₦airaland Forum

ezeagu:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0K0p8wCNKTQC&pg=PA316&dq=%22the+kings+of+the+Igala+claimed+descent+from+the+Nri+of+Igbo-Ukwu%22&hl=en&ei=-l7pTP7sGI20hAfXvJ0P&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22the%20kings%20of%20the%20Igala%20claimed%20descent%20from%20the%20Nri%20of%20Igbo-Ukwu%22&f=false

Written by a true Igbo man, Christopher Ehret.

[center][img]http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/ehret/ehret.jpg[/img][/center]

I think you already knew this but wanted a debate anyway, say the truth.

But, anyway:
[url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0K0p8wCNKTQC&pg=PA316&dq=%22Benin+traditions+of+the+past+few+centuries+claim+Yoruba+origins+for+their+ruling+family,+but+it+appears+from+archeological+evidence+and+sixteenth-century+written+documentation+that+the+actual+impetus+for+the+establishment+of+the+kingdom+came+from+the+north,+most+probably+from+the+Igala.%22&hl=en&ei=m2DpTMPRJ9KGhQeKsvQQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Benin%20traditions%20of%20the%20past%20few%20centuries%20claim%20Yoruba%20origins%20for%20their%20ruling%20family%2C%20but%20it%20appears%20from%20archeological%20evidence%20and%20sixteenth-century%20written%20documentation%20that%20the%20actual%20impetus%20for%20the%20establishment%20of%20the%20kingdom%20came%20from%20the%20north%2C%20most%20probably%20from%20the%20Igala.%22&f=false]Link[/url]

I even partly guessed this thing as a joke.

^^^^

I haven't seen where the Igala historians themselves ever claimed descent of their kings from Nri. Seems more than likely that Dr. Ehret took the Igbo histories on good faith and ascribed the claim to the Igala when it originated from Igbo history. I hope you do know the Igala are widely held by historians, anthropologists, linguists, etc. to be most closely related to the Yorubas (you won't find any contradiction to this, note that I said widely held, not one or two counterclaims), not any other group, so the statement that their kings were descended from this or that kingdom would not even imply that they were actually descended from the people of that kingdom (just as the Itsekiris are not descended from Binis merely because their kings are). I simply haven't seen anything in Igala oral or written history from Igalas that claimed they were from Igbos. The one thing which cannot be disputed is that most of the Igala kings have "Igboid" sounding names and one is even named Ebele, so there is an enormous rationale for them going along with the claim that their kings are descend from Nri and I wouldn't actually dispute that they are (but once again, similarity in names between Igala and Igbo could just imply common ancestry, which we know they do have). What I said was that I don't see any claims from the actual Igalas themselves that say so.

I could certainly be wrong, but I don't see any evidence from Dr. Ehret's neat little summary that contradicts what I originally said since he seems to have a penchant for not giving references (at least in that book, I'm sure he has references at the end of chapters and direct references in his published papers). To make matters worse for this oral history (which originates from Western Igbos, not Igalas, unless, as I said, you can offer any evidence otherwise), after claiming Igala are descendants of Western Igbo migrants, it claims Yorubas are descendants of Igalas that continued migrating westwards. Population of Igalas: 2 million. Population of Yorubas: more than 35 million (actually much more in the African diaspora). I hope you can see the problem with such claims. Wherever the Yorubas originate from, it is more likely to be from somewhere in northeastern Yorubaland than Igalaland. What scholars have learned is that yes, from linguistic evidence, there appear to be migrations from the area near the southern central middle belt to the South west and Midwest , but the idea that the Yoruba+Itsekiri+Edo originated from the Igala, even with the famines the Igalas went through in their history explaining  their low modern population, is implausible on numbers alone.

Obviously though, Igala, Igbo, Yoruba, and most Southern Nigerian groups were all one group of people at one time tens of thousands of years ago.



With regard to the Igala originating the Benin Kingdom dynasty conjecture, I've already encountered it, but for one thing it doesn't relate to what I earlier stated which is that the origins of the Edoid group of languages are Northwest of Benin city proper near a non-Yoruba speaking area of what is now considered part of Ondo State.

From: Archaeology and language, Volume 27 by Roger Blench,

"Oral traditions and the prehistory of the Edo-speaking people of Benin" by Joseph Eboreime:

http://books.google.com/books?id=mqKrB5_6EtsC&pg=PA310&lpg=PA310&dq=benin+kingdom+darling&source=bl&ots=mOYezNi3la&sig=YaWb9RvWZ0e8Cq49q1TIjVKEl3U&hl=en&ei=oJXpTJ_wGYWdlgf767y5CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDsQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=benin%20kingdom%20darling&f=false

The Edoid languages show their greatest diversity in the hilly areas northwest of Benin City. Elugbe (1979) has suggested that this region is the original Edoid homeland. From this area Edoid speakers would have spread southwards to the plains, and into the Delta area. The expansion of Edo culture from Benin City probably eliminated large numbers of Edoid languages with only a small number of speakers and left the remote Delta Edoid languages isolated south of the Bini area.

The linguistic evidence indicates an early dispersal from the north-western forest margin which distributed a Proto-Edoid belt from the north, to the extreme south and the far west, where they developed the dialectical features that distinguish the the Bini and Esan (Ishan) from the Southern dialects.

From State and society: the emergence and development of social hierarchy and political centralization by John Gledhill and Barbara Bender

'Emerging towns in Benin and Ishan (Nigeria) AD 500-1500" by P. Darling:

http://books.google.com/books?id=mZJprFtufMUC&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=benin+kingdom+darling&source=bl&ots=YbVNt8ah2d&sig=qKrECbQzhW6HI5BX4sU0AmtsTbE&hl=en&ei=oJXpTJ_wGYWdlgf767y5CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=benin%20kingdom%20darling&f=false

At present, interpretation of the area's earliest history rests on linguistic analyses of the Edo group of languages. In and near the hilly northernmost part of this group are found some non-Edoid, unclassified Niger-Congo languages - Ogori and Magongo (two villages), Akpes (four dialectically different villages), and Ukaan - and it is suspected that these may be relic languages from hill-based savannah settlements, possibly antedating the Yoruba/Edo/Igbo linguistic split variously estimated between 4000 and 10000 years ago. The linguistic heterogeneity of both the northernmost Edoid and the Yoruba Akokoid groups emphasizes the antiquity of this area(. . .)

Clearly, this Northwest area is not Igalaland, but where I originally located it in my previous posts.

The theory of the Igala origin of Benin was put forward by A. F. C. Ryder in "A Reconsideration of the Ife-Benin Relationship," and later by John K. Thornton in "Traditions, Documents, and the Ife-Benin Relationship" to resolve the question of why the mysterious kingdom of "Oghene,"  or "Ogane" a powerful kingdom noted by multiple European explorers to be located north, but not West, of Benin (the "sixteenth-century written documentation" Christopher Ehret mentioned), and which therefore could not have been Ife (in its present location), was said by Benin (according to European explorers' written documentation) to be the paramount kingdom in the region and the origin of Benin and other kingdoms. The Igala theory is basically that the word "Ogane" was a corruption of the word Igala (though I don't know why the ethnic group and not the kingdom (Idah) would be referred to by those paying tribute to it- that little important detail has always been ignored). Duarte Pacheco Pereira (1507, Esmeraldo de situ Orbis) wrote of a kingdom called "Hooguanee," whose ruler was regarded "among the blacks as the Pope is among us." Thornton theorizes that this Hooguanee was Ogane/Oghene. Reasonable enough. However, in Thornton's own article, he admits there is neither conclusive evidence for or against Ryder's theory.

Let me quote directly the relevant parts of Thornton's interesting conjecture:

TRADITIONS, DOCUMENTS, AND THE IFE-BENIN RELATIONSHIP John K. Thornton Millersville University

I

Historians of Nigeria have been curious for many years about the relationship between the various states of the southern zone since the sixteenth century. The fact that the area has produced a rich art, has a fairly elaborate set of tra- ditional histories, and has been the subject of some systematic archeological work means that the modern scholar has somewhat more to go on in reconstructing the region's history than just the fairly sparse and disappointing contemporary texts that came out of the early Portuguese contacts and subsequent European trade and navigation. But contemporary documentation for southern Nigeria remains much weaker than that for other African areas, such as the central African zone, Gold Coast, or the western Atlantic coast. Nevertheless, documents have raised problems in understanding the history of the area that cannot be fully solved by recourse to the other sources of information, in spite of the comparative richness of non-documentary sources.

