₦airaland Forum

High_Chief:
You guys should pick up a dammm book and read more about this man before you start saying what you dont know. He had the best interest of Nigeria at heart. Shut your mouth if you have not read about this man

Tell that to Balewa's kids. When Balewa was killed and his body dumped somewhere like garbage, why was that in the best interest of Nigeria?

Why won't Nigerians admit that these guys were yet another bunch of incompetent and misguided military buffoons and just move on already.

No need to romanticize idiots.

There's something sociopathic about this snippet of the interview, but I can't quite put my finger on it exactly.

mbatuku2:
I'm still sticking to my claim of minimal migration of Bini people into Anioma territory as settlers. Apart from Oza nagogo, what other Anioma communities are Edos?

Alisor and Alilehan

I didn't say there was large scale migration. I'm saying there may have been founding elements in some places that were either ethnically Edo or just Edo-speaking/Edo-influenced.

Andre Uweh:
^^^Owa in my own part of Igboland means east (Owa anyanwu). Owa could have meant east from Benin. But this is just my personal assumption.
Like Abagworo stated earlier, The Igbo groups East of Benin acquired from the Edos the aristocracy pattern of Bini. But before this, what you had in those areas were Nri culture and that exist till date.
Lets go back to the 1997 centenary of the Bini occupation. In 1997 the year of this anniversary, N.T.A did interview the sole survivor of the sack of Oba's palace. Am not sure if he is still alive now, the man spoke in Igbo. He was 8 years when the sack happened.
This goes a long way to show that Ndigbo were in Benin even till the sack of Bini in 1897.
Those who left Bini and moved eastwards are Igbo people.

That man wasn't the "sole survivor" of the 1897 sack of the palace; he was apparently the only person alive by 1997 that was in the palace at the time, though.

Anyway, I acknowledged that Owa is a word in multiple Nigerian languages. My point was that Mbatuku's suggestion that there was no Benin migration eastward is not that likely considering that there are peripheral Edo communities in/near Ika areas to this day.

And if we take the likely story that the name Agbor is derived from "Agbon" (meaning "the world", or "life" as was emphasized here and elsewhere by actual Delta Igbos, we don't find an Igbo root for that name, although Agbor is clearly Igbo today, which is suggestive of something more in line with what Egharevba claimed and what bokohalal mentioned with regard to that song about Udo, Edo, and "Eka" (although the possibility exists that they were "Benin cultured Igbos" (as Abagworo put it) that chose an Edo word only because of influence, not because they were ethnically Edo).

I don't know what the word for "east" is in Ika or in the Owa dialect, but I wouldn't be surprised if Owa doesn't have a tradition that the name refers to the east.

mbatuku2:
Does anyone know if the Benin culture has any Igbo influence?

The Ikegobo cult or "cult of the hand" in Benin is very likely to be from Ikenga. This may have been introduced to Benin during Benin's wars of expansion when contact was made with other outside groups or some Western Igbo immigrants may have brought that with them.





As for the rest of your discussion with Abagworo, I agree with the general sentiment, but maybe not the specifics. You are possibly underestimating the spread of Edo culture. There are pure Edo settlements like Oza nogogo and Alilehan that are only a stone's throw away from Agbor. Yes there was probably Igbo migration both ways, but its really unlikely that there were no actual ethnic Bini migrations whatsoever.


As for the Owa issue, one possible reason a person (such as Agbontaen) might have difficulty accepting the story is because owa is a basic Edo (Bini) word which means house and there is a pure Edo community called Owa (now named Evbuobanosa) in Orhionmwon LGA in Edo state. It should therefore be pretty easy to see why Agbontaen could claim that although they received later elements from other cultures, their basic foundation was from Benin. I read a more complex derivation of Owa from Ute Okpu in one of the earlier debates here, and it's entirely possible, but perhaps not as convincing. But I think "Owa" is a word in multiple Nigerian languages, not just Edo, anyway.

