Thursday, 31 December 2020

THINK SERIOUSLY ABOUT THIS

The Black African, the wretched of the earth, Is the only member of the human race who has been brainwashed to think that his ancestors bequeathed him with a curse that has prevented him from Attaining aspired goals and life desires. Almost every misfortune he encounters on earth is the fault of some ancestor... Who must be bound and cast with the fire of the Holy Ghost in the name of Jesus.

The white people dont have terrible ancestors who have done terrible things. No. It's only the black ancestor. Over the years, the black ancestor has been so vilified by Christians they pay tithes, stay up all night, fast and pray to destroy the African ancestor in the name of Jesus. The black ancestor is so wicked he cursed his own kids.

Having cursed his ancestors who gave him life, the black man is roaming around the world like a tortoise without a Shell. He has no backbone. Zero identity. Thus no race respects him. He's lynched in Malaysia, incarcerated in Cambodia. He's shot like a dog in the streets of America. In Europe he cleans the white man's shit. And they spit on him. Why won't they? A man who hates himself and despises his roots deserves no respect whatsoever.

John Hawkins was a foremost English slave trader, a thief, and by contemporary moral standards he can as well be called A Terrorist. John Hawkins made three trips to West Africa In the 1560s, and stole Africans whom he sold to the Spanish in America. On returning to England after the first trip, his profit was so handsome that Queen Elizabeth I became interested in directly participating in his next venture; and she provided for that Purpose a ship named JESUS. Hawkins left with JESUS to steal some more Africans, and he returned to England with such dividends that Queen Elizabeth made him a knight. Hawkins chose as his coat of arms the representation of an African in chains.

Today the generations of Hawkins and Queen Elizabeth I are alive and enjoying life from the proceeds of their Evil ancestors. They don't demonise their ancestors despite their active involvement in the greatest evil humanity has ever witnessed. Both individuals sanctioned rape, kidnapping and Mass murder, but their children don't bear "ancestral Curses" like black Africans. You'd be hard pressed to see a member of the British elite publicly denounce slavery.

Isn't it time to emancipate yourself from mental slavery oh ye Negro? 

If ancestral curse exists, who should suffer from it? The ancestor Who kidnapped and raped and murdered and pillaged and stole and enslaved his fellow man, or the man whose freedom was taken from him? Surely, the man who threw pregnant Negro women to sharks at Sea because they were too weak, deserves his future generations to suffer and not the man whose society was so pure they had no prisons to punish offenders.

Do these Black Africans who will go to church today binding and casting "ancestral curses", know that almost all the top British politicians from the 17th century till the 19th century were proud slave merchants? 

It is on record that 15 Lord Mayors of London, 25 sheriffs and 38 aldermen of the City of London were shareholders in the Royal Africa Company (RAC) between 1660-1690. The RAC alone was responsible for trafficking over 1.5million Negroes to Britain and twice that number to the Caribbean.

David and Alexander Barclays were active participants in the kidnapping and enslavement of millions of black Africans. As was standard practice at the time, The risky and long-term nature of transatlantic slave trading required new banking houses that could offer credits to prospective slave traders, for periods of between one and a half to three years. One bank that provided this service was run by Alexander and David Barclay. Their bank still carries their name. The Barclay's Bank is also a proud sponsor of the English Premier league that me and you are fanatical fans of Chelsea and Arsenal and Man United today.

Their children don't bind and cast their ancestral evil, rather it is the Negro whose ancestors were dehumanised and tortured and enslaved, that keeps praying against "ancestral curses"

The Bank of England was also involved in the slave trade. Sir Richard Neaves, who was the director of the bank for 48 years, was also the chairman of the Society of West India Merchants.. A group of vile men who stole Africans and made handsome profit by selling them on to farmers who needed them to work in there sugar and tobacco plantation in the West Indies.

Today Liverpool Football club will be playing Tottenham Hotspur in the Barclay's premier League. Pay attention. How many of you who are Liverpool supporters today know that the initial founders of that football club were retired slave traders, whom in 1892, with slavery outlawed, decided to invest their money in a football club that will reap future rewards for their generations to come via a bank called Arthur Heywood and Sons & Co.. That bank would be absorbed in turn by the Bank of Liverpool, Martin’s Bank and Barclay’s Bank.

You watch them and shout in ecstasy when they score. But a pastor somewhere will tell you the reason you're poor is because your ancestors committed evil, hence the reason you experience ill luck. And you will believe and start casting and binding rubbish!