One of these documentary problems is the issue of the Ife-Benin rela- tionship as documentated in archeology, contemporary texts, and art history. The problems raised by the relationship between these two southern Nigerian cities ultimately reflects on a much larger set of questions concerning the relationship of all the early states south of the Niger, at a period quite near the ori- gin of the state system that would predominate the rest of the pre-colonial period. Until 1965 most scholars who thought about the matter accepted the view that early Portuguese texts describing the kingdom of Benin that mentioned a mysterious interior kingdom called "Ogane" (to give one of many variants) referred to Ife, which modern traditions in both Benin and Ife name as the founding city of most of the southern Nigerian states. But that year A. F. C. Ryder published an important review of the issue that argued that the identification of Ogane with Ife was impossible, principally because the contemporary sources referred to Ogane as being east or perhaps north of Benin, whereas Ife is quite definitely to the west. Ryder went on to propose that Ogane was some other state near the Niger-Benue confluence, and further argued that the relationships suggested in the early documents required a re-examination of most scho- larly opinion about the patterns of state interaction in the whole zone. Since Ryder's article a number of scholars have taken up the debate, looking over the evidence and for the most part failing to come up with either decisive support for Ryder's position or a convincing demonstration against it. Additional archeological work and further work by art historians, while it has undermined some of Ryder's evidence (particularly his con- tention that Ife was not an ancient city or that its art was not crucial to artistic development in the region) have nevertheless failed to provide conclusive new evidence to eliminate Ryder's position or to propose unchallangeable support for it.2

In some ways, then, the debate about the Ife-Benin relationship has been a standoff that matched information acquired through written documentation against archeological, traditional and art history evidence, and its resolution would make a contribution to clarifying issues in using each of these sources. This paper is an attempt to re-examine the question pri- marily from textual evidence, and to propose some new documen- tary evidence which can shed light on the issue. In addition to supporting Ryder's position that Ogane was not Ife but rather a state (the Igala kingdom) of the Niger-Benue confluence, this documentary evidence suggests new interpretations of the regional history of southern Nigeria in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. I will also attempt to explain the way in which the various strands of traditional evidence can be reconciled with the documentation by examining, at least in part, the history of the region until the end of the precolonial period with an eye to the ideological impact of various changes and its probable impact on tradition.

II

The early and most important text material, discussed in detail in Ryder's work, came from two independent sources, the description of west Africa by Duarte Pacheco Pereira (written ca. 1507) and the account of Portuguese expansion written by the chronicler Joao de Barros (published in 1552). Pacheco Pereira maintained that he had visited Benin four times at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, and based his information, presumably, on local informants. His account described two kingdoms in the interior 100 "leagues" east of Benin one named "Licosaguou," which was very powerful, and another close by named "Hooguanee," whose ruler was regarded "among the blacks as the Pope is among us."3 Barros, for his part, relied on reports of early Portuguese visitors to the kingdom and the account given the Portuguese court in 1540 by an ambassador of Benin to Portugal. Like Pacheco Pereira, Barros mentioned an interior kingdom which lay "20 moons" or about 250 "leagues" east of Benin named "Ogane," which was the most powerful in those parts.

Benin and its neighbors bore this king such reverence that he was regarded as the "Supreme Pontiff" and that kings of Benin sought confir- mation of their succession from him. Among the confirmation gifts was a cross like that of the Order of St. John, which led Barros and the Portuguese court to imagine that he was a Christian, perhaps even Prester John.4 This sixteenth-century evidence has been the documentary basis for most of the subsequent discussion by art historians and archeologists, and the general confirmation in the accounts (in all particulars save direction from Benin) to traditions, which archeology and art history have not challenged, has led most of them to offer this as decisive evidence of an early confirmation of the relationship between Ife and Benin. But there exists seventeenth-century evidence which contributes additional infor- mation on these interior kingdoms and which cannot be overlooked. Leading this later evidence is the Portuguese navigational guide to the west African coast published in Lisbon in 1614 by Manuel Figueiredo. Figueiredo's account seems to rely on Pacheco Pereira for much of its information, but includes material not found in the earlier text. Since Pacheco Pereira's work had not been published in Figueiredo's time (and indeed is only known to modern scholars from eighteenth-century manuscripts), he was clearly working with texts which might be better (and perhaps fuller) than the versions known today. Figueiredo repeats Pacheco Pereira in almost all particulars and in only slightly different language, except that when describing the interior kingdoms he uses different names. The powerful king whom Pacheco Pereira called "Licosaguou" is named "Miosaque" by Figueiredo and the Pope-like ruler of the other state, "Houguanee", was called "Agare."5 Although "Agare" might be arguably the same name as Barros' "Ogane," it is somewhat farther afield from Pacheco Pereira's "Hooguanee."

Accepting, however that the manuscript traditions of all the sources might contain copyists' corrup- tions as well as problematic spellings of foreign names, it is quite possible to argue that the kingdom to which they referred was Igala. This designation conforms to a probable reconstruc- tion of an original term which was variously rendered in dif- ferent texts. It also confirms Ryder's suggestion that Ogane was a state of the Niger-Benue confluence rather than Ife. It therefore represents a strong case for arguing that it was the Igala kingdom rather than Ife that was the dominant state of early southern Nigeria. Figueiredo provided the basis for most, if not all, sub- sequent descriptions of the region. When Alonso de Sandoval published his account of west Africa in a book dealing with the conversion and origins of American slaves in 1627, he added the information about Agare and Mosaico in terms very close to those of Figueiredo, even though he clearly possessed independent information about customs and life in Benin from other infor- mants.

Dutch writers also picked up this information; Dierick  Ruiters' guide to African navigation of 1623 more or less quotes the Portuguese text in Dutch translation.7 But Sandoval and the Dutch writers as well had some independent information, although it is not always easy to tell where the later texts are elaborating on received information or simply distorting it. That Dutch writers possessed information about the interior beyond Benin seems confirmed by a Dutch manuscript navigational guide and description of west Africa written about 1654 which, while it includes information about the location of "Agarra" also mentions other states such as "Adoke," which do not figure in earlier descriptions of the land beyond Benin.8 This manuscript clearly used the same sources, or was ancestral to the account of west Africa found in Leers' description (1665)9 and ultimately the great compilation of Dutch seventeenth- century knowledge of western Africa by Olfert Dapper (first published 1668).10 Dapper provides some information on Benin's wars in the northern interior, noting for example that "Isago' (presumably the same place as Ruiters' "Miosaco" was the most powerful interior king, had many horses, had attacked Benin during the reign of the king reigning at the time of Dapper's informants (i.e., perhaps pre-1640) but had recently been subjugated by Benin. 1

Dapper also mentions other kingdoms which are not men- tioned in any other account, such as "Istanna," which lay to the north of Benin and had once been powerful until recently sub- jected to Benin rule, and another weak kingdom called "Odobo."12 At the same time, Dapper fails to mention either Ogane or Agarra (as the kingdom is called in the Leiden manuscript). But Dapper was a compiler of information without first- hand experience in the area who relied on manuscript sources for his information. It is possible that he mistook the state of "Adoke" in the Lieden manuscript (or its sources) for "Odobo," and perhaps he misread "Agarra" as "Istanna", making the "r's" into "n's" (a relatively easy mistake) and converting the "g" into an "st." Certainly the information he supplies on Istanna's location accords reasonably well with data from other sources, including the Leiden manuscript, for Agare. In any case, the earlier names of "Miosaquo" and "Agare" were still current in later times, for the Italian Capuchin Domenico Bernardi da Cesena, who visited Benin's neighbor Warri in 1722 records information about them, most of which was clearly derived from navigational sources such as Figueiredo. On the other hand he supplies other information about the places, apparently from his own knowledge. For example he describes the people of Agare and Miosaquo as being very wild and living in the bush, but that surprisingly "among such a savage people there were not a few Christians."'3 This could simply be a reaction to mentions of the cross from Barros, and the "Papal" role of the king of Agare, or it might be that he was still able to collect information from local people on the continued existence of a kingdom of Agare.


Taken together, this information tends to confirm Ryder's contention that the powerful interior kingdom that was regarded as a religious leader among the states of the lower Niger valley was not Ife, but a state of the Niger-Benue region, and supports an identification of it with the Igala kingdom. Although we are less certain about the identity of Licousagou/Miosaquo/Isago, its location, use of horses, and power suggests the Nupe kingdom, an identification proposed by Ryder in his discussion of the problem.14 A powerful Nupe kingdom is cited in Ibn Battuta's account of his travels in west Africa as "Yufi" in about 1353--a period for which Hausa chronicles also mention Nupe raids in the area to the north.16 The fact that Licousagou is mentioned as a part of the constellation of states depending on Ogane and that it most likely refers to Nupe sug- gests that perhaps the apogee of the system of states centered on the Niger-Benue confluence was reached in the fourteenth cen- tury and encompassed the kingdoms of Igala, Nupe, and Benin.