You aren't the only ones making such arguments, though. Nowadays Ogho is called Owo, although as Chief Ashara (the Owo historian) and even the current Olowo of Owo attested to, the original name was Ogho (which is actually a non-Yoruba word (the "gh" sound, called the "voiced velar fricative" by linguists, is completely alien to Yoruba and is only found in areas of Edo influence such as Ogho/Owo and Ilaje) and just so happens to be a pure Bini word which means respect). Of course today, Owo is considered wholly Yoruba in origin and any Edo influence is chalked up to Oba Ewuare or Oba Ozolua's conquests and expansion, not to an early Edo element in the founding population. Chief Egharevba, and of course, the Binis in general, believed the exact opposite however.

tpia@:
I'm not sure where this bini is yoruba claim is coming from.

First time i ever heard of it was here on nairaland.

Same here. Posters like Alj harem (step 1), Bababuff, Negro_Ntns have even repeated this. I've never heard of this bizarre claim outside of the internet.

My dad expressly explained the difference between yoruba and benin to me as a young child - he pointed out the similarity in names

There's not even much similarity in names, really.

True, some yorubas were absorbed into benin but so were other tribes.

Which other tribes?

ekt_bear:
Nice, thanks. I'll take a look.

No problem. If you can find it, R.E. Bradbury's 1957 book gives a very thorough survey of all of the "Edoid" ethnic groups of the former Midwest - their traditions, methods of social organization, religious beliefs, etc. and it's highly detailed and informative. Bradbury's book is not available online unfortunately.

From all available written information, there is nowhere in Edo north that is "Nupoid", although there must definitely be some people of originally Nupe descent there. Edo north is thoroughly "Edoid" with a few exceptions.

tpia@:
obviously there's something at stake here with the way people get very jittery at certain sources, not to mention the intentional misinformation commonly spread on nl.

i'm not willing to get into any long pointless arguments at the moment so just go with whatever's being peddled- its up to you who you associate with.

There's nothing at stake. I would actually like to know the answers to the questions I asked you and your sources or ideas - it would improve my knowledge base.

And this is an anonymous forum so I don't think there are any real associations here that have any significance.

tpia@:
Going by the names of kings wont really work in this instance since edo isnt really a monarchical concept per se- you're getting it mixed up with benin.

There were multiple independent non-Benin monarchies in what is now Edo state, except that Benin claimed or attempted to claim overlordship over all of them at later times when its military made this possible. The former Ekpoma kingdom among the Esan are a good example of this.

ekt_bear:
What is the story behind this? I've heard/read a bit of Nupe somehow influencing Edo area I suppose long ago, but don't know how exactly it happened.

The parts of R.E. Bradbury's 1957 book that refer to Etsako and Ivbiosakon history and traditions do mention the Nupe invasion, though not in great detail.

Here's a link with some references to written work by others on the Nupe invasions (under the part "Kukuruku Wars"

http://www.edo-nation.net/edoconf2.htm

You can follow up the references cited for specifics, of course. I think there are some errors in that article though.


Here's another article written by somebody from Edo north:

www.unilorin.edu.ng/publications/zioseni/The">https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:kMC26g-lnxEJ:www.unilorin.edu.ng/publications/zioseni/The%2520Islamisation%2520of%2520Auchi%2520Kingdom.doc+islamic+scholarship+nupe+edo&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESh5jVYnuCIrRnfCOxJvWpOndjS4J5gJQtMLrjUqLsJWJQFGgf2aGptha1C35EyXZjWNDiib0HrVmhtS_rkZ-OL-kCOR5WbwmZW9USqOX8G7odtbyVgiimQ_Byk5ch_tEfiTpAZE&sig=AHIEtbQeAvFFK8Vz2bzRDMqzY6ECepyb_g

tpia@:
The nupoid parts were heavily inlfuenced by nupe during slave times.

And what are the Nupoid parts? Could you please name one "Nupoid" (linguistically, culturally) group from the northern part of Edo state. I know there are some people there of Nupe descent, but I"m not sure that there are really "Nupoid parts" of northern Edo state. I would have to read more on that area to find out for sure though.

The ebiroid influences stem from proximity no doubt. Could also be the slave trade.

