₦airaland Forum

macof:
Not being Yoruba doesn't mean they have nothing to do with Yoruba

Yoruba and Igala share a common origin, one more closely connected than the Yoruba-Edo-Igbo origin infact, and the Okun- Ekiti sub groups have had a lot of interaction with the Igala for centuries.

Don't take all lay man's translation seriously, just because aljharem gave his suggestion doesn't mean that's all to it...

Igarra is different from Igala.

Abdul4trust1:
i Tire, The Only Place You Can Find The Name 'Zainab' In Edo Is Edo North And "Eze" Is Not Edo Name. But You Can Find Yoruba Names In Edo.

You cannot be so sure. I know Eze means 'River' in Edo.

An Anioma woman who doesn't identify as Igbo.

Cocolatti:
If truly you are a Northerner living in the north then I think you are being economical with the truth about Hausa Christians. There are Hausa Christians in Kaduna(makarfi,ikara), Zamfara(tsafe,bungudu), kano and Katsina. Please don't allow religious sentiment to be cloud your reason. This is a known FACT!

It is very possible that some of them at least are not true Hausas, but 'Hausanized' ethnic minorities in the North. I once met this guy; he had a Christian first name and an Hausa last name (let me call him Sam Auta). I told him he was the first Hausa Christian I was meeting. He told me he wasn't Hausa, and that he was from southern Kaduna.

But he told me one interesting thing, which is that the Maguzawa (pagan Hausas) are beginning to embrace Christianity or a syncretic form of Christianity.

Can someone do body parts: Head, Eye, Nose, Mouth, Ear, etc. Thank you.

You are Jamaican? On which side - Dad's side or mum's?

I believe the entire story was created by later Kings of Ethiopia, after they displaced the Zagwe Dynasty in the 13th century AD.

If you were a Christian king, it makes total sense to try and manufacture links to the most fabulous king in Judaeo-Christian tradition (i.e., King Solomon).

Mulatto = Little mule.

To think I never made the connection, and it was so obvious.

funshyboi:
can we say ooni of ife is an emperor

No. He is not.

funshyboi:
who can help in explaining the differences between this kingship titles, His Royal Majesty, His imperial Majesty and His Royal Highness. no contribution is void. thanks

His Royal Majesty = A King.

His imperial Majesty = An Emperor

His Royal Highness = A male royal. Could be a king (especially if he doesn't have sovereign power, as is now the case with Nigerian kings), or he could be just a prince.

Opiletool:
Can you do me a favour please?

Stop engaging that slowpoke. He's a renowned bozo in the culture section of nairaland. Don't allow him drag you into his fold.

Thank you. I was actually not going to go on.

*Yawn*

Bottom line: 17th century European maps are full of shit.

Bottom line: You can't take me up on the facts I threw at you. About the map makers not even knowing the course of the Niger, or the proper location of cities like Zamfara, Zaria et cetera. About the map makers being confused on whether Benin reached Cameroon or not, whether Biafra was a village in Cameroon or a Kingdom in Nigeria.

Bottom line: You want to stay sweating over Lagos [even after I have repeatedly said it is largely external to the larger point I am trying to make], and whether three distinct names on a map represent a united political entity or not *scoffs*. Something you appear too geographically-challenged (educationally-challenged, even) to understand.

Take care.

And keep hope alive. One day soon,you'll get to France. E go be.

ehikwe22:
Ojobu is a very popular Ika name. Ojobu is from Oje meaning king and obu which means a healer or a doctor. How's the best way to literally translate this? A head doctor? Whichever way it's interpreted, it has a very nice meaning. After all, I've seen people that their parents gave doctor as a name in Agbor.

I know the breakdown of the name. I just think it sounds funny.

By the way, have you noticed that Ika seems to sound closer to Esan than to Benin? Oje, for example, is Esan. Benin says ogie.

ehikwe22:
Ika naming patterns are so perculiar and we give names according to circumstances surrounding the birth or events that happened during the time of birth. But some general Ika names are.
Kpanmiose - thank God
Aghoghom - I rejoice or rejoice
Ighogho - happiness
Ehiedu - God's guidance
Ehikwe. God agreed
Ehiwario. I plead to God
Ehioma. Good lord.
Ehiobu. God is healer.
Ojobu. Head of the traditional healers.
Obuh. Doctor
Erunmuh. Gold.
Osemeke or Ehiemeke. Or Ehiarunka or Osearunka. God do well. These are some of the names that can go for any circumstances.
First you need to understand the concept of ehi. Ehi is the Ika version of the Igbo Chi. Firstly, Ika people started giving so many of the ehi names at the advent of Christianity and later started replacing the ehi with Chi. Any Ika person you see bearing a chi or Chukwu name is not bearing an Ika name. There's no concept of Chi and Chukwu in Ika. We have oselobue as God and ehi s Guardian Spirit or personal God.
I'll give you more names later.

