying to snatch their glory from the top?

Cowards!

IF FOREIGNERS SEE AFRICA AS THE BEST PLACE TO MAKE MONEY SO CAN YOU

Seriously? Yes. Every foreigner in Nigeria will tell you there is more money to be made in Nigeria than in their own countries. Otherwise they would not leave their comfortable countries to make bigger profit and live majestically in Africa. All they have to do is distinguish frausters from greedy local partners and hold their noses long enough until they drain Africa's Central Banks with the help of African enablers.

This is the reason Virgin/Nigeria Airways died when politicians demanded more shares than real investors. The only problem in Nigeria are those ready to defraud you. While waiting to sell your goods and get paid, they will tactically wait until you run out of the foreign money you brought knowing you will not check out without cash. They will only sell after you leave and pay you whatever they want. If you have a deep pocket, wait or establish local retail outlets.

Africa can never get out of the economic quadrum we put ourselves as mainly petty traders; buying and selling imported foreign goods and services while we export little finished products at our dictated prices. On the other hand, just ask Nigerians exporting finished goods and preserved food to Western countries dictate what to pay for their exports; how they laugh to their banks in U.S dollars and Euro. We must think about finished exports instead of obsessive indulgence in foreign used and junk goods.

While it is a fact that restrictions are intentionally placed on our finished goods in Western countries, Africans must go back to trading with one another more than we do with those outside Africa. Selling Naira cheap by round tripping will only compound and depreciate our African currencies. If you are big enough as a foreigner or Nigerian in Diaspora, you can launder money by getting allocation at the Central Bank as a business looking to buy materials for your business abroad or by legally paying schools fees abroad for education that are cheaply available at home. If those fail, go to black market.

Even some Nigerians in Diaspora make more money in Nigeria than they make at their bases abroad. They know Africans are obsessed with anything exotic and made abroad, usually of lower quality. What they do is look for foreign used goods like cars that move in the market and ship them in. Voila, they are ready to change Naira at black market and check out of the country. Each time we go to Asia to import cheap finished goods, we only drain the pockets of Africans when the same products could be copied and made at home.

These are people that saved for a year or more and bought their tickets on credit cards to come home and show off for about a month. These Diaspora Africans are not drug peddlers, 419ers or ritual mongers. Most of them work like a son-of-a-bitch to afford a little holiday. Some of them actually worked their last shift without sleeping before getting on the plane. But they are willing to spend their life savings to reconnect at home with relatives and friends.

Importation of used goods like electronics, clothes and cars flooded the Ports in the names of importers but little goods as exporters. It became a trend as African countries bleed most of their foreign reserves. Yet, whenever Africans in Diaspora, especially Nigerians, visit their country; they are rushed like millionaires from foreign currencies. Some of those who know better, watch Diaspora Nigerians brag until they are down to their last dollars or euros.

They know that they cannot wait for their flight out of the country, cannot even afford to miss their flight and pay penalty fees before they get stranded. Money or profit are made legally exploiting the most liberal and open markets, no country outside Africa allows. People used to go to jail for what were smuggled goods to keep Naira at par with British pounds and one and a half American dollars. Now foreign currencies are legal tender: with 100 U.S dollar bills more available on the streets of African countries' capitals than in American cities.

Only foolish foreigners would see Tax Free or Open markets and not take advantage. In order to glamorize and back open free markets in Africa, the International Monetary Fund created Structural Adjustments with the backing of Oxford and Harvard trained African economists. Even when they finally admitted at the Ghana conference that Structural Adjustments was a disaster that wiped out the middle class. They never relented; but encouraged multiple Devaluations. There are different ways to skin a cat.

We cannot fault those who think they are millionaires from their swagger after landing at the Airport. As soon as they step on the soil, their body and soul are revitalized. Nice to be home. They become whole again in a country where they are the majority instead of a disrespected minority, no matter the achievements attained where they are coming from.

Privileged Africans are fleeing foreign reserves left, right and center since patriotism, loyalty and conscientiousness come last while greed and indifference prevail. It is only Africans that will sell properties acquired over a lifetime or borrow a fortune that can start local business to buy visas and tickets that cannot sustain them for a month abroad! Otherwise, fortune that could have been invested at home to boost local production, create jobs and businesses.