They are actually in northern Edo state.

books.google.com/books?id=9jEjnbbI3xAC&pg=PA71

http://nigerianobservernews.com/12082011/features/features9.html

I think there is another group besides Etuno that is Ebiroid that was mentioned in R.E. Bradbury's 1957 book, but I can't recall the name right now.

In addition, some areas seem to have non-black admixture from unknown sources.

What areas?

Chyz*:
@PhysicsQED, do you think its best that the Igbanke and Oza nogogo work with each other in such a way that the Oza Nogogo people will be ceded to Edo state and the Igbanke to Delta(basically swap place)?

I honestly don't think any groups are going to go to other states except that some miracle happens and every faction from every group reaches a consensus. All of the complaints I have read from the two groups (Igbanke and Oza nogogo) are very impassioned and serious, but I still do not think it is likely to happen any time soon. Even if they were to switch places, other groups would also want to be transferred to other states in addition to these groups, and then more and more groups until you have states that are ethnically homogenous. I don't think this issue is a priority for any state's government right now. Maybe when (or if) Nigeria is more developed these groups might get their wish granted.

R.I.P. to the victims.

ejs:
I m looking for help determined the origin an history of a mask that I have acquired that I am told is an original Benin Bronze

That is probably not even a modern Benin bronze, and definitely not an "original" (pre-1897) Benin bronze.


For a brief outline/overview of the industry in imitation Benin bronzes, you can check out this article:

Art and Science in Benin Bronzes
Author(s): Joseph Nevadomsky
Source: African Arts, Vol. 37, No. 1, Explorations of Origins (Spring, 2004), pp. 1+4+86-88+95-96
Published by: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3338001


Here's approximately half of the article:

"A famous social scientist once said, "In science as in love, an overemphasis on technique very likely leads to impotence." Good science combines method and intuition, accommodating the objectivity of mathematics and physics that since the Enlightenment has made life synonymous with progress, to the subjectivity of literature and philosophy that since the Ancients has made it worthwhile. Take dating techniques in Benin art. I single out TL (thermoluminescence) because it is a method art historians are most familiar with, if only in that reflexive way of babies startled by a sudden loud noise. Developed in the 1960s and 1970s, TL dating is used to confirm the stratigraphic dating of in situ pottery and terracotta works. It is also routinely used by museums and galleries to verify a plus-or-minus dating of authentic ceramics.


Bronze sculptures with clay-core remnants have also been dated in this way, including the so-called bronze art of the kingdom of Benin in Nigeria. These sculptures are among the most technically proficient works made by the lost- wax casting process. Although in 1897 a British punitive expedition removed objects after sacking the capital (establishing a no-later-than date for "authentic" Benin works), artifacts not part of that booty, and automatically suspected to be more recent in origin, may be authenticated by stylistic methods, by TL testing, or by another method such as metals analysis utilizing laser ablation. While these methods provide an extra comfort level to collectors and museums, they leave something to be desired for reasons I deal with in An Elementary Guide to the Dating of Benin Bronzes (forthcoming; coauthored with Natalie Lawson, California State University, Fullerton). This D ick and Jane-style primer is meant for art historians who failed ninth-grade algebra and/or suffer from social anxiety syndrome. TL is problematic as an accurate chronometric dating procedure and as a certification of authenticity for dealers and their clients. It also poses a challenge to a corps of middlemen adept at faking Benin art. The British punitive expedition against Benin returned with booty consisting of thousands of brass and ivory artifacts that now command premium auction prices. But not all manufactures were confiscated in 1897. In chieftaincy homes in the city, in the palaces of dukes on the outskirts, and in rural communities, one occasionally finds castings that, judging from past experience, might someday enter the market. There are stunning examples. "Traditional Art from the Benin Kingdom," an exhibition at Southern University Museum of Art in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has intriguing pieces. Other examples from the Lower Niger Bronze Industry and the southern fringes of the Edo area pique one's interest. An erstwhile shrine, a serendipitous discovery, brass-castings at the northern boundaries of empire- these excite a scholar's professional gonads and stimulate a collector's salivary glands.

