₦airaland Forum

ekt_bear:
Slightly OT, but naija's population doesn't seem to give it any advantage over smaller countries.

Take a look at the recently released list of 2011 PECASE winners:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/26/president-obama-honors-outstanding-early-career-scientists

No Nigerian names. Possibly no black or African names.

Several Persian names. And Iran is 1/2 the size of Nigeria.

So what is the point of all this population?

Doesn't seem useful for doing anything, does it?

Quality >>> quantity.

Better a country of 2 million that performs well on average versus an underperforming country of 160 million.

We are doing something deeply, deeply wrong as a people, country, and continent. I grow more and more pessimistic about our prospects.

I think the issue here is just money. Smart people often avoid going into academia if their family's economic situation is not comfortable.

Nigeria has produced some quality individuals in academia, but yeah, not enough relative its size.


Nigeria is far from academically challenged, though, in terms of human potential. It's just that poor countries don't have money to invest in science.

Some of the Nigerians I came across when looking up African academics were impressive.


On Iran being half the size of Nigeria, maybe you should compare only one half of Nigeria to modern Iran, to get a better perspective. We should compare apples to apples, right? Iran is the most scientifically inclined Muslim country on the planet, after all. Whereas, at least half of Nigeria (or more) is. . .

ekt_bear:
Slightly OT, but naija's population doesn't seem to give it any advantage over smaller countries.

Take a look at the recently released list of 2011 PECASE winners:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/26/president-obama-honors-outstanding-early-career-scientists

No Nigerian names. Possibly no black or African names.

Several Persian names. And Iran is 1/2 the size of Nigeria.

So what is the point of all this population?

Doesn't seem useful for doing anything, does it?

Quality >>> quantity.

Better a country of 2 million that performs well on average versus an underperforming country of 160 million.

We are doing something deeply, deeply wrong as a people, country, and continent. I grow more and more pessimistic about our prospects.

Chyke Doubeni on that list is of Nigerian origin. Probably from the SE going by his first name.

http://www.umassmed.edu/fmch/faculty/Doubeni_Chyke.cfm

He got his medical degree in Lagos.

^^^^

You're correct. So I guess 1952-1966 is what is relevant to their discussion.

@ Abagworo, while I agree with the statement that the terrain was a hindrance to development of Bayelsa, I should point out that the Eastern region of Nigeria existed from 1939 to 1966.

Why is Nigeria getting so much free money? The UK, the World Bank, etc.

Things must look bleak.

killayut: You people  are really sick,  Benin empire was and all we knew about it and as written in history was  their carving and  mud houses and  due to their stupidity they were massacred  and their king taken in to exile,  Now what is good about that history  you tramp. READ  about the NIGER DELTA  TRADING STATES and learn about IJAW civilization

lol, don't compare Niger Delta trading states with Great Benin. That's ridiculous. I have no interest in getting into any prolonged historical discussion, so I'll leave it at that. Sensible people will know how silly the comparison is. Oh yeah, and by the way, both the "carving" and the houses were often praised by multiple observers. The trading states you mentioned were visited many times by many people, yet it is doubtful if even one person had similar praise for any of those places.

And the stupidity was on the part of the British, who couldn't listen to simple instructions to wait before entering and decided to intrude. Of course, to some dumb bastards who see the British as gods, they can go anywhere and do anything they please regardless of what any Africans say. The British had almost every enviable aspect of their civilization handed down to them with little effort on their part from other groups and civilizations, and only fools see them as infallible or superior.

@ killayut, I see you still don't understand the Gelegele issue, and I'm not going to bother discussing this further with you. Peace.

By the way exotik, sorry about the long response. I just realized how long my post looks in comparison to what I was responding to.

exotik: hey Ovbioba, i remember watching a documentary some years ago, cant remember the name where he allegedly had an affair with some white women. and i have had dicussions with black-american or african-americans (to be politically correct) and they said he did like white women.

Interesting. I'll have to look around a bit for documentaries on MLK and see what I can find. All of this is new to me.

and the crux of his "integration" message was all about “interracial relationships” fighting dreaming to have cordial and extra-curricular relationship with ebos, and he had to throw that a lill black boy holding hands with a lil white girl in his dream speech. and when i look at the US today, the only thing that has really blossomed for black-americans  is interracial relationship/marriage. oh, plus they can now sit on a bus.

Yeah, MLK was for black economic and political integration with the larger American society. I doubt that this was because of any particular infatuation with whites, though.  The reasons seemed practical.

There are still a few black Americans that criticize this, but I'm pretty sure that King didn't foresee the problems that would arise in black communities in later decades. That was pretty much out of his control.

As far as black Americans, I'm pretty sure things are getting better in a few areas after the 80s although maybe not in educational, employment, crime or incarceration statistics.

