₦airaland Forum

houvest:
You are right about Kennedy. I suspect it was his vice Lyndon Johnson that was in power then. However I disagree that US could not go against her ally at the time. Probably wouldnt is better especially as they were bogged down with the war in Vietnam. It does not however stop them from regretting their action or inactions against an unjust war and genocide with the benefit of hindsight and unfolding world events.

Well, the U.S. and U.K. had a special relationship at that time and the British government actually expressed modest "moral support" for the Vietnam war (http://www.americansc.org.uk/Online/Wilsonjohnson.htm), although it didn't send troops. But there was really no pretext which the U.S. could use for interfering in a civil war in the U.K.'s former colony anyway, and there is nothing to suggest that the U.S. government would have taken military action. And if they had objections, they could have been raised, but they weren't.

As for the Vietnam war, being "bogged down" with Vietnam wasn't really the issue. They simply deferred to Britain. U.S. diplomats even explicitly said that they were deferring to Britain as the country (Nigeria) was within their sphere of influence.

The U.S. hasn't expressed regret for any of the actions that they actually did take in certain parts of the Middle East or South America. It's more than doubtful that the U.S. government would express regret over something  that had nothing to do with them.

As for whether a war is unjust or not, that often depends on what perspective one is looking at it from.

[edited, "always" --> "often"]

OK2NV:
Blame Kennedy. That guy was the worst President to occupy the white house. Struggling with a serious medical condition and addicted to steriods and pain killers, JFK was not on sound footing all the time. He also had very low morals as he was having extra-marital affairs, links with the Mafia. JFK started and escaleted the cold war (Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile crisis), started the most disastrous military campaingn since WWII (Vietnam) and the worst legacy was to support Nigeria against Biafra all because Ojukwu grew a beard and so he most be a commie b@stard like Castro and also cos the West did not want to appear to their new arab buddies that they were supporting a crusade in Africa.

JFK died in 1963. He was far from the worst president, although he made some mistakes.


On the issue of Biafra, the U.S. couldn't go against its most important ally (Britain) in the world at the time, so there was never even a question of the U.S. intervening once the U.K. had decided its course of action.

Standing ovation for Haiti.

Actually, WE (continental Africans) should have been asking them to join since long ago. It would be an honor for us if they joined, but of course African leaders aren't even thinking of such things.

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/board-60.0.html

^^^

Mods. You know what to do.

All this dogon turenchi from Northerners like this fellow Adamu and Sanusi about religion and "intellectual development" yet Gombe couldn't produce more than 17 candidates for university admission out of a group of 18,000 that took qualification exams. Maybe they were too busy relying on "divine guidance"? And it was also found that government officials had stolen millions of dollars meant specifically to improve education in the state. Maybe they were "divinely guided" to loot their state like mad.

Judaism and its offshoots are full of ritual and "pagan-like" mystical "obscurantism", but the author of this article is too daft to even know that. When he figures out why all those Muslims, every year, perform that ritual in which they gather around an inanimate object that they claim Abraham or somebody important touched, maybe then he'll realize what a fool he is. What is "animist" or "pagan" if not the belief that a stone is imbued with some spiritual importance because somebody said to be holy touched it or used it? And these same Muslims that travel miles to gather around a black rock in the desert will look down upon the few remaining Maguzawa and other pagan Hausa as "stone worshipers". I dey laff!


Soyinka = Nobel laureate

Adamu Adamu = A man with two first names, no achievements, and no insight to offer

odiaero:
can u imagine a ghanian telling a friend of mine from sweeden how dangerous anyone from nigeria could be? I almost beat her up

lol @ the irony

ndu chucks: There is no doubt that the people of the onshore oil producing areas are underserved and ignored by both the federal government and their state governments. It is noteworthy however, that most of the oil revenues are generated from offshore activities.The oil rigs in the Atlantic ocean, miles and miles away from any land, is in Nigeria's waters, hence the revenues generated from offshore oil exploration is essentially commonwealth. The offshore oil belongs to ALL Nigerians and not some marginalized inhabitants of southern Nigeria.

