₦airaland Forum

"long" --> "alonge" (tall, skinny)

lol, that makes sense. I had seen that name before and I was a bit confused by it. Thanks for clearing that up.


As for Agboghidi, I've seen the meaning defined as "ingrate" online, but I'm certain that's not the original/real meaning.

I think from the structure of the name, it originally meant "large ram" or "great ram"  (a kind of appellation giving praise).

Agbo = ram

gidi or ghidi = could mean large or great, not 100% certain on this though


But it may have come to mean someone who was ungrateful because of the behavior of the first Enogie of Ugo, a certain war leader with the appellation Agboghidi, who was felt he was unrewarded after his efforts at subduing a rebellion.

You can read a summary of his story here if you haven't already: http://www.edoworld.net/Emokpolo_And_Ewuwu_Agbe_Culture.html

He is also mentioned in some books (Egharevba's main book, a book by Ademola Iyi-Eweka, a book by Joseph Sidahome, etc.) which would give a fuller account than that summary.

Agboghidi of Ugo was apparently a culture hero among Edo and Esan, but because of his disrespect to the Benin palace for not being adequately rewarded the name seems to have a second meaning of "ingrate".

The use of Agboghidi, Aigboghidi, or Agbogidi as a last name by people or its use by the Obi of Onitsha as an appellation is clearly adhering to the original meaning though, not the second meaning. I guess praising somebody as a "great ram" back then was basically like praising someone as a "lion" today. That's just my theory though. You could try asking someone much older about the meaning to confirm this or to get the correct meaning if I'm wrong.


[To other posters, sorry for derailing the thread.]

step1:
Enahoro - Like the sun

exotik:
but dis one na proper esan name na,  still common amongst esans as a firstname and not even a surname.

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-44799.0.html#msg1106138

^^^^

It's the same name as Enaholo. The meaning is given in that post. It has a different meaning that has nothing to do with the sun.

(The same way Iyasere became Iyasele in Esan is probably how Enahoro became Enaholo for some Esan.)

exotik:
Alonge
Akpata
Ojo

^

edo.

Is "Ojo" Edo? I don't think it's originally Edo. Maybe Edo-Akure.

Also, I think Alonge might be Edo-Akure as well.

If those names have a meaning in Edo, could you please explain them?

Aribasala, since you've read some of Shaw's publications on Igbo-Ukwu, like this:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/180494

and this:

www.panafprehistory.org/images/papers/FURTHER_LIGHT_ON_IGBO-UKWU_INCLUDING_NEW_RADIOCARBON_DATES__Thurstan_Shaw.pdf+Igbo+Ukwu+controversy&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiMl0Qcly-Txiw182wslgjKF_Ym8fYN11VFFSi_ZosZKKXXOZq1KdeabkK0KF3wNcERt00O8eFrum3wabbXB_Umc9X9IFIxSxvreOM8DclJRcHJmaYkbJivJuKJT7VHlhz2t5Pz&sig=AHIEtbRhJJSqEiy9CoTmXnnx5sqK4ewLww">https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:-afPb7b39PwJ:www.panafprehistory.org/images/papers/FURTHER_LIGHT_ON_IGBO-UKWU_INCLUDING_NEW_RADIOCARBON_DATES__Thurstan_Shaw.pdf+Igbo+Ukwu+controversy&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiMl0Qcly-Txiw182wslgjKF_Ym8fYN11VFFSi_ZosZKKXXOZq1KdeabkK0KF3wNcERt00O8eFrum3wabbXB_Umc9X9IFIxSxvreOM8DclJRcHJmaYkbJivJuKJT7VHlhz2t5Pz&sig=AHIEtbRhJJSqEiy9CoTmXnnx5sqK4ewLww


?

Then why do you have any doubts about the Igbo Ukwu site having a 9th -11th century date overall based on all known dates?

The one outlier date (15th century) may indeed have been from contamination as suggested in the article above. One outlier date doesn't change what the majority of dates indicate.

