₦airaland Forum

Ordinarily there is no reason why a sane person should believe Jesus died for them or that Mohammed is the last prophet but people do not only believe, they also hate on and attack those who do not. So what can we put it down to if not hypnotism and demon possession since such an attitude is obviousy not from the creator God who made common sense.

People died for people, went to war and died for their people. Col Fajuyi for instance died for Yoruba people when he was killed along with General Ironsi. During the various Yoruba wars in the past, many staked their lives and lost it for their people. There are thousands of heroes who died for their people, so that their people can be free and human civilization can continue advancing. The name of Jesus is a terrible insult to their legacy.

Jesus was a criminal who broke Jewish blasphemy laws as did Mohammed and was subsequently arrested and done away with by the Jews. A kind of law we need today to maintain sanity in our world. A simple law saying 'No man must be found going about saying he is something other people can not become. That is a megalomaniac, a mentally deranged man or a demon possessed person.

The US is blamed for the trans atlantic slave trade whereas the European nations that really profitted from the slave trade are Portugal and Spain. The West African nation that most profitted from the transatlantic slave trade was Oyo. A fact which embittered the Muslim nations that bordered Oyo to the North in West Africa and the selling of Muslims into slavery by the Oyo was a main catalyst for the Fulani jihad.

The US is accused of monetary imperialism via the IMF and World bank but the policies they propose are the ones they and other industrialized nations use themselves. It may not be the only way but any way you choose will bring good results if you are focused, honest, hardworking and etc and if you are a nation dependent on or tied to income tax for government revenue. So there are African American majority nations in the Americas with more than double the average global per cabita income of around USD 10000 pa because they are organised while there are others like Haiti whose per capita income is much less than half the global average.


The US is blamed for having military bases all over the world which many say is for the purpose of imposing themselves on others. While lazy and impotent countries who may be said to be cursed with inept and visionless leadership whine and complain, visionary leaders in other nations seize the opportunity of the atmosphere of peace to develop and grow while having a very minimal budget provision for the defense of their sovereignty as used to be the case in the past. Smart nations like this include Singapore, South Korea, Norway, Malaysia and a host of other prosperous nations. In the past, defending a nation's sovereignty was the main job of its government. For instance, during the middle ages, the men of England were divided into two. One half to fight Vikings raiders and one half to farm. It was like that all over the world before pseudo nations under UN cover emerged. If the US military bases are vacated, Indians who have a defense budget more than double the size of the whole Nigerian budget may feel obliged to fill the gap. Iran will occupy Iraq and a Sunni-Shiite war might break out within months with nukes being used. The Chinese may feel obliged to back the Shiites because of Iran while Pakistani nukes are Sunni nukes. Africa, Arabia and parts of Asia will be partitioned between China and India immediately if Russia hands off. Only Iran and maybe Turkey will be given a measure of respect in the Mediterranean.


They say Saddam Hussein and the Taliban should not have been toppled. Meaning a Dictator who answers to no one, does not obey any court, that has killed hundreds of thousands should be able to say he will not allow inspections for nukes. Everybody should be answerable to some people. No one is an island. So nobody should be allowed to take such a stand that can compromise global security. Also, Afghanistan under the Taliban was the headquarters of Al qaeda, where Osama bin Laden was holed up, a place where the CIA could not access. The place was under Sharia law while the US is opened up. So they had to be toppled.
No nation will be allowed to be a sanctuary or headquarters for renegade Muslims.


They say Ghadaffi should not have been removed but the Arab spring that spread to Libya was real and Col Ghadafi was ready to kill any number of the around 8 million Libyans to stop it. It means nothing for such governments to kill its people since people are never important to such governmemts like Libya and Nigeria whose government revenue are not from income taxes. So the Libyan government under Ghadaffi mobilized the Airforce to bomb out Libyans in Libyan cities. If only a few Libyans are left, its ok for the government, once the oil wells are secured and the government is in place. So the NATO imposed a no fly zone on Libya to prevent the intended carnage and Col Ghadafi was later killed by Libyans. Libya is now in a mess but that is the fault of Libyans. Not that of the US. Norway produces as much oil and they are ok. The US is not Libya's Daddy or Mummy.

What applied to Libya applies to Syria as well. The bottom line is that the people must be armed in case there is the need for a struggle with the government and only fascist governments are afraid of an armed citizenry. If you are a landlord, buy a good automatic weapon.


As the saying goes 'A ngba oromodie lowo iku, oni won o je ki oun lo si atan lo je' meaning. While trying to save a chick from imminent death at the hands of preying hawks, the chick complains bitterly that it is being prevented from going to scavenge at the refuse dump!' Not knowing that hawks are waiting there. So do not be going about blaming the US, IMF, world bank and etc for the misfortunes you brought upon yourselves as a third world nation because doing that betrays a lack of insight, hindsight and foresight. A people with dignity, pride, resilience who believe they are not sub humans will find a way against all odds to be economically at par with their fellow humans as have done the Singaporeans, Japanese, South Koreans and etc.