There's a black Attorney general, a black NASA administrator, black ambassadors, black American professors at prestigious universities, etc. I don't think that would have happened as quickly without Martin Luther King.

But MLK wasn't really as unflinchingly "white accommodating" in his thought as some people might see him today. For example, he strongly criticized America's involvement in the Vietnam war and was accused of being unpatriotic by some whites for doing so.

Some of his later comments, although not specific, also suggest that he favored affirmative action, which isn't popular with all whites. If affirmative action had been implemented in some sort of direct economic way, rather than merely in education or employment, it might have really changed black America in a positive way. So he wasn't just about integration, he was also interested in correcting past injustice, but he first had to get people to agree to stop the discrimination before he could begin to seriously ask about correcting past economic and educational discrimination.

To understand MLK's motivation in his own words, read his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail"  (http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/resources/article/annotated_letter_from_birmingham). I think he was sincere and his reasons were as he stated in that letter, more than they were because of anything else (i.e. the alleged interracial affairs).

as for w.e.b dubious, i always thought he became an afrocentric @ the later stage of his life that was why i said he didn’t know where he belonged since he was a half-breed becoz lots of half-breeds really do not know where they belong, or which group to belong to and they find it hard to decide….so they claim all sorts of ancestry and end up saying they are “mixed”. so it was interesting to know that he wrote such a book way back in 1915? dont think i will have time to read it tho, coz i don’t care that much.

I think Dubois was always Afrocentrically inclined, actually. He may have been one of the first black writers to claim ancient Egypt had black origins. Also, he seemed to take pride in being black and was happy not to be descended from the white people who had kept his particular group as slaves
.
See this quote for example:

' "Dr. DuBois was born in Great Barrington, Mass., on Feb. 23, 1868, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation. He was born, as he phrased it in his autobiography, "Dusk at Dawn," "with a flood of Negro blood, a strain of French, a bit of Dutch, but, thank God, no 'Anglo-Saxon.'" '

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0223.html

So I think he had a little bit of veiled contempt for the American whites he was around, which was understandable given the racism of the times.

btw, i always wanted to ask u this question, why do u go by the name Physics? coz u seem to know much about History from ancient bini to greek. so maybe u should think of changing your name to HistoryQED…haha

I'm actually a physics major and I'll be going to grad school to study physics a year from now (at which point, I'll probably post very rarely on nairaland, if at all). I know a lot about different areas of science, especially math, physics and astronomy, but real science discussions rarely ever come up in this forum, so I basically never end up displaying what I know in those areas. I agree with you that I end up mostly discussing history on here, but I spend much more of my time reading scientific books and articles and any study of history is pretty far in the background in real life, especially nowadays.

History is something I find interesting, but to be honest, I don't consider myself in anyway a history expert and definitely not on Greece, lol. Me calling myself HistoryQED would be dishonest as I probably don't know as much about world history as your average history student at a university.
I know a lot about a few specific areas of history (African ancient and modern history, American history), but not very much about most other groups.

My knowledge on Greek history is not deep at all (there is way too much written on Greek history for me to care about having any expertise in their history, anyway; also it's completely irrelevant to me personally), though I know some of the basics, and my knowledge of Middle Eastern history, East Asian history, Indian history, Mesoamerican history, Egyptian history, Arabic history, etc. is also relatively shallow. What helped me in having at least basic knowledge about all of those areas is reading the books in Will Durant's Story of Civilization series and reading one other book about the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia. Besides those books, I haven't read about the history of any world cultures in depth at all. I kind of got lucky in finding those books by Durant, because those books, especially the first 5, are a goldmine of general information, however biased the books may be towards the West.

What drew me into African history was when I stumbled on an art book called Treasures of Ancient Nigeria in a library. I read several similar and related books over the next few years and read many more publications about the different ancient Nigerian cultures mentioned there. Then I branched out and read up on other parts of West, Central, East and south Africa like Ghana, Ethiopia, the Congo, Zimbabwe, etc. From there I started reading many of the publications of the most prominent Afrocentric writers (Van Sertima, J.A. Rogers, Cheikh Anta Diop, etc.) to see if there was any truth in their historical claims and to find out which claims could stand up to scrutiny (not that many, honestly). That's how I found out about Dubois' book The Negro.

As far as the stuff I post on here, you won't see me post much in detail about other African or Nigerian cultures besides Benin, because I haven't read up as deeply on those groups as I could have and honestly don't know as much as someone who had studied those cultures in detail would. I focused more on Benin and the cultures connected in some way or another with it because of the direct connection I have. When you consider the very favorable, impressive way Benin was described by the whites who first saw it, and you contrast it with how whites would see it today in terms of development, relative to their own societies, it's a bit depressing, but it's also a source of evidence to show that the biased historical picture painted about blacks is not really accurate.