Abuja was built with Nigeria's wealth. period.

I just saw this.

You do realize that the same logic behind the law which is used to argue that that offshore oil belongs to Nigeria rather than belonging to, say, Tanzania, Morocco, Kenya, or even Uzbekistan, also implies that these coastal parts of Nigeria are the reason why the oil belongs to Nigeria? In other words, Lagos, Bayelsa, Delta, Akwa Ibom, etc. are the reason Nigeria can claim that oil. If those states had somehow been transferred to different countries (for example, the Republic of Benin and Cameroon, or new countries entirely), then Nigeria would not have that offshore oil. So those states' continued inclusion in Nigeria make it possible for Nigeria to have the offshore oil, and the argument that the only oil a coastal state gives Nigeria is its onshore oil doesn't really make sense. Had the colonists divided the countries differently, Nigeria could possibly have no offshore oil.

This is probably the most deliberately mischievous thread ever started on this forum.

ekwy nwa:
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP
tel them the koko

I was just noting that the claim of the author (Naiwu Osahon) about modern day Ife chiefs wearing the kind of clothes Benin chiefs wear/wore does not seem to be accurate.

http://theooni.org/iferight.htm

Even if Ife chiefs and dignitaries at one time wore wrappers, they don't seem to do so today.

There are a number of other things in that article that I don't agree with exactly, even if I might lean more towards the Benin story.

Rhino.4dm:
Here is the full article http://www.raceandhistory.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/2312

Yeah, I've seen it before. I don't really agree with all the arguments or claims made in that article, but I understand why there is still skepticism over the different accounts of the Ife-Benin connection from both sides. I think the issue has been kind of overblown somewhat though. Whichever way the connection goes, both were great states in ancient Africa and worthy of respect for their contributions to black African history.

ACM10:
[size=18pt]Evidence of Ancient closeness of Yorubas to edos[/size]

Linguistic evidence: Nil

Cultural evidence: Nil

Archaeological evidence: Nil

Only one evidence: oduduwa mythology/fairy-tale

Yorubas, una too much joor

There is some cultural and archaeological evidence, in addition to historical evidence in oral tradition and documents of a longstanding connection, though. Much of this stuff is in books or articles, but I didn't bother to post any (and probably still won't) because this thread is mostly political anyway. Some cultural similarities have already been discussed in the culture section in some threads. There are of course, some similarities or cultural connections with Igbos, and I didn't discuss that either.

As for linguistic evidence, as I posted on the fifth page of this thread, Edo is basically linguistically equidistant from Yoruba (56% cognate score with Edo over 100 selected words) and Igbo (50% cognate score with Edo over the same selected 100 words). These languages may all sound quite different today, but it seems very probable that several thousands of years ago they were the same and they all later went on to develop their own peculiar/unique features and characteristics.

The dress culture of Ife chiefs and priests is from Bini court.

Just wondering, but do any Ife chiefs or priests wear wrappers today? Because I haven't seen any. The Ife bronzes show rulers or dignitaries wearing wrappers, but I think they've all changed style since long ago to the kind of agbadas and other outfits seen elsewhere in Yorubaland. Even if the dress culture of Benin and Ife were at one time the same or similar (although wrappers seem to have been used throughout parts of West Africa), the Ife court dress culture today is obviously different. All the pictures I have seen of Ife chiefs are in modern Yoruba clothing.

I don't think Uhe means virgin/innocence/source in Edo, that is a different uhe, with the e at the end pronounced differently.Uhe is the same word as Ufe, which is what some Yorubas still call Ife. Uhe/Ufe/Ife are all the same word. The uhe referred to as meaning innocence/virgin/source also can mean the lower end or lower part of something (and hence the source), and the e at the end of that uhe is pronounced different from the e at the end of Uhe meaning Ufe/Ife.  The notion that the latter is derived from the former sounds like conjecture to me, but I may be wrong.


[edited, noticed an error]

insisted on Negro, with a capital N

[size=30pt]N[/size][size=5pt]egro[/size]

As if capitalizing it makes the word any more ideal. How would it be more dignified to be called a capital-N-Negro than to be called an African?