As for Igbo Ukwu being associated with Nri, there was a whole book about that by M. Onwuejeogwu . I haven't read it, but what is clear is that the bronze casting individual with the ichi scarification on his face and the bronze castings of locusts definitely suggest a Nri connection, since both of these are culturally/religiously associated with Nri. Shaw also agrees with Onwuejeogwu's identification of the bronzes with Nri (I don't have the exact quote, but this is mentioned in Connah's book) and I don't think there is much doubt among scholars about the association of the bronzes with Nri.

The one thing I will agree with you on is that sufficient archaeological work has not been done in Nigeria (Graham Connah had a great quote about just how meager the amount of archaeology that has been done relative to what should have been done is in his book African Civilizations: an archaeological perspective, but I can't recall it exactly right now) to determine the earliest dates of all states and cities. Some people are actually arguing about dates of state formation while using what is actually a small amount of data or misinterpreting the small amount of work done so far as being definitive.

Beaf:
@PhysicsQED

I recall telling you at one time to get in touch with Dr. Omokaro Izevbigie. I really think you should, the man is an encyclopedia of Edo hystory; he is also from the royal family (Eweka), so you can be certain that what he tells you is the version from the palace court.

Yeah. I've thought about that and I'll probably try and contact him at some point in the next few years in between my studies. Thanks for the recommendation.

^^^^

If you actually think I'm Naiwu Osahon or Nosa Idubor, you must be drunk right now. My regard for Benin's contribution to African history has virtually nothing to do with any "Oduduwa controversy" and I have no interest in spamming the net with the kinds of articles Osahon posts, since I don't consider the issue relevant to me personally.

As for the rest of that spiel, I never claimed "Bini birthed Ife" and the talk of "greater kingdoms to the interior" is funny to me considering what I've read about the interactions between Benin and some of those kingdoms to the interior. 

As for the coast, Bini have no land on the coast. What was stopping these "greater kingdoms" from conquering all the way down to the coast? A certain fly?

Trying desperately to link one's group with a group in the bible, even when there should be no possible motivation to aspire for one's group to be the same as that group (what did the Jebusites actually accomplish anyway? Ijebu>>>> Jebusites) is the height of delusion and inferiority complex. Sorry if that sounds offensive, but that's what it looks like to me.

But if my laughing at the Chadian origin of Ijebu offended you, I apologize for that specific laugh. Everyone is welcome to their own origin stories since nothing is certain. Even some Edo would argue seriously that the Edo are from Egypt. I even got into an argument with another Bini guy once who tried to claim that Nosakhare was an indisputably Egyptian name. So my own people are sometimes adherents of the same kind of claims.

lol, if you want to find about Ijebu, there are other ways to find out stuff, you know. You don't have to keep posting this "Jebusite" stuff or posting very weak speculative articles like you do in those threads in the culture section. Why not become an archaeologist? Follow in the footsteps of Patrick Darling, Thurstan Shaw, Ekpo Eyo, etc. Who knows, maybe you'll find more than they did, or find archaeological support for your theories.

And I couldn't care less what Naiwu Osahon wrote, but he (like you) is also an advocate of all this Egypt/Nubia/Levant ---> Southern Nigeria stuff, so he actually has more in common with you than he does with me.

And Idu is a "semi-mythical" ancestor of some importance. What his name means is not directly relevant to this discussion and different people can give competing interpretations.

Idu and the Edo have nothing to do with the Edomites or Idumea. If you keep spewing this Idumea/Edom --> Edo stuff and this Jebusite ---> Ijebu stuff with reckless abandon, you shouldn't be surprised when I laffff. And if you feel your people are from eastern Chad, fine, but please don't drag my people into the great Hamitic and Semitic migration scheme, or I'll be forced to respond with further laffs . . .

Rossikk:
amor4ce, thanks for your post. Please ignore the likes of PhysicsQED who say that exploring African history is 'unimportant'.

Don't misinterpret my motivation for my responses.