Benin's brass-casting tradition continues, aimed at the venturesome tourist, at diplomats and visitors to Lagos and Abuja, at Nigerians as house decor, at local residents as landscape monuments for keeping up with the Edokpolos, at religious organizations that require bronze apostles with Nigerian embellishments, at the government as civic sculptures that honor its corrupt patriots, and at Hausa runners who artificially antique castings for sale in Europe, the United States, and probably now Japan. Reproductions from South Africa, Cameroon, and Ghana flood the market, too. Bronzes from Cameroon are conspicuous by their bulbous faces and excessive filing, which artificially creates a thinness approaching that of early Benin bronzes. Examples from Johannesburg are inexpensive, aimed at the lower end of the market as curios, and can be found on the Web at <http: / / www.fineafricanarts.com> or in an African arts shop at Notting Hill Gate, London. In a so-so Benin style, they are slightly off, like an Austrian torte made by Eskimos on a very hot day. Others from Jo'burg are cutely rustic, with designs that replicate Zulu/ Swazi /Sotho/Ndebele beadwork and cows with curved horns that are not a part of either the Benin City contemporary casting scene or its historical art. Splinter cells are hidden everywhere. There are Benin-style silver medallions cast in Indonesia, and, adding to the art historical hysteria of Castings of Mass Destruction, one is warned that there are casters in Europe-worse yet, European casters in Europe- producing "Benin" bronzes. As a matter of fact, a casting owned by Chief Inneh of a "bird of disaster," stolen in 1985, may have been made in Europe sometime during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and there is also the example of the Eresoyen stool. Both are honest historical recastings, maybe, but now globalization brings the postmodern uncertainty of Blade Runner. Replicants hide in artificial fog, disguised as West Africans. Connoisseurs accept simulacra. Art historians struggle for iconographic certainty. No wonder dealers of African art are at wit's end about validation. "The problems of art history in West Africa are almost unique," Paul Craddock tells us in a 1985 essay on dating metals. The Benin bronzes are one of those problems.

That problem is complex. The recent "First Word" in this journal by Skip Cole on African art fakes and the addendum by Barbara Blackmun on recently manufactured Benin pieces are cautionary (African Arts, Spring 2003). Both essays purport that scientifically certified dates from European labs are offered as objective indicators to authenticate Benin bronzes that are not authentic. The manufacture of artificially altered Benin objects with scientific documentation is an international cottage industry. The collusion between Benin's brass-casters and European dealers is a grainy issue, no doubt, with Benin's casters as incidental or indifferent participants. The murky trail leads to Hausa dealers, who purchase raw castings and transform them into "antiquities." These middlemen, their long-distance entrails impervious to national borders and continents, are aided and abetted by international brokers, appraisers, and buyers armed with scientific documentation. Once in a while, historical bronzes do pop up on the market that complicate the researcher's condemnations of casters' infidelities and agents' duplicities. The altar to the hand studied by Bradbury is an on-the-radar bronze and an incontrovertible example. But off radar: owned by Chief Ezomo, one of the hereditary kingmakers, it was stolen in the 1980s by one of the Ezomo's many sons by one of his many wives who buried it in his mom's compound. The police recovered and returned it. Blackmun saw it during her mid-1970s fieldwork, kept on the Ezomo's paternal shrine, and I saw the casting a decade later, after its return. After the Ezomo died, the altar to the hand became part of the estate. Then it disappeared again, to reappear in New Orleans. Charles Davis legitimately acquired it from the inheritors and offered it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where it now resides, and I again saw it in 2003 at the Met. Another example, a hip mask, circa sixteenth century, photographed by Fagg (Fagg & Plass 1964) and me (Nevadomsky 1997), is in a Benin City bank vault, with a horde of honest dealers growling at the gate. (Dealers are all honest, just as kids are always bright.) Benin City's museum might have been a magnet for attracting extant pieces in local private hands. But little has happened. With Igun Street - the brass-casters' guild - only a block away from the museum, I hardly go there except to escort visitors, and I was happy to take Barbara Plankensteiner and Gisela Volger there in January 2003. (Plankensteiner and Volger are curating an exhibition of Benin art scheduled for 2006 for the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin; Museum fur Volkerkunde, Vienna; and the Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn.) I was stunned. The museum can't offer a haven for its own collection. Bleak, dusty, and half-empty cases testify to objects on loan, but no one knows where. One is not even sure that displayed objects are the real McCoys. Security for the collection lies with people who harbor a grudge against Benin's historical hegemony, have fallen prey to an evangelical religious fervor, or are simply insouciant. During Joe Eboreime's tenure as Head of Station at the Benin Museum, the Ohenukoni of Ikhuen, a very old man, offered the 100-plus objects from his shrines to the museum at fire-sale prices - as scuttlebutt has it, to prevent his callous senior son (not resident in Benin City) from inheriting and disposing of them. It was a trade-off: the Ohenukoni needed money to redo his palace and silence his chirping wives. Allegedly, some of the objects came in the front door of the Benin Museum and went out the back. Under the usual time-will-tell-or-forget investigation, this incident raised little dust and was chalked up to museum infighting with a division of the spoils. It is typical of museum seepage in Nigeria. Such leaks are endemic."