For your information, Liverpool was a major port for the transatlantic slave trade. Slave ships were often built or repaired in Liverpool. Nearly one and a half million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic in Liverpool ships. The 'Liverpool Merchant' was the first recorded slave ship to sail from Liverpool. She set sail on 3 October 1699 and arrived in Barbados on 18 September 1700 with a cargo of 220 enslaved Africans. Part owner Sir Thomas Johnson is known as the 'founder of modern Liverpool'.

Liverpool city wouldn't be what it is today without the trade in black Africans. The personal and civic wealth gained from slaving cemented the foundations for the Liverpool's future growth.

The children and grandchildren and great grand children of the perpetrators of this monstrosity against the black Man enjoy heaven here on earth, and live in more stable environment. They have managed to stabilise their society and solve their problem and live in relative peace.

But the Negro ancestors, the wretched of the earth, who was kidnapped and his freedom forcefully taken away from him; he was sentenced to a plantation for the rest of his life. It is this ancestor and many others who is demonised by Christians as having bequeathed their offsprings with "curses".

African Knowledge is not a Taboo


I know the love that the Blackman has for the white, it will be easier for majority of the Black people to believe their own natural science if the endorsement is coming from a Whiteman.

Maybe we need the Christian authority to reform to this and perhaps help us tell our people in church that their indigenous knowledge doesn't negate their religious faith.

The indegenous knowledge is simply science. It can be studied and decoded.

If we know this much (little), we will perhaps understand what attitude we should have towards the knowledge that we have presently untapped.

Should we talk of the thousands of Herbal remedies in the Osanyin library of Yoruba herbology?

How can we makeup for lost years?

Turn the Academic Curriculum into the practice, research and development of the ancient knowledge in contemporary framework.

The reason why we are presently shorthanded is because majority of young graduates today are not in the Ìṣẹ̀ṣe religion. The number of sound university graduates in the Ìṣẹ̀ṣe community in the first 20-30 years of Nigeria's independence would be so low. 

Presently, we are having more numbers of Ìṣẹ̀ṣe people who are University graduates, this will evolve this ancient knowledge.

I feel that everything is forming up to create one loud bang!!

Natural order can't be suppressed!!!

Copyrights: © 2021

The Knowledge and Lesson in African Religion

I will be willing to help the Christian church if it wants to reform its theology. 

One of its major reformation will be to appreciate the diversity of Knowledge existing in Africa's natural science.

The reason I say this is because Africa's natural science coded in humanity's first information retrieval system called IFÁ, is being erroneously tagged "African Traditional Religion".

Religion is a myth that a people is made to believe in order for them to be easily governed. This is what Organized religion is. Africa's wasn't religion. Those who are called Òrìṣàs are not mythological figures, they are those who left actual knowledge of something that works. That is, Òrìṣàs are the inventors and scientists of the Africans. Obatala and Ọ̀rúnmìlà are the common philosophers. They are not merely mythological figures but also real human figures who evolved into Òrìṣà. I know this because these people left actual liturgy of their discoveries. It is what all the practitioners of the art of their Patron use as a knowledge guide into producing the same results that their Patron produced while on earth.

The missing link right now therefore is that younger people have to pick up this knowledge and interpret them to contemporary realities and see how they can create an economic advantage with that indegenous knowledge. 

An Ayeta expert for example might want to explain to the contemporary mind how his creation is able to deflect the movement of a moving metal traveling at the speed of a bullet fired from the barrel of a 9mm.

Tens of Thousands of this knowledge abound in crude form today. 

Although the Whiteman has known how to adapt Africa's indegenous knowledge for modern consumption because of his global outlook to life, the African still shrink at the sight of his own indegenous knowledge because of his myopic outlook to life. Talk of when a people neglect their natural competitive advantage.

It only means that these people don't know what is going on in this life. They don't even understand how nations develop.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Copyrights: © 2021

The Yoruba Had Democracy Brefore The West

The Europeans did not bring democracy to Yorubaland. We have been practicing it, especially in Oyo, before their coming. Our forefathers could elect a king and also depose him. If he was tyrannical like Alaafin Karan, aloof like Alaafin Aole, pusillanimous like Alaafin Ajaka (in his first term) or vengeful like Alaafin Odarawu, he could be told to abdicate and commit suicide where necessary.

There was a King (President) and then Basorun (Prime Minister). The same kind of system the UK has. In fact, Great Britain had its first Prime Minister in 1721, we had ours since Oranmiyan became Alaafin circa