"History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals." - a great man


I just disagree about the validity of some of the Hamitic hypotheses floating around.

amor4ce: PhysicsQED, you can go through the links below for your personal research:

    Oduduwan Revolution in World History  From: Yoruba Ancient History Society
    AfricanOriginsoftheWordGod
    NANASOM: Afurakani/Afuraitkaitnit (African) Ancestral Religion
    Yoruba World Exploration And The Loss Of Dynasties
    I want to believe that a lot of answers to the questions we ask are in the Edidi text – if only I had access (Daniel 2:18-19,27-28). I already got some important answers from the meaning of the name Daodu.

    Dudu Negro, what if the Yoruba people(s) did not arrive in West Africa all at once but in waves of migrations, say 2 or 3? Such would account for versions of Yoruba history that mention Oduduwa and his entourage meeting a group of people (eg Nago and Aku as you say) in Ife upon arrival.

I have already read those articles and I'm neither impressed nor convinced, and I've seen several stretches and outright errors in them. Farouk Martins' article in particular is riddled with enough error that it would take a counter article to correct some of his mistakes. Anyway, I'm not interested in countering some obscure internet articles.

The Ijebu monarchy does acknowledge migration from Wadai (Wadi?) in the Sudan/Ethiopia region, also the arrival of Obanta therefrom.

Imao. . . still searching for the origins of Ijebu in the Sudan or Israel?

Dudu_Negro :
The Hausas retained the name of their culture but linguistically lost their original tongue to the indsluence of Islam and conquest by Fulani.   Today, there are very few indigenous Hausa names. . . most are Arabic.  It should not surprise at all that Hausa is classified as Afroasiatic given that it had been under the influence of Islam centuries before contact with those scholars that studied and made this classification schemes. This is not to say that their origin is not also in Afroasia. . . but I'm outlining the ease with which to reach such a conclusion for Hausa and not for Yoruba.

This makes little sense as an argument. There are other groups of West Africans that had centuries of Islamic influence but their langauges are still not considered Afroasiatic langauges. Mande languages and the Fula language are not Afroasiatic, for example.

In fact, for you to claim this, you're basically saying that a distinct Hausa language doesn't really exist and it is overwhelmingly Arabic influenced and distorted with Arabic borrowings, which has not been demonstrated by anybody to be true.

Yoruba itself suffered from similar influences.  The monarchy that established the Yoruba States and sovereignties were not themselves indigenous to the land.  These conquering tribes were the emigrants from AfroAsia.

Yes, we've all heard and read this before from many other people. It's a form of the Hamitic hypothesis. Nothing original or groundbreaking. But as I said earlier, the actual Yoruba ethnic group does not, from other available evidence, originate from the  Near East or the Levant even if it can be proven that their leaders and rulers derive from Egyptians, Canaanites, etc. The Yoruba langauge is a world away from Afroasiatic languages and a mere 100 words - some of which have to stretch very hard to form an apparent correspondence - do not actually suggest a strong connection.

Yoruba oral tradition says Oduduwa came from East.  You mocked this "East" reference in one of your responses when you said it could be any East.

That was not what I was saying. Every group now in Southern Nigeria was originally somewhere else in East Africa. I was saying that East Africa does not in any way necessarily mean the Nile Valley. It could be somewhere else in East Africa nearby, but well outside of the domain of the states that would become Kush and Egypt.

I disagree!  It could be only one East. . . and that's the one global reference that humanity know as East.   If you say to anybody Western Education, this is human reference to denote philosophical teachings and knowledge that came out of the Grecko Roman civilizations.   It will not be a reference to Yoruba (another West) teachings or a teaching and scholareship out of West Africa.

What was originally being discussed in that thread was that humanity originates in East Africa. Originating in East Africa and migrating West is different from the claim that rulers come from the Nile Valley or Levant.