Ishan4real:
Ishan is the real and correct name of the area and the people of that ethic group of Edo State and Not Esan incorrect.

Why do you say that? I've read the exact opposite (that "Ishan" is an anglicized or corrupt version of the original name "Esan" everywhere else.

Sagamite:
Maybe there is a misunderstanding here.

My perception of Sanusi's intelligence is not limited to his economics. I am just talking about general intelligence and that is my assumption of what Lagarde is saying.

Obviously there are tons of economic professors in Nigeria that will know more about economics than him.

I am looking at him as a holistic person in terms of ideas, utterances, actions and problem solving skills.

I guess I did misunderstand you then.

But even the part in bold, I'm not sure that I would agree with.

Maybe Lagarde is surprised at encountering an African whose apparent intelligence equals or exceeds her own and imagining that he's the most intelligent person in that country is her way of coping with or countering the possibility/realization that the people in that country might generally be more intelligent than she (or other Europeans) would think.

SapeleGuy:
Dear Sagamite,

Because the IMF/World Banks record in Africa is an ode to failure, I can afford to be crass perhaps not as crass as the purile person who said Sanusi is the most intelligent man in Nigeria.

I know you are an excellent researcher, so I am hopeful that you will be able to come up with the Tangible achievements of IMF in Africa - Good luck in your quest

Best regards
Sapeleguy

Sagamite:
Even if you think IMF have made an "error" before, I would expect you to have done an evaluation of intent and evolution of philosophy.

Is your assessment of "their error" that of wilful intent or local-application ignorance?

Even if your assessment of "their error" in certain past years was the former above, why do you think it will be the same in the future? It is the same people in the IMF in 1980 that are there now and will be there in 2020 and 2050?

Your statements are similar to those I look down on when someone tells me "USA is evil and against the black man because of what happened in the 70s. So that is what they are doing now and I don't trust them. They will never change". I look at the person and wonder how some can say what Nixon did in the 70s is a determinant of what Obama will do today. The person might well tell me that what Lincoln did in 1865 is what Obama would do in 2012.

This whole whiteman is out to destroy us should be above you. You should leave such to cap28 and his psychotic disorder.

Look at your statement I labelled crass again.

You guys can look through or buy and read in full the 1999 book coauthored by none other than Soludo for an overview of how the IMF and SAP failed in Africa:

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=xRaiPlp28hUC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5#v=onepage&q&f=false

Some interesting information there.

Sagamite:
Again, I will say it.

Educational attainment is not equal to superior intelligence. Being a professor is not a sign one is more intelligent.

I agree actually. But there is really nothing about Sanusi's articles, or his familiarity with Marx, Foucault, or whoever else he chooses to cite in his various articles that is really proof of having higher intelligence than the eggheads at those universities. After all, those professors may have read just as widely, if not more so, but choose to deliberately focus on one area that they can possibly make an impact on.