Guy, you funny o. Why would you suggest 'Head of Traditional Healers' as a name for someone (presumably a name she wants to give her child) in 2017?

historyworld031:
Lagos = Van Ichoo Benin

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8595583b/f1.item.r=Benin.zoom

"Van Ichoo Benin" are three different entities on that map. They occupied different sections the same bar of land, but the map doesn't suggest Benin suzerainity over the other two entities. What, you can't even read a map? Jesus.


It's like seeing "Egba Ijebu Ondo" on the following map and assuming they are one place:

historyworld031:
"If the gloves don't fit, you must acquit"
By the way, you still haven't appologized for saying that in none of the maps was Benin written allover Lagos.
I have specifically isolate a map on which that is more than visible for your intention, but yet you have refused to aknowledge the fact and you have rather dodged the subject alltogether.
Would you admt your mistakes/lies in order to at least look objective ?

My words: "None of the maps explicitly shows Lagos as part of Benin."

^^^

See the above statement? It is still correct.

I went on to say that Lagos (Ichoo/Eko)is clearly shown as existing west of Benin, and nothing in the map suggests this Ichoo was part of Benin. That too is still correct.

It is your problem if you do not understand basic geography. Lagos (Eko) is not the entire bar of land that lies south of the Lagoon, but is located on its western end. On your map that western end stands on its own as Van (which I suspect is Fon) and then Ichoo (Eko), and then the Benin part of the bar to the East.

The only apology I owe you is apology for assuming you were bright.

Meanwhile you owe me apologies for posting maps that show the city of Zaria located SOUTH of a River Niger that never turned into the Atlantic and calling them accurate and reliable.


(PS: I like how you stay put on this Lagos issue [even when no one is really debating Benin overlordship of Lagos with you], instead of facing the issue I have been highlighting from the get go, which is the general unreliability of old European maps. Hope I didn't go over your word limit again.)

I was looking for typo mistakes? Really? The things I listed look like typo mistakes to you? Mschw. I actually thought I was engaging someone that has an appreciable level of education. You're just an uncomprehending simpleton like most of the noisy people here.

Look at your maps. Look at the ones I posted. If you know any geography you will not pursue this future after studying them critically.

Out.

historyworld031:
I don't have time to go through your lengthy write up, I hope disproving your main claim will push your sense of decency to appologize and stop trying to discount evidence based on your feelings, hte talk about the river niger shows how biased you are. How important is that in a map made by traders whose only use was to show the Existing Kingdoms and their geogrpaphical locations in other to make it easy to get in contact with the Kingdoms and to trade with them ? Or did you expect that the medieval european traders should have used hellicopters to make their maps or perharps you thought they should have set foot on every inch of land, making maps doesn't work like that my friend. All that matters in such maps are the border lines. And the location of the capitals.

You don't seem to get one fact: Benin Kingdom was not just in "political controle of Lagos", Lagos was part of Benin Kingdom.
And this map which is one of those I posted clearly has written "Van Icho Benin on Lagos":
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8595583b/f1.item.r=Benin.zoom

Now I expect your applogies.

You posted a long response to my comment. I assumed you were scholarly and responded in kind. My bad. The only think I am going to apologise for is assuming that you have sense. Sorry for that assumption.

My argument all along is simple, but you are incapable of understanding it. It is this: European sources are not infallible. Your maps have errors, and are therefore not reliable. I delineated the errors. But you won't read it because you have short attention span, like most half-literates.

Here is another 'accurate' map by your darling Europeans. In this one we see the Bonny River cutting across Igboland and reaching the Niger at Ossomari.

historyworld031:
The common denominator among the yorubas is that you like conspiracy theory more than diabetese likes sugar.
I give you multiple maps drawn by various individuals of various nationality, all trying to write down as much information as possible in order to help them and their people in their trade with our ancestors. Then here you are telling new stories which can only be classiified as conspiracy theory once again. What is so difficult in proving each claim you make, why do yoruba never get that point at all, you guys make one claim after the other and never ever think of proving your claims.

I am not Yoruba. So I don't know what you mean by 'You guys'. I am from Delta. Unlike you, I have no motive to be non-objective in this issue.

The maps prove without any doubt that Lagos was part of the Benin Kingdom.

Er. No. None of your maps explicitly shows Lagos as a part of Benin. One map actually indicates 'Ichoo' (Eko, a.k.a, Lagos) as being west of Benin, with no indication that the former was a dependency of the latter. But even if the maps did show Lagos was within Benin's political hegemony, so what? Professor Akintoye didn't doubt Benin holding sway over Lagos at some point. So what really is your point?