So there's no need diluting this reference of East with conjectures of East as in Igbo

I never said Yorubas came from Igbo or that their leader did. I have said and will continue to say that these groups share a common origin  and are basically different sides of the same coin. It's obvious and the correspondences in words are more numerous and stronger than you will find between Yoruba and any Afroasiatic language

or  Bini

Once again, the Bini claim is that at one point a Bini prince became ruler of Ife, which is hardly a stretch of the imagination considering that the same pattern of a Bini prince or noble becoming ruler of a place among a different non-Bini group was repeated to the north, east, west, and south of Benin in multiple kingdoms centuries later. The fact that all written documents support that the Binis always claimed that the ruler they originally knew had an Edo title (the original form of which could not have been pronounced by the Yorubas in Ife, as they don't retain "gh" in that part of Yorubaland) only buttresses that argument.

or Kenya or such frivolous misguides to discredit authentic accounts of history.

When did I claim that Yorubas came from Kenya? I never claimed anybody in southern Nigeria came from Kenya.

Yoruba oral accounts says Ife was settled by Oduduwa coming from East.  Oduduwa settled Ife and from where Old Oyo and new Oyo were created and out of which grew and spread out the Egbas, the Aworis, the Ijesas and many other Yoruba sub groups.  Yoruba itself is the cultural name of the settling migrants, just as Fulani is the cultural name of the settling conquerors.

What you have to take into account when evaluating the Oyo traditions is that the Kisra legends of the Borgu kingdoms and some other northern kingdoms were prevalent in the same geographical area that Old Oyo was in. Given the later Borgu-Oyo alliance, it's hardly unreasonable to suppose that Borgu traditions influenced the Oyo account of the origin of the founder. The notion that Oduduwa came from the East doesn't necessarily mean the Middle East.

The language of the elite class and the courts were Arabic due to Islamic Jihadi conquest which established the Fulani monarchy.  Thus original Hausa language got mixed up.  In the case of Yoruba. . . the laanguage of the courts and the elites was Yoruba, consistent with the settlers. . . . but it influenced and mixed with Nago and Aku, the native tongues of the indigenes .  This native tongue belonged in the Congo slassification scheme.  The Yoruba tongue was not strong enough to distinctly stand out but its influence was nonetheless noticeable.  This minute influence and remnants is what is discernible as similarities with Egyotian and Afroasiatic tongues.

The Igbo and Edo can also put forward similarities between a few words in their languages and certain Afroasiatic languages. That doesn't mean anything significant, because as I said earlier the language family to which these groups belong and the Afroasiatic language family are African language families.

Yorubas are definitely an Afroasiatic culture, tongue and people.   The Nagos and Akus that were native to the land are assimilated into the Yorubas and the mix is what it is today.  The Yoruba monarchs have their roots in Afroasia and as well many of the subjects they rule over. . . mixed with original indigenes of the land.   This is not a subordination of Yoruba to any culture in Middle East. . .  Yoruba itself was a powerful contender in the proto semitic family of Afroasia. . . . and not descended from Jew or Arabs or any of those craps.  I know you keep going to the fact that Yoruba authors support your position. . . . .but these were authors whose work was not formulated on the oral accounts but took reference from errors already accepeted by Europeans and marketed as mainstream history.  .

I don't think we're going to agree You see the culture of the Yoruba states as "Proto-Semitic" and in line with the cultures of Middle East.  I'm not going to argue with you about how to perceive your own culture beyond what I already have so far, so we might just have to keep on agreeing to disagree.

Jarus:
I have it on reliable authority that SLS actually contacted the Churches too for the relief funds(at the smae time with the Kano donation) but they said they needed to get approval from their national body first before collecting.

Well that would explain it. But I still wonder if he ever contacted anybody in Borno or Yobe when doling out these donations. Do you have any info on that?

la furia:
I swear if the CBN had donated to the madalla bomb victims first most of u here would praise him for a nice gesture. Tribalism has eaten deep into us

Why not?

And in fact, apart from the Christmas day bombing in Madalla, what about Borno state?

Why not Borno before Kano?

Why did he have to wait until there was public criticism before donating to the Christmas day bomb victims?  

Negro Ntns, in that discussion with Rossik, he repeatedly referred to the 100 handpicked words posted in that online article, but if there were a real link, he would be able to provide far more than 100 words and he would also be able to demonstrate common linguistic characteristics.