As for the topic, I agree that those black Americans that prefer the term black American to African American have a good rationale for that preference, but the truth is that when push comes to shove, they are still going to be identified in some way or another with their distant relatives on the other continent. That's just the reality. Rejecting the "Africa" part because it's distant and disconnected to their present may indeed make sense, but others (the non capital-Ns of America) will still connect them to Africa regardless. All "Negros", "blacks", "coloreds", or whatever we want to call ourselves, will always have an African link even if we were living on the moon or in a space colony somewhere.

Obiagu

Tokyo was built by the Japanese

London was built by the English

and a city like New York is unique (although not totally unprecedented) in the world's history.



My issue with Abuja was that oil from underserved or ignored (by government) communities was used to construct an administrative center far away which resulted in some of the Gwari people being relocated against their will. Did the government of Nigeria make some agreement with the Gwaris in which they were asked to vote if they approved the siting of the FCT there? And if not, why not?

Other than those issues, I have no issue whatsoever with the deliberate creation of a mega city meant to cater to whoever can compete, without respect to ethnic background.

Onlytruth:
I'm disappointed in the bolded.
What is "Malay"? What is Edo? What is Igbo?
Wouldn't you agree that no nation is sacrosant and untouchable? Each nation is a product of years of immigration and mixing up and even morphing of different groups.

To answer your question, the country will still remain MALAYSIA despite heavy Chinese influence! SMH.

What would make it still remain Malaysia? As of right now, Malaysia's population is about  1/5th Chinese.

You're talking about no nation being sacrosanct.  What's funny about this is I remember an Indian Canadian comedian, Russell Peters, joking about how in the future, some hundreds of years from now, every human on the planet would be one big mix of Indians or Chinese. It seems you agree with that sentiment.

I have no problem with the Indians or Chinese, love their cultures, and would have no problem with Indian-Chinese-Nigerian mixing, but I think that at a certain point, even those of us pretending in this thread to believe in a kind of extreme cosmopolitanism which is at odds with human nature would "push back" if Russell Peters' joke world ever came close to being a reality. I think you guys are living in a joke world with some of the comments you've posted recently, though.

I guess I don't really agree with the "ends justifies the means" viewpoint all the time. In the case of Abuja, it doesn't really make sense to me that any Gwari people were relocated from their land if they didn't want to be, even if a Gwari general/dictator gave tacit approval to the whole thing. Is there really no "empty" (unoccupied by an ethnic group) land in the entire Middle belt? (if the country won't agree to have the capital in the south or far north)

And as a more general question, if the Chinese "develop" Malaysia through sheer economic brilliance, but the country is no longer really run by Malays because the Chinese are dominant in Malaysian academia, education, medicine, engineering, corporate business, etc., is it really Malaysia anymore?

I'm not  a staunch nativist or anything, but the position I'm describing seems like common sense. You guys seem to be advocating some kind of extreme cosmopolitanism.

Obiagu, I guess your argument is that without the non-Gwari in Abuja, Abuja would be a vastly inferior city.

I guess,  I believe that without government attention and FCT status, Abuja would be a vastly inferior city regardless of whether the inhabitants were mostly Gwari, Edo, Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani, or whatever.

Obiagu1:
You seem to be missing the point. In your infamous cliché: "being a tenant in your land", where you suggesting that we should have left Abuja for Gwari people to develop?

IBB was Gwari, so, feeling magnanimous and noble-minded, and possibly also thinking oil money development would spill or "trickle down" to his Gwari people by proximity, he implemented the Murtala administration's decision to have the capital at Abuja. Otherwise, it could have been a different northern minority group entirely.


In my ideal world, yeah, I would leave Abuja for Gwari people as their own city or village, while that money would have been spent in Delta state, Bayelsa, and other states where the money really came from. If other groups wanted to move into the Gwari city/village of Abuja even without oil money, it would be on the terms of the Gwari.

Obiagu1:
Well you got the drift because probably by now you'll be a skilled broom maker or a famous palm wine taper.