If you can not develop your place, it is a sign of inferiority complex. Period.

A government whose revenue is dependent on income tax can never see its revenue reduce by 70 percent within a year. That can not be possible unless there is an epidemic that killed 70 percent of the population but when the budget is financed by the sales of natural resources, that can be the case. So it can be clearly seen that the global society needs a treaty that mandates all governments to depend only on income tax. Such a consensus will do well to promote economic stability all over the globe.

This is the facebook version of this post with links to references in the comments.



https://mobile.facebook.com/notes/akin-lawanson/the-story-of-ilorin/10153331502261152/?refid=17&ref=pymk&_ft_=top_level_post_id.10153331502261152%3Atl_objid.10153331502261152%3Athid.680055176%3A306061129499414%3A51%3A0%3A1462085999%3A2628390298208100829

Who converted the ancestors of the Fulani Gida or town Fulani, people like Othman Dan Fodio and etc to Islam? The answer is Yoruba, Hausa, Bariba, Kanuri and etc Muslims. I believe this will come as a shock to people who see themselves as scholars.

Money is one of the most ingenious inventions of man, if not the most ingenious so far. It is the most important facilitator of division of labour. In a very advanced human civilization, labour is infinitely divided and hundreds if not thousands of people have to contribute daily to the enrichment of the daily life of an individual and all must be compensated in some way. If a farmer wants to buy clothes for instance, he can not pay for the clothes with farm produce, since the clothes seller may already have the produce the farmer is placing on offer, so, money was invented to represent value. Money is a tool to facilitate trade and division of labour and therefore should never be seen as property in itself. My daily life is enriched by thousands of people. Transporters, Landlord, phone companies, satellite companies, pay tv companies, internet companies, tailors, traffic wardens, shoe makers, soldiers, UN, online blog operators, face book people, Police, CIA people and etc. Thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people, all of whom have one contribution or the other to my daily life. It is only made possible because money was invented to facilitate the division of labour. If I were a member of a tribe in the Amazon forest in Brazil or a bush man in the Kalahari desert of South Africa, I would not need money and my life would subsequently not be as rich as it is today, though I might be happier. I would not be able to communicate with someone on the opposite side of the globe or access stuff on the internet and etc.

Having thus established that money is invaluable for an advanced human civilization to keep thriving, we now come to the question of which is the best form of money? We must keep in mind that money should not be seen as an end in itself but as something fluid that must never be hoarded, only used as a tool to facilitate trade and division of labour. It does not need to be valuable and should in fact not be valuable in itself but merely agreed upon by consensus to be used as a store of value.

So I will say money should be a substance agreed upon to be used by all as a store of value for the purpose of facilitating trade and division of labour to make life richer. This agreed upon store of value should not be valuable in itself and should preferably not be useful for any other purpose. The introduction of new money should not be at a runaway rate and should not be monopolized by anyone or group. Government or individual.

The most widespread money ever used by different human cultures across the globe is the cowry shell and it fits the definition above. Among the Yoruba, the custodian of Aje (money) is the Orisa Olokun or Olu Okun. Owner of the seas from whose belly cowry shells come from. Not some Central banks who inflate currencies anyhow. The Yoruba used to use Central bank money in the past in the form of Akun beads and etc produced by the Yoruba, then the Oyo traded in gold with the Malians, Arabs and etc.

Later in the modern post industrial revolution era, we have the gold standard by which currencies are backed by gold. A dollar used to be a gold certificate, then silver certificate but nowadays, it is no certificate as it has been inflated away just like other currencies. In the past, all issued currencies were backed with precious metals in bank vaults. You deposit your gold with the bank of London and get issued a certificate saying you have so, so amount of gold with that bank and traders will take the certificate from you in lieu of gold but nowadays, banks issue currency of a million gold tonnes while having 50 thousand tonnes of gold in stock. However, central banks across the world still hoard gold and other precious metals as a capital base and they continue driving the price up as a result. So, gold mining activities are still on to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per annum. This demand for gold for the purpose of hoarding, skyrockets the price of gold.

What the world needs nowadays in my view is to singularise its currency by inflating all currencies uniformly or at agreed rates determined by consensus. This maybe necessary as population and economic growth rates are not equal across board. Once such a consensus is reached, the obsession of central banks with gold will end and gold will be used only for jewelries and industrial purposes leading to a price fall since the Central banks will cause a glut by offloading their vaults to the market. Gold mining activities will be down for some time after that.

There was a human civilization that came to Earth, landing in South Africa to mine gold around 200 thousand years ago, they must have moved thousands of tonnes for their central banks to store in vaults, those gold worshippers. That is the energy sapping path we are following with our current monetary system and I daresay it is not the right path as gold is not food that we need to eat or water that we can not do without. We have no reasons to be slaves to gold.