Look through the following links from a to z and tell me honestly if the vocabulary of ancient Egyptian really matches Yoruba:

http://books.google.com/books?id=WUppj1LHdJ4C&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://hieroglyphs.net/0301/cgi/lookup.pl?ty=en&ch=a&cs=0

http://karathutmose.tripod.com/dictionary/dictionary1.html

www.jimloy.com/hiero/e-dict.htm

http://www.ancientsites.com/aw/Post/399761



In fact, if you're serious about this connection, get the largest and most comprehensive Yoruba dictionaries you can, get the largest and most comprehensive dictionaries available for each of the Afroasiatic languages, and then scan through each of them methodically and see how many cognates and semi-cognates you can find. Then publish an analysis of these connections for posterity.

Negro Ntns, my point to amor4ce, is that since the language family that Yoruba belongs to is African, and the Afroasiatic language family is also African, it's not surprising that some languages between these two language families share some words, since they diverged from a common root. I'm not going to get into the issue of religion, mysticism, and sacred practices because I don't claim to know enough to discuss that thoroughly.

Also, the issue is not tones. Tones are not something rare among African languages and tonal Afroasiatic languages were still classified as Afroasiatic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_%28linguistics%29#Tonal_languages


If the Yoruba language was really Afroasiatic (like Hausa is), then

a) one would be claiming that the Europeans were somehow particularly inclined to label Hausa as Afroasiatic, but somehow disinclined to label Yoruba as such. Why did the European bias of scholars not prevent them from figuring out that Hausa was Afroasiatic, but somehow prevented them from figuring out that languages like Fula, Nupe, Yoruba etc. are Afroasiatic? The most likely explanation is that Fula, Nupe, Yoruba, etc. are not actually Afroasiatic. and there was nothing to justify grouping them with Afroasiatic languages.


b) why have no professional linguists (including professional Yoruba linguists) that publish in peer reviewed academic journals, classified it as Afroasiatic? Why is it only Oduyoye that does so?

There are over a thousand publications relating in some way to the Yoruba language: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CzUV4oKBiSIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&ots=rGuJA7kQRY&sig=6JWwmMtIlxxxKLNL0BConPesKII#v=onepage&q&f=false

But the only claim of a connection between Yoruba and Afroasiatic is 'Yoruba and Semitic Languages: Linguistic Relationship', Nigeria Magazine, 1968 by Oduyoye (an article I haven't read), the book by Oduyoye cited above by amor4ce, and another claim of a connection to the Egyptians from Olumide Lucas.

Even the book I linked to above by Lawrence Olufemi Adewole starts by acknowledging that Yoruba "belongs to the Kwa family within the Niger-Congo phylum of African languages" (http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CzUV4oKBiSIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA11#v=onepage&q&f=false).

There's no particular reason why one would take the word of Oduyoye and Lucas over that of Adewole and most other scholars.

Amor4ce,


Afroasiatic is one of the five language families of Africa.

Of Africa.

The fact that there are some similarities or connections between the words in some languages that are in different language families is nothing extraordinary or something which counters the existing classification scheme.

If you want an answer from a professional and objective linguist specializing in Afroasiatic languages and African languages in general  on the question of why Yoruba and related Nigerian languages are not Afroasiatic, but a language like Hausa is Afroasiatic, you should probably try to get in contact with Christopher Ehret and/or Roger Blench. Try contacting them by email or something. Linguistics isn't my thing.

But if you want to continue in this current path of trying to connect southern Nigeria to the Near East based on thin evidence, maybe you'd want to contact not only Odudoye, but also Dierk Lange.

Personally, I don't care if any Nigerian groups once lived in the Levant or Egypt. It doesn't even matter. Even if this "Hamitic hypothesis" inspired thinking turns out to be true, it doesn't change history or affect anything in the present. Why some people are so desperate to be part of the "Afroasiatic" group is beyond me.

Nnenna1:
One example is this thread. I find it interesting that there isn't as much political implication in the threads discussing the earlier attacks on the Northerners in Benin and Sapele as there is in this one. Why is that?

Do Benin and Sapele people have a history of clashes or conflict with Northerners? No.