My contention with your maps isn't with respect to some political imperium over Lagos. What I was criticizing is your general uncritical reverence of European sources, which I have noticed before now in your comments. Early European sources do not always have the kind of accuracy your worshipping self bestows on them. Your maps here are a good example of how inaccurate European sources can be, especially the farther back one goes in history.

I like how you are able to say a map drawn in 1699 (about the situation of west africa in 1699) is inaccurate and you base your comment on which superior document ? The worse is that it is not just one map there are more than a dozen made by different people who visited our ancestors and they all show the same thing.
The map is a photo of the past, if you don't like the truth then take that up with those who fed you lies all your life.
You can't discount evidence based on your feelings.

Discounting evidence based on my feelings? LOL. I have facts. Go and look at your maps again, this time critically. If you had studied your own maps, and if you knew your geography, you would have been able to spot a good number of 'ridiculosities'.

For example:

a. Your maps show River Niger (written as Niger Fluvius) flowing ever eastwards; it never curves south to form the Niger Delta and then flow into the Atlantic. It just continues eastwards, and the geographers of the time said it joins the Nile in Egypt! WRONG.

b. Your maps show Zaria (Zegzeg) located SOUTH of the River Niger. WRONG! They also show Zamfara located EAST rather than WEST of Zaria. WRONG AGAIN!

Fact is: these early European mapmakers, before 19th-century explorers like Clapperton and the Landers improved their knowledge of the 'Dark Continent, knew very little about the interior of Africa. All they had were stories (some not accurate) collected from people on the coast, and their own imaginations. Trust a 17th century map of West Africa at your own peril!

Look, in order to claim this:

Either you bring proof either you show me proof that you invented a time machine.
I am not even going to dig into the debate, let us just take care of the logics of your comments.
You have hundreds of people drawing something and their drawings all show the same thing and then hundreds of years later a "timetraveller" (you) is here to say that their drawing was based on heresay and they knew nothing of what they were drawing.
It is so weird that you are the same people who consider unsubstantited stories to be history.

Er. Their drawing are not all showing the same thing. Some of the maps show Benin stretching to Rio del Rey in Western Cameroon. Other maps show instead that it was the Kingdom of Biafra that controlled the Rio del Rey while Benin was restricted to some of the rivers farther west. Did you even look at these maps at all before posting links to them?

And for your info I am in france, these maps are very important in europe and they are taken very seriously.
In europe they don't have the mental disability which the likes of you keep showing.
These maps are so important that they are kept in the best european libraries, real historians like the ones in europe base their research on these documents rather than on stories which you call "oral history".

I have a lot of things to say about this last bit, but let me try and contain myself.

First. Am I supposed to be impressed by the 'fact' that you are in France? Did you imagine that somehow you are the only Nigerian on Nairaland in Europe or North America? You somehow manage to bring your location up in every comment. The way you always emphasize it and proceed to assume that everyone else is an unfortunate creature languishing somewhere in the jungles of Congo scratching their anus, makes me suspect strongly like macof that you have never left Nigeria. What is more, your style of argument and level of understanding is the same as that of Nigerian public school products. (Apologies to everyone who attended a Nigerian public school.)

For your information I have an advanced degree from a university in the UK. I have had two papers published in well regarded peer-reviewed journals (I would post links to my works, but my anonymity on NL is very important to me) and I am working on a PhD proposal for a university in Canada. There are many people on NL with similar backgrounds like me and we don't go on every NL post singing it; it's nothing exciting. So, your being in France doesn't impress anyone. If anything, it is doubtful you have been inside an international airport.

Second. These maps are not taken seriously as accurate sources of information in Europe today, but you wouldn't know that because you are neither a scholar nor in Europe. They are preserved and kept in libraries and museums, yes. But this is because of their aesthetic value and the insight they provide into medieval and early modern cartography and nothing more. They also keep books of Norse mythology in European libraries. This doesn't mean that European scholars regard Norse mythology as accurate history.


Let me drop this map of West Africa drawn by the well-regarded European cartographer Herman Moll in about 1727. Can you spot the innacuracies in this 'reliable' European map, Oh highly intellectual Nigerian-in-France?

S

historyworld031:
The video is just a video.
The poet is merely saying things which were recorded by the portuguese or which took place during the war against the british empire.
These are recorded and easilly verrifyable things even backed by the bronz which you see in the background (that is also history).
These are not "oral history".
Checkout the maps, that is the most important.

What exactly is it about the maps that you want us to take note of? That Benin Kingdom existed? We knew that without the maps.

By the way your obvious regard of European sources as infallible is...naive and cute. While contemporary written European sources are important, to have the level of trust you have in them is something no modern historian, European or African, will advise.

Take this question of maps for example. The Europeans didn't even know about the geography,etc, of much of Africa apart from a few ports on the coast and a tiny number of the towns in its immediate hinterland until the late 19th century and the 20th century.