Many people say they are not perfect and that nobody is perfect for them to have an excuse to rob and kill other people while some others have no definition for perfect yet say they are not it because they look out for themselves first. Everybody should look out for themselves first and that does not make anyone not perfect. To me, when you stop being perfect is when you stop using the golden rule when dealing with others. If you dont have a definition for perfect, do not say you are not it because it means a lot, as so many criminals are around looking for just that encouragement to validate their behaviour.
An adult must be perfect.

Ilorin is a huge city because of the influx of Muslims from Yoruba cities of the Oyo, Ijesha, Igbomina and etc. Some of my ancestors must have sought refuge there in the past and their descendants are now Ilorin because my paternal ancestors were Muslims and Ijesha Muslims relocated to Ilorin in huge numbers.

It started when the Alaafin Aole became despotic. He asked his Aare Ona Kakanfo to attack a certain town because the Baale of that town once caught and flogged him when he was a young prince dealing in slaves. Later, on becoming the Alaafin, he decided to punish the Baale, so he let the Aare Ona Kakanfo loose on the town as an obligatory expedition for Aare Afonja who was the Kakanfo. Afonja found out that the town in question is the origin of the first Kakanfo and that one had placed a curse on any Kakanfo that attacks the town. It led to bad blood between the Alaafin and the Aare ona Kakanfo. Afonja himself was a prince who contested for the throne but lost to later become the Kakanfo. He chose Ilorin as his headquarters as the Kakanfo does not stay in the capital. The rivalry between the Kakanfo and the Alaafin heightened. It came to a head when the Basorun, head of the Oyomesi council in Oyo ile, the Onikoyi, head of the royal guards and the Aare ona Kakanfo Afonja joined forces against the Alaafin and surrounded the capital. Thus cornered, the Alaafin had no choice than to commit suicide, making the second time the imperial army would be used to achieve such an aim. The first time was when a civil war broke out between the supporters of Alaafin Abiodun and that of Bashorun Gaa when the latter tried to remove Alaafin Abiodun as the fifth Alaafin he would remove, it is said that Alaafin Abiodun would have been removed like the four others before him if the Aare Ona Kakanfo Oyabi had not marched on the capital to save the Oba, leading to the routing of Gaa.

In thesame way, the Onikoyi, Basorun and the Aare Ona Kakanfo surrounded Oyo ile and Alaafin Aole had to commit suicide but not before placing the legendary Aole curse on his detractors.

Aare Ona kakanfo Afonja retired to Ilorin and placed the Igbomina and Osun division under tribute. He asked a Fulani onion merchant and Islamic preacher to relocate to ogbomosho with him and that one obliged. Later as is normal with Muslims, he started to become uncontrollable, so the Aare asked him to leave but his students who were mainly Yoruba Muslims refused and turned it into a street fight in which the Aare was slain, the other Yoruba did not come to his support as he himself had withdrawn support to the Alaafin but the Yoruba turned against Muslims across the land which led to Muslims fleeing in large numbers to Ilorin, swelling the city’s population including royal Muslims and commoners. From there they ganged up and started planning jihads with support from Sokoto. All initial efforts of Sokoto with the subdued Nupe to compromise the Yoruba and Bariba failed, their successes started when Yoruba Muslims established a state in Ilorin. it was Ilorin that burned down the Old Oyo ile.

Thus Alaafin Aole lost out in the struggle with Aare Afonja but Ilorin did not become fully independent until after more than 30 years after three Alaafins during the reign of Alaafin Majotu. The Dahomey declared independence from Oyo when the Alaafin refused their terms in 1826 and defeated an Oyo punitive force, the Egba declared independence and etc. It was the season and the Ilorin declared independence as well as a Muslim city just like Iwo in Osun state was once. Ilorin once surrounded Oyo ile but did not destroy the city. They sent to Sokoto for a flag but were not accomodated at first since it was not a Fulani but a Yoruba jihad. Later the Fulani jihadists started cooperating with them. It was Ilorin in alliance with the Fulani that burnt down Old Oyo known as Katunga, then they pushed down South into Ijesha territory led by one Mallam Abdulsalam but were stopped in their tracks in the Pole wars which means Down! in the Ijesha dialect.

After the establishment of Ibadan, Ijaiye and Ogbomosho and after the rise of Ibadan, Ilorin was checked. Ibadan defeated them in Osogbo, drove them back and tried to take Ilorin but the Aare Ona Kakanfo Edun of Gbongan was said to have messed it up. Ilorin was not taken but were later allied with Ibadan then later the Fulani allied with the Ijesha via Ilorin during the Kiriji war.

So as the other Yoruba groups fought for their independence from Oyo, Ilorin did same and they were not the only one to adopt Islam, Iwo also did but allied with Ibadan throughout the Kiriji war while Ilorin allied with both parties at different times. North of Ilorin in Niger state are Yoruba towns with Obas and they are surrounded by the Igbomina. So even if Ilorin will like to be separate from the Yoruba, their land will be completely surrounded by other Yoruba and Bariba.