Well what you're saying is that it's good that the Europeans came and took over North America because the final result was eventually good for me (or you), even if all those Native Americans, and Africans suffered there? Because the Europeans had advanced science, right?

A kind of "the ends always justify the means" outlook?


And who knows, I might even be a famous artist, court poet, or maybe some sort of minor feudal overseer posted somewhere by the king. . .no reason I necessarily have to tap palm wine. Maybe others would bring palm wine to me and my 30 wives in my large house. . .

Abuja was developed with oil, wasn't it?

I mean, without oil, would anybody be rushing to buy that land?


Why not another minority group's land in the North?

Apparently the Gwari weren't exactly fine with the whole Abuja thing:

books.google.com/books?id=SPBfnT_E1mgC&pg=PA110

books.google.com/books?id=SPBfnT_E1mgC&pg=PA111

^^

Read the second link.

Obiagu1:
I put up an imaginary scenario where, assuming the Native Americans were not colonized and they had the power to prevent the more Advanced Europeans from buying lands and putting up some development, America will not be there as you know it today.

A closer example is Abuja. Maybe we should have left it for Gwari people to develop.

Well, in the scenario you've made, where Europeans somehow don't colonize America, why would they colonize Africa?

And if they don't colonize Africa, why would migrating to a European run country to get their education even be a desire or an issue for me or my family? Why would we even care?

Obiagu1:
It still does not make sense. If the Europeans that moved to the Americas were prevented from developing America, by now you will still be in Benin-City because nothing will take you to America.

I don't really get your argument here, so perhaps you could make it more explicit.

Are you referring to the Europeans that did the founding, fighting and colonizing of North America or the ones that came later, starting mostly in the late 1800s?

If you're referring to the first group, then there's really no comparison or argument to make there, but if you're referring to the latter group, there were anti immigration quotas of sorts for a long time (to keep the country of one basic ethnic makeup) and there were stated and non-stated quotas for Jews in fields like academia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus_in_the_United_States

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


It should be obvious that there was a reason there was a "Jewish quota" but not an "Irish quota" in academics. Not to say that there aren't very many bright Irish people in academics, but the non-Irish Americans already there didn't think they were any less competitive than them (Irish) in academic areas (if anything, they thought the Irish were inferior).

As for me being in Benin, I wouldn't have a problem with that, but honestly I wouldn't be in America if it wasn't for the 1960s civil rights movement, not because of some Irish, Italians, Germans, and Polish  that came to America in the 1800s. They're not even relevant. The country would still have been a 1st world country without them, although maybe not as great a 1st world country.

[And for anyone else reading, I'm well aware that there are some Nigerians that moved to America before the civil rights movement and got degrees and lived there for a while before returning to Nigeria, but I'm making a general point on why there are many more Nigerians in America rather than a few.]

Obiagu, my statement about being a "tenant in your own land" was being realistic. If you read about the Malaysian Chinese and the efforts (quotas and affirmative action) made by the ethnic Malays to ensure that their country is still felt to be "theirs" while still coexisting with the Chinese Malaysians, you'll understand the scenario I was describing. The "Bumiputera" (meaning "son of the soil" approach is what would naturally follow in a region when a more economically dominant/competitive group (like the Chinese) moves into that area. I didn't say the "push back" would be preventing non-natives from legitimately acquiring land at all. But quota systems of some sort would naturally arise. Were 1950s non-Igbo of the Eastern region and Igbo of the Eastern region equally economically competitive? Well if they had all stayed in the same region, some sort of quota agreement would have developed.

ekt_bear:
And why don't you think it would have happened? Why were the fears of the Eastern minorities, which they voiced to the authors of the Willinks report, unreasonable?

At a certain point, even if they were still in one region, some sort of agreement would have to have been reached between Igbos and those non-Igbo groups that had some complaints, which would have been more or less equivalent to setting quotas. 


Basically, I mean that if it ever really reached a point where the indigenous group were "tenants" in their own land and the place was dominated by another group economically, the indigenous groups would get organized and push back some way (not necessarily militarily, but probably politically). Before this point is reached, there would probably already be an agreement in place of some sort.