One of the things I learned from history is that science and technology determined why the world is the way it is today more than anything else, and science and technology are why certain people and groups more or less rule the world today. The arts and humanities and history are important, but they are secondary in importance. I don't intend to go into researching history in any kind of professional capacity, although I still think there is a lot to be studied and discovered about African history.

anyways, laters.

Yeah, later.

k.o.n.y. did you listen to all of the songs of the other artists he mentioned?

I agree that the sound of the Jamaican "toasters" is not hip hop, but it is the case that there was some real rhyming in some of their songs.

Check out this song by U-Roy


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8un1z4hFIqM&feature=related


It's not hip hop, but it's definitely rapping.




Completely unrelated and off topic:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOfA7udJBSI


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz9w3cRMn0Y

I like these two songs. Reggae in general, I love. God bless Jamaica.

killayut:
DO NOT mistake  GELEGELEGBENE  to be GELEGELEGBINI,   and thank God  you admitted  you don't understand Ijaw dialect,  if you are a good person in to conflict resolution  then study the words from all angles. the Bini meaning and the Ijaw meaning before you make a conclusion.  AGAIN. leave the matter for the  GELE GELE  people  to setlle,  if  there are BINIS IN GELE GELE  let them meet with the IJAWS and resolve  the matter. THE entrance of EDOS out side GELE GELE  in to any conflict with  the IJAWS of GELE GELE  would lead  KALABARI IJAWS in to their defense .

My point is that Ijaws never knew the town as Gelegele. The writing of it as Gelegeleg[b]bini[/b] is by Ijaw historians (Alagoa, Kowei, etc.). I don't care if it's Gelegelegbini or Gelegelegbene, you guys don't know the name for it and you're claiming it.

^^^^^

Killayut, you keep making yourself look ridiculous.

You would be asking why a place that was destroyed has no shrines. This is too silly. Gelegele was relatively small to begin with, considerably smaller than Ughoton. Then it was destroyed. Why would there be evidence of shrines there?

And the Binis never sought out the Ijaws. The Ijaws had NOTHING that the Binis could not get from the Itsekiris or Europeans.

@ killayut,

Gelegele is an Ijaw word now? lol @ that. This is starting to remind me of that squabble over the word "ama" between some Igbo and Ijaw posters here. I'll refrain from calling you a liar, however, since I don't understand your language.

If you claim you can provide an Ijaw etymology for it, then what does "Gelegelegbini" (what Ijaws really called it, before they started pretending to own it) mean? "Bold water"? "Bold Bini"?

killayut:
Bro you need to go round Nigeria to know more about your country. In Rivers  state  alone there are over 10 Edo settlements and the people  are distinct from the Ijaws. Some of them have become Ijaws  by reasons and never by any Ijaw presure.  Settlements like Degema  which is  about the Capital of the Kalabari  people is  home town to the USOKUN AND ATALA edos who are today refered to as  KALA  and Opu Degema  people, Obonoma and Bukuma  settlements  are also Edoid, Abuloma in Okrika is also an Edoid group. These are  Edo settlements  in Rivers state that even Ijaw  people of KALABARI AND OKRIKA would fight to protect,  So let the GELE GELE IJAWS be  my friend,

I mentioned speakers of Edoid languages in Bayelsa and Rivers several pages ago in my first response to Dede1 on this thread. That there are Edoid speakers in those places is irrelevant to my point about land grabbing. Whose land did those people in Rivers land grab? If they are not the original inhabitants of the areas they now occupy, did they settle there and get on bad terms with the other groups there by proclaiming kingdoms in other groups' land? I don't see the similarities.

I have read accounts that state clearly that the name Ijo derives from Ujo, a famous ancestor of the Ijaws and some of these accounts also acknowledge that this wasn't the original name for the Ijaws but that Oru was the original name. That the original name was Oru does not mean that the name Ijo, by simple elimination, derives from a European word.

Can someone (i.e. Dede) give a convincing linguistic argument showing that there is a particular reason that the Portuguese would use the word "Jos" or "Ijos" to refer to "boat people", "seamen", "sailors", "fishermen", "ferrymen", or "people of the river" or even "porter" "helper" "servant" or even anything similar? Portuguese dictionaries are accessible, and I can't see how there is a connection between the word "Ijo" or "Jos" and Portuguese words. Granted, languages change somewhat over time, but if the word "Jo" did not have a meaning in their language, I doubt they (the Portuguese) were the ones that made up the term.