But actually when the British arrived in Ilorin in the 1890s, the chief who signed the protection agreement with them was a Mallam, the Balogun Ajikobi, a descendant of Alaafin Abiodun. However after parts of Yoruba land were put in the North arbitrarily, the NPC manipulated things to appoint another person as Ilorin chief, a Yoruba man with recognised Hausa and not Fulani ancestry. It must be noted that all Ilorin people are Yoruba and the NPC did not love anyone more than the other but they had to do something to spite the Yoruba who were their opponents as the APC under President Buhari did when they stopped Mr James Faleke from becoming Kogi governor. Not that the Ebira were favoured.
The last Afonja descendant to be Oba in Ilorin was Oba Moma who committed suicide in 1895 after he realised that his Baloguns were going to upend him for trying to smoothen relations with Ibadan and Britain. He set his palace on fire and died together with his slave, Ogundojere. So the Afonja family had returned to reckoning as at 1895. The British saw the last Afonja descendant as a great man and ally, so a WW 1 Gun carrier was named after him. However, with him removed from the scene, the onus fell on the Balogun Ajikobi, a descendant of the Alaafin Abiodun to put Ilorin under British protection, not on the Balogun Fulani or Balogun Gambari whom the Ilorin people saw as not adequately representative of them to sign the protection agreement on their behalf.
The principal chiefs in Ilorin are the Balogun Ajikobi, Magaji Aare, Balogun Gambari, Balogun Alanamu, Balogun Fulani, and Baba Isale , all of whom without exception are ethnic Yorubas.

However, in Ilorin, Lagos, Ibadan, Ilesha and etc, there are families who claim descent from Hausa, Bariba, Tapa, Fulani and etc. Just like in Kano, you have whole quarters claiming descent from Yoruba. That is all a result of centuries of trading with and dealing with each other and it does not change the ethnic affiliation of those individuals from that of their primary constituency.


What the Ajikobi family need to do now is to go to court to retrieve their right to produce Ilorin chiefs. Try and lose first. People who do not try have already lost.

Hausa Sarkis were deposed on their land by Fulanis. So installing a Yoruba as Emir of Ilorin because of his part Hausa ancestry does not add up. It is better to restore the Ajikobi despite that it is still Ilorin Afonja.
Afonja was not a traitor, he did in the Northern parts of the empire what the Ibadan later did in the South and what Dahomey did on the coast.

One of the post Afonja ruler of Ilorin was Oba Moma who was from Idi Ape from the Magaji Aare family. He wanted to ally with the British and Ibadan but committed suicide when he was frustrateed by the baloguns, Ajikobi, Gambari and Alanamu in 1895. He and his slave, Ogundolure or something like that. The person who signed the protection agreement with the British was Balogun Ajikobi, a descendant of Alaafin Abiodun. The British respected Oba Moma, saw him as a great man and as a result of that they named a World War one gun carrier after him. Oba Moma Ilorin WW1 gun carrier.

Oba Moma of the Afonja wanted to ally with the British and Ibadan but committed suicide at the end. Balogun Ajikobi signed the protection agreement. Who is then the rightful ruler? That was the debate that the Northern region capitalised on to promote the Sulu Gambari family as Emir. The Sulu Gambari are not Fulani but Hausa descent as the name shows but as the Balogun Fulani stood no chance of being accepted as Emir despite being Yoruba as well though of part Fulani ancestry, the Northern government chose a Gambari descendant to be chief to spite their Yoruba opponents. When Gov Lawal, a member of Afonja became governor, he raised the Magaji Aare to first class, a move reversed by Gov Saraki while the Balogun Ajikobi is brandishing the protection agreement in his custody.

Solution? The Yoruba know Ilorin as Ilorin Afonja but the protection agreement is with the Ajikobi family. So the Ajikobi have more claims. Out of the 6 principal chiefs in Ilorin, 4 are paternally from Yoruba while all are ethnically Yoruba, the masses are 99 percent Yoruba like other Yoruba cities.

The Ajikobi should go to court while the Aare family should be compensated in some way.

We dont need a conference as Yoruba, we need out of Nigeria with our lands and people and the banning of Islam and Christianity on our lands.

We dont need the help of Igbos which is conditioned on making Lagos a no man's land and the present leadership of the Yoruba are conceding this by going to the National assembly to ask for a special status for Lagos. This is sad.

I urge all reasonable Yoruba persons to start agitating for the pull out of our people and lands from Nigeria along with the Bariba who are traditionally allied to the Yoruba, then we propose a merger with Benin and Togo, then delineate the resulting giant of Africa into states.

We need the help of Britain, US, China, Russia, India and all the good people of the world not that of Igbos or Hausas. Nigeria is a failed experiment.

Let Igbos, Hausas and others go and arrange themselves without Yoruba help, the mudslinging and bad mouthing is sad. If Yoruba need help, they know who to ask, not Igbos, Hausas and etc who can not even help themselves.