Other information tends to support this possibility as well. Modern traditions of the Nupe trace the origins of the kingdom's founder, Tsoede, back to the Igala kingdom, suggesting that the dynasty that ruled the country since the early six- teenth century had somehow come from a closer association with Igala.17 The famous Tado bronzes in the Nupe kingdom, which were said to have been cast in Igala and brought to Nupe by Tsoede, have been dated by the thermolumiscence process to the mid-fourteenth century as well.18 All this supports the idea that, prior to the sixteenth century, Igala had ruled Nupe in some way, even though the powerful kingdom in the area was known to Arabic sources as Yufi or Nupe. Of course the issue of nomenclature may be resolved if we know whether the dominance of Igala was some sort of unitary state system under a single dynasty or a looser confederation which recognized the Igala ruler as its head. But if Arabic sources mention a kingdom of Nupe, Christian sources of about the same period may name this state dif- ferently. A kingdom of "Organa" appears regularly on fourteenth-century Cataldn and Italian maps of west Africa in the land east of Mali.19

The term is sufficiently close to a variety of early sixteenth-century terms for Ogane that it must be regarded as possible that these sources provide independent confirmation of the same powerful state mentioned by Ibn Battuta under the name by which it would eventually come to be known to Christians. Scholars have provided a wide variety of possible iden- tifications of "Organa," mostly among the desert oasis towns of the Sahara (often just south of the coastal states). The evi- dence most often cited for this concerns the legends that accom- pany pictures of the king of Organa on the maps: that he was a 'Saracen", that he made war on the kings of Tlemcen, or that his country was sandy and desert.20 But the kingdom of Organa may well have been less well known to the sources of the Christian maps than Mali or the desert towns, and perhaps these legends need to be taken less seriously than geographical information in the maps, par- ticularly if it refers to the same kingdom of Yufi in Arabic accounts--for this Yufi was said to kill north Africans who visited his country.21

Furthermore, as Fall has demonstrated, the relative geography of desert towns on Catalan maps of the period is remarkably precise, and Organa is clearly shown south of the desert on all the best maps.22 Finally, Organa's loca- tion seems to be oriented more by the Niger River (the "Nile" river of the maps) than by desert geography. If this last point is true, then the mapmaker who knew only that Organa lay downstream from Mali on the "Nile" (Niger)--the same sort of information that Ibn Battuta knew of Yufi--would have described a location that would fit perfectly with an identification near Yufi and the Niger-Benue confluence. Certainly the sixteenth-century Portuguese writers iden- tified their Ogane with the Organa of the maps. Barros mentions that when the Portuguese court heard of the Pope-like ruler who revered the cross lying inland from Benin, they consulted "Ptolomey" and determined that he was Prester John.23 This "Ptolomey" could only be one of a number of world maps produced in about that time which combined newly-rediscovered Ptolemaic information about Africa with new information deriving partly from the portolan sources of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- turies and navigational data provided by sailors in the Atlantic. Martin WaldseemUller's map of 1507, for example, com- bines Ptolemaic and protolan map traditions, and includes a "Regnum Orguene," while a kingdom of "Organe" lies directly behind Benin on the Cantino atlas of about 1502. 25


Accepting these various arguments, we can reconstruct the history of this period along the following lines: a powerful kingdom of Igala exercised substantial authority over its neigh- bors to its west (Nupe) and south (Benin), possibly with an apogee in the mid-fourteenth century (if one accepts that the Organa of Christian cartography was Igala and that the Arabic Yufi was a part of this state), but by the late fifteenth cen- tury it had gradually lost whatever real power it once had. By the early sixteenth century the countries that were once subor- dinated to it were completely independent, though they still looked on Igala as a parent kingdom and ultimate source of their legitimacy. Later, in the early seventeenth century, a powerful kingdom of Benin expanded to the north, humbled the Igala state (assuming Dapper's Istanna to be this kingdom) and fought a suc- cessful but probably not decisive war against Nupe over control of the Niger-Benue confluence, which it lost only during the late seventeenth century decline and civil wars that broke Benin power throughout the region. This theory, although it contradicts current tradition in both Benin and Ife, is not without support. Art historians have noted the influence that Igala themes have in Benin art, and the cross motif is found in Igala and Nupe sources--particularly the Tado bronzes. Moreover, P. J. Darling's archeological research has argued in favor of a northern origin of the Benin kingdom.

He then goes on to state in the rest of the article that Oghene was changed to Oni of Ife or Ile-Ife when the Yoruba Oyo empire ascended to power due to the supposed influence of some Yorubas hired as foreign (impartial) judges in social organizations in Benin City. Obviously that's quite an enormous stretch.

When he states "Art historians have noted the influence that Igala themes have in Benin art" Thornton makes quite another stretch. He cites "The Benin Bronze Horseman as the Ata of Idah" by Joseph Nevadomsky, an very interesting conjectural piece that provides no conclusive evidence of its claims of the bronze horseman having a non-Benin dress and scarification although it does provide an interesting theory but actually ignores the fact that one aspect of the Bronze horseman figure, usually held to be Oba Esigie or Oba Ehengbuda, can be directly tied to Benin, particularly his style of head ornament, which is similar to Bronze pieces for other later actual Obas of Benin where a protruding tusk or cob-like structure is part of the headdress and is therefore not a foreign head ornament but a Benin ornament.

With regard to the Tado (Tada) bronzes, I would refer to "The Tsoede Bronzes and Owo Yoruba Art" by Douglas Fraser, which argues quite convincingly, also relying on William Fagg's admission that he could find no evidence of ancient Idah bronzecasting, that the Tado/Tada bronzes of Nupe have an Ife (for one of the bronzes) and Owo (Yoruba, with Benin influence) origin in style and and that the story of bronzecasting merely being transferred to Nupe from Idah when the half Idah prince founded the Nupe monarchy is unlikely, destroying a major plank of Thornton's argument above. The bronzes of Nupe, dated to the mid 14th century (well after the Ife bronzes, it is important to note) cannot likely have been from Idah and the style of the art actually suggests the greater influence of Ife.  That the cross motif is found in both the Benin art and the Tada bronzes does support this Oghene (where crosses were important) theory, but that Tada bronze in the Ife style  and the absence of Idah bronzecasting makes it more likely that this "Oghene" was more or less Ife at a different location from its present or an outpost of Ife's sphere of influence.


As has been noted by numerous historians the location of the city of Ife moved multiple times before ending up in its present location and its sphere of influence (of the Oni of Ife) changed (decreased), though admittedly it certainly could not have moved all the way from the northeast to its present position.

With regard to P. Darling's "northern origin" for the Benin kingdom it is necessary to say the following.

The "archaeological evidence" around Benin shows a 16th century "civil war" in Benin, in which an Edo polity based at Udo, to the Northwest of Benin, attacked an Edo polity based in Benin city proper. Udo, a large Edo village to the northwest of Igodomigodo (Benin city proper), which had historically resisted the central authority of Benin for hundreds of years including under the warrior king Akpanigiakon in the late 1200s-early 1300s and which had grown in strength by the 1500s, attacked Benin, then under the control of either Oba Esigie or his predecessor.

Whether Benin won or lost is a matter of dispute. Patrick Darling thinks Benin lost to Udo. Though he doesn't explain how Benin became superior once more to Udo afterward with any actual evidence but just states that Benin, under Oba Esigie just eventually overcame Udo . Benin (Bini) historians wanting to believe Benin never lost anything before 1897 claimed Benin beat Udo, with the assistance of Portuguese and their guns. Strangely, the Benin version seems to make more sense than the Udo conquest one simply because it gives a more reasonable explanation for how events later played out (with Benin ending up dominant over Udo soon after) when the war ended. Patrick Darling identifies Udo as having a "Yoruba" or Ife-oriented culture relative to Benin's more "Edo" culture (which  Udo actually should have, considering their Northwest-of-Benin (i.e. on the border with Yorubaland) location) and identifies their conquest of Benin as the origin of Ife origin of Benin Obas myth and identifies Udo as introducing Ife (Yoruba) bronzecasting to Benin in the 1400s.

Once again, this is reasonable except for how Benin ended up still just dominating Udo. Alessandro Zorzi (Informatio hauuto io da portogalesi .1517. I Venecia), provides written confirmation of Portuguese assistance in Benin's war against Udo, which does support the Benin version of the story over Darling's since it makes no sense that a conquered Benin could pull in foreign assistance to go off to war with it's conqueror's home city if it were merely trying to overcome occupation. My point however, is that archeological evidence points to a "civil war" in Edo land and that the "Northern invasion" was from Northwest of Benin, from Udo, not from Idah.