It's obvious why any Igbo + North thread is going to result in a lot of political discussion on this forum.

@ chiekh, lol, I think you should bow out of this thread already and admit your hypothesis was wrong. . .

hercules07:
@Physics

I disagree with you on Japan being evil thereby American being justified to drop two atomic bombs on them, the Allies were as evil as the Japanese, they could have dropped the bombs in their oceans close by to let them know the havoc they can cause if the Japanese do not surrender, no, they had to drop not one but two on civilians, we know the victors get to write history but we should not justify what is condemnable.

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


^^^^

How does that compare with Allied war crimes?


The only war crime charge against the Allies that I can really think of is the claim that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime.


Nazis and a human-experimentation-practicing Japanese military force are certainly far worse than the Allies.

Houvest, sorry if I came off as rude earlier, and thanks for the discussion.

houvest:
I see your point of view but do you see mine? Saying that Boko Haram is an Arewa problem is funny when there is no such Nation. And if there were. Thinking that it would not be exported is the height of denial. See this:

Our goal is to Islamise Nigeria by force, and we will – Boko Haram
January 29, 2012- from The Guardian, UK -

So you actually think al-qaida inspired  terrorism would somehow be averted by leaving Arewa as a separate country? I don't see the relevance of an enemy country (Biafra) to this issue.

By the way, the fact that they think that it will be exported, doesn't mean that it actually will be.

houvest:
So what was the point of mentioning Middle East and South America as if you only regret active actions and not passive actions.

The point is that, if the U.S.  doesn't regret those "active actions" in South America or the Middle East, and would never, for example, have regrets for propping up Israel to the point that it continues with the settlements in what is meant to be Palestinian land, then how much sense does it make to claim that a situation (a threat to an ambassador) would make it have regrets over a "passive action" that still doesn't place them at fault for what happened, especially considering that even if they had "actively acted" during the war, it still wouldn't avoid the current situation (the threat against a U.S. ambassador)?

houvest:
Please have a more wholistic approach. Think  of US strategies to contain terrorism in West Africa, Africa, the world not just the imaginary Nation of Arewa. As it is now what stands against Boko Haram overunning the rest of Nigeria, W. Africa,etc if it succeeds in overwhelming the Nigerian Government if there is no strong Counterpoise in the region?

You refuse to even see my point. Biafra would not be relevant to stopping terrorism in Arewa and as an enemy nation, its intervention would only make things much much worse.

Boko haram is not at risk of "overrunning the rest of Nigeria" or "overrunning West Africa". Boko haram is a northern Nigerian problem that Nigerians that live in the north have to deal with and in the event of an Arewa, it would be an Arewa problem which they would have to solve internally.

Houvest, I NEVER wrote, claimed, suggested, or even insinuated that the U.S. government "never expresses or feels regrets for past actions" and it is [b]extremely [/b]dishonest to even suggest that I did. If you can't understand English, I have no intention of discussing anything further as I have no time for fools or liars.

houvest:
Physics wrote

Actually, my point was more that they don't regret those actions, not just that they don't express regret, so I should have stated that. But whether openly or secretly regretted, the point is that if there's nothing to suggest that there was ever any "secret" regret over affairs that they actually interfered in that had to do with the cold war (in the case of South America) and which they might actually have a reason to regret, there would be no reason to feel regret over issues that had nothing to do with them (Nigerian Civil War) and which they didn't involve themselves with.

The question is this, if you have the power to stop the death of 3.5 million people and you did nothing to stop that, have you not done sometthing wrong and if you find out later that this your inaction was the wrong policy, Can you not regret it since we have established that the US can and does regret past actions? Forget all other story and answer this simple question? Does the world regret not intervening in Rwanda? Do you only regret active actions? Can't you regret passive actions? Note that historians regard US role in the Nigerian Civil war as dubious. http://www.jstor.org/pss/721864

The U.S. originally expressed full and total neutrality, refusing to sell weapons to either side.