As for some renegade Ilorin Muslims who may want to be against such an arrangement, you are totally encircled by Jebba, Igbomina, Ibolo, Ekiti and etc who are all Yoruba towns with Obas, then the Bariba. So how possible is it to say you want to prove stubborn? So far it is not possible to find an Ijesha town in the NW, it is also not possible to have a Fulani or Hausa town on the spot where Ilorin is. When somebody is named Gambari, Tapa and etc that person is Yoruba because only Yoruba use those nomenclatures.

Go to Kano, you have hundreds of thousands of indigenes claiming descent from the Yoruba quarters of the city. So no place in the world is 100 percent of anything.

YourNemesis:
There will NOT be any Ijaw state in the West. They wanted to have indigenous Ilaje (Ondo), Bini (Edo) and Itsekiri (Delta) lands on which they are not indigenous to, carved out to become an imaginary "toru ebe state". None of the aforementioned tribes will allow it..... Ijaws are like the marine nomads, and that is why they are currently at loggerheads with every single ethnic group in the niger delta, because they were always moving from place to place.

I know there are Ijaw indigenes in Ondo and probably Edo creeks, surely in Delta creeks in Warri too but it is Lagos I have never heard of. Ijaws are in control of Bayelsa and some Rivers state towns, if Nigeria is broken up, they will have a fairly large population to manage in those places while there will also be indigenous Ijaw in other places as well. The Ijaw country will also contain non Ijaws. It will be a good deal for them in my opinion.

Even for us the Yoruba of Nigeria, we are not speaking our original language but we are all Ife people and the language of Ife people has changed severally over thousands of years. In Akoko area we have languages that are not Yoruba language at all but they are still Ife Ooyelagbo people.


The people of Bonny in Rivers Nigeria are Igbo speaking Ijaw people. So if the Ewe say they are Ife Ooyelagbo people, no one should try to take it from them. Language is not determinant, even DNA is not the determinant. Heritage is the determinant. Do not confuse them into abandoning their heritage. It does not change them from being Ghanaians.


In any case, we Ife people see all humans as Ife people but many have cut the ties. If the Ewe people have not cut the ties, please let them be. That is my humble opinion.

Ethiopia is a more serious country with more serious leadership than Nigeria. If their cities have constant power, then they are better in that respect as Nigerian cities do not have that but I believe poverty may be more rampant in Ethiopia than Nigeria. As an Ethiopian that you are, please start pushing for the organisation of your country. A taxable minimum wage must be introduced and working under the table must become illegal, in that way government revenue will unavoidably increase by multiple folds. Government will have a lot of disposable cash which they will use to intervene in the economy by assisting entrepreneurs heading Ethiopian corporations, the economy will develop faster. That was the Japanese approach. The first step is income tax.

Better start the crusade in your country as I am doing in Nigeria.

Ednite:
I just wanna know what relation Ethiopia have with yoruba, igbo and biafra. I've never heard of these names before i join this forum. But it seems like every body knows some thing cuz when i search about Ethiopia, i can say i always get these words mentioned together. I need the answer

No relationship except in today's global world. Apart from the fact that we Yoruba or Ife people see ourselves as the first human sedentary culture since the last worldwide one called Ife Oodaye was destroyed over ten thousand years ago. So we insist according to our theology that Ife Ooyelagbo is the mother to all subsequent sedentary cultures on Earth today.

But Egypt is seen as most prominent of the old cultures despite that Ethiopia is believed to be older. We Ife people, the Yoruba see ourselves as the oldest though we have no pyramids of Egypt or churches carved in stone of Ethiopia to show for it.

I read somewhere that Ijaws in Lagos, Edo and Ondo be given not one but one or two states. I know there must be Ijaw towns and villages in Ondo mainly in the creeks but are there any Ijaw towns in Lagos? I have never heard of any. The only two groups I know of in Lagos are Yoruba and Egun. Please which local government has Ijaw majority villages in Lagos?

The Ilaje are riverrine Yoruba just like Ijaw. They are in the Ondo creeks together with the Ijaw with the occupation of fishing and farming but other Yoruba are not marine people.

pazienza:
I am not an Ikwerre,so i will leave that battle of whether Ph is ikwerreland and by extension igboland to the ikwerre people,i want to believe that like the ndoki people,who maintained the igbo border at okoloma,and the anioma whose bravery shielded us from bini expansionism and kept the boundary at agbor,will be able to maintain our southern boundary.

But then again, this Ph issue had long been resolved in the thread "the true extent of igboland".

In the eventuality of the fall of nigeria,i wonder the chance the ijaw nation of just over 5million(this is me being generous),stands against the igbo of over 30million in the fight for Ph,considering that you guys will equally be fighting with the itsekiri for the soul of warri,and with the bini for gelegele.

Does ijaw have what it takes to sustain a battle at three fronts against formidable and fierce opponents like the igbo,itsekiri and the bini's?

