₦airaland Forum

tpia@:
he is white.

That's what I thought.

But if you look around the nose/mouth area, especially in this pic:

www.nairaland.com/attachments/699554_Proud_Igboman_jpg67068b5bd97212102dca7ce93fc5a17f

It makes me think maybe he might be like 1/4th or 1/8th of something else.

Dudu_Negro: Physics,

You always give up. I don't like that about you. Stand your ground and see your fight to the end.

I will keep answering you as many times you ask for info on the connection

Dude, go and sit down somewhere. . . don't spoil the mood for my smoothie.

lol, I think you're confusing yourself buddy

Anyway, carry on with your thread. . .

I don't think the Swiss authorities are saintly. I just don't see the angle/benefit for the Swiss in showing that they helped African dictators stash stolen money.

I think OBJ is a thief.

I just think Abacha was also a thief and I think you're deluding yourself.

I think you know very well that points 1 through 5 are just your interpretations of my positions but are not actually exactly what I wrote. I have no serious issue with Bello's theorizing by the way, and definitely don't consider him insane.

Your perception of my questions is based on some bizarre belief that this story of a migration of Yorubas from "AfroAsia" - a story which I have not even disputed in this thread - somehow negates what I have written earlier about Bini and Ife. What I am telling you is that if the migration were true - let's assume it was - it would not affect in any way what I wrote anywhere about Benin and Ife. Get it? The basis of my view for whatever I've posted about Benin and Ife is not based on negating the account of the migration of Yorubas from Iraq or Egypt or Canaan or wherever else and if the migration had happened 100% down to the way it was narrated by Bello it wouldn't alter what I wrote about Benin and Ife because what I wrote is based on something entirely different.

The issue here for me as far as the Kanuri is when you try to rope distinct groups in for the purpose of crafting the particulars of this history without giving any good reasons for doing so.

By the way, you keep referring to emotions and stuff but between the two of us, I'm far more calm in any discussions we've had. I think you need to stop looking for emotional motives where there are none and stop interpreting this as a "fight". Like I said, if you can't provide a direct answer, just continue with your thread.

Andre Uweh: Mazi Anayo Ude.
From Antwerp, Belgium/Ebonyi state. He is the publicity sec Ohanaeze Belgium.

Is he half Belgian or Belgian in origin?

He looks very. . .light.

Dede1: Ubani has been changed to Ibani or Bonny

The Igbo names that could not be converted to unintelligible moniker in the so-called Ijo are abandoned for English names.

Dede, do you really think Ubani was changed to Ibani as some sort of deliberate conspiracy to make it un-Igbo?

Ibani is attested to as early as 1906:

http://books.google.com/books?id=ULAWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA41

Was there a conspiracy afoot in 1906?

I think the name is actually what they said it is - Ibani.

Abacha was a thief.

Reuben Atabor is a fool.

The Swiss have nothing to gain by discrediting Abacha.

It's a waste of time to go back the Bini issue because I already made my position on that clear a while back although now I'm not sure if you understood it. I don't see what the connection would be between my view on that issue and this Kanuri stuff. If the migrations you think happened had somehow actually happened, it wouldn't affect my position on the Bini issue in any way.

My interest on the Yoruba-Kanuri issue was awakened when you posted it, because I have an interest in pre-colonial African history. I've read up on Igala, Jukun, Ijaw, Songhai, and others although I have no direct ethnic connection to those groups. Now I'm hearing for the first time after already reading up on Kanuri that Kanuri and Yoruba share the same origin and it's starting to sound a bit like that story from you about dan Fodio's mother being from a certain ethnic group.

I won't bother about a thread because it will not serve as a reference point for anyone since people who want to know about Kanuri origins will go to the Kanuri and their writers and find out for themselves.

Dudu_Negro: Physics,

You always give up. I don't like that about you. Stand your ground and see your fight to the end.

If I "always give up" I would have stayed quiet and I wouldn't have brought the question up again would I?

I just don't want to further disrupt your interesting thread on politics with all this other stuff. Carry on and expect no further interruptions from me (although I can't promise that I won't bring up the "Kanuri question" on another day, in another place).

Dudu_Negro: Physics,

To those unaware of the beginning of this argument it would seem you have a point but to those who are familiar with where this issue took its beginning, we know nothing, no explanation satisfies you.