However with regard to the Igala, there was a Bini dynasty of Idah from 1507-1537, from the brother of Esigie (see R.A. Sargent "On the Methodology of Chronology: The Igala Core Dating Progression", which took over control from the original Okpoto dynasty for a while. During this same time in the early 1500s, immediately after the Benin "civil war" (actually an Edo war), Idah (the Igala kingdom) under Aji Attah, the brother of Oba Esigie, attacked Benin and were repelled by Benin with help from their Portuguese allies.

Unfortunately for the Igala kingdom being "Ogane" or "Oghene" theory, archeological evidence also seems to place the date of the ascendancy of the Igala kingdom to about 1477 AD or thereabout (see that same article by R.A. Sargent, where the grave of early monarch  of the first Idah dynasty (Okpoto dynasty) is identified as having a late 15th century date), whereas Benin city palaces (Oba's palaces) have been found (see "Archaeology in Benin" by Graham Connah, The Journal of African History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1972), pp. 25-38) which date to around the 13th century (1200s), in accordance with the historical record which claims that this is around the time Eweka became the first Oba. So the question arises of how Igala was not a developed central structure until the 15th century but Benin, which was a developed central structure before the 13th century and before, was supposedly under Igala dominance and paying tribute to them.


The single most glaring piece of evidence against the Igala as Oghene theory, apart from the fact that Igala had no evidence, or no recollection of a centralized structure before the 15th century, and apart from the fact that Idah had no evidence of bronzecasting, and therefore nothing which could possibly have given rise to the bronzecasting tradition at Ife and Benin, is the simple fact that Benin went to war with, and sacked the Igala Kingdom in the 16th century. We know that at the height of Benin's power but before the rise of the Oyo empire, Benin controlled Lagos for a while, led wars against the Western Igbo, obtained tribute from much of what was the former Midwestern region of Nigeria, and also influenced and occasionally received tribute from Owo. We should note that after the rise of Oyo, Benin did war with Oyo, which ended in a stalemate. We then have to ask, before the rise of Oyo, why did Benin never sack Ife or demand tribute from Ife or attempt any kind of confrontation with Ife even though it was fine with obtaining tribute from its new colony of Lagos and and obtaining tribute from Owo and conquering all over the place elsewhere? The only answer would be that even then, Ife was regarded as some sort of holy city. If Igala/Idah was some sort of city whose ruler was "regarded among the blacks as the Pope” was among the 16th century Portuguese, and from whom the ruler of Benin was descended and to whom Benin sent a messenger to upon the installation of a new ruler, how could Benin possibly fight Idah or vice versa?

Worse still for that theory, archaeological evidence supports the primacy of Ife (near the current location) over both Benin and Idah (Igala), also in accordance with the standard historical record. How could Igala have birthed the major city-states of Southern Nigeria when it only got to that level in the late 1400s?

I have never accepted the theory that Igala = "Oghene" and that Benin and Ife changed "Oghene" to Ife (Yoruba) when Oyo (Yoruba)  gained power and prestige. But more convincing archaeological evidence could certainly change my mind.

It's one thing to say there was a northern invasion and another to ascribe it to the Igala  based on flimsy linguistic connections and misinterpretations of "archaeological evidence" (bronzes). Yes, previously the "Oghene" were the most powerful kingdom in all of southern Nigeria until their power waned, but there is no convincing evidence for the Igala theory of Oghene to me. For scholars who might not have read as many different conflicting perspectives as I have (e.g. Christopher Ehret), it is easy to read well written theories in well written papers by great historians like Ryder and Thornton and just summarize their claims in a book, assuming that what they assert is really plausible or correct. For now, the Igala theory of Oghene/Ogane remains an unverified conjecture. Maybe more real archaeological evidence will prove them right some day. Either way, as I said before, Binis themselves are descended from a common ancestor with most southern Nigerian groups but being descended from the Igalas, whether they could have been in a position to found Benin or not, makes no sense to me given the direction of migratory patterns of the Edoid languages' speakers and the size of the Igalas compared to the Edoid group as a whole.

History is so interesting, rereading all my sources again, sometimes I regret not becoming an archaeologist/historian.

Good discussion (although it started out as a joke)

ezeagu:
Ogiso is 900 AD actually and Nri's foundation was as early as 700-800 AD. Archaeology shows bronzes before 800 AD. Respect your elders!

I know from when the bronzes date, but the date given for the actual Nri Kingdom is always written as 900 AD- 1911 AD on Igbo sites, history sites, and basically everywhere. However using the reasonable logic that random artisans were not making bronzes for nothing, then we could accept the 700 AD date except that it is always claimed otherwise by Igbo historians, who give it a later date. By the same reason, simple logic dictates that the Benin defensive earth fortifications (iya) were not being built for show. They were being built from 700 - 1450 A.D. (see "Benin Earthworks: Perceptions Over Time" by P. Darling. or any of various articles by that same author which state that they were being built before the 8th century ) but I never gave the pre-700 date, rather I gave the 800 AD date, the earliest date I had read written by credible Benin historians for the Ogisos (I had actually read somewhere that tried to ascribe a B.C. date to the Ogiso dynasty, which I found laughable and ignored) . So using the logic you employ to ascribe a 700 AD date to Nri despite all historians saying 900 AD, I could easily do the same for Benin since somebody was ordering those large earthworks to be done. So it is one thing to say there was activity in a place and another to say the first monarch of a kingdom founded the kingdom at such a date.  Regardless, the 400 years thing you originally wrote is still laughable.

ezeagu:
It's also found in Igala history.

Never seen a reference to it in Igala history, but I'd be happy to read one.

No, now, you did a u-turn. From the east to the north and then towards the south.

Uhhh, no. When I brought up the area north of Akoko-Edo as the place Edos migrated south from I was specifically referring to the area north of Akoko-Edo where isolated languages with a small number of speakers that can't be classified in any of the known larger minority or majority groups of Nigeria are found, whether Igala, Edoid, Igboid, Yoruboid, etc. That is where Ukaan and Akpes are found and that happens not to be where the Igalas are. Although I will at this point assume you've concocted the U-turn theory just to annoy me for your amusement and stop debating this stuff in this thread.

Smh.

This false story needs to die.

DapoBear:
Look, English did not originate in Africa, yes. But that is no reason not to choose it as the lingua franca. Heck, tomatoes didn't originate in Africa (they are indigenous to South America), but they are one of my favorite things to eat.

It is pretty silly to reject a perfectly fine tool (the English language) for sentimental reasons, I think.

We've got bigger fish to fry.

True. But look at the case of Cameroon. The English speakers are marginalized there to an extent. Some French speaking African countries might laugh at the idea of going from a supposedly eloquent, beautiful sounding colonizer's language spoken by a supposedly liberal, unprejudiced country like France which many have strong, old, positive relationships with to a supposedly plain, inelegant colonizer's language (English) spoken by non-African and African countries they don't interact with much and who are virtually strangers to them. For them, what's the point? This is one argument I can see for the pro-Swahili proponents. Even then, I don't think it's a good enough one considering all the other problems with implementing Swahili over French or English.

ROSSIKE:
That's a funny one. I'd say that, considering we're AFRICANS, I would think that Swahili being an AFRICAN language would be more than good enough reason to choose it over French, English, or Italian, or am I missing something here?

You're not missing anything. Just pointing out that this seems motivated my politics, not practicality.

It doesn't have to be rushed. This is not something that would happen over a year or two. This, if introduced, would likely start with the children's curricula,  this generation of adults will not be obliged or mandated to ditch English or French and speak Swahili. This is a generational transformation that will take several years to decades, starting with the children. It's a form of social engineering with the long-term outcome in sight.

This is reasonable.

The wild, negative assumptions you make here are too numerous to be worthy of a response.