Bro,you better pray that Nigeria don't disintegrate,cos if that happens,ijaw will get burnt.

You cant be too sure. People in the Niger Delta have been stockpiling arms and I dont believe Igbos can trample over them the way you said.

It is sad that Igbos are newcomers to nation building. That is the problem and it is funny that they are now more aggressive than others. Take for example Modakeke and Ife, they fight and Modakeke have their own chief who is the Ogunsua, whenever he is meeting the Ooni he defers to him, despite that he is older than the late Oba Sijuade, he may then leave to go and start a fight later but they acknowledge that Modakeke are on Ife land. Thesame is the case with the Arogbo Ijaw on Ugbo land. Arogbo is a Yoruba word. On that land, the King of Ugbo is the overall chief while the Ijaw chiefs are under him. Nigeria can not change that.

That is not the case with Eastern Ijaw because Igbos had no nation in the 19th century and were in no position to be granting people land. We might also say Arochukwu was the only Igbo people involved in nation building having a capital and administration but the Opobos were not Arochukwu in identity, they were Ijaw in identity but they related with Arochukwu. So on what basis will Igbos say Ijaws must be under them as a minority? On the basis of the Eastern region created by the British that the IPOB are always abusing? It does not add up. Eastern region, West, North, Biafra and etc are all defunct and Nigeria must follow suit.

Isnt Opobo, Andoni, contiguous with Bayelsa? Then Ijaws still have people in Delta. Let people take who they can take and leave the rest. There is some advantage in having your people in other places as well. Take Igala for example, they are scattered in Kogi, Delta and Anambra. How can they manage to get all their people together?

olaitoro:
slaves are called osu, oru, or ohu in Igboland depending on dialect; thus name like nwaosu or nwosu 'might' have been used to denote offspring of slave in the olden days.

Generally the concept of osu is almost dead in Igboland cause one can hardly see or identify who is an osu/slave or not.

Nwosu presently does not denote slave as the early missionary made use of that term osu in evangelism thereby prompted some early converts to adopt that osu proudly making it a positive term.

Eg of the names; osuagwu, osuala, osuchukwu, nwosu, osueke etc.

I am telling you what an elderly person told me and it is a known fact that when Yoruba land was in turmoil, some Yoruba were sold as slaves to Igbos who bought them to use for farm work in their relatively calm region by that time.

Then slaves are not called Osu but Oru in Igbo language sounding similar to the Yoruba Eru meaning thesame thing. Osu is not slave but outcast. There is a difference.

People should inculcate the habit of maintaining civillity in discussions of all kinds. You dont have to insult people to make a point.

olaitoro:
for the bolded, my dear stop littering nairaland with trash like this.

Make sure you know something before stating it as fact.

Oko is shortform of okoro or okorobia which denote masculine in Igbo land.
Igbos have 4 market days; eke, orie, afor, nkwo.
A male born on eke day is called Okeke or Okereke
A male born on orie day can be named Okoye, Okolie, Okorie.
A male born on afor day - Okafor, or okoroafor.
A male born on nkwo day - Okonkwo or Okoronkwo.

The same applies to females with name mgbeke, mgbafor, mgbankwo, mgborie.

Well, I may be wrong but it was an Igbo elderly person that told me if a slave is bought on Eke day, he will be named Okeke, Nkwo day is Okonkwo and etc. Then it is a fact of history that many Yoruba slaves disappeared into Igbo land to be used as farmhands in the past.

You can not mean that slaves were not named in such a manner?

Wulfruna:
Lawani, he didn't describe himself as Igbo. He didn't describe himself as Ijaw. It would be anachronistic if he had used either of those terms to describe himself in 19th century Eastern Niger Delta. You people need to learn how some ethnic terms like 'Igbo', 'Ijaw', etc were used in this country before the 20th century and stop repeating these mistakes.

But he was Ijaw of Opobo, head of an Ijaw house to which he belonged. The Ijaw houses were organised thesame way. They initiated foreigners to become Ijaw. Other people do same. Many Osu in Igbo land today are not descended from Igbos. Many may be Yoruba and etc. Names like Okafor, Okonkwo, Okeke are indicative of people bought as slaves and are probably Yoruba in origin. So take the people you have and leave others. Jaja of Opobo can not say he is any other thing apart from Opobo which is Ijaw.

Bayelsa is a majority but not wholly Ijaw state as there are Edoid and other groups there as well. There are Ijaw towns in Rivers with Igbo identities and Ijaw towns in Yoruba area too who settled two centuries ago. They speak Ijaw and Yoruba while some in Rivers in Bonny and Opobo speak Igbo but are Ijaw. Some of these people are naturalised Igbo descendants while the remainder are Ijaw. An example of Igbo descendant is the King Jaja of Opobo but he would describe himself as Ijaw while speaking Igbo. I doubt if Ijaws are as much as the 10 million being claimed. The Ijaws in Arogbo are counted as Ijaw while the Apoi are not, being classified as Yoruba with Oba and etc. They speak Yoruba but retain some Ijoid rituals. They are mixed but essentially Yoruba. The Arogbo are riverrine people and they maintain contact with non Yoruba Ijaw, so they remain more of Ijaw than the Apoi but also speak Yoruba. The Ijaws in Bonny and Opobo are counted as Igbos when estimating number of Igbo speakers.