Then they expressed a pro-federal one-Nigeria position, (but still refused to sell weapons to the federal side) so that they could increase their relief efforts toward the Biafran side without any accusation of interfering in Nigeria's affairs or aiding the rebels. Given their aid efforts towards Biafra when the starvation issue became more serious, I don't think it would be accurate to say that they were inactive in trying to prevent civilian deaths.

After the war was over, Nixon sent Gowon a congratulatory message and the U.S. felt it had made the right choice.

Regarding Rwanda, yes that was a mistake that many Western nations have expressed regret for, but no country on earth is eager to jump into another country's bloody civil war. That's not a hard thing to understand. The same countries did nothing in Burundi when the Tutusi were massacring the Hutu, even though any of them could have overrun that country in a day or two, but the fact that they didn't intervene in a conflict that had nothing to do with them doesn't make every nation on earth with a decent military "guilty" for the deaths.

houvest:
What if US has realised that the Boko Haram issue is not going away any time soon and is actually al Quedda's instrument of destabilisation of Africa and beyond and that a Biafra would have been a check to this the way the other Nations I earlier mentioned were checks to Communism?

In what possible way could a Biafra be of any relevance to terrorist threats being made against the U.S. ambassador to a sovereign Arewa republic?

There isn't any pretext on which Biafra could be involved in the political affairs of Arewa and vice versa unless the actions of one was affecting the other.

There is no connection whatsoever between Islamic fundamentalist terrorism and the Nigerian Civil war. It's just an incredibly silly claim.


South Korea is a check to communism spreading further among Koreans. South Vietnam was an attempt stop communism spreading further among Vietnamese. Biafra would not be relevant to the issue of Islamic terrorism in Arewa because these would be different countries and any external action - and from an enemy nation - would only exacerbate the problem.

houvest:
Good a thing that you yourself have debunked your whole argument before that US does not regret its past actions so no need for me to start debunking them. Dig further, you are going to see more.

Either you have very serious reading problems or comprehension problems. I never wrote anywhere that the "U.S. never regrets its past actions" and indeed it would be absurd to suggest that this was the case. It's funny how you had to google around for the example of the Chinese, when a much simpler example would be the Native Americans or African Americans who are much more obvious and who the U.S. government has already expressed regret over the mistreatment of these groups on multiple occasions.

Regretting the actions in Greece openly after visiting Greece is different from their actions in South America, which I doubt they will ever apologize for. Equally, they will never apologize for propping up Israel to the point where that country feels it doesn't have to abide by international law with respect to the settlement issue because they feel that they are majorly/mostly still right in propping up Israel in that way. U.S. ambassadors and even a president have visited Nigeria yet not one has ever even considered the Nigerian civil war relevant to current U.S. - Nigeria relations or commented extensively on the Nigerian civil war and yet you're engaging in self delusion over something posted on a site with propagandistic overtones.

Since you don't seem to comprehend a simple argument, I'm not going to bother trying to spell it out to you any further.

Ironically, I didn't initially post in order to debunk the original article, but merely to counter OK2NV's misconception about JFK's involvement in 1967 events and to explain the very simple reason why  the U.S. couldn't have been involved. The original article didn't seem credible enough to warrant an argument, so I originally wasn't planning on responding to this thread.

When shooting started Dimka simply walked away, past all the soldiers surrounding the building as well as driving through numerous checkpoints on his way,

lmao

@ houvest

Interestingly enough, after a bit of searching, I did find one instance where a (Democrat) U.S. president openly expressed regret over siding with a certain Greek regime during the cold war:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19991121&id=yuwyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mAgGAAAAIBAJ&pg=5353,5100677

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/21/world/clinton-tries-to-subdue-greeks-anger-at-america.html

houvest:
Please read the report again. It never said that US has expressed regrets but this :  With recent assassination threat emerging from Boko Haram Islamic Fundamentalists and their partners against the US Ambassador to Nigeria, US and Major European authorities secretly regrets siding with Federal Troops during the Nigeria/Biafra civil WAR, 1967 to 1970 that killed 3.5Million Biafrans because of the fast-spreading Islamic fundamentalism in Nigeria and elsewhere.