The obsession with foreign salvation has its origin in destroying African values and culture by replacing them with foreign tastes. This makes it easier to control and manipulate people the way they want. Modern day economic sanction before naked force of mass destruction are always methods of domination. Just like the old Protectorate used to conquer the Zulu, Ashanti, Ijebu, Bini, Jaja of Opobo and other Africans dominated local authorities.

As these sanctions become effective, the average citizens flee their own countries for greener pastures into the land of those dominating them. In order to cheapen their labor into glorified slavery, they are controlled, selected and demonized at the border. They take any job they can, as long as they are protected from immigration officers.

Agadez Niger Republic where migrants from Libya were begging to return home met migrants defying their horror stories to go through even worse situations. Despite horror stories of dying in the desert, taken as slaves by Asma Boys, sold for body parts, rape and given the most inhumane treatment worse than animals, new slaves were not convinced by the face to face stories until they taste the worst punishment themselves. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/world/africa/agadez-niger-migration.html

Source:

I am glad more and more people are seeing through this fake economist MrVitalis propaganda of foreign salvation, imports, devaluation and Structural Adjustment.

All the loans given to empower individuals, foreign companies, Zimbabwe farmers, money launderers, political cronies and other connected people to power:

How much of it has grown the economy?

If anything, they all stifle infrastructure and economy. Just examine the costs of big and small projects in neighboring countries compared to Nigeria. Even roads, find out the cost of one kilometer, as if they are paved with gold, compared to anywhere in the world.

Their reason for inflated cost: they have to import what can be produced as finished goods in Nigeria. Yet, they are willing to export raw materials.

Why does a good exemplary project like this in some people home State turn into ethnic bashing from outsiders?

Before you say ha, they will be crying and calling on moderators. Leave people alone nah. Especially in the comfort of their own state.

Travel travel, you never travel. Who is better off in his own home but travel out? How many Londoners, New Yorkers or Lagosians pride themselves on travel-travel?

A begi, make we rest small nah

Lagos is within Reach!

It is very tough when we stare at death.

The amount to be spent on Air Ambulance could be used to bring the specialists and their equipment here on medical tourism, treating not only Akeredolu but others in the same situation.

May God save him.

Azikiwe said they were like a beautiful bride everyone wish for.

Who or what was he talking about?

Oh, Lagos!


_Professor Banji Akintoye_

*EARLY HISTORY OF LAGOS: A response to Oba of Benin, by Banji Akintoye*

_December 9, 2023_

On November 26, 2023, the Oba of Benin ignited a huge controversy about the early history of Lagos. He did so by making the claim that the Edo people of the Benin Kingdom were the founders of Lagos. 

Because the crown worn by the Oba of Benin originated from Ife, we must be respectful in our answer to him. 

The Oba, in an admirably polished speech, made the following statements – that “Lagos was founded by Benin”; that “Benin founded the nucleus of Lagos”; and  that “Benin founded the origin of Lagos”. 

Most respectfully, what we will do is to lay out for the Oba of Benin the most ascertained history of Lagos from the best of knowledge from the studies of African history, the contributions of archaeology, historical linguistics and written records to the knowledge of our history, and from the best and most sustained traditions of the Yoruba and Edo peoples. 

The peopling of the coastal forests and islands of the Lagos area occurred in the very ancient era when the Yoruba people, consisting of their many subgroups, occupied the large forest and coastal territory that is the Yoruba homeland. The Yoruba subgroup known as the Awori settled in the Lagos area in those very ancient times.

The Awori are one of the Yoruba sub-groups. One best known fact about the Yoruba nation is that it comprises many subgroups differentiated by dialects of their common Yoruba language. For avoidance of doubt about what we are describing here, we add that the main Yoruba subgroups are,  from the Yoruba territories near the Niger-Benue confluence generally southwards, the Oworo, Bunu, Owe, Iyagba, Jumu, and Ikiri (who together are now commonly called the Okun-Yoruba), the Igbomina, Oyo, Ibolo, Ijesa, Ekiti, Akoko, Owo, Ife, Owu, Egba, Ibarapa, Yewa, Ketu, Ondo, Ijebu, Ikale, Awori, Ilaje and Ishekiri (all today in Nigeria), the Sabe, Anago, Ohori, Popo and others (today in Benin Republic).

The Edo are not a Yoruba subgroup; they are an entirely different ethnic group, a separate people or nation – just as the Nupe, Ighala, Hausa, Ijaw, are separate peoples or nations. The Edo homeland and the homeland of the Awori subgroup of the Yoruba are not contiguous. Between the Edo territory and the Lagos territory of the Awori, there are the territories of the Yoruba subgroups Itsekiri, Owo, Ondo, Ilaje, Ikale, and Ijebu. 