So if Nigeria will divide, how will it go? The Ijaws in Yoruba land were allowed to stay on that land by the people of Ugbo and only the Arogbo can be said to be like other Ijaw while the Apoi can be said to be of mixed heritage. The land is the land of Ugbo people traditionally while the Igbo speaking Ijaws in Bonny and Opobo own their land. They are Ijaws but have adopted Igbo as their lingua franca. They also have part Igbo heritage. They are a bit like the Arochukwu who have part Efik heritage.

So how can an Ijaw nation be carved out of all that?

I am not saying an Ijaw nation can not be carved out as it can be done by a referendum and people will determine where they want to be but what Ijaws want should be well articulated and while fighting to take Ijaw people in other places, it must be remembered that even Bayelsa is not wholly Ijaw and the former President Jonathan is not Ijaw but from an Edoid group speaking Ijaw as a second language. Bayelsa is netted already by Ijaw while Opobo, Andoni can determine their fate since historically they were never under Igbos or anybody and there is no Opobo or Andoni person whose ancestor is not Ijaw, even if they were slaves from Igbo land, they were sworn in as Ijaw in the past. I believe they are more of Ijaw but using Igbo today as lingua franca along with their Ibani dialect.

In the West, Ijaws were granted land by Yorubas and those Ijaws especially the ones on land have both Ijaw and Yoruba heritage and all speak Yoruba. How feasible will it be for the Arogbos to take land granted them to add to Ijaw territory? Those Arogbos are Ijaw natives in the creeks of Yoruba land. They are Ijaws of Yoruba. They were not there a few centuries ago. Ethiopia has 90 languages. The new Yoruba nation I want to happen will have less than ten. Yoruba, Egun, Bariba, Ijaw, Akoko, Ewe and possibly Nupe. 95 percent of whom speak Yoruba already today. Let Ijaws form their nation based on Bayelsa possibly with Opobo and Andoni. Not only Ijaw will be the local language but Ijaw will be official status. That is better for Ijaw.

There are Yoruba in Delta who are isolated too and they are on their land. Their situation is not like the Ijaw on Yoruba land. So no group can get all their people together easily but people are what they are. If Ugbodu people are in Biafra. They are still Yoruba people.

One thing to note is that King Jaja of Opobo was an Ijaw man. He was sworn in and he never described himself as an Igbo man. If he was not bought by an Ijaw and made an Ijaw, he would not have become what he became. All humans are thesame. So if I take an Igbo boy and bring him up as Yoruba. He is a Yoruba man and not an Igbo man anymore. The cultures are different. Jaja of Opobo spoke Ijaw and observed the culture. So he was Ijaw though born Igbo. He would never have described himself as Igbo.

blayde:
And why will someone resort to assassination if he is blameless and has nothing to hide?

There may be many reasons but I can think of extra territory crimes and privacy laws.

blayde:
U just said d CIA order assassinations or u don't know what that means?

I'll leave u for now but just like Rey said keep watching events unfold and their undercurrents perhaps you will understand someday.

I can order an assassination if that is the only option left for me. That does not make me a bad person or not a gentleman so far it is in line with the golden rule.

blayde:
now u finally getting my point.
The aim of d CIA is to appear righteous before d world whereas they are full of shit.
Remember d Reporter waswho exposed them was so frustrated-loosing his job and so on that he eventually took his life.The CIA were d ones who stringed things. They will tell u after all they didnt pull d trigger on him.So please cut the CIA humane whatever crap.

How am I getting your point? We are not on thesame page. You think the CIA are bad people while I think they are perfect. The two viewpoints are opposites and can not be reconciled.

blayde:
Take d Nicaragua crack explosion for example.President Reagan used d CIA to secretly smuggle drugs even though he claimed it was without his authority so as to use its proceeds to illegally support the contras in Nicaragua.

I do not believe it was with his authourity. There are all kinds of useful idiots affiliated with the CIA and if the CIA know that someone is going to be assassinated for instance, they may or may not step in to stop such an assassination depending on if the person deserves it or not. Then the CIA order assassinations too.

Reyginus:
Lololololololol. Everything you wrote about the US up there is wrong. US Sincere? US humane? The corrupt CIA is the guardian angel? Lololololol. Seems the world is better this way no need to spoil your fun. But is the world better this way?

The world is not better this way but the CIA is not your Daddy or Mummy, what you can do is to join the effort to make the world a better place. Who knows if yours will be the long awaited light or suggestion. The Christians have brought their own way forward which is that all must bow and worship Jesus as born agains. The Muslims via Boko Haram, Isis and others re unequivolacal about their. Worship only Allah and his prophet Mohammed and etc.

