₦airaland Forum

@ tpia, how is Modupe Ozolua biracial?

She does not have Irish ancestry as claimed by some website. That's Ibinabo Fiberesima.

I don't see what's biracial looking about her or her features.

edit: never mind. . .not worth my time.

airmark:
She is not the most beautiful in 9ja. Donald duke's wife fine pass am. Neverless, this bianca is beautiful. No wonder ojukwu no wan die.

lol, no way. Bad comparison.

Donald Duke's wife is ordinary looking. Bianca's definitely prettier.

Yes, she's beautiful, but no, not the most beautiful woman in Nigeria. Maybe one of the most beautiful famous women in Nigeria. In real life, I've seen Nigerian women that are even prettier.

And honestly, I think she'd look even better if she was a little darker.

k.o.n.y:
No grown b.american is going to make fun of africans like that.

lol, did I read this right?

I'm going to have to call this bs. I've had multiple personal experiences that disproved this.

And grown African men and women don't know who lil wayne is unless their kids make a point of telling them who he is. Unfortunately, you don't have to watch TV to see black people imitating the mannerisms of people in "gangsta rap"




@ the topic, people make fun of other people in America. Grow thicker skin and get over it. Blacks will make fun of Chinese, Whites will make fun of Chinese, Indians, Hispanics, Blacks, etc., but I'll tell you right now I'd rather be mocked ten times in a row by an ignorant AA than deal with an actual racist from another group even once. Anybody who respects themselves enough can brush off mockery, but actual racism is much more annoying.

ExplicitView:
My God!
How can we be debating about this copyright law. I just wished I'm allowed to say ' Physics QED, SHUT UP YOUR MOUTH! you can't even QED your own right'. But I wouldn't.
@Oldtime, thanks amillion for the brake down of a very good lecture, sounding and reminding me of one of Africa greatest writer(Prof. Achebe).
Then, for those that don't understand 'copyright' law.
That Yeats used a phrase in his book, does not make it his copy. MTN- Used the 'everywhere you go' does not make it their company's name.
Our own Achebe(Prof). Bought and paid for that PHRASE as TITLE to HIS BOOK and a MOVIE.
If 50 Cent did not know about copyright laws, like some people on this naija page, he wouldn't have offered 1million dollar insult to Prof's legal team for their client. He would have gone to court instead.
A copyright that the owner would not sell for 1 billion US dollars. I'm totally proud of you my greater mentor.
A true great Igbo, true Nigerian, and A TRUE GREAT AFRICAN MAN.
"I doff for Prof. The gods are wise".

You're a dumbass.

"When the president of CAN called for the arrest of that general, uninformed ignorant people whose children may be slaughtered in future decried the position of the CAN president. As a special adviser to the CAN president, I can tell you that he has more information in his hands than he is allowed to speak to the public."


Who's stopping him?




"There is something called the American declaration of independence, Nigeria does not have the equivalent of it. What is written there is very simple but very powerful, and you can build the country on it: “…All men are created equal before God and everybody is entitled to the pursuit of happiness….”

That is why you see that nobody jokes with liberty in the US. If you have 10 heads, everybody is equal. Three revolutions were fought by the Americans, all based on the original agreement. "



The part in bold was kind of deep. The Revolutionary War, Civil War, and Civil Rights Movement all connect back to the opening of the declaration of independence. He conveys a lot in a few words.

His analysis was very interesting. Wish he had gone into a little bit more detail on radicalism in the north and the 26 groups, though.

@ Ezeagu, I wasn't talking about streets paved with potsherd pavement like those in Ife which spread to Benin and Oyo. The potsherd pavement of Ife was artistic and creative, but I think ndu chuks was referring to something that looks like a stone paved street in England or a cement surface street (which is impossible for that time period.)

I have not read of stone or cement streets in Benin like the kind ndu chuks was clearly thinking of.