Actually, my point was more that they don't regret those actions, not just that they don't express regret, so I should have stated that. But whether openly or secretly regretted, the point is that if there's nothing to suggest that there was ever any "secret" regret over affairs that they actually interfered in that had to do with the cold war (in the case of South America) and which they might actually have a reason to regret, there would be no reason to feel regret over issues that had nothing to do with them (Nigerian Civil War) and which they didn't involve themselves with.

Anyway, assuming that an "Arewa Republic" had been created following a Biafran victory, America would still have an ambassador to that country, and Boko haram would instead be threatening to kill that ambassador. So either way a U.S. ambassador would be threatened. So the argument of this article doesn't even make sense.

Secret internal communication between EU and UN diplomats demonstrate that the United States is apprehensive of past actions against Biafra, which it now regrets. United States Russia, Britain and others supported Nigeria Federal Troops in Nigeria/Biafra hostility. Credible source knowledgeable with US-internal memos states that ‘US now regrets its support for Nigerian Federal troops in its face-out with Biafra in the 60s”, insider of internal US working relationship with Africa who spoke on a condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on sensitive security problem facing Nigeria, disclosed our insider source.

Yeah, my point is that this is a fabrication, because there's nothing to suggest that any U.S. government has ever expressed "secret regret" over actions during the cold war which they actually could have a possible reason to regret, so it would make no sense for any U.S. government officials to express regret over something (Nigerian Civil War) which they had no stake in and no participation in.

As for US regretting its actions in the Middle East,what did they do there that they should regret? Do you regret doing something inself defence?I do not get your drift here. If you are referring to Bush's lies that got them into the second Iraqi war, then you should know that it has been thoroughly condemned in US and  resulted in policy reversal there. All troops have been pulled out of Iraq.

I was actually referring to Iran (Mossadegh, 1953), Iraq (being pals with Saddam Hussein when he was massacring Kurds, up until he invaded Kuwait), Afghanistan (looking the other way with respect to the drug trade when deciding which specific people to support), and Israel (being so overly friendly and chummy with Israel that the current government there is bold enough to continue allowing the building of more Israeli settlements on future Palestinian land).

However US does not waste time to regret their mistakes, one of the things that make them great, eg http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/World/Story/A1Story20111009-304032.html, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/06/08/Obama-regrets-Afghan-civilian-losses/UPI-55691307568676/.

That's quite a different thing than expressing regret over a political decision to side with a certain side in a civil war in a foreign country. America chose to involve itself in a war in Afghanistan against the Taliban so it makes sense to express regret over civilians killed by America in the process of prosecuting a war against the Taliban.

Us fought a civil war because of the injustice of slavery and only nuked Japan as a last resort so why cant they regret their actions or inactions in not stopping the death of 3.5 million Biafrans especially with the threat of Islamic fundamentalism threatening them and the rest of Africa from Nigeria at present. Why the eager desire to deny this news as credible?

The U.S. government has absolutely no reason whatsoever to feel any regret or express any regret over nuking Japan. The Empire of Japan was an extremely evil country during WW2 (see for example experimenting on humans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731), and they were prepared to fight to the last man (not literally of course, but you get the idea) when invaded. That would have cost more American and Japanese lives than trying to end the war quickly with a nuke. They actually saved many more Japanese lives by taking the decision to nuke them.

Islamic fundamentalism and Islam are separate issues entirely from the Nigerian Civil War which was not religious, but ethnic and political, and the way the author of the article tried to connect them shows that he's possibly confused. And during the Nigerian civil war, the Hausa and the Fulani were probably outnumbered in terms of participation by their non-Muslim "Middle Belt" allies anyway.

Also, the U.S. is on good terms with Turkey (majority Muslim country) and several other majority Muslim countries around the world (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc.), including some in Africa. 

By the way, it's not "desire" to deny it as being credible news, I just see the entire spin and argument being made in the article as illogical and nonsensical based on known facts.

Are there any pictures? From the description given so far, it sounds quite basic so I'm wondering how it is that they didn't have something like this earlier and how they were practicing shooting prior to this. What were they using?