The assumptions were neither wild nor negative. Let's say we want to talk economics and I want to talk about the marginalist theory of value which may be relevant, were I an economist or professor of economics in a particular African country, to my assessment of why people are making the economic choices they are making at this or that time or which they made in a previous era. Having created and defined words for the concept of utility  (in the economic sense) in Swahili, one would then have to create and define words that expressed all of the many economic concepts related to utility ( marginal utility, cardinal utility or ordinal utility, utility function, etc.) were they necessary to explain my theories or predictions. But then I need to explain marginal, cardinal, ordinal, and function (in the mathematical sense) in Swahili. And it goes on and on from there until one gets to the very very basics of every combination of possible ideas until one gets to some concept which is so basic that a word would already exist. Which is why it would be likely that words and concepts would just be taken from European languages without being redefined in Swahili terms when confronted with the daunting process of repeating this definition and additional definition of words/ideas in the first definition and additional definition of ideas/words explaining the first additional definition and so on and so on for millions of words/ideas. Obviously one would start with the basics first and build up from there rather than the reverse as I used in my example,  but in doing so one starts from a limited vocabulary and struggles to reach the heights of the modern vocabulary of developed nations, and thus our purely Swahili speaking economics professor may know what marginal and function mean if these basics have already been defined, but not ordinal or utility until someone later defines them for him (and why would they necessarily do so?) in his language and even then he won't necessarily know ordinal utility as a concept and so may be behind his peers for a while. I am not saying it is impossible to catch up. Rather I am saying it would be such an enormous uphill climb that more practically minded and less politically resolute people than you or me would just settle for stealing concepts and their words straight from the colonizer's language, as Western Europeans did with Latin.

Wrong!! That a regional language adopts terminology from the dominant one does not necessarily imply degradation, or inertia. The regional language could well develop a specialisation in a particular area of endeavour that could see it's terminologies in that area elevated in the continent's intellectual discourse. The bottom line is autonomy. The intellectuals of each region are not precluded from developing concepts and principles in their own languages with translations made in the continental language if required.

Perhaps, but by then we would have enjoyed a thousand years of Continental Rennaissance!!!!!

What I mean is in a hypothetical future, how can Kikongo's (7 million speakers) intellectuals/academics/word-coiners/idea-makers keep up with the pace of the expansion and development of their language with Swahili (all of Africa) while also contributing to the ideas and words developed and defined in Swahili, without those new Kikongo words merely being taken from the Swahili words rather than being unique, original Kikongo expressions of concepts/ideas when it proves too daunting to keep pace with the rate of expansion (in all directions, not just one area) of the Continental Swahili? Will they, having taken time to master the 150 new Swahili words for concepts introduced in say, the last 5 or 6 years, turn around and do double the work and redefine those concepts in words appropriate to their own language or will they take the more natural route and just appropriate the new Swahili words into their regional vocabulary? Consider the hundreds, or is it thousands, of languages in Africa and ask yourself honestly how many will take the route involving double the work and requiring an official intellectual academy (for each language) like the French Academy (Académie française) of the French language over the natural route of just taking the new foreign word into their regional language (which requires no translation/equivalent word-coining academy). Add in the even worse factor that different regional languages will move at different rates proportional to the "academic strength" of the community of that particular language. The Igbos, Yorubas, Ashantis, etc,  will field an army of academicians (Soyinka already started a Yoruba Academy, so I hear) which will have no trouble promulgating native equivalents every year for new words in the continental Swahili, while less advanced groups (I'm not worried about Nigeria here, actually) might be left in the cold in their ability to field armies of linguists, poets, writers, scientists, philosophers, etc. to sit around and discuss and then construct their own versions of ideas they can already say and express in Swahili.

ezeagu:
Owa is the product of a kingdom that existed at least 400 years before the Edo Empire. Respect your elders.

Lol @ that

Nri Kingdom- about 900 AD onwards

(Ogiso - ruled) Benin Kingdom- about 800 AD onwards (the time earthen wall fortifications started)

Then around 1200 AD Benin started that Edo empire stuff.

^^
Who said anything about Igala (and yes I'm familiar with that Igala from Igbo and then Igala continued migrating westwards stuff found in Igbo (but not in other) history). The whole Edoid groups together outnumber the Igala and speak a language strikingly different from theirs for supposed migration such a small distance away from them so you would have to do better than that. Also, I was actually referring to the Northern part of what is now Ondo State, where the Ukaan and Akpe languages are spoken, and not to what is now Kogi state when I referenced the area north of Akoko-Edo.

ROSSIKE:
I've read what he says. He seems to think that because ''Europe haven't done it'', we shouldn't.

Actually, Europe has already done it. It's called Latin. Much of Europe was "colonized" by Rome and even those who weren't colonized adopted Latin for written communication and records and much more. Then they all moved away from that and developed their own literatures and phrases and styles. Nobody speaks Latin anymore except for religious rites. In fact, at one point you mentioned Pythagoras's theorem and relativity theory being translated into Chinese. Well, as a minor correction, they had already discovered Pythagoras's theorem before being introduced to it by the west. As a counter to this I would point out that European scientists, even Newton, continued to publish in Latin for a long time until adopting the languages of their mother countries for scientific publication (English, French, German, etc.), but it never decreased or increased the quality of their work. Newton spoke English, but thought about physics and math in Latin, and expressed himself in Latin. His ability was never reduced by the fact that he had to read about Galileo or Kepler's work in Latin rather than in an English translation. And it was the same for Galileo and Kepler with regard to Italian and German. They read voluminous works in Latin and expressed their mathematical and physical ideas in Latin but then spoke their real languages when debating fellow countrymen and Latin when debating foreign scientists they were corresponding with. Now you want to swap Latin  with Swahili and German/Italian/English with our native languages but the counter to this is, did the quality of English, German, and Italian scientific research suddenly plummet and degenerate once the use of Latin was abandoned and they began to publish in the languages they naturally spoke? No, if anything it continued right on rising. The phantom of language change will not get Africans to adopt the push for scientific research that the Chinese have, rather it will take real interest in the science itself, and there are very real social changes that would bring that about, such as improvement in the general standard of living and quality of life and additional money to pour into research from profits (rather than being spent on development of infrastructure and other necessities) but I can't see how language would make one less or more competent or research inclined.  

But who doesn't know that ENGLISH is the ''unofficial'' lingua franca of Europe? There's hardly anywhere you'll go in Europe and not find English readily spoken. It's certainly the language of trade across the continent.

Incorrect. English is not the lingua franca in Europe although it is true that English has overtaken French for the purposes of the European Union and of business. English has overtaken French as the language of trade in Europe. Still, one cannot go to just anywhere in Europe and start speaking English under the impression that one will be understood. It is only so in certain countries, Western European countries especially, but not including Spain, Portugal, Poland, and a few others in Western Europe and excluding much of Eastern Europe. If a language of business is to be adopted, I see no reason why it should be Swahili and not the current French and English except that the latter two are European while Swahili is African. To me this does not serve a purpose if hundreds of words have to be invented immediately just to catch up to the pace of modern business and economics and if these words will mostly have to be stolen from French and English or be poor attempts at using Swahili to convey or describe concepts it cannot describe simply without having to define a multitude of other concepts that are also only expressed in European languages.

He makes other unwarranted assumptions such as that indigenous languages will be subsumed unfairly, and not allowed to showcase their peculiar strengths etc -  a charge for which there's no evidence. If anything, the development will herald a BOON in the elevation of major languages like Yoruba, Ashanti, Hausa etc.

Actually, that makes no sense. Consider the example of scientific concepts with regard to the growth of languages. If Swahili is currently more capable of expressing scientific concepts and eventually this expression of scientific concepts is highly developed to where, say, one could describe evolutionary theories, or theories of the formation of the universe, or thermodynamic concepts, in purely Swahili it would follow that simultaneously doing so in every major African language (Shona, Zulu, Somali, Amharic, Kongo, Ashanti, etc.) would be much slower paced for each language than doing so for the "Latin" of Africa, which would have contributions from all of Africa (once all the scientists from all regions buckled down and learned their Latin (Swahili)), unless the versions of the expressions of these scientific concepts in these regional languages would just be derived (stolen) from the new Swahili words for them, in which case, there would be little point as the regional language still would not have developed. If this cycle were to be repeated, eventually a mass of words stolen from Swahili would come to populate all of the words for important concepts and ideas and expressions in the regional languages (as Latin does for English, French, Spanish, etc.) to the point that the regional language could never recover and be its own language until it were readopted and developed independently as the English, French and Spanish did with their own languages.

And he says in a hundred years time every group would form their own version of the African lingua franca.

Again there's little evidence to support this. English is still spoken officially in its original form by most Africans, over a century after the British brought it, with no sign of people ''imposing their dialect on it to turn it into a different language altogether''.


So why does he assume that this will happen with an official African language?

Actually, many pidgin words spoken throughout some parts of non-Portuguese speaking Africa are bastardizations of proper Portuguese words introduced from a few centuries back. So over time, as the standard is lost, the natural linguistic tendency arises and overtakes and the words used are neither used in a grammatically identical manner as in the original language nor is the exact same word used. But with regards to English, the standard was never lost. In fact, we became and are becoming better at English than we previously were. However if English had merely become a lingua franca between our real languages (Edo, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Tiv, Ijaw, etc.) and we spoke and/or mostly wrote in our real languages always while only invoking English for some official documents and publications or business transactions now and again, the bastardizations which I predicted would certainly have occurred. In this modern information age though, this does seem less likely to occur even if English were relegated from everyday use to merely lingua franca status.