@ ndu chuks and Dede1

According to the logic that a street needs a particular sort of stone or cement aspect to be a street, most of Asia did not have streets at any point in history prior to the 20th century and any account that says that anybody was walking along a certain street in Asia before the 20th century is an exaggeration.

@ ndu chucks


I just understood your comment about the streets.

Streets paved with hard stone are principally a Mediterranean thing (with the exception of Mesoamerica, where there was copious amounts of stone). Countries close to Greece and Rome, or who were colonized by Rome, adopted that practice, but it was not a worldwide practice. As for streets with smooth cement surfaces, that was not widespread until the technology was developed.

Are you claiming that streets without stone paving or cement surfaces were not streets? Then there were very few streets in many other 17th century kingdoms as well, so Benin was not behind that many people in this regard.

Also, there are two different quotes from European visitors (Legroing and Nyendael) which state that there is little stone in the country so the inhabitants of Benin build with earth. This is not entirely false. Large stone deposits can be found in parts of Edo north (Afenmai area), but in Edo south (Bini), it was much less plentiful so they built with earth and wood. If they had opted for stone, things might have turned out better as far as the preservation of the city, but building would have been much more time consuming and laborious because they would have to go searching long distances for stone and haul stone over large distances back to Benin. Without large stone deposits nearby, it didn't make sense to try and pave all of the streets with stone or to construct the buildings out of stone.

ndu_chucks:
I'm not sure how one must not conclude that the above is nothing more than gross exaggeration. Dutch visitor said the streets in the city seemed to go on with out being able to see an ending  What vehicles plied these roads? Were these people talking about trekking paths or roads? abeg make una no make me laugh jare  Unending roads ko, unending paths to the bush ni  

I don't really understand your comment.

If a city is six miles long, and you are standing on the ground at about the two mile mark, are you actually claiming that you can see a tree or building four miles away? Do you have superhuman vision?

Maybe you want to rethink your comment.


http://books.google.com/books?id=Vrj4gApIJz4C&pg=PA178#v=onepage&q&f=false


^^^
The reality is, the city was, in the past "magnificent."


As for the roads:

"Here the women are employed in keeping the streets neat and clean; in which respect the inhabitants are not exceeded by the Hollanders themselves."

^^^

That's another quote about Benin.

"Legroing tells us : " The city of Benin is situated in a plain surrounded by deep
ditches. Vestiges of an old earthen wall are to be seen ; the wall could hardly have
been built of any other material as we did not see a single stone in the whole journey
up. The houses for the most part are covered with latanier leaves, and those of
the king with large shingles. In front of the king's houses there were two thick
clumps of high trees, and these appeared to us to be the only trees planted by the
hand of man (Labarthe, p. 175)." From Landolphe we learn that a " ditch more than
20 feet wide and as deep surrounds the town, and the soil taken out is made on the
city side into a talus, on which a thorny hedge has been planted so thick, that not
even an animal can get through. The height of this talus deprives one of a view of
the houses at a distance, and one does not see them until entering the town, the gates
of which are very far apart " (II., 48). " The streets are very broad ; in the middle
there is turf on which the kids and sheep feed ; about thirty feet from the houses
there is a level road, covered with sand for the inhabitants to walk on " [ibid, II., 50).
He also mentions several spacious courts surrounded by earthen walls about sixteen
feet high. Along the inside of the walls there ran a gallery fifteen feet wide, thatched
with natanier. The thatching is done by overlapping the leaves which not
being pulled apart, fall one on top of another to a thickness of eighteen inches.
This roof is supported by large pieces of timber cut into the shape of pillars. They
are set up about eighteen feet apart, and carry stout horizontal planks on which
abut the sloping joists which carry the roof, which was an ingenious piece of work "
(ibid, I., 111-112). Of the apartments of the king's wives he says the walls are twenty
feet high and five feet thick, solidly built of earth [ibid, I., 335)." - H. Ling Roth, Great Benin

^^^^

Another quote about Benin

nasoeb:
The likes of dede, physicsqed,  i will advise you go study your history before you come here to talk shitt. if you want to argue, then  do it constructively.