Consequently, most of their early maps were not even accurate, but based on conjectures and hearsay. I noticed, for example, that one of your maps purportedly from the 17th century, implies that 'Benin Regnvm' stretched eastwards as far as Rio del Rey in Western Cameroons. That is quite simply not true.


Let me not even talk about this phantom 'Kingdom of Biafra' they always place in the general Eastern Nigeria-Cameroon area.

historyworld031:
don't claim to know something if no proof was shown to you.
Lagos was part of the Benin Kingdom. That is the only Verrifyable fact and here is proof:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IlUMUGUorw


Some ancient maps of Benin Kingdom:

This one dates to around 1699:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8595525w/f1.item.r=Benin.zoom

An other map of Benin made in the 17th century once again:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b530530714.r=Benin?rk=214593;2

An other map of Benin from the 17th century:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8595583b.r=Benin?rk=193134;0

This one date to the 19th century:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8469390z/f1.item.r=Benin.zoom

An other map from the 17th century:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8595527q/f1.item.r=Benin.zoom

The story about the awori doesn't come with any sort of proof.
Also when did some people start referring to themselves as yoruba ?

That video is proof of what? The poet in the video doesn't even know Benin history much. Which Benin Kingdom traded gold with the Europeans?

I have read Professor Akintoye's works, both in international peer-reviewed journals and in book collections and I am still looking for his book 'History of the Yoruba People'. There is no doubt he is an erudite scholar of international standing.

But I think he is being a little bit economical with the truth here. When the interviewer asked him if the Kingdom of Lagos existed before the arrival of Benin people, I think it was obvious he was asking about Eko on the island and not about Isheri and Ota on the mainland. We know Aworis had organised small kingdoms in Isheri and Ota before Benin incursion, but I see no evidence that they had established a Kingdom and a dynasty at Eko pre-Benin contact.

I am sure the venerable professor knows this too and was just being dodgy.

This story no stand well.

Spanish is right there at the top of my list.

English accents are sexy too.

The rest? Meh.

I was expecting a white girl. Black British stars often end up with white girls.

davidnazee:
We use last name/family name to trace ancestry or tribal connections. First name doesn’t matter here. His first name could be John doesn’t mean he is English man or an Igbo man living in Lagos names his son Tunde doesn’t mean he is Yoruba.

Many Anambra Igbos have Benin ancestry.

You have changed topic. Real really changed topic.

Go back to my earlier comment. I was only interested in setting the record straight about Oseloka NOT being an Edo name.

All this Benin-ancestry-surname sia m'osiroya, you are veering into now, I didn't come here for that.

If we have agreed that Oseloka is not an Edo name, then my work here is done.

davidnazee:
His name is Osekola Obazee. That is clearly an Edo name and I believe he has Edo ancestry. Please what does Obazee mean in Igbo?

My friend, his name is not Osekola. His name is Oseloka. And that is not an Edo name. It has an Igbo meaning. I never said his surname Obaze is Igbo in origin. I was clearly talking about first name; don't change topic.

He may have Benin ancestry or he may not. He comes from Ogbaru which has mixed ancestry, tracing to many different places, including aboriginal Igbo, Igala and Benin.

My original point still stands: Oseloka is not a Benin name. Benin people do not answer Oseloka. Only Igbo people answer it. It has a clear Igbo meaning. (Even if 'Ose' originally filtered into Igbo-speaking areas from Edo-speaking areas, it doesn't change this fact.)

1shortblackboy:
its surprising cause i never heard of it before. its just unheard of for a bonny person to say he's not ijaw

Hmm. I don't know, man. I keep seeing statements like this online, but it seems the reality on ground in Rivers State is quite different. I don't get the impression from the three major Ijoid groups in Rivers State (Kalabari, Okrika and Ibani) that they are very keen on the Ijaw identity, to be honest. The antics of the Kalabari Ijaw nationalist, Asari-Dokubo and others like him, doesn't seem to resonate much with the ordinary people there.

Ikwerre dialects are very divergent na. Kay Williamson says that Ikwerre has more divergence in it than all of Igbo put together. She may have exaggerated, but the divergence in Ikwerre is indeed big. It is possible the woman in the first scenario was speaking a dialect from its Northern axis. Me, I have heard Obio-Akpor dialects and sh*t was practically undecipherable. And I was told it gets worse the further south you go.

Zigimatic:
The closest name that comes to mind in my opinion is "Bosah", one of those ancient Igbo names that's still relatively common especially amongst Anambra folks.

Common amongst Anambra folks? Hmm. I haven't met a Bosah from that axis, except maybe Onitsha. The Bosahs I know are all from Delta. Asaba axis, predominantly.