According to the best knowledge of history from archaeology and historical linguistics, the different peoples of today’s Nigeria Middle Belt and South (Yoruba, Igbo, Nupe, Ighala, Gbagyi, Edo and others), evolved on the Middle Niger into distinct linguistic or ethnic groups (or nations) about 40,000 years ago. From there, these ethnic groups or nations spread out over millennia and occupied the territories that are now their homelands.   All the available evidence shows that each of these nations had settled into its present homeland by about 6000 BC, or about 8000 years ago.

All over the large forest country and coastlands that became theYoruba homeland in those ancient times, the earliest Yoruba people spread out in subgroup after subgroup. It is from those earliest times that the Awori, one of these Yoruba subgroups, settled in the coastlands and islands that are now known as Lagos – with the Ijebu subgroup to their immediate east and northeast, with the Ilaje and Ikale further to the east, and the Itsekiri still further to the east on the coast.

The Awori settled in a coastal forest area consisting of coastal forests and coastal islands. Their most inland group of settlements was located in Otta. Another group of their settlements lived in Isheri, a short distance south of Otta, on the lower banks of the Ogun River. Another group existed at what became known as Ebute Metta along a part of the lagoon coast. Another settled on Iddo Island. And another settled on the largest island of the area, the island later known as Lagos Island.  Finally, other Awori settlements settled along parts of the coast, all the way westwards to the area of modern Badagry, where Awori and Egun settlements interspersed.

In about the 9th century AD, a very important revolution started at Ife in central Yorubaland and, over the next six centuries (until about 1600 AD), swept over the whole of Yorubaland. The revolution resulted in the creation of unified kingdoms and towns all over Yorubaland. It transformed the ancient clumps of small and separate settlements into unified kingdoms and towns everywhere in Yorubaland. Starting from Ife in the 9th Century AD, this revolution continued until about the 16th Century AD, and turned Yorubaland into a country of many proud kingdoms and many rich towns – and made Yorubaland the most urbanised expanse of territory in the whole of Africa, and one of the most urbanised countries in the world. In the land of the Awori subgroup, this kingdom-creating revolution resulted in the creation of an Awori kingdom at Otta, another at Isheri and another on Lagos Island. Historians believe that these Awori kingdoms were created in the course of the 11th Century AD.

In about the 12th Century, according to the traditions of the Yoruba people and of the Edo people, the Edo people, neighbours of the Yoruba in the southeastern forests, sent to the Oba of Ifefor help. Their problem was that their Edo country, immediate neighbour to Yorubaland, was being disrupted by conflicts. And the help they wanted was that the Oba of Ife should help them to bring the Yoruba kind of political order to the Edo country. The Oba of Ife responded by sending one of his grandsons, a young warrior prince named Oranmiyan, to go and help the Edo. Oranmiyan went, fought and subdued several warring Edo groups, and created the Benin kingdom, a kingdom like the Ife kingdom. 

After ruling the Benin kingdom for some years, Oranmiyan decided that the kingdom should not be ruled by him, a non-Edo foreigner, but by an Edo man. Oranmiyan and the Edo elders therefore installed as the king of the kingdom a young son born to Oranmiyan by one of his Edo wives, a boy born and raised in the Edo culture. That young king, named Ewuare, is the progenitor of all the kings of the Benin kingdom till today. That is why Edo kings are today counted among the Yoruba kings or among the “sons of Oduduwa”.

The earliest non-Awori people to come trading with the Awori on the Awori coastal islands of Lagos, even long before the Awori had created any kingdom, were the Ilaje. According to the traditions of all the coastal Yoruba subgroups, the Ilaje were the earliest pioneers of trade along the Yoruba coast. Later, Ijebu traders, and later still the Ikale traders, and then the Egun and Anago traders from the west, came to trade with and among the Awori. This coastal trade existed long before the coming of the earliest European explorers and traders to the coast of West Africa in about the 1470s AD. 

Following the coming of European trade in about the 1470s and its expansion along the coast of West Africa, the European traders were attracted particularly to ports like Lagos, the Benin port of Gwato and the Itsekiri port town of Warri. The vibrant trade in European imported goods enhanced the trade and wealth of these port towns. Of the Yoruba kingdoms, the kingdom of Itsekiri on the southeastern coast had, for a start, the closest relationship with the early European traders, the Portuguese. The Itsekiri kingdom became a rich trading kingdom and, culturally, it imbibed some European religion and culture, established close diplomatic relations with Portugal for some time, and grew into a rich and elegant kingdom.  