And those professors have their own articles (and books) too, and when you look up some of them, you see concrete studies and analyses of issues that are relevant to economics and directly relevant to Nigeria's economic development. Not fragments of their political and social philosophy laced with seemingly impressive references to philosophers whose fundamental ideas are inherently questionable (like Sartre, Marx, etc.). Sanusi has too much of the latter and not much of the former. Those who are easily impressed by the "banker as a philosopher" novelty of Sanusi are according him a level of higher intelligence and competence which he almost certainly does not have.

SapeleGuy:
God bless you.

The most intelligent man in the country? This is so condescending, can you imagine them making the same statement to France or USA? Thunder fire dem!

Do you know how many coups and wars they have started?  Do you know how many  people have died through corruption aided and abetted by the IMF? The IMF is an institution that has never and will never mean well for Africa. Those of you who know your history will remember that the IMF indebted generations  by giving loans to unelected, unaccountable and puppet dictatorships.

Nigeria does not need any more 'intelligent' or verile academicians who are impotent in the real world or who slavishly follow flawed economics because the textbooks says so.

Nigeria needs  'No retreat, no surrender' patriots who will put our interests first. You don't need to go to school to have honour or courage.

Finally, before you start giving IMF or World Bank any sort of Kudos, please answer this simple question. What is their record of achievement in Nigeria or Africa?

Sanusi is not really pro-IMF or pro-World bank, from what I read. In fact he was and is very critical of the structural adjustment program.

volasunkan:
it is not unexpected,UNN and uniben should cover their heads in shame,this is what happens when ignorami are in charge of academic affairs.


UNIBEN's greatest export to uk is James Onanaefe IBORI,the man even at the height of his controversial criminal antecedents,the school went on to humour him with the privilege of invitation to deliver a CONVOCATION SPEECH!
This uniben school is so infantile and stupidly-run to the extent that the appointment of the university VC was done in the Oba of Benin's palace based purely on a silly 'benin son of the soil' criteria instead of tested scholarship and administrative/leadership competence.Imagine a university VC appointed on such puerile criteria.

1. Your comment on Uniben is pitifully ironic. Read about the NNDP, Richard Akinjide, the University of Lagos, Professor Eni Njoku (Snr), Professor Saburi Biobaku, and the 1965 vice chancellor crisis in detail and then get back to reality. When you come to terms with what happened there in 1965, maybe you'll refrain from these kind of comments in the future or maybe you'll stick by your words and "hang your head in shame" for Unilag. Last time I checked, 1965 is over 40 years before what you're complaining about (2009).

2. A UNN export to the U.S. is one Dr. Joseph Igietseme, whose research was honored by the CDC at one point. A Uniben export to the U.S. is Dr. Charles Rotimi (Director of the Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health at the National Institutes of Health). You can look him up. Fashola is another Uniben alumnus. Don't know why you forgot him but remembered Ibori.

3. What's ironic about your mention of the invitation of Ibori to deliver a speech at Uniben is that this happened before the "son of the soil" got a chance to be at the helm of that institution. This happened while the acting vice chancellor (who was not a Benin man, but a man from an ethnic group (Itsekiri) from Ibori's state (Delta)) was at the helm, not the current VC: http://saharareporters.com/news-page/ibori-our-convocation-speaker-not-here-uniben-students-staff-and-alumni-tell-acting-vc-kub

4. The appointments for VC of Uniben were always done on an ethnic basis, regardless of whether that was what the Binis or the palace of the Oba of Benin actually wanted. I've covered this elsewhere already: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-458875.896.html#msg8635197

5. Finally, the 1965 incident had far less merit than the 2009 agitation. That's just the truth and any objective person can see that.

Sanusi is intelligent, but the most intelligent man in the country, as in any country, is more likely to be some obscure professor tucked away somewhere (probably in the natural sciences) and not in government. She knew that she was exaggerating when she made that statement, but it can be interpreted as being not just exaggeration, but also condescension. And if you don't know a place, why make statements about who is the most outstanding person in that country in a certain aspect?

