Nigerian-Americans are bringing pride to Nigerians across the globe. Cream will always rise to the top. Someone has to do it.

This is not the first time, this author has written about Nigeria.

In her previous book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, she wrote about the Igbos.

"Market-dominant minorities can be found in every corner of the world. The Chinese are a market-dominant minority not just in the Philippines but throughout Southeast Asia. In 1998, Chinese Indonesians, only 3 percent of the population, controlled roughly 70 percent of Indonesia's private economy, including all of the country's largest conglomerates. More recently, in Burma, entrepreneurial Chinese have literally taken over the economies of Mandalay and Rangoon. Whites are a market-dominant minority in South Africa - and, in a more complicated sense, in Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, and much of Latin America. Lebanese are a market-dominant minority in West Africa. Ibo are a market-dominant minority in Nigeria. Croats were a market-dominant minority in the former Yugoslavia. And Jews are almost certainly a market-dominant minority in post-Communist Russia."

cramjones: I have read this book and the previous book the author wrote.

How could you have read this book, when the book will not be published until February 4, 2014?

Of course Nigerian-Americans will want an apology. We believe in the American system and simply wish to be treated fairly and not generalized. Unlike some Nigerians back in Nigeria, we do not tolerate ridicule of our community from our elected officials. This is what it means to live in a progressive country like the US. The weak are able to speak their mind freely, and the strong have to listen. I know this may be a new concept to some of you, but the collective Nigerian community in the US has spoken.

I think the problem with Nigerians, is that they want change rapidly, but it does not work that way. It takes years of development to reach that stage. If you look at China, it's development took many years.

Jonathan with his capable ministers are gradually transforming Nigerian after years of rot.

bakynes: You shd talk abt success of Igbos arnd the world. Keri Washington recently married a quarter back playing in the NFL and d guy has igbo parents and bears an igbo name as well even though he is American Now.

You are right.

Osi Umenyiora



Nnamdi Asomugha


Duke Ihenacho

Here are some successful Igbos in politics and acting.

Chuka Umunna


Chiwetel Ejiofor


Godson Chikama Onyekwere or John Godson Poland's First African in Parliament
[img]http://i.wp.pl/a/f/jpeg/30618/600pap_john_godson.jpeg[/img]

Nice story.

Many African-Americans can trace their roots to the Igbo.

Reverend TD Jakes


Forest Whitaker


Danny Glover


Blair Underwood

Lagos is only for rich people. Poor people need not apply.

Most of the states that these governors represented did not even vote for Jonathan in the past election. I do not think he will be losing any sleep over their actions.

The Nigerian presidency will be won in the Middle Belt and the South-West.

Whoever wins in these areas will become president.

There was a country...

Does this mean Nigeria has regressed?

This is an example of a city in Nigeria that needs more people.

OgunjiSAYO: There is Only One GOD! Iam That Iam is HIS name! The Creator Of The Heaven and The Earth! Worship Only Him ! Dnt worship gods and it Shall be Well with You !

Well I guess you should change your Ogun name, since you are recognizing one of the orisha.

One cannot stay angry with Fashola when they see his achievements.

We are here lamenting, but nothing remains static. Things can change for the better in Ibadan, and all other Nigerian cities that have lost it former glory.

We may weep when we see old pictures of Lagos, Ibadan, Port Harcourt and Enugu but change is constant.

django1:

Partly true, but the most important factor that mitigated against the growth of ibadan and still does is bad leadership.

Things have improved a bit since this new governor came on board but its still too early to say we are on the way back but I believe if he keeps doing what he's doing (and some more) we might just have our city back.

I agree with that as well. It was probably many factors that lead to Ibadan's decline. We might also add that oil may have played a roll. Nigeria's reliance on oil lead the old regional economic structure to decline. The West had cocoa, the North had groundnuts and the East had palm oil.

When we think about this decline across the board, it can make one very sad and curse past Nigerian leaders.

One thing I must say is that Yorubas cherish their culture and traditions more than any other group in Nigeria.

How come this did not make front page?

Ibadan's steady decline can be traced to Lagos success. The economic vacuum that is Lagos has sucked the life out of many cities in the South-West.

It is like the New York City factor. New York City is such a prominent city in the New York state, but other areas of New York like upstate New York have lost population and economic power.

Money is not everything. Education is key. Why would I want my children to become a footballer, when they can eventually own a team?

Africans must not forget their culture!