But the location of the Itsekiri kingdom was much less accessible to European traders than the port of the Benin kingdom. Therefore, most of the European trade along the Yoruba coast went to the Benin port. Until about the 1550s, the port of the Benin coast controlled most of the coastal trade and became the source of most imported goods going into the eastern parts of the Yoruba interior. As a result, the Benin kingdom became, for about a century, the richest and most powerful kingdom on the West African coast, and the most memorable West African kingdom among European traders.

In those early years of the European coastal trade, the port of Lagos was known to, and desired by, the European traders, but reaching it with their bigger boats from the sea was made difficult by sand bars along the entry to the Lagos port. However, over time, the European boats gradually mastered this difficulty and, by the 1550s, Lagos was attracting increasingly large shares of the European trade along the coast. As the natural port to the extensive and heavily urbanised Yoruba country in the interior, Lagos simply blossomed into a massive commercial centre from about the 1550s. Nearly all European traders along the West African coast traded in Lagos. This growing commercial importance of Lagos attracted to Lagos more and more indigenous traders from all over the West African coast – the Ilaje, Ijebu, Ikale and Itsekiri, who had traditionally traded to Lagos, and now Edo traders from the Benin kingdom, and Ijaw traders, and traders from the Yoruba interior kingdoms, and traders from the far western coasts all the way to what was called the Upper Guinea Coast in the European records. Lagos was on its way to becoming the greatest cosmopolitan center in West Africa. 

By about the 1580s, Lagos had become the greatest commercial centre on the coast of West Africa, and Its trade with the European traders had totally surpassed that of the Benin kingdom. Very many Edo traders were coming to trade in Lagos, and Lagos became very famous in Benin. Benin traders to Lagos became like a special class of people in Benin society. 

The rulers of the Benin kingdom responded to this by embarking on an attempt to seize, control and possess the booming trade of Lagos. Fortunately, we have some written records by European traders who were trading in Lagos in these years. The Oba of Benin sent a considerable military force to Lagos. In 1603, A German trader trading in Lagos wrote in his notes that Lagos had become like a Benin military camp. The background to this is that a succession dispute was going on between two princes of the Awori kingdom of Lagos, and the Benin decided to support one of the princes to win the throne and thereby turn the Awori kingdom of Lagos into a vassal of the Benin kingdom. 

The Benin forces were successful for some time and the prince supported by them became considerably stronger than his rival. But the fighting was not yet over. In the further fighting, the commander of the Benin forces was killed. The near-victorious prince, named Asipa in most traditions, then decided to further seal his relationship with the Benin by offering to lead the group that was taking the body of the dead Benin commander to Benin. In Benin, this Awori prince met the Oba of Benin, and the Oba of Benin declared him his adopted son. Some traditions have it that Asipa also married a Benin wife in Benin. 

Asipa returned home into continued opposition and, in the midst of serious contention, he was crowned Oba of Lagos. As the opposition to him never relented, he was forced to lean and harp continually on his Benin support. Some traditions have it that, to show support for this embattled Oba of Lagos, the Oba of Benin paid a brief visit to Lagos in these years. In the midst of all this, this Oba of Lagos and his leading Awori supporters started the tradition that he was a prince from Benin, a descendant of the Obas of Benin. 

This is the origin of the tradition that claims a Benin origin for the Obas of Lagos, the tradition that some Lagos families still hold to today, the tradition that the current Oba of Lagos has occasionally been heard to affirm – the tradition that the Oba of Benin proudly proclaimed during his visit to Lagos on November 26, 2023. 

But the Benin kingdom never succeeded in capturing and controlling Lagos or its bouncing trade. In fact, as the commerce of Lagos flourished more and more bountifully and Lagos developed into the great emporium in West Africa in the course of the centuries after 1600, the trade of Benin declined sharply and relentlessly. Other problems added to the weaknesses of the Benin kingdom in these centuries – resulting in the fact that the Benin kingdom never recovered but went on declining until it was conquered by the British in 1897. 

The Lagos kingdom had its own troubles too – the troubles emanating from the royal politics of the kingdom’s princes. But, in the roaring commercial and economic prosperity of Lagos, the politics of the royal princes became hardly more than side shows. The troubles of the Asipa era ended with his passing in about 1630, and, according to the traditions, less troublesome successions prevailed thereafter for the next two centuries. 