I gave Afrocentric view, you said it was oral fable and had no scholarship backing. I gave Eurocentric view from scholars you said they were repeating what Muhammad Bello said. I gave you records from studies on ideophones that singled out Yoruba Kanuri and Ewe as interconnected, you disputed their conclusions. . . you flawed report of the Global Peace blog. Now you ask for a supporting claim from the other side - the Kanuri side -. . . dude, open a new topic for this discussion please. I hope when I quote credible accounts from their own regents and princes you will finally shut up.

Open a new topic to get what you ask for.. . .that way we have a point of reference going forward.

1. The "Afrocentric view" you gave originally mentioned Kanuri? It seems like you appended that later on.
2. Bello does not say what you're saying. He does not argue for an affinity between Kanuri and Yoruba in origin or in another way.
3. You don't seem to understand what ideophones are. Ideophones are everywhere in languages including other Nigerian languages. That three particular languages were studied in one very early decade in the linguistic study of African languages by Europeans does not somehow show a deep relation between those three languages.
4. I'm already familiar with what some Kanuri claimed for their origin. My reference to you providing Kanuri accounts corroborating what you said was for you to provide supporting evidence for your particular historical view, not for me to be informed of old Kanuri traditions of origin (which are already known).
5. The issue is not sufficiently interesting to merit opening a new thread. I just wanted one simple and direct answer that provides strong evidence of a connection. If you can't be bothered do that, fine. I'll leave you to continue your thread on Aro Meta and politics.

lol, who is that pale skinned man in jeans?

Where is he from?

Negro,

When an association is claimed between two distinct peoples by someone (such as yourself) from one of those groups, there should be some effort made to verify that the supposed connection is held to be valid by people from the other group and an explanation for why should be given. You worry about whether I would accept Afrocentric or Eurocentric sources, but if you could provide Kanuri sources alleging a connection - any kind of connection - I would easily accept your hypothesis. Anything from the 17th century or earlier to the present day from Kanuri would be welcome.

Ideophones are a linguistic characteristic found across a variety of African languages including other "Volta-Niger" languages besides Yoruba and not just the three languages mentioned in that article and the speakers of those languages are not automatically connected in recent origin. I think you know Kanuri and Yoruba are quite distinct linguistically so I'm not sure why you posted that article about Koelle and Kanike.

The second source you posted "ODUDUWA AND YORUBA REVOLUTION IN WORLD HISTORY" although generally interesting, is marred by the errors, distortions, and selective and misleading uses of sources that crop up in the article. The assertion in there of a Yoruba-Kanuri connection is just that - an assertion. No explanation is given at all.

My earlier objection to your use of Sultan Bello's story about the origin of the Yoruba from Iraq to try to connect Yoruba to Kanuri is based on two things.

1st, Bello is not a particularly reliable source on origins. In fact Bello could not even put forward a plausible suggestion for the origin of the Hausa:

books.google.com/books?id=xPd0oj1t53oC&pg=PA35

2nd, Bello actually discusses the origin of the Kanuri and claims they are of Berber origin (note that this is a different from what the Kanuri themselves believed). He does not claim an affinity between the Yoruba and the Kanuri in origin although he discusses both groups and their purported origins, yet you were trying to use his writings to support your claims of an affinity between Yoruba and Kanuri in origin.

This is why I said your earlier claim did not make much sense to me.

The only thing I see as unfortunate is that there do not seem to be many Kanuri on Nairaland for even a few to be able to inform you of how the Kanuris see themselves in relation to other groups and what they and their ancestors and scholars actually believed about their origin. Instead you have to pull them in from out of nowhere to rope them into histories where they serve merely as an appendage to your group for the purposes of your particular historical agenda.

God forbid it.

Onlytruth: Honestly bro, I am not belittling the man's achievement. I respect that guy more than a whole lot of other Nigerians. I am only saying that we should celebrate the engineers that make things that put us on world map. How many Japanese did you know that won Nobel Prize for Physics as of 1980? But guess what, Japan was already a world renowned country in product design and development by that year.

Point taken. The Japanese can do both really well (producing high achievers in theoretical sciences and great businessmen) and I know we're capable as well but I think unfortunately that both of these problems come down to disparities in the quality of government more than just a current disparity in the fundamental capabilities of the best people of the different nations. The Japanese government pumped money into their education and research sectors since the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800s AND they put a serious effort into providing an enabling environment for businessmen through infrastructural development and other actions. Nigeria has not succeeded at doing even half of what would be necessary in these two areas.