??


I'm not even discussing Bonny right now.

Lol,  Dede1, how big was Tubingen in 1603?

Find out and maybe you'll see why there's nothing absurd about the comparison. Tubingen was never a small city relative to Germany's other cities, but it was never the size of the larger cities in Germany. So if the palace complex alone was as large as a regular sized city, then the city containing the palace was indeed probably the size of those actual large cities (Florence, Madrid, etc.) that those Europeans compared it to.

Who said the Benin palace in 1897 was as large as the city of Tubingen in 1897 or the city of Tubingen now?

I doubt that the 1897 Benin palace was anywhere near as large as Tubingen in 1897, but what I do know is that even the 1897 palace was at least four times the size of the present one, and that prior to 1897, the palace was even larger than that before a civil war in the very early 1700s.

'The walls of the palace are well preserved, In one of the facades at which
Lieut. King entered there were three doors, of which the chief was in the middle; on
each side were rows of eight or ten elephant tusks curiously carved, the points turned
towards the wall. During the last insurrection the king was killed and a large
portion of the palace was burnt down, but enough remains to bear witness to its
former splendour. Down the centre of the facade rises a pyramid about thirty to
forty feet high, on the top of which there was fixed a copper serpent whose head
reached to the ground and whose body was as thick as that of a man. The
inhabitants of Benin have no idea of the lapse of time, but say that this serpent
has been there for several centuries. Two apartments which Lieut. King saw, and of
which one was the audience chamber of the king, had been spared by the fire ; the
ceilings were flat and the beams which crossed them were covered with various
designs." It will be observed that King speaks of a pyramid, and in so far his description
of these buildings agrees with that of Dapper, who, however, called them
turrets. ' - H. Ling Roth, Great Benin


A German, in 1603, wrote that the Benin palace in 1603 was as big as a German city, that he, a German, had been to, in Germany. That's just the reality of the situation. Anywhere in the world, palace complexes are not usually as large as whole cities, even if those cities are of a modest size, so that is necessarily a testament to the huge size of the palace.

I give the Chinese credit on having the largest palace complex in history, but we are/were capable of the same kind of thing in Africa, regardless of what anybody might think or assume.

I probably am wasting my time. I find Dede1's opinions interesting (however biased they may be) and that's why I wanted to see if he could really justify his perspective in the face of written evidence to the contrary.

Dede1:
Today’s Benin City can not be mentioned among the largest cities in Nigeria.

What relevance does this claim have to your original comment?

Almost all of Benin city was burnt down to nothing in 1897.

In addition, there is no doubt that the present day Benin City is, at least, four fold bigger than Village Empire called Bini.

Uh, no. This statement doesn't even make any sense from a simple logical standpoint. Does present day Benin city stretch to Udo, Edo state? No. Did the past Benin empire stretch well beyond Udo, Edo state? Yes.

If you do not discern element of exaggeration in comparison of Bini empire to the cities in Europe by the European explorers in order to quantify the value of their trip to Africa, I shall leave you with the hyperbolism.

Many European visitors (including some of the writers who wrote about Benin) wrote about many other parts of Africa, especially on this same coast and did not make any such comparisons or give glowingly positive descriptions about the other places they visited.

A German writer (Joshua Utzheimer) notes that the palace complex of the city alone was as large as an entire German city. Other writers point out that the number of rooms and courts of the palace did not seem to end, a Dutch visitor said the streets in the city seemed to go on with out being able to see an ending, and from this you claim that we should conclude that rather than them all seeing the same thing, they were all exaggerating, merely for the sake of it, since they were in Africa?

And it would make more sense to show from the primary sources themselves that they must have been exaggerating based on their diction or exact statements, than to just assert that every statement from each explorer was an exaggeration. Unless you can read German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese and have read every description of Benin, your assumptions here don't carry much weight.

Embarrassing.

Multibillion dollar shipyard vs. small pipe making factory.