We should all come with our insights and ways forward to make the world a better place. We are all in it together.

If you know something the US or CIA are doing wrong, highlight it and let us discuss that one. To me, they are sincere and are doing their best.

blayde:
so much credit to the US.Well said though but never trust them on counter terrorism or any of sort of which the CIA is being used to carry out most of it's dirty jobs.

Why do you think the CIA can not be trusted and who is using the CIA to carry out dirty jobs?

I have often said the US is the largest nation being run with an appreciable level of humaneness and sincerity on Earth nowadays. There are smaller nations that have gotten somewhat better results, nations like Norway, Singapore and etc but the USA is number one as the largest single entity in that nomenclature. If Europe were a single nation and not a trading bloc, they might be ahead of the USA.

I was telling an online friend, a US citizen a while ago, that I would be surprised if any US politician dead or alive is indicted in the Panama gate. This is because the US is not ruled by one man, a cabal or a cliche. The US is ruled by the CIA which has thousands of members. US law and bilateral treaties and dealings with nations insist that all financial transactions and dealings of US citizens with banks and other financial institutions be communicated to the US government as top priority. This is so far all US nationals, not to talk of politicians. The CIA watch them all like hawks. This is why US politicians are not involved in the mess.

You will find Chinese, Indians, Russians, Arabs, Nigerians and etc in the names contained in the over 11.5 million Panama papers. The modus operandi, the grease to oil the wheel of corruption is thesame all over the globe and they use thesame channels, same resources to launder money. Shell companies, secretive banking laws and tax havens are the instruments.

We have to come to terms with the reality that the world is a global village now especially with the UN. In the 15th century, only people with strength of character were thrown up as leaders anywhere in the world and all cultures evolved a system that is good for them. A man posing as a poor man while he is a dollar or even Naira billionaire is among the dregs of the Earth and can not rise to a position of responsibility in the old pre United Nations world. If you lack strength of character, you will not be able to last long as a leader as even the sovereign status of the nation you lead will be at stake, but nowadays with guaranteed sovereignty and other modern shenanigans, we now have pseudo states where anything goes leading to things like the Panama gate.


It is high time we got our acts together and realise that the global society needs a consensus on many fronts including God, economic model and etc for a peaceful coexistence and prosperity for all.

okenwa:
"not all that call me Lord Lord, shall be saved " ....Jesus

That is the core of the problem. There is no reason at all to call Jesus Lord Lord talkless of being saved as a result of doing that. He did nothing to deserve such. Making such a statement betrays him as a crook and a megalomaniac or what do you think?

There was a Pastor who paid for a 30 days utility but was disconnected on the day 20. He called in to the head office of that utility who then called a branch office to reconnect him, the person at the branch reconnected without precaution or second thought and the utility ran for another 30 days instead of the remaining 10 and dropped a debit of around 9000 naira, the Pastor knew but did not call in as he did earlier, he enjoyed the service and went to pay when it was cut after 30 days. He was informed of the debit but he said it is not his concern, so the sales person at the branch who connected him earning maybe a tenth portion of his salary had to pay or lose his job. That Pastor is a thief with a sense of entitlement peculiar to Christians. They expect to sin and be forgiven upon asking God, to be saved by grace and not by works and to reap where they have not sown at the expense of others just like armed robbers.

I was the person who paid that money used by a Pastor who is probably a millionaire.

Not all Christians are sadists as most are just ignorant and are too lazy to think, read or research but you need a level of sadism to be a member of any Abrahamic spirituality all thesame.

Hagm0nd:
So what explaination do you have for orunmila

Actually I would say Ogun represents innovation that leads to prosperity, not actually war. Orunmila represents wisdom and concern for others.

Hagm0nd:
I think those doing it know that the energies are potent but in the case of lukumi and santeria many of the deities are fused with catholic saints in a way to preserve the knowledge and rites of slaves in the new world

They can syncretise Saints with Orisa. For instance all men are Ogun, because it is a male energy. You may go further to say Buddha is Orunmila or Zoroaster is Orunmila. Alexander the Great is Ogun and etc etc. If the energy is very manifest in an individual, that individual is the orisa incarnate but no character is Olodumare in the Abrahamic faiths and etc.

Hagm0nd:
I dont think so i think yorubas have the best way of keeping their culture we practise a sort of syncretism
most of the christians and moslem still infuse our atr in their beliefs

There is no fight in Aborisha practice, so we have many Muslim and Christian clerics who use the principles, perform the rituals to help people and etc. They are free to do whatever they like but an Awo using the name of Jehovah or Allah instead of Olodumare, adopting the fascism of those practices has derailed already. I dont know how it is possible to syncretise Aborisa practice with Abrahamic faiths. It is practically impossible. Jehovah or Alla is not Olodumare. The Almighty God is not a thug. The principal orisas are energies which have been incarnated severally and all have several manifestations or aspects.