Onlytruth: lol, this is a no-brainer to me. Those who make products that others can't make, even if they stole the tech, will get more respect. If I develop a main battle tank that is impervious to any anti-tank shell, all from a copied or stolen tech; what would save me in the day of war? Nobel prize or my tank? lol

Well the part in bold is exactly what I was getting at. Those who come up with ideas - not just gadgets - that other people either can't or just don't come up with are those who are most celebrated today and the nations who are ruling the world today. While you're producing tanks that can resist any shell, some hot shots at DARPA are working on an electromagnetic pulse bomb that can fry all the electrical components used in that tank. And what's that DARPA gadget based on? Theory. The guys who come up with the theoretical ideas can later produce products that the current gadget producer can only dream of producing unless they keep up with and research heavily in the theoretical aspects as well.

Onlytruth: I am criticizing the fact that we churn out engineers BUT churn out ZERO products.

This is a valid point. I only felt it was wrong to use Ogunnaike as an example. He has proven to be great in his areas of research and he should be commended for that. His products are mainly going to be ideas though because of his areas of research.

Churning out products has several obstacles in Nigeria, most of which I'm sure you probably already know. But here's a recap anyway:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/13/yes-there-are-tech-startups-in-nigeria-here-are-my-favorites/

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/02/why_tech_entrepreneurs_in_deve.html

So once again, there is something seriously wrong with the system starting from the top (government) as much as from the bottom (people, private sector).

Onlytruth: I never said he has to do it all by himself.
Another scientist I respect is one guy called Robert J. Oppenheimer who was the project manager of the Manhattan project. A pure genuis who was credited with "having all the designs locked in his head". Only he could remember the whole damn thing. Others simply followed him. Why can't the Ogunnaikes of Nigeria lead a comparable, not necessarily SAME project in Nigeria. BTW I don't believe that ALL Nigerian best engineers are overseas. That is a red herring to me because younger ones are being born DAILY and they mature DAILY.
Talent is the key, not age.

Once again I get your point, but the kind of effort which was put into R & D prior to the start of the Manhattan project back then is worlds away from what Nigeria is even doing financially today, regardless of raw talent.

This is why I fear so strongly the return of a Buhari type or IBB type to Nigeria - they're just not forward looking.

https://www.nairaland.com/877510/nigerias-new-science-fund-takes

^^^
GEJ's administration showed some seriousness about some of the things we're talking about by February of 2012 after being in office only a short time. A Buhari type of leader would mean regression and stagnation because areas like this would not be focused on in the entire 8 years. I was initially stunned to read that Nigeria did not have an equivalent of the U.S.'s NSF until this very administration and I wondered what was wrong with the brains of the people that Nigerians had allowed to govern the country.

Onlytruth: I never said I've abandoned what I was working on. The point I'm really making is that I can now do MUCH MUCH MORE BY STARTING A PRIVATE COMPANY THAT DO A WHOLE LOT OF THAT KIND OF STUFF.

Well there are revolutionary tech companies that have been founded where the CEO or founder of the company is someone who has made significant contributions to his field before/while founding the company. George Westinghouse, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Edwin Land, Robert Noyce, and Steve Jobs come to mind, and there are probably several others. But your approach might work as well - found the company first, go into multiple areas and then introduce the revolutionary idea later on (if it hasn't been superseded and made obsolete by then).

The problem I see in Nigeria is that there is almost ZERO effort on the part of Nigerians to even think that way, talk more of organizing their businesses to invest in such companies. My fear is that Nigeria will remain the same way 1000 years from now. There is just no hunger for science/tech/innovation in Nigeria. The dominant mindset is to IMPORT everything, and those who make effort to produce/invent at home are mocked and called "Aba made".
I respect "Aba mades" more that some patent that have zero impact on the people of Nigeria and the image of the nation.
Once Innoson vehicles starts shipping to other African countries, watch as my prestige skyrockets. How many Africans would respect me because of Prof Ogunnaike? That's my point.

But if Professor Ogunnaike (or some other Nigerian academic) suddenly wins some highly prestigious award in a particular scientific field - let's ignore the more obvious ones and instead say it was the Charles Stark Draper Prize or the Lasker Award or Wolf Prize - would your attitude really be the same toward that academic? Would that academic still be just a "paper" scientist/engineer to you?

Since we're talking hypothetically, which do you think would improve the prestige of a country more - gradually producing several high achievers in theoretical sciences or gradually producing several innovative/revolutionary businessmen? Which of the two sets of people do you think will be remembered longer by other countries?