I honestly think Sanusi is something of a dilettante, actually, and that this may explain his publications in areas that have nothing to do with his chosen career and his dearth of publications relating to economics.

An aspiring or amateur political philosopher might want to read Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire, but I see no reason why a competent modern economist or banker should even care what that is, let alone read it. Not that people can't have a wide range of interests, but I think this supposed higher intelligence is mostly show, eloquence, etc. and not really substantive.

Also, there's certainly nothing in his publication history or scholarly background to suggest he's any more intelligent than or even as intelligent as any of the top Nigerian economics professors from any of the better Nigerian universities (UI, UNN, Uniben, OAU, etc.).






On a completely unrelated note, that woman (Christine Lagarde) looks a bit like the Mad Hatter.

hustla242:
The man is not even intelligent.
He is more like someone applying hammer and nail where tact, finesse and sophistry are required.

I think you meant tact, finesse, and sophistication.

Sophistry is to be avoided.

@ thread, No ethnic group is purely homogenous anyway.


As far as Ondo, I would think that of the Yorubas there that have any non-Yoruba ancestry, there are more Yorubas mixed with Edo there than with other groups - with groups like Ifon, Idoani, Uhami/Iyayu/Ishua, Ukue-Ehuen/Ekpenni, Uhobe/Sobe, and of course, Ogho (called "Owo", being there.

So saying it could be "very strong/powerful" when used in managing a condition is significantly different from saying it would be "very effective"? Ok.

But regardless, he's not a professor of English.

Abagworo:
A) Africans were purely the same and are still same to me. We were all unclad and lived in mud houses with thatch roof and that is the truth. Going by all the older pictures I've seen only either the noble or elderly wore clothes. The children and common people were stack Unclad or show me any picture displaying other wise.

1. Yeah, we're all the same - that's  why we look different, have different languages and even language groups, different indigenous religious beliefs , different patterns of social organization, etc.  How ridiculous.

I'm sure you know deep down that an Igbo isn't the same as a Congo pygmy or an Ethiopian/Abyssinian/Habesha, or a San/"Bushman", but you're saying everybody is the same. If you want to say your own specific sub-group were a certain way, limit that to your sub-group and don't drag other groups into that nonsense.


2. By the way, I didn't say that there weren't limits on who could wear clothes or claim that a significant number of children would wear clothes, but to say that "we were all unclad" before contact with Europeans or Arabs is nonsense.

People have yet to explain to me why the indigenous clothing styles looked nothing like - and didn't even match in basic physical shape or form - the clothing Europeans and Arabs wore.

Why does the clothing on the people in the Nok art look so different from Arab and European clothing?


3. As for living in mud dwellings,

a) not everybody lived in "houses", some lived in what are properly and accurately described as huts, while some others had regular sized houses, large houses, great halls, etc., that alone is a difference.

b) the Egyptians lived in mud and straw dwellings. That's why Egypt was once referred to (erroneously) as a "civilization without cities" by European historians and archaeologists - they couldn't find stone ruins of houses and palaces around the temples and tombs, so they were confused as to where all the houses were, assuming that if people could build with a certain material (stone and different types of rocks), then they would necessarily want to use that material everywhere, even when it wasn't their preference. Some of the remains of these mud and straw buildings can be seen and a few have been excavated. It is now well known and generally accepted that Egypt's primary architectural style for buildings that were meant to be continuously lived in was with mud.

The ironic thing about your tone in describing the mud houses with thatched roofs - apart from the fact that the ancient Egyptians that are universally considered quite sophisticated preferred mud buildings for the places that they actually intended to live in - is that the material of the dwellings served an actual purpose: to keep the home cool(er) during the day in a hot environment. This is attested to by pre and post colonial observers.