The one thing I will admit, is that all of black Africa speaking Kiswahili [i]could [/i]work to foster more African unity if done correctly.

The thought of a whole continent, and of almost all of a race, speaking one language is rather awful. Complete and utter limitation of expression, of style, and of perspective. Dante did, using Italian, what the Germans certainly could not have done at that time. Shakespeare did, using English, what the Russians certainly could not have done until the time of Alexandr Pushkin. I bring up these names because the original article mentioned Ngugi Wa Thiong'O, Soyinka, and Achebe. How do we know that we are not adopting the "Russian" of the African languages in adopting Kiswahili, i.e. a language less fit for literary and scientific achievement without major improvement and upgrading in style and quality of expression and range of vocabulary (as Pushkin did for Russian) when other languages whose influence and importance we might want Kiswahili to supersede by adopting it as the African Latin might currently be the "Italian," "French," and "English" of the African languages., i.e., already full of enormous range of expression or possessing admirable qualities of style or grace of expression and just waiting for a master to make something of them. We might have a situation where the  "French" of African languages, could be relegated to the status of a local language and made to stop growing, while something rather plain by comparison ("Russian" is taking its place in importance. Does anyone actually think that there are not attributes of French, German, Italian, etc. that are uniquely beautiful and which the continued speaking of Latin by those regions might have failed to bring out? The very fact that these languages steal (borrow) words from one another, especially stealing from the French language, should reveal that there are words and phrases and ideas which certain languages could be better suited at capturing and expressing than others or be better in developing than others.

It seems the real problem here is that we speak different "Latins"- English, French, Portuguese, and Arabic, and that they are all non-African, not that it actually makes sense to develop an African lingua franca, when Europeans moved away from that unideal stage and developed their unique languages for their own benefit and for the benefit of the wider European world.

Anyway what the people spouting this Kiswahili lingua franca stuff don't realize is that languages diverge for a reason. We're not all exactly the same. That's the plain truth. Within 100 years of adopting Kiswahili for communication between different Africans,  different African regions will begin bastardizing it based on their natural linguistic inclinations and blending their indigenous language's traits and words into their version of swahili, ultimately defeating the purpose, as the different Kiswahili's will gradually be unintelligible to one another, taking us right back to square one.

Well Ekiti may be the cannabis capital but I don't know about drug capital. The drug capital is probably Lagos.

Cats are just cats.

babaearly:
do you know the bini people are of the lost tribe of isreal and moved down from egypt?

No, but I do know that this post is nonsense.

ezeagu:
No, Edo is a lost tribe of the Igbo.

You can't be serious.

Strange stuff. Edo and Igbo are quite different cultures and linguistically very different but as you know little about Edos you make bizarre statements about Edo being a mix of Yoruba and Igbo and now a full blown "Edo is a lost tribe of the Igbo" statement. I don't know why this ever even comes up when people who've actually bothered to study Edos have identified a whole family of languages called Edoid whose origins have been associated with a migration from the area north of Akoko-Edo downwards.

davidylan:
the reason i dont take threads like this seriously is because you are the type who may have pooh poohed Nigeria when you were younger. Not learning the language or anything about Nigeria is squarely your fault. What exactly is this meant to tell us? That you are a british citizen? Do we honestly wish to know?

His not learning the language is squarely the fault of the parents. It always is.

You are whatever ethnicity you are. Nigeria is a political construct. Know what that ethnicity is and embrace its culture, language, music, history, leaders, struggles, as best you can and the rest will follow.

After reading this, I suspect you have yet to date a black girl. Which isn't necessarily your fault. I don't know your background. You could be hideous and thus, white girls with "jungle fever" might be your only chance. Just sayin'. . .

You are not and never will be British. Stop deceiving yourself. British are English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, and a few others and those are real ethnic groups to which you do not belong. Start by embracing whatever specific Nigerian ethnic group to which you belong and the rest will follow from there.

I'll assume the purpose of this posting this thread on Nairaland and not on a Nigerian Forum (where it will be preaching to the choir) is to correct the ridiculous notion some Nigerians have that Biafra was born out of Ojukwu's personal ambition. That is commendable since a lot of people who haven't bothered to read up on any aspect of the civil war try to lay the blame for secession on Ojukwu.

This is a good article in general in explaining the pressures on Ojukwu given the circumstances, but it is actually not accurate on a number of crucial points which I'm sure people who are interested in this era of Nigeria's troubled history are familiar with. I would advise those that blindly accept every argument put forward here to read not parts of, but the entirety of the book The Nigerian Civil War by John de St. Jorre. The first incorrect statement is the timing of the blockade. The blockade did not occur before the Aburi accord but in fact after the secession declaration. The other is the idea that One-Nigeria advocates like Nzeogwu, Ademoyega or the other coup plotters would have declared secession.

The main problem some that actually know anything about the war have with Ojukwu is in the way Biafra was actually realized. He could have granted the indigenous population of the now Rivers state, many of whom are Igbo, the fuller autonomy that they wanted, but he didn't, instead giving them a poor substitute for what Gowon would later grant them, turning them against him. That isn't my problem, for sure, but it is a very real one which some people from that area do in fact have and did have with Biafra. As things currently are, I doubt it would be a problem if Biafra was declared again and they were included in Biafra now that they have the control that they desired. This little gesture towards those Eastern minorities, including Igbos (Ikwerres) that loathed "Igbo domination" could have saved Biafra a lot of headache.

He could have followed Awolowo's prudent suggestion and had representatives of the East, supported in some, but not all,of their demands by the West, meet with the Northern dominated federal government and negotiate and if the North proved intransigent in implementing at least some part of the Aburi accord, he could say, with the full backing of important voices in the West that the end of Nigeria was necessary. He refused and asserted that the solution was the "largest army in black Africa", which he had built up secretly, neglecting the fact that the Western region had no army and could not obtain one in their position but were expected to attempt to somehow stand with the East and fight the North for the East's demands.

With the important potential ally (the Western region) severely checkmated (note that Awolowo was in no position to secretly start a rebel army, lest he betray the man who freed him (Yakubu Gowon, although I know Ironsi meant to have freed him but didn't actually do so immediately after he resolved to do so, resulting in Awolowo still being in prison until Gowon pardoned him)) the best option was diplomacy (building a coalition of support in the South) rather than going it alone. Ojukwu chose going it alone under the assumption that he was in a "position of power" (his words) due to his newly found large army. He refused a solution in which those in the Western region who supported the implementation of most of the East's demands (Awolowo) could stand with the East and declare solidarity, and align themselves with the East over those in the Western region who supported the Northern controlled military and government and instead said that a military solution was necessary.

The other problem with this military solution, apart from the fact that it precluded those in the West who were sympathetic to the cause of the East from even being able to show solidarity with the East by having leaders from the West and East present before the world a series of reasonable demands of the East to be met for Nigeria to continue, seems to be that instead of invading and taking over part of the North on the way to taking out Gowon in the West or overrunning much of the North (both of these options may not have been militarily feasible, but if so, then all the more reason not to secede under the impression that the power from which he was seceding could be defeated with his army), he took over the Midwest and in exactly such a way that could only be described as a Biafran takeover of a non-Biafran region. He had already lost potential Southern support by refusing diplomatic overtures to the Federal government in which those in the South who supported the East's demands could show support. Immediately after the Midwestern takeover (not "liberation" he lost whatever Southern indifference or neutrality that still existed. Had he gone the other route, and actually thrashed the Nigerian military directly in battle and then overrun the North, that would have been "honorable conduct," and settled the question of whether there was to be a Biafra without any additional question of whether the not at all honorable situation in the Midwest would be sustained after Biafra's victory or the more crucial question of whether a similar situation would have arisen in the West following Biafra's takeover of the West.


These were tactical mistakes, and they were important and enormous. But Ojukwu was not some some perfect human being.

I also hope it's known that Aluko is not exactly pro-Biafran. In fact, reading some of his other articles he seems slightly prejudiced against Igbos so this article probably doesn't even have the aim which some pro-Biafrans here on Nairaland might assume it does.

Ileke-IdI:
This nairaland is pretty much sad, a projection of how jealous and competitive Nigerians themselves are.
I've met a lot of Ghanaians, they're one of the smartest, nicest, well represented group of people I've been honored to come across. And I have met a lot!
Anytime I come across a Ghanaian, I playfully ask about the rivalry between Nigeria and Ghana, and the same answer usually pops up; "There is no rivalry, we're brothers". And it usually surprises me that I come on NL and read something else. Ghanaians loff almost everything about Nigeria, esp our movies and they proudly call us one of the smartest groups of Africans.