As an example of one of the accounts I was referring to:

http://www.ijawfoundation.org/people.htm

^^^

Although there are several things stated in there that I disagree with completely (such as the false claim about a population of 14 million Ijaws and some of the historical claims), I have to say that I am more inclined to believe that the term Ijo is of African origin than Portuguese.

killayut: If ancient Binis  never had a fight with Ijaws over any land why are Binis of today  doing same ?  Who is fighting the Ijaws in GELE GELE ?  are they Binis  who live in Gelegele   or  some Binis  elsewhere ?    People should reason,  Bini  people from another settlement can not come to GELE gele  TO Claim that  a town inhabited by another language group belongs to them .  The forest surrounding the town could be of dispute  but not the town itself .  Are there any historical evidence of early Bini residence or activity in gele gele ? cemetery, shrine  and family  to mention a few ,

My mother's  town in Rivers  state  called  Bakana today is originally named  OBA-AMA  which was named after the title of the king from where they migrated  from. The main founding family of that Kalabari Ijaw  town were from the Ijaw settlements of the GELE GELE area  at the Bini river  and at that  time  the area was  under  Bini empire (  Empire  does not mean they were  Bini people ). The rise of Bini empire  had the Binis  ruling over several non Bini  people ) and  every one respected  the OBA just as every one respect  the king and  queens of England under the British empire.  That area Gelegele  and the River  Benin  might be the original home of Ijaw  people from where they dispersed to different places  because  many other Ijaws in Rivers  state  traced  their root to the same spot,  People  should not lay claim to where  they do not live,

Why are you still trying this line of argument?

a) Gelegele was not uninhabited, even after the destruction of Gelegele. But few Binis returned, and the place became majority Ijaw.

The Ijaws don't get to decide all of a sudden after the discovery of oil that the demographics of the place become permanently Ijaw majority or that there exists an Ijaw traditional ruler there. This so called Ijaw traditional ruler of Gelegele is a shameless liar and fraud. He is merely the head of a settler group and is in no way a real royal or traditional ruler.

b) Gelegele is NOT an "exterior" territory of the old Benin empire or a different ethnic group's territory that the Binis conquered in ancient times or gained political control of and put under the empire.

It is a Benin founded place and "core" Benin territory. This is why people are not seeing eye to eye on this. Binis are trying to hammer it into people's thick skulls that very core Bini land is being claimed by people who are opportunists. This is why there is so much contention on this and why the Binis won't back down.

This will be second time after trying to explain the situation that I get all sorts of vague insinuations referencing the ancient Benin empire. This is an ordinary land dispute between the owners of the land and migrants, but because Benin is involved, people start insinuating things.

Humans are fundamentally territorial creatures by nature. It's easy for hypocrites, sitting back comfortably from outside the situation, to act as if they would agree to any part of the territorial land mass occupied by their ethnic group being ceded to and eventually owned by other groups in only a matter of decades. But would any of them actually abide by this in real life? Are they claiming that every single piece of land between their towns is fully occupied?

I would like Rivers and Delta state political and traditional leaders to put in writing in an official agreement with the federal government that they will abide by the principle that every single Nigerian group can settle in the southern part of Rivers state and the southern part of Delta state and claim as much land for their group as they deem fit, as long as that group is constantly physically present there. I know this would never happen, but this and this alone could be the only possible excuse anybody could use to demand that the Binis give up their claim to their own land to settlers.

That the British created a situation (burning it down) that made it unappealing to the majority of its former inhabitants to return there does not mean that a bunch of opportunists can start attacking Binis there and claiming it.  If Ijaws wanted to own that land so badly, they should have fought the Binis for it in 1897, not all this cowardly bullshit where a few ordinary civilians are selected and attacked with machetes. This whole situation involves cowardice, fraud, and hypocrisy.

If there is some group that the Binis would have to cede the land to, it would be the group that actually conquered the land and captured it, not opportunists who were even allowed to live there by the Binis.

c) Nobody is denying that the Ijaws had some "settlements" along the Benin river. That is quite another thing from laying claim to a specific area held by another group for centuries and claiming ownership of an area that they had no historical control of or authority in.

This talk of "settlements at the Gelegele area" is what is also somewhat annoying. What does this even mean? What are the names of these settlements? Or were they living at a place and not knowing what they called the place? How is that a real village or town? There were Itsekiri trading "settlements" in Bini areas, but they did not start claiming ownership of the land. All I could make out from your comments is that some Ijaws had traditions of settling near a Bini area in times past and then moving out.

d) This talk of a cemetery or shrine or question about any "any historical evidence of early Bini residence or activity in gele gele" is frustrating and annoying. How are you not getting what I've been saying? A group would only give up ownership of land that they occupied for centuries to another group if they formally ceded the land to that other group. In the absence of that formal cession, why should they possibly see it as anything other than their land? Did the other group conquer the land from them? Did the other group pay them the cost of the land? This isn't so difficult to understand.

exotik,

MLK, cheated on his wife, but that was with other black women. I haven't seen evidence that suggests that he was involved with even one hooker, white or black, even if one or more of his close followers ("entourage" is alleged to have been.