And not all of these Nigerian academics in the West may really be focused on Nigeria because they're focused on their careers. I know for sure that some are very concerned with Nigeria's progress because I've read of their specific efforts/attempts to contribute to the development of science/technology back in Nigeria, but not everyone is going to be the same. Ogunnaike has started doing his own small part, though I've come across others who are doing more: http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2008/may/nigeria053008.html

Again, whose fault is it that we "elect" half witted people? Why not elect the Ogunnaikes?

I didn't say it was the fault of outsiders. My theory is (as I said earlier) that Nigerians don't really have high enough standards so they're not screening people out well enough. It's not clear to me how one would introduce these standards and deter less impressive or unimpressive candidates from contesting and winning though.

You see, when some of us call for Nigeria's disintegration, it is precisely because we see no hope in the country supporting the right humans to take charge of things. As I right this, a section of the country known to be least educationally developed is baying for blood because one of their own is not the president. I wanted to see if ordinary Nigerians can actually take charge of the future rather than continue on current recidivistic mindset setting us back and keeping us in stone age.

Dividing the country probably would accelerate development for most peoples of Nigeria. No argument from me there.

Believe me, I thoroughly understand what the man has done.

Well you seem to be criticizing him for not inventing great practical things when his areas of research seem to necessarily lean more toward producing "products" that are really ideas rather than big or small gadgets.

My point is that a single professor of engineering in Pakistan created the Pakistani nuclear program and developed it up to the bomb stage.

There were multiple top Pakistani scientists involved in successfully developing Pakistan's atomic bomb. I don't know where you're getting this "single professor" stuff from, but it's false.

I want to see Nigerian engineers achieving similar feat - A COMPELTE engineering feat.
I won't really respect any of them until I start seeing these things.
Nigeria should be sending men to space and building things that make other countries stay off when we tell them to.
The fate of 160 million people is at stake.

This is a lot easier said than done. I asked you why you weren't initiating an electricity generation revolution and you said you never abandoned what you were working on and the project is ongoing. So this criticism even applies to you, right?

And the things you're talking about (nuclear programs, spaceflight, high tech defensive weaponry) are even more complex than power generation which Nigeria can't seem to overcome yet and I don't see these things coming about without a drastic increase in the amount of money available to fund research in these areas and to improve education and educational institutions/facilities in Nigeria.

1. Onlytruth, since you said you had a background in electronics/electrical engineering originally when you were an undergrad, why not take it up again and see if you can't play a major part in resolving at least the local (if not state) electricity crisis affecting your community through your own research? If the line of thinking or the idea you had was so potentially revolutionary for electricity generation, then it would make sense to stick with it or return to it and try to actualize it.

You said white people in the same situation would not wait on an inefficient government and would instead generate sufficient electricity privately through small scale efforts. Perhaps some of them would, but what's really stopping you from emulating or imitating what you think they would do independent of the state or federal government?

Incidentally, have you heard of the "Great Stink" of London in the 1850s? That's a good example of a group of white people literally waiting until most of their capital city smelled like sh1t to fix up the sewers and change their filthy living conditions - and even then they deferred to the government (people they elected because they were perceived as the some of the best individuals in their society) to come up with a plan to resolve the problem. It's not as if small groups of people just decided to engage in individual small scale cleaning and sanitation of the city - even though the whole place literally smelled like sh1t - they deferred to the government to recruit the necessary experts to fix the problem. Perhaps Nigeria's problem lies with the quality of the people Nigeirans elect compared to people in white and east Asian countries - there don't seem to be any unwritten rules or standards in place about the level of prior achievement or education necessary to hold any political position.

2. On an unrelated note, I think you don't seem to understand the role of a researcher like Ogunnaike in the advancement of his specific field of science. A few of his many publications may end up having more lasting significance as a contribution to that field or in aiding a future researcher's contributions to that field or others than an invention from him may have in the present day. And anyway, to produce a really outstanding invention (not a minor one) is something that's much easier said than done.

The irony of selecting Ogunnaike as an example to make your point (and you do have a point, but I think your criticism is a little misdirected here) is that Ogunnaike worked as a researcher at DuPont for 13 years according to every bio available of him. So he was actually working at one of the most important technological companies in the world for more than a decade - a company that introduces real and very important new products to the world. His role may not have been to invent new products, but if you look at and try to get a grasp of the actual areas of his research it should be obvious why that's the case. And the "paper engineering" is apparently important enough that people win major fellowships, prestigious awards, salary increases, and promotions on the basis of "paper engineering". Go figure.

lol, what's up with this dude's eyes?

Is he cross eyed?

Dudu Negro: In this regard, we will look at the Kanuris and the Yorubas, kins by ancestral roots

Can you explain what connection you think there is between Yoruba and Kanuri exactly and why you think there's a connection.