I tip my hat to these innovators. Nigeria and Africa as a whole need more people like this if the continent is to join the 21st century.

Sombrero Galaxy

What appears to be one gorgeous galaxy is actually two: A thin disk galaxy (in red), embedded within a large elliptical galaxy (in blue), about 28 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Infrared images from Spitzer revealed the Sombrero galaxy's hidden double nature; previously, astronomers thought it was just a flat and lonely disk galaxy.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Fiery Space Flower

What looks like a flaming peony is actually the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way's satellite dwarf galaxies, located about 163,000 light-years from Earth. The fiery ribbons in the image are giant ripples of dust spanning many light-years, and wrap around several centers of active star formation. This image is a composite of observations from the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory and Spitzer.

Image: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI

Helix Nebula

What looks like an even more terrifying version of the Eye of Sauron is actually the Helix Nebula, about 700 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Here, the white dwarf star (visible in the very center), is the dead remnant of what was once a star like the sun. The bright red glow immediately around it is probably the dust kicked up by colliding comets that survived the death of their stellar host.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ.of Ariz.

10 Years of Mesmerizing Photos From NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope

For 10 years, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has been helping scientists on Earth learn more about the mysterious objects hiding in our star-studded skies. On August 25, 2003, the telescope -- carrying a relatively small, 0.85-meter beryllium mirror -- launched from Cape Canaveral, FL. Since then, it's been trailing the Earth on its orbit around the sun, like NASA's Kepler spacecraft.

Spitzer stares at the heavens in infrared wavelengths, revealing the cold, distant, and dusty realms of the universe, normally invisible to eyes on Earth. In this gallery, ribbons of dust wind around massive stars, the cavities carved by hot, young stars open up like bottomless caverns, and the spiraling tendrils of a distant galaxy glisten behind a foreground nebula.

Spitzer's first years in operation were spent studying the sky in the longest infrared wavelengths, a task that required cooling the instruments to within a few degrees of absolute zero. When the liquid helium coolant ran out -- long after the mission's minimal 2.5-year duration -- the telescope switched to a "warm" phase, where it studies objects nearer the Earth at shorter wavelength.

During its time in space, Spitzer has seen, for the first time, an exoplanet's glimmering light, discovered the largest ring around Saturn, and stared at the center of the Milky Way.

Instead of celebrating with a traditional 10-year anniversary gift of tin or aluminum (because let's face it, that's lame), we thought we'd share some of the extraordinary images produced by this telescope. We thought we'd pick one for each year, but it was impossibly hard to choose from among the many transfixing spacescapes crossing our screens. So, after much agonizing, we finally picked these 16 beauties.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/08/spitzers-10th-anniversary/

PAGAN 9JA:
TRue Ifa Spirituality is possible only in Yorubaland by the Yoruba, of the Yoruba and for the Yoruba.

It is time the Yoruba brethren realise that.

I disagree. Ifa spirituality can be practiced wherever Yoruba reside including in the Diaspora where there are many people of Yoruba descent. They are part of this continuum

Ifa sprituality cannot be denied. From Brazil to Cuba and now the United States, there is power in traditional Yoruba religion. I might say Ifa is one of the most popular traditional African religions in the world.

Ancient African Religion Finds Roots In America
by CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON



In the suburbs of Seattle, an ancient West-African religion is gaining followers. Yoruba, from the Yoruba people of Nigeria, has been spreading across the U.S. for the last 50 years.

The religion is particularly popular with African-Americans who find it offers a spiritual path and a deep sense of cultural belonging.

Looking For Answers

Wesley Hurt's Yoruba story begins the night he met his wife, Cheri Profit. It was nearly eight years ago, not long after a tour in Iraq. He had just gotten off for weekend release from an Army base in Tacoma, Wash.

Hurt was ready to go out and have a good time. He and some friends went to a club, where he saw Profit. She avoided him at first, but eventually he got her attention. Not long after their meeting, they were a couple.

They bonded quickly — over food, politics and religion. These two seekers were constantly rethinking their relationships to the divine.

"With my mother, we were Jehovah's Witness, we were Pentecostals, we were Baptists, we were Seventh-day Adventist," Profit says. "It did not work for me."

Hurt had been a Southern Baptist for most of his life.

"And a lot of things have brought me to try to find my spirit," he says. "So ... of course, you start off in church asking questions, and, you know, I didn't get the answers that I wanted."