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/mlking.asp

He couldn't compete in extramarital affairs with JFK though.

http://www.whosdatedwho.com/tpx_1246/john-f-kennedy/

^^^
Now that was somebody who was really "obsessed" with screwing everybody in sight. And he's on American currency.   A great man. He basically went to bed with half the 50s and 60s female stars of Hollywood.



As for W.E.B. DuBois vs. Garvey.

I would say DuBois was actually an Afrocentric writer and historian, but more in the "academic" way, than as a black nationalist. Read his book The Negro (parts of this book are what made me see him as an academic Afrocentrist) and The Souls of Black Folks, and you'll see why he definitely was not confused about "where he belonged." His comments against Garvey may seem pretty awful today, but he was definitely very pro-black.

@ MzDarkSkin

The first "hip hop" songs probably weren't Caribbean, but the first instances of "rapping" may have been Jamaican:


http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/15/opinion/l-rap-music-began-on-jamaica-in-the-1960-s-659388.html


However, hip hop has a distinct sound and content which I don't think is Caribbean or Jamaican.

k.o.n.y:
When i said "grown" i meant africans from age 20-30 ish. And yes they do know who lil wayne is. And would you care to share your so called experiences

lol, Africans from age 20-30ish in America aren't the ones that think that all black Americans act like lil wayne. That's Africans 50+ who grew up in Africa at a time when there was virtually no social deviancy or ghetto behavior where they grew up. They are repulsed by anything even remotely ghetto, but I don't think Africans 20-30 in America are or that they claim all AAs act like lil wayne or like rappers. Maybe that's just your experience, but maybe you've only been around a certain group or you're getting this stuff from internet commentators. I've run into more Africans 20-30ish in America imitating lil wayne than I have claiming all black Americans act like lil wayne or like rappers, so I'm not sure I agree with this. I know Africans 20-30ish that are dating African Americans, and I don't fully accept your statement.



As for my experiences, as a kid my family was invited to a church service by one of my mother's friends from work.

At this church,an African American pastor, who had to have been at least in his 50s, made it a point, in a part of his sermon where he was criticizing intellectuals and atheists that reject Jesus, to make fun of what he called "back to Africa people" that reject Christianity. To drive his point home, he said that said that they should actually go back to Africa and go fight lions and cheetahs with the natives while being bitten by mosquitoes and see if they won't be calling for Jesus after that. That drew a lot of laughs. Africans have a good sense of humor though. My parents, who are Christian, also laughed. When I asked them in the car if they knew anyone who had ever hunted any lions, they laughed and said no.

This was in Houston when I was 12. (My family doesn't live in Houston anymore, but if I went back there, I could describe the church)

I also remember my 7th grade gym coach, a grown African American man (Coach Warren) calling a Ghanian kid in our class (Kofi), "King Coffee" "Prince Coffee" and mocking his "black African darkness" (he always stressed the word "African" for comedic effect). This was a grown man! 

I see why people found that funny, but it's pretty bad to see a kid being mocked by a grown man.

But I have had positive experiences with African Americans with regard to Africa as well, so I'm not making any conclusions based on a few bad experiences.

I've learned a few things here and there. Nothing that's affected my life, though.

Obiagu, I understand the angle you're trying to argue from, but that angle is flawed and it may be due to the fact that you're viewing all of this out of historical context.


Let me provide the historical context.

Gelegele was a Bini village that was burned down to virtually nothing in February 10th 1897 by British soldiers under Captain O'Callaghan of the Royal Navy. It was a point of contact with Europeans for centuries and had received them with no problems or conflicts there. There was no Benin military presence there so it was captured and destroyed without a fight. When the British got to the town of Ughoton, they had an actual fight on their hands, but they took out Gelegele with no trouble. With the village of Gelegele destroyed, and the village itself being smaller to begin with than say, Ughoton, it made sense that there were fewer Binis that returned there.

After 1897, some Binis returned, but over time the Ijaws came to be predominant in the area.

That does NOT make Gelegele "Ijaw land" all of a sudden. The argument by the Binis that Gelegele is historical Benin land is backed by history.

The Ijaw never had a real traditional ruler there who was recognized by anyone else other than some Ijaws, although now they are trying to turn the community head of a settler population into a real traditional ruler.