It's curious therefore, that something that was based on common sense and basic needs is so greatly looked down upon.

c) That some of these houses could look very polished and neat is also known. And some of them were designed in such a way that multiple European observers were impressed with them. A look at Frobenius's description of Ife ruins, or various European descriptions of Benin or the British admiration for the palace of Kumasi before they burnt it down, makes this quite clear.

d) one kingdom (Benin) which had extensive contact with Europeans which would have exposed them to European clothing, and had trade connections that would have seen some of their people make contact with European forts and buildings elsewhere in Africa - never even for a minute attempted to build European stone brick houses with tiled roofs or anything in the fashion of a European dwelling. Nor did they have some mass adoption of European clothing. If they didn't have real clothing before making contact with Europeans or Arabs, why were they so reluctant to adopt en masse and exhibit the clothing styles that Europeans and Arabs wore?

e)

"Excavations in Benin City, near the royal palace, yielded some rare and intriguing fragments of cloth dating to the 13th century. Microscopic analyses revealed that the fibers of some of the fragments had convolutions and other features associated with cotton, but the condition of the samples prevented a definitive identification.13 Other aspects of the cloths point to indigenous, rather than foreign, manufacture, such as the variety of fabric structures and diversity of types and weights of yarn elements. These features are consonant with cloth woven on the vertical loom. In my view, it is the presence of flat, raphia-like fibers in some of the samples that speak most strongly to a West African provenance. In any case, by the time European navigators and merchants began to frequent this part of the Guinea Coast in the 1490s, the Benin area was noted as a place where cotton cloths could be purchased at inland markets. In the year 1505, for example, one Portuguese merchant stationed at the trading post of Ughoton purchased over 1800 locally woven cotton cloths, using them to clothe slaves, make ship’s awnings, and exchange for gold on the Gold Coast.14"

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=benin+connah+cloth+13th+century&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CEgQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww2.lse.ac.uk%2FeconomicHistory%2FResearch%2FGEHN%2FHELSINKIKrieger.pdf&ei=RnrsTp2yCqKOsALphpzJCQ&usg=AFQjCNFqYmXMgw67xVveh-uIEg76B3z0XA

freepeople:
We are abusing the word [size=14pt]"potency"[/size]. We should use "efficacy" instead.
[size=14pt]Potency[/size] refers to amount of drug needed to produce a certain response, while,
[size=14pt]Efficacy[/size] is the maximal response that can be elicited by a drug.

When potency is mentioned, we think about dose of the drug, but when efficacy is mentioned, we think about the effect of drug on the disease process. Pharmaceutical company can't get an FDA license by proving that their drug is potent, rather, license is issued by proving that their drug is efficacious when compared to placebo. Let's not use the word inter-changeably. Potency is mostly the language of charlatans.

I think you're misunderstanding the prof's use of ordinary English.

Potency and efficacy are ordinary words which - like many other words - have been borrowed by scientists to have specific technical meanings in their specific field, and we don't need to claim that "potency" is the language of "charlatans" when it is in fact a specific pharmacological term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potency_%28pharmacology%29

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

But he was not even making any technical statement or pronouncement - he was clearly speaking in plain English and in plain English what he claimed made sense. So we should refrain from misreading his very ordinary (not technical) use of the word potent to mean something other than the obvious, standard dictionary definition.

LMAO @ "43% of NASA scientists are Iranians" from that Iranian article Yes, the Iranians are smart, but that claim is nonsense.

Ahmadinejad's propaganda department should try a more subtle approach.

TerraCotta? Are you still around?

Is (then) Lt. Col. David Ogunewe still alive? What did Ogunewe have to say about Adekunle's strange claim from years back about Adekunle stopping the July coup's success in Enugu?

I don't think his role was as major as he was trying to make it out to be:

books.google.com/books?id=qA44AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA75

Abagworo:
From my research so far it seems all black Africans were very much alike in culture,religion and a lot of things before contact with Europeans. Most of these things we call our culture today are infact the things that killed our culture. Arabs and Europeans. Our real culture was beautiful and rich.

So we can actually say our true culture existed before the 16th century.

lol, research? Aren't you the same person that claimed that

a) we were all unclad before contact with either Europeans or Arabs (you said this recently in another thread)

and that

b) "The only traditional cloth making community in Southern Nigeria is Akwette in Abia State"