Negro_Ntns, I don't think we're going to agree on that issue, so we'll have to agree to disagree.

ekt_bear:
Continue discussing amongst yourself these very important issues of economic colonization of the COR region of the East that PhysicsQED raised.

Just for the record, I don't think that ("economic colonization" would actually have happened. But I noticed in the Willinks report that disputes in the Eastern region had more of these economic conflict incidents brought up between Igbo and non-Igbo.

PapaBrowne:
errm . . . no! I didn't miss the point.
I know its all politics. And I stated my views early enough.
But my reference here is to the undertones by both parties and they depict a prostration and a validation of superiority of the EDO heritage.
A neutral reader will come up with the conclusion that the group being discussed is perceived as seniors by the discussing groups.

*sigh*

I think you're still being naive.

Nigerians of any background are proud, self-respecting people when it comes to their groups, despite the problematic nature of the actual country at present. That you actually believe what you typed above suggests to me that you're a bit divorced from reality.

reporter?:
The basis of the thread was cultural; however, the OP was disingenuous from the beginning.
Yorubas are not in any way on a land grabbing mission or trying to "attache." What is the economic gain of such adventure?

What does Edo possess that the SW does not possess in equal or more measure? This is not an attempt by Yoruba (IMO) in anyway to annex a distinct entity and a proud (rich culture) like Edo.
Anyone who construes it as such is just misdirected.

I understand what you're saying, and I'm not under the impression that either west or east has expressed any desire to "attach"  to Edo, but the original post claimed

"This falsehood has being propagated unabated for years and everyone assumes it is true.
When it comes to culture, Yoruba culture is not closer to that of Binis than Igbo is.
When it comes to language, Yoruba language is not closer to Bini language more than Igbo is.
When it comes to physical appearance of the Edo people, they do not in any way look like the Yorubas.

Then how did this myth originate?"

but the thread became more political and about ethnic alliances when Nigeria is split.

But then again, this is the politics section, so it's not surprising. I'm not really criticizing anyone that's Yoruba or Igbo for engaging in one of the political games of this forum. I was just pointing out to Papabrowne that this thread had the appearance of being about cultural affinity to Edo in principle, but in practice it was more about political orientation and ethnic political alliances.

PapaBrowne:
Secondly, even though on the facade it feels like a pawn in a chess game btw the two, the undertones from both parties (Yoruba and Igbo) in this argument portray and accord a seeming superiority towards the EDOs. If a total stranger goes through this thread, he would be left with the opinion that the EDO people must be of a special breed. That's the point I tried to present albeit in subtlety.

This same discussion could be had between the East and West over the Igalas if the Igalas happened to be located more in the south and exactly between East and West instead of the more northerly position they have. It's not about Edo in particular or any supposed "superiority" or "special" quality of the Edo. This entire discussion could have been about Igala if they were in the south instead of "Middle Belt".

Negro_Ntns,

Omo n'Oba Erediauwa also noted his admiration for certain qualities of the Igbos in those quotes.

Even if I were the kind of person who resorted to ethnic attacks (which I'm not), whenever my ethnic group or any Oba of Benin past or present was criticized or challenged in a statement, it would make no sense to post anything like what you posted above when that's just not what I believe.

Call it honesty. I can't feign dislike or hatred when I don't have any or launch into ethnic attacks when I have no desire to do so.

Lakal, thanks for the clarification. Well I do admit then that "gh" is just unique to certain Yoruba dialects and not due to outside influence, though I  was skeptical of the claim that the entire "Proto-Yoruba-Igala" group had "gh" at the time they were distinct from other "Kwa" groups for the reasons I mentioned above. I guess it would make more sense to see "gh" in Yoruba dialects as a "throwback" from "Proto-Kwa" times than something retained from outside (non Yoruba) influence.

I have read in multiple places that Owo's borders extended into Kabba, but it would make sense that the majority of the Kabba Yoruba were not dominated by anyone else since they did not adopt similar patterns of political/social organization.