It's this simple:

1. Binis found and occupy Gelegele for hundreds of years. Not only are they the founders, they are the majority inhabitants for centuries.
2. The British invade, and soldiers under Captain O'Callaghan burn Gelegele down to virtually nothing on February 10th, 1897.
3. Fewer Binis return to Gelegele after the defeat of Benin.
4. Some Ijaws populate the place for trade reasons. Later the place becomes most heavily inhabited by Ijaws.
5. Ijaws declare that the place is Ijaw land, and elevate a mere Ijaw community headman to "royalty" after oil is discovered there. A dispute with the Binis ensues.
6. A Midwestern government inquiry looks into the dispute and rules in the Binis' favor (1970), that the land is Edo land on which the Ijaws are tenants.
7. The case goes up to the level of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and the ruling is in the Binis' favor (1983).
8. The Ijaws continue their aggression over land that they have no real historical reason to be claiming.


All of this information is freely available and could be found out by anyone who was actually interested in looking at the history of the place objectively. Of course, if one doesn't know anything about the actual history of the place and that it was a majority Bini village for centuries, then one might make the mistake Ambrose Alli did, and assume that the Ijaw agitators had an actual case for their claims.

As for the example of your village that you gave. Read #5 on my list above and you'll see why this is a different kind of situation.

Also, different ethnic nationalities would probably not agree over issues of land as easily as different clans within the same ethnic group, so that alone makes it a more complicated situation.

Obiagu1:
Yes every uninhabited territory is open for anyone. You cannot say they don't have ethnic ownership when they were not made subjects to the original people of the land. Can you say that the land is Benin when the people that live there are Ijaws?

1. How did you conclude that the territory was uninhabited? By some Bini elders being there? If there were never any Binis there, there would never have been any Ijaws there.

2. If any uninhabited territory is open for any group to later claim ethnic ownership of, then that's a new concept .  But let this movement start in Rivers state (especially Rivers state) or Delta first, before Edo state adopts this policy. There's no reason why Edo state should commit fully to a policy when there is no evidence that other states would commit to the exact same policy.

Obiagu1:
I said I won't comment here but this issue of giving someone land to settle and after so many years you came back and say they (the settlers) don't own the land is what I find hard to agree with. Ownership has changed hands; nothing more, nothing less. The settler cannot claim beyond what was given to them but at the same time cannot relinquish the land they've lived on for years.
They can't be sacked from the land, not possible.

I don't recall reading that the Benin palace tried to force the Ijaw inhabitants of Gelegele off the land.

And it was not as if some large number of Ijaws was given land. The few initial ones were allowed to peacefully coexist and they later populated a section of historic Benin land in larger numbers. Nothing wrong with that.

The only issue here is this claim of  ethnic ownership. If you accept that the land is truly "theirs", then all of Nigeria is a territorially open for land grabbing as far as "ethnic ownership" is concerned. Any and everybody can settle anywhere and later start claiming that their ethnic group or clan has paramount authority and ownership in any area.

If this is actually true, Rivers state is in for quite a shock. Let Rivers lead the way. Let Delta state follow, and maybe Edo state will give it consideration.

killayut:
Enough said and we have  read / heard all the sarcasm.  Benin  empire and Benin this and that. Was Lagos not part of the Benin empire ? People  are  now redefining  what an empire is. So if Nigeria was part of the British empire mean Nigeria   belongs to the English  huh ?  These Benin morons are blinded  cheap goats who can not see Ijaws  beyond  Gelegele . Gele gele  is a settlement and the people speak Ijaw and not Benin or Edo. It is not an empty forest in dispute but a settled  land from time long. No Oba of  Benin has ever fought wars with the Ijaws and  claimed GELEGELE  was an Edo town. It maybe a town under the Old Benin empire  but never an Edo town so the Obazuwas  should know.   If an Ijaw man or militant has taken laws in to his hand by attacking innocent Nigerians, such a person or persons  should be arrested and dealt with accordingly  but to say  a round headed, mud house loving ,wen hen yen saying twerp from Benin  would come to Gelegele to sack the natives  is a gross miss yearning. No one wants any one dead  but the murder of a GELEGELE IJAW by any Benin scum would be met with equal force.  The protection of any part of Ijaw land and any Ijaw is the obligation of every Ijaw from Rivers, Delta, Bayelsa, Ondo, Edo, Akwa Ibom state.

Killayut, you're a miscreant. You were the same fool who was claiming earlier that Ijaws had "settlements" in Ughoton and suggesting that they had any claim to part of Ughoton. Any Ijaws in Ughoton do not have "ethnic ownership" of any area of Ughoton and any people from the so-called Ijaw settlements in Ughoton, like their cousins in Gelegele, have no right to claim ethnic ownership of any area there.

1. How are morons like you going to come here and claim it was an Ijaw settlement when you people don't even know what to call it? Is it Gelegele or Gelegelegbini? Have you guys made up your minds yet? Imagine people who don't even know what to call a place deciding that they own it.