I, myself, try to see the hate the Ghanaians have for Nigeria. Apart from the movie industry, I've yet to see any.

Nigerians can be a group of messed up people, I swear. You people just loff to hate, you project your feelings unto other people.
If you do not hate yourselves, you'll hate others. Stick to the tribal hate, it does you more justice.
Jesus! Never met people that love to hate like a fat kid loves BK.
Your movie industry is crap crap crappy, yet you think yours is still better than Gollywood. Better in what sense?
Your politicians are outstandingly corrupt, yet you think you're still better than Ghana.
You complain daily about Nigeria's condition, yet Nigeria is still better than Ghana.
Your politicians messes you up by mixing tribe/region/religion into politics, yet you're still better than Ghana.

I could go on and on. . . . point is, address your own issue and worry not what goes on on a Ghanaian website.
Quit posting bad Ghana pictures because you know what? They look exactly like somewhere in Nigeria.

This is why the Nigeria-Ghana rivalry annoys me. I've yet to have any negative experiences with Ghanians in real life, but I come on the internet and see anti-Nigeria stuff spewed constantly by Ghanians and anti-Ghana stuff spewed constantly by Nigerians. I can't say the same about AA's and Jamaicans though. That stuff carries over in real life.

I don't know why this MzDarkSkin is pretending she's neutral. She literally hasn't stopped insulting Nigeria and Nigerians since she started posting here. It actually kind of annoys me that people give her the time of day on ANY threads since she literally knows next to nothing about Nigeria beyond what she can google or wikipedia or scavenge from Nairaland. Most of the animosity towards Nigerians from either Jamaicans or African Americans when Nigerians are in countries besides their own almost always originates from Jamaicans and AA's brash ignorance and inexplicable inclination to brainless thuggery or idiotic "you sold me into slavery" crap, or blatant anti-African sentiments and constant insults and mockery of everything from names to appearance to whatever else they can come up with. Nigerians only talk about Jamaicans when they're in the UK where the behavior of these Jamaicans there is clear to see for anybody with a brain to assess it and see whether they actually want to associate with such people. In the end it doesn't matter though because Nigerians will just go on achieving, while those other two groups continue to embarrass blacks far worse than any Nigerian scam could through underachievement across a whole range of areas and with mindless thuggish behavior (with a much much larger percentage of them behaving this way than Nigerians, no matter what they want to believe).

The Ghana-Nigeria rivalry is pretty ugly and rather annoying, considering the pointlessness of it all so I usually stay out of these silly debates, but it annoys the hell out of me when somebody who literally joined the site to put down Nigerians (like MANY of the Ghanian posters here) comes in and pretends to be a neutral because she has some other nationality.

This isn't a positive. It's irrelevant.

“The person who rigged the elections in Lagos State came to me. You know I am a man of my words. It was in the presence of Bode George. The person prostrated and begged me. He confessed that he was the one who falsified the results of Lagos state. I told him God allowed it; otherwise, he would have been attacked by leprosy.” - Obasanjo


LMAO.


Good write-up, overall. Though this is old and irrelevant now, it helps destroy some myths and nostalgia people seem to be having about Obasanjo.

Well, not so recent, actually. Six years ago. But things have not improved, really.

http://www.globalintegrity.org/reports/2004/2004/country1323.html?cc=ng&act=timeline



Nigeria: Corruption Timeline


June 1993 – Presidential elections in Nigeria are judged to be essentially free and fair. At the time, Nigeria is managed by the Provisional Ruling Council, a 32-member organ comprised of military officers and civilians which rules by decree following the suspension of the 1979 Constitution.

June 1993 – The military, led by acting president General Ibrahim Babangida, annuls election results. Polls indicate that the vote had been won by wealthy businessman Moshood Abiola, who earned an estimated 58 percent of the vote. Riots follow, in which 100 people die. Babangida eventually cedes power to a transitional civilian government pending planned elections in 1994.

November 1993 – General Sani Abacha forces out the acting government and establishes a ruling regime. Abacha quickly dissolves the transitional civilian government, replaces it with military officers, and bans political parties.

May 1994 – Prior to elections for a Constitutional Conference, the Abacha regime cracks down on the opposition, resulting in a largely boycotted election. Two weeks later, Abiola declares himself the rightful president of Nigeria and immediately goes into hiding. Abiola is later arrested and jailed for treason in June.

July 1994 – Petroleum workers launch a labor strike against the government to demand that Abiola be released and declared president. The strike spreads to other unions and paralyzes much of Nigeria.

August 1994 – The Abacha regime imposes military control over unions and jails their leaders. The strike ends and the government begins a new crackdown on opponents.

June/July 1995 – Claiming it had uncovered a coup plot, the Abacha regime secretly arrests, convicts, and sentences 40 alleged ringleaders. Opposition sympathizers are also caught up in the dragnet of arrests.

October 1995 – Abacha announces a three-year timetable for a return to democratic government.

December 1997 – Disillusioned voters boycott local elections after it becomes clear that Abacha has co-opted the election process in order to entrench his personal power; less than 10 percent of the electorate goes to the polls. By the end of December, the Abacha regime rounds up the leaders of another suspected coup. Arrests in this latest alleged coup top 60 within a month.

June 1998 – Abacha dies. General Abdulsalam Abubakar assumes leadership of Nigeria. Abubakar institutes a number of government reforms, frees political prisoners, and promises to return Nigeria to democratic rule.

July 1998 – A day before his scheduled release, Abiola dies in prison of an apparent heart attack, sparking violent riots.

August 1998 – Abubakar establishes the Independent National Electoral Commission to conduct elections and formalizes a timetable by which the country would return to civilian rule.

December 1998 to February 1999 – The electoral commission successfully conducts local, state, federal, and presidential elections across Nigeria.

February 1999 – Retired General Olusegun Obasanjo is elected president with 63 percent of the vote, defeating Olu Falae, who garnered only 37 percent. Obasanjo, who had governed Nigeria as a military leader in the 1970s, was at that point the only military ruler in Nigeria's history to have ceded power to a civilian government, and had only recently been freed from prison after being arrested during the alleged 1995 coup.

May 1999 – Obasanjo is inaugurated as president, ending 16 years of military rule. Moments before taking the oath of office, Obasanjo is presented a copy of the newly enacted Constitution, finalized in secret by the outgoing Abubakar regime.

June 1999 – In a special closed legislative session, congressmen debate whether to increase their housing allowances to $140,000 per year. The debate comes shortly after a divisive campaign by teachers and civil servants to institute a $30-per-month minimum wage.

June 1999 – In his first speech to a joint session of Parliament, Obasanjo pledges to make anti-corruption the centerpiece of his administration. The first bill he sends to the National Assembly targets corruption, but after passing through the House, the bill languishes.

July 1999 – Ibrahim Salisu Buhari, the first speaker of the House under Obasanjo, resigns after less than two months in office when it is discovered that he lied about his academic background and age, which would have constitutionally disqualified him from the position. Buhari pleads guilty to forgery and perjury in connection to the scandal, and is eventually fined the equivalent of US$20. He is pardoned less than a year later.

June 2000 – The National Assembly finally passes the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission Act, establishing the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to enforce anti-corruption measures in Nigeria. The commission is inaugurated in September.

July 2000 – A government investigation uncovers what it characterizes as inflated procurement contracts in the National Assembly, some of them awarded to companies in which legislators had a financial interest. High-level officials are implicated by the investigation, including Senate President Chuba Okadigbo and Senate Deputy President Alhaji Haruna Abubakar, who both collected substantial "welfare" packages from the government.

August 2000 – Okadigbo is impeached for corruption and misappropriation of funds. After his impeachment, Okadigbo is indicted for spending public money on cars and car furnishings. Following intense media pressure, Okadigbo resigns in October. The indictment is eventually dropped. October 2000 – President Obasanjo is accused by eight House members of bribing them to help oust Speaker of the House Ghali Na'Abba, who Obasanjo had attacked for his corruption. The legislators dramatically unload the alleged bribes on the House floor. Obasanjo strongly denies the charges and calls for an investigation into the matter.

October 2000 – Construction begins on one of Obasanjo's pet projects—a modern sports stadium in Abuja. The estimated cost of US$380 million exceeds the combined budgets for national health and education, and the actual costs eventually spiral hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.

February 2002 – A government anti-corruption commission issues its first indictment of a high-level government official, accusing Justice Garba Abdullahi of demanding a US$9,000 bribe from a businessman in order to reverse an adverse ruling.