So Hurt, a 32-year old Atlanta native, started exploring — first Judaism, then Islam. He was looking for something that spoke to his spirit and to his blackness. About two years ago, he found a home in one of Yoruba's esoteric branches, called Ifa.

"What brought me to Ifa is that how close this tradition is linked to us as African-Americans in this country," he says.

This feeling is familiar to many black Americans who practice Yoruba today, just as it did with those who have been practicing for years. In New York City in the 1950s, African-American Yoruba communities began to grow alongside a surging black nationalist movement.

For several decades, the religious tradition spread down the East Coast and westward, to Chicago, to Oakland and Los Angeles — and to the Seattle area, where Hurt met an Ifa priest named Ifagbemi.

Entering A 'Sacred Relationship'

At a recent gathering, Hurt, Profit and a group of about a dozen other believers worshiped in a circle on the carpeted floor in Ifagbemi's bare dining room. The priest sat with them, shifting between English and the Yoruba language as he lead them through an Ifa ritual.

Ifagbemi's path has been a lot like Hurt and Profit's: a black American, born in Topeka, raised in a Christian home. He embraced Ifa as a young adult and later initiated into the priesthood. For nearly four years, he has headed this small group of devotees.

"When you enter into this stuff, you're enter into a sacred relationship with people that you're working with," Ifagbemi says. "I think it's a privilege."

He runs the group mostly from his apartment, where he has converted one of the carpeted bedrooms into a sacred space full of shrines to the gods of Yoruba's pantheon, spirits called "orisa."

There's a long table covered with pure white cloth and spread with sliced watermelon, bananas and gin — gifts to the divine.

Along with a life of worship, Ifagbemi says part of his job as a full-time priest is to help people adapt this ancient religion to a modern, American reality.

"We're not African anymore," he says. "I need to sort of emphasize to a lot of African-Americans that yes, this is an African tradition, yes, we want to connect with our roots and whatever else. But our roots are here, too."

It's a lesson he's been impressing on Hurt and Profit. Ifa's tenets resonate with them: good character, respect for elders. Plus, there's an element of homecoming in the ways this African faith speaks to them as black people.

But it was different for Profit in the early days, when her husband introduced her to Ifa. "Initially — I'm not gonna lie — I was a little hesitant at first," she says. "It was just the general notion, you know, you shouldn't do that."

With Yoruba's shrines and statues and worshipers going into trance states, some newcomers admit that the African traditions might disturb the folks at church back home.

What helped calm Profit's worries was a ceremony where the faith came alive for her.

"They had the drums going, and the ladies were up dancing, and after a while, I was, 'Hey!' 'Cause I was feeling it! I got up, I danced, I was dancing — me and the other women, and it felt good," she says. "I've never experienced that in church, and I've been to church many, many times."

'Finding Myself'

Tracey Hucks, chairwoman of the religion department at Haverford College, says, "for so many African-Americans, this tradition has been a space of freedom and a space of home."

She says blacks in America have been drawn to Yoruba for more than a half-century because it offers them an ancient spiritual heritage, one that predates slavery in the United States. At the same time, she adds, it helps them affirm their racial identities in this new world.

"And it also allows them to be able to affirm their black physicality, in a place that has said that, 'You represent anti-beauty in this culture,' " she says. "It is this religion that comes and says, 'No, you look like the gods of Africa.' "

Doing rituals for those gods, dancing for them, and finding fellowship with her community, Profit says Ifa just feels right to her.

"It like it gives you a sense of purpose, and when you feel that, there's no other feeling like that, I feel like, in the world," she says. "When you feel that, you know."

Her husband, who had been searching for years for spiritual answers, has found his place, too.

"First, I was looking for God, but then I started finding myself," Hurt explains. "And in finding myself, I started bettering myself."

Ifagbemi's congregants, seated together in the priest's apartment for an intimate ritual, are all on paths a lot like Hurt's. They're trusting Ifagbemi as their guide.

To close the ceremony, he shakes a rattle and calls, and everyone responds with Yoruba's most ubiquitous blessing: ase. It's like saying "amen."

For the young couple with ties down South, for the Ifa priest from Kansas and for his small flock near Seattle — so far away from Ifa's West-African roots — this old tradition has given its followers a new home.



http://www.npr.org/2013/08/25/215298340/ancient-african-religion-finds-roots-in-america

A black person in Britain will never be considered British.

But a black person in the United States will always be considered an American, no matter his ancestry.

The difference is that black people helped build the United States, but the same cannot be said of Great Britain.