2. No Oba of Benin has ever seen Gelegele as a piece of Ijawland or an Ijaw town. The very idea of this is ridiculous and there is nothing to support this claim.

3. It is not "if" an Ijaw militant has attacked innocent people. It's happened multiple times against multiple groups, not just Binis.

4. Round headed? What does that even mean? Look at Samson Siasia's head. Is he no longer Ijaw?

Mud house loving? The Binis had real houses. And large halls, and decorated floors, and walls decorated with elegant cloth, and courtyards, and impluvia, and columns, and gates, and patios, and gardens, and palaces with galleries, etc.    This is all already on the record from non-Bini observers.  What exactly did Ijaws have that I could mock in response? Fishing boats?

Lol, "wen hen yen" very funny. I'm not going to mock the Ijaw language and I couldn't care less what it sounds like. I'm sure the language sounds fine, but unfortunately the truth is that the people speaking it like to make trouble.

5. The Ijaws have no authority to claim ownership and make demands over an area they were allowed to be tenants in.

6. I also have to laugh at you blaming the country of Nigeria in your earlier post. If not for the country of Nigeria, there could never arise a situation where Ijaws could be claiming either of those areas and even you know this.

nasoeb: Gelegele rightfully belong to the ijaws. In those days the ijaws were hiring the Bini slaves to work and cater for their kids as they were complaining that they were being maltreated by their "uselesss" ruler.

Bini slaves to Ijaws? Lol @ this nonsense. Get out of here with your fairytales. Stick to Bonny and Rivers and refrain from commenting on the Midwest that you know nothing about.

the few that were employed tried their best to establish good relationship tier with the ijaws, knowing their reputation in battle so that if anything should happen, they will run to the ijaws to be protected.

What reputation in battle? Reputation in battle or reputation in piracy? Nobody in any place in Nigeria was at any time scared of any Ijaws. This so called battle reputation was invented by the Nigerian press after the Nigerian military restrained itself from using full force against militants.

There was never any time when Ijaws had a military reputation that would make any other group see them as a threat or as protectors, and certainly not several decades ago. This was definitely not the case in the Midwest.

In 1854, an army of over 10,000 Bini soldiers was sent by the Oba of Benin to crush the forces of his half-brother, a rebel prince who was trying to claim the throne. That's something that was noted in writing by other people without any bragging about their "battle reputation" on the part of the Binis. And you think the same Bini people who were sending out large army contingents from their population took any notice of the so-called battle reputation of Izon pirates, fishermen and ferrymen?

And that was how the ijaws gave free hand to the binis.

You really are shameless. Imagine settlers giving out land.

we need say the truth as it is, no matter where i come from, we have to say the truth and give the ijaws what belong to them

There is no truth in anything you claimed. You were on this thread earlier, why did you come here only after the thread had already died down to spread this made up story about "Bini slaves" and "battle reputation"?

The Binis didn't need to get any free land from any Ijaws.


The same way Ijaws came to Okomu for timber felling on land they didn't own, they came to Gelegele for trade on land they didn't own. If not for the Binis, they would not be seen in these areas.

killayut:
Why are Ijaws  so hated by their neighbors ? Who has been living in Gelegele ? Is there any Bini family in Gelegele laying claim to the town or just  some Bini people else where  ?  This is funny . Gelegele is not a forest  but a settlement where people have been living  and dying  and being buried . Are bini  people being buried at Gelegele  cemetery   ?  So if the ancient Bini people  recognized the existence of Ijaws in Gelegele and came down to trade with them  without problem  why are BINIS of today trying to do the otherwise ?? Simple question.

You must think people are naive or foolish or something and you can just bamboozle people with nonsensical reasoning and lies.

I posed a question to one Batubo earlier and that person completely ducked out when they realized how ridiculous their statement was, so I am going to ask the same question again and see if I can get a rational answer.

Are you asserting that any group in Nigeria has the right to come to the southern part of Rivers state and proclaim a land controlling traditional royalty in a place after enough decades have passed? And then claim ethnic ownership of that area?


Nigeria is not full. There is enough space in many areas and your own Ijaw land is not entirely filled up. For your own sake, you had better hope that you aren't claiming that just anybody can settle in your Ijaw coastal territories and start claiming to own those places.

Some people are claiming that Siluko is Ijaw and somebody is trying to claim it for an Ijaw LGA or Toru-Ebe state. Is Siluko an Ijaw name now?!

One person on this forum claimed that Sallogun was Ijaw today even though it was specifically designated as not Ijaw by the British colonialists in the earlier 1900s. Today, they are claiming it.

This is the same thing with Gelegele. It was once not filled with Ijaws, just as Siluko, Sallogun, etc, were not.

Just because you have populated an already established place, it does not give you the right to proclaim fake kingdoms there or to try to attack others there and claim ethnic ownership of a place for resources.


What I found particularly funny was this statement:

"Gelegele is not a forest  but a settlement where people have been living  and dying  and being buried . Are bini  people being buried at Gelegele  cemetery   ?  So if the ancient Bini people  recognized the existence of Ijaws in Gelegele and came down to trade with them  without problem  why are BINIS of today trying to do the otherwise ?? Simple question."

There would be no Gelegele if not for the ancient Binis. You conveniently left that part out.

A whole major road in pre-colonial Benin was named Gelegele and it led to an area called Gelegele (the area was named after the village of Gelegele, which was founded by Binis and majority Bini for centuries) which was under the supervision of the Ezomo of Benin.

Was the Benin kingdom in the habit of naming things after obscure Ijaw villages?

Also, what's this about "the ancient Binis came down to trade with them"?

You have it backwards. Binis did not seek out the Ijaws to trade with. That doesn't even make logical sense for a whole slew of reasons, one of which is that the Ijaws had little that the Binis couldn't get from the Europeans directly. The Ijaws came to trade with the Binis in Bini land, not the other way around.

And please don't pretend that in the past the ancient IJAWS  ever attempted to proclaim that there was an Ijaw traditional ruler in Bini land. Why are IJAWS of today trying to do otherwise?

If these people are not confronted about their nonsense, soon we'll be hearing about an Ijaw ownership of part of Okomu.

Oh wait. That's already happened!

Shameless descendants of migrant Ijaw timber fellers are claiming ownership of part of the Okomu area.

They are trying to do the same thing with "Okomu-Ijaw" that they are doing with Gelegele.

ndu_chucks:
Would you care to prove that the above statement is more than a fiction of your imagination? When, where, and how did he and his fellow soldiers plan for the transition period to democracy to be at least 4 years? Thanks in advance.

"THE MASS PURGE



Repeating the mantra of military governments all the way back to Major-General Ironsi’s regime, Murtala declared his government a “corrective regime” that would tackle the corruption that was increasingly infecting government institutions. After dismantling the inner core of Gowon’s regime, Murtala turned his gaze to the civil service. Murtala unleashed a massive onslaught against public sector corruption and inefficiency on a scale never seen before in Africa. This led to a wave of dismissals and retirements of over 10,000 public officials who were summarily dismissed or retired on the grounds of inefficiency or corruption.



In response to national debate on the military’s continual hold on governance, Murtala announced plans for the military to disengage from politics. Some officers were genuinely concerned that military rule had a corrosive effect on military professionalism. Murtala therefore laid out the framework for the return of Nigeria to democratic rule on October 1st 1979. Anxious to avoid the blatant ethnic based party politics of the 1960s, Murtala told the committee which would draft the new constitution, that the SMC would prefer it if they came up with a system of government without political parties. In the end several “new” political parties emerged as clones of the parties of the 1960s. He also stressed that the military did not intend to stay in office “a day longer than necessary”. One of the justifications for the coup that removed Gowon was that Gowon had postponed the return to civilian rule. However it is perplexing that on taking over power, the officers who overthrew Gowon then announced a four year transition to civil rule programme. Murtala ignored the results of widely discredited 1973 census (the results of which have never been made public), and declared that the 1963 figures would instead be used for national planning purposes. The number of states was increased from 12 to 19 with the creation of seven new states: Anambra, Imo, Niger, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo and Plateau."

http://www.gamji.com/article6000/NEWS7073.htm




Note that Murtala came to power in July of 1975, but decided that for some reason democracy could only be had by October of 1979.

IBB probably learned from this guy.

Murtala Muhammad's name should indeed be removed from the naira and airport. It's true that the reason he's on that note has nothing to do with his military actions, but those actions are problematic enough that they should cancel out whatever else he did that was positive.

Although there seems to be no evidence produced yet that he ordered any direct killings of civilians during the 1967 Federal invasion of the Midwest and although he wasn't present when the executions of civilians in Asaba occurred, as the top commander of federal forces in that area, he bore responsibility for their actions.

His unwillingness to condemn his soldiers' actions either soon after the invasion or when he was head of state, and his unwillingness to court martial the soldiers involved and have them tried for murder, shows his indifference towards their actions, which is an indefensible attitude.

Also, when Murtala Muhammad removed Gowon in a coup, allegedly because Gowon kept delaying the return back to civilian rule, he and his fellow soldiers planned for the transition period to democracy to be at least 4 years, just out of greed for power. This fact is conveniently ignored by people for some reason.

Nigeria should refrain from glorifying mediocre military strongmen and replace his picture with any decent social or political leader that passed away.