April 2002 – The House unanimously strikes down a measure signed into law that would have outlawed the formation of new political parties ahead of the 2003 presidential election, claiming that Obasanjo had inserted new language into the bill after it had been submitted to him.

August 2002 – The National Assembly threatens to impeach Obasanjo if he refuses to resign, accusing him of 17 separate indictable offenses including incompetence, disregard for the rule of law, and corruption. Obasanjo refuses to resign.

September 2002 – The ICPC obtains its first conviction, sentencing local government chairman Emmanuel Egwuba to three years in prison for awarding a contract without budgetary approval.

January 2003 – Auditor-General Vincent Azie submits a 300-page annual report, covering the 2001 financial year. The report chronicles corruption in Nigeria, including a number of suspicious payments and honoraria to politicians, and criticizes all branches of government. The following month, Obasanjo fires Azie.

February 2003 – The National Assembly passes a bill replacing the ICPC with a less-powerful anti-corruption entity. Obasanjo subsequently vetoes the measure. The Assembly tries to override the veto in May, a move which is ruled illegal by the chief judge of the Federal High Court, who affirms the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Act of 2000.

April 2003 – In the first civilian-run presidential elections since the end of military rule, Obasanjo wins re-election with 62 percent of the vote, defeating former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, who had seized power by coup in 1983. The opposition rejects the result, and international observers note that serious irregularities occur during balloting.

November 2003 – The government releases its report on the Nigeria Airways investigation, commissioned by Obasanjo in 2001 and shelved since May 2002. The report details the systematic looting of the once-prosperous airline, and implicates 90 people in its downfall. The report recommends that the government prosecute several individuals and seek to recover US$400 million looted by companies and government officials.

December 2003 – After the ICPC announces that it is probing top government officials for allegedly accepting bribes from a French firm, Sagem SA, Obasanjo fires Labor Minister Hussaini Zannuwa Akwanga. At the end of the month, prosecutors charge five people, including Akwanga and two other former ministers, with taking bribes from Sagem, which won a US$214 million contract to produce national identity cards. As of March 25, 2004, the case was pending.


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What on earth. . . .nonsense if it's true.

I don't know why, but as a minority I wasn't even all that offended by that or even shocked. I kind of expected it almost. I'm only disappointed in seeing Ribadu fall into the "stereotypical" Hausa-Fulani Northern hegemonic mindset. He might have said "sadly" but by ending with Jonathan being "unacceptable and not "electable" he showed that he conceded to that mindset, to that "born to rule" mentality and had no interest in challenging it or reforming his people's political outlook.

That "born to rule" mentality  of Northerners is a major source of problems for Nigeria, from 1967 to the present. And by that "born to rule" mentality let me say exactly what I mean: When Ribadu says that Jonathan is not acceptable to the North, it is not actually the simple chauvinism that people are assuming it is, in my opinion, and he is not merely saying that Northerners feel that some member of some tiny group cannot be "ruling" them (actually, what problem did Northerners have with Gowon (Angas), IBB (Gwari) and Abacha (Kanuri)?) especially as they've accepted such rule before.

Really what he is conveying is that Jonathan, an Ijaw, is unacceptable because there is no justification for some tiny Southern ethnic group being granted a position that would otherwise belong to a Northerner. The basic mentality which Ribadu has revealed he acquiesces to, and maybe even condones, is that a Northerner must rule Nigeria by default, and that in between this Northern rule the presidency is to be granted to a Yoruba or an Igbo  by the North on account of the large population of those groups, to keep up appearances and make things seem fair, but for it to be given to a group of people with no political muscle (a minority) is a travesty.

The presidency, he is implying, is loaned to Igbo and Yoruba by the North but for it to go a tiny group to which the North has no obligations, and is small enough that it should normally be able to ignore them, unlike the Yoruba or Igbo, annoys Northerners who feel that they only ever would give up the presidency to Igbo or Yoruba because they have to, and are now giving up something valuable and which supposedly is their birthright when they don't have to. A few Northern politicians, we know, are fine with handing over power to an Igbo in 2015 (with the exception of Buhari, who doesn't oppose it, but hasn't made any commitments), even though most of the people making the Igbo-2015 promises are PDP and PDP had originally slated 2015 for some (presumably non-Igbo) Niger-Deltan. However those same Northerners who are fine with giving it away to an Igbo quite soon would probably be equally annoyed, and also view as unacceptable having to give away the presidency to an Efik or Annang at some point in the future after that Igbo presidency if a credible candidate from one of those groups (Donald Duke?) could possibly clinch the presidency- also because those two groups should be "ignorable". The sad thing is, if Nigeria practiced real democracy, all this crap about background wouldn't matter. Hausa-Fulani-  about 25 percent of the population, Yoruba- 25 percent of the population, Igbo- 25 percent of the population, Others- 25 percent of the population. Some of those others are Northerners and some are Southerners and we have to ask, why would the North get uptight when a southern part of that other 25% happened to emerge and get into a position of leadership, especially considering their chances of getting it again would be rather small? Because it's in their mindset that they own the political affairs of Nigeria. This is what Ribadu tacitly agrees with.

This is just my theory, and it might not make sense to some people so I'm not asking everybody see it my way but  this is just what I see. I think what that statement revealed about Ribadu was far deeper than simple "his group is too small for him to rule the large North" bigotry. Rather, I think it revealed he is no where near as "progressive" or "young and different" as people assume considering that he still has the mentality of a supporter of Northern hegemony over the political affairs of this country.

I don't really see the appeal of Ribadu. The guy seems like a bit of a simpleton. He blindly attacked OBJ's opponents without also going after crooks that OBJ was shielding and supporting and now is even backtracking on the need to verify the sources of money that might flow into his campaign. Jonathan, apart from having a Ph.D, seems quietly clever, and mostly politically competent, barring that gaffe about MEND and the abuja bombing.

Clearly "federal character" was employed in the selection of names. A rather arbitrary, strange motley of achievers, some of them at vastly different levels of achievement. But let me leave off criticizing until I make my own mark somewhere. . .

Beaf:
Seriously dude, the chances are 99.99% that I do.
I can cope with everything your lil brain can throw at me, from math to fine art, from physics to biology, from history to inventions, from scientific papers to patents. To you, I am like a living encyclopedia, I can draw better than you and freeze you with abstract math.

Dude, I'm fcking red hot!

The rest of your post is simply a long winded way of throwing in the towel, so it isn't worth a pinch of salt. But why start a rude argument only to throw in the towel?

PS: If you had started out in a civil way, we would never have headed down this route

Lol@ the bolded. Don't even dream that it could be so, you might regret it. From the immense amount of time you spend on Nairaland compared to me it would actually be physically impossible for you to be as adept at me in most of those areas, regardless of all the help the internet could give you, especially in physics. I stay in the lab. You stay on nairaland. if actually tasked with explaining, in terms of physics (not watered down or simplified either, but from first principles) an actual unusual scientific phenomenon or any non-obvious physical principle playing out in real life, you would be at a loss and your beloved google couldn't help you. It would be highly amusing to me if somebody who reasons like you did in this thread had any actual competence at what you called "abstract math" (lol @ calling it that), but there's no way to verify across the internet that you even know how to tie your shoes, let alone construct a simple mathematical proof, so I could care less about your claims.

How is it throwing in the towel to correct the notion that you or anyone else was ever calling you a monkey whenever the word tribe was used. I didn't start an argument. I called a silly story what it was. Step up your bullshit detector and we won't have to go down this route in the future. Later.

Beaf:
Precisely! Even East European shitholes like Armenia, Georgia, Belarus, Moldova etc are not described as having tribes, cos there can't be tribes among caucasians. No, tribal lands start in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan etc where the people aren't caucasian. Lets note that the examples, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are at about the same developmental level as their caucasian neighbours.

Most of the Eastern European "shitholes" you mentioned have a higher GDP per capita and probably a higher standard of living (plus electricity) than Nigeria. Let's not degrade and insult unnecessarily.


From my experience, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, etc. are mostly only called tribes within Nigeria by Nigerians or by older or occasionally recent British writers writing about Nigeria or those groups. Outside of Nigeria I usually here them referred to as ethnic groups or linguistic groups, though I can't speak for Europe, I'm talking about in America. There are subgroups within those groups however, and you can bet that all and sundry, near and far, black and white, might call those groups tribes. Not to demean the subgroups or anything. It just so happened that that's the one of most fitting words in the English language for what that kind of extra, unnecessary distinction between sub-units of an larger ethnicity represents. Most of the Europeans overcame their tribal mentality long ago. I can't say the same for somebody who wants to see himself as an Egba man and has problems with his Ijebu or Ekiti neighbors when they are really all the same ethnicity the way all Scottish are Scottish and all English are English.-