I've seen literally nothing to suggest a connection but you keep insisting on it. The explanation you gave before didn't make much sense to me.

^^^
He probably just posted that to bait somebody into responding so he could insult them.

eGuerrilla: As I was just as curious as you are about the origin of these figures, I did some further digging.
What I found, surprisingly enough, is that the two articles cited time and again - no matter where I looked - were actually written by Nigerians.

Although I find it worrying that WHO directly substituted Lagos for Nigeria in this instance (as it did in the case of other capitals like Pretoria, Bamako and Dakar), @Nairaland commentariat, do we at least agree the underlying trend here portends a problem?


Adebajo, S. B. (n.d.). An epidemiological survey of the use of cosmetic skin lightening cosmetics among traders in Lagos, Nigeria. West African Journal of Medicine, 21(1), 51–55.


Ofili, A. N., Eze, E. U., & Onunu, A. N. (2006). Prevalence of use of skin lightening agents amongst University of Benin undergraduates in Benin City, Nigeria. Nigerian Medical Practitioner, 49(1), 24–27.


Nnoruka, E., & Okoye, O. (2006). Topical steroid abuse: its use as a depigmenting agent. Journal of the National Medical Association, 98(6), 934.

And do you actually believe the conclusions (or should I say insinuations) of those studies? This is why I say 50% of statistics are bullsh1t - either partial bullsh1t or just complete and total bullsh1t. In what country anywhere in the world, in what one place anywhere can someone actually claim that 70% of traders or 60% of university students will probably be bleaching because a sample (which was selected how?) returned those results? Those Nigerian scholars would fall into the category of mentally ill people to me if I weren't so sure that they were just publishing whatever they could no matter how absurd just to add their publication list. Now look at the result of their nonchalance - the freaking WHO is citing stuff that they didn't even believe themselves when they published it as if it were factual.

Also, you didn't quote the part of the study where they indicated what the selected persons actually said about what creams they used - if there was such a section in those articles.

Did the authors of the studies ask the people directly if they used any bleaching cream and which ones?

Did the authors of the studies give the actual names of the bleaching creams people claimed to use in their article explicitly?

Did the authors of the studies show and prove that the specific creams or soaps the people selected used were meant to or actually do bleach skin?

Did the authors ask people if they were using those substances to bleach or just as lotion/cream generally?

Did the people that participated in the studies participate because they knew it was about skin bleaching creams, or was the sample actually random?

There's nowhere in the world where 70% of traders or 60% undergraduates are bleaching. I can agree that there is a problem but this is just nonsense.

Well maybe it is real - in which case the man is a fool or an actual affiliate of the group. And there doesn't seem to be anything about his eyes that indicates that he's blind as someone suggested above.

DaRapture: Well you've answered your own question in a way. The Tiv are direct descendants of the people who established the Nok civilization.

Some of the stuff you post is just really off base sometimes.

The Tiv claim to have come to Nigeria most recently (17th century or thereabout) and if they were here much earlier, there's no evidence that they were here earlier than other groups.

The Nok culture has been associated with the Ham people (Ham is the name of the ethnic group) of Northern Nigeria by Bernard Fagg who studied Nok art and some nearby peoples. Frank Willett conjectured that there may have been a connection between Nok art and Ife art and that's about it. The Tiv have their own quite distinct art.

The edges around several of the letters look blurry to me, but other contours in the picture (such as between the man's body and the background) don't look blurry so it's not a picture where the figures have blurry outlines/contours. Just my observation.

I really thought OKC's mistakes in the third quarter of game 4 and in the 2nd half of game 3 showed that the Heat won 4-1 mostly because of OKC's mistakes, rather than some huge improvement from the Heat since last year. If it had gone to at least 6 games, I might be doffing my hat for the king, but it looked more like they breezed through the last three games without having to really fight for it. The Heat were good in the last game (the streak of 3s especially) but if OKC had won game 3 and 4 like they should have, it would have been a different game entirely.

When Dallas and Miami played, Dallas clearly won it - they just outplayed the Heat, period. But this series was more like watching the Thunder start good and just keep shooting themselves in the foot.

I don't know why people just believe some of the statistics that some organizations cook up. 50% of statistics anywhere are bullsh1t (I know this is also a statistic, but pretend it's from the good 50%).

Only a completely insane or mentally ill person would claim that "over 77 percent" of Nigerians use bleaching creams on a regular basis. I would be surprised if it were even up to 5%.

"This looks shopped"