From about the 1830s, some liberated former slaves returning from the Americas began to settle in Lagos, bringing greatly transformational influences with them. In the course of the 1840s, a great new factor came – namely, the missionaries of various Christian denominations. Meanwhile, the commerce had become so great that the various European countries on the island were getting into conflicts with one another over shares in the trade; and when a succession dispute erupted between two princes in 1851, one of the European countries, the British, found it worthwhile to intervene with great force in it and support one prince against the other, in order to push British interests to the forefront on the island. 

The coming British era saw enormous transformations, especially Western education, the emergence in Lagos of large numbers of Yoruba university graduates, the beginning of British institutions, and the emergence of a Movement of Yoruba Cultural Nationalism. In short, for the next two centuries and more after Asipa’s time, Lagos flew into high skies of prosperity and greatness that the Benin kingdom could not even dream of.

To summarise then, it is indisputable that the Awori are a subgroup of the Yoruba nation, that they are not descendants of the Edo of Benin, that they were the earliest settlers on LagosIsland and its neighbouring forests, that their early 17th century Oba who chose, or who was forced, to describe himself as a prince from Benin was an Awori prince and not an Edo prince.

I have received calls or messages from some Yoruba persons who have told me that they are disturbed by the November 26 statements by the Oba of Benin about the origins of the Lagos kingdom. I don’t think that any Yoruba person should be disturbed by any claims or insinuations about any part of our Yoruba nation. It is natural for people to desire to take and own that which they find beautiful, attractive or successful. In spite of our Yoruba nation’s intensive suffering from Nigeria’s abominably poor governance, state-generated poverty and state-promoted insecurity, for over one century, we Yoruba are still the most prestigious Black nation in the world, and our homeland is still the most desirable to all Nigerian peoples. The Oba of Benin’s November 26 statements about the origins of Lagos are totally false, but we Yoruba must never cease respecting and honouring the Obas of Benin, since they belong to a significant strand of our nation’s main roots.

_*Prof. Akintoye is a Yoruba Leader and Founder of Ilana Omo Oodua.*_

Oodua Voice March 12, 2018 at 8:13 AM

Here's the submission of Farouk Martins Aresa:

It is too late for all kinds of novel origins of Lagos or Awori, the real owners of Lagos. It is sad and embarrassing that the Oba of Lagos did not know that he is a descendant of a father from Ilesha. Shame! Most historians know that Ashipa was the first Oba of Lagos as taught from old schools days. Ashipa title is still common throughout Yoruba and Bini land. The same is true of Ado as his son indicating special relationship between Yoruba and Bini origin of the OBA title.

In order to understand the controversies surrounding the origin of Oba of Bini, one has to understand that each time an Oba is crowned; he has to renew his palace lease from Ogiamien Ode. Ogiamien, the son of the soil leased his own land to Oba, the stranger. This treatment as an outsider made the children of Eweka crave acceptance in a strange land by a novel theory.

The real problem started because Eweka as Yoruba, became Oba only on a condition that he has to lease the land each time at coronation before ascending Bini throne. Ekaledera was used as novel theory to claim a relationship to an Ogiso father. The mischief-makers try to claim the father of Oranmiyan was the lost son of Ogiso in order to trivialize that rite of passage Ogiamen administered. If Oba were a son of Ekaledera he wouldn't rent from Ogiamen. He no be we-we!

Yoruba artifacts are much older, Iwo Eleru dated far back to 10,000 B.C! Ile-Ife moved few times from the North of Bini before present location East of Bini: "according to Prof. Fela Sowande, Ile Ife is not the Ife to which Yoruba oral traditions refer. Also in the words of Professor Wande Abimbola, the seven sites of Ife mentioned by Ifa are Ife Oodaye, the first and possibly the original one, Ife Nleere, Ife Ooyelagbomoro, Ife Wara, Otu Ife, Ife Oore and Ife Oojo'."

See Prof. Thurstan Shaw on radiocarbon dating. Carbon dating indicated Oba-Ogiso relationship at Ife burial ground went as far back as 560AD, that is even before arrival of Oranmiyan in Bini. It is undisputed that Ogiso fell from grace after a brutal order killed a pregnant woman. The people revolted against me him with votes of no confidence. The people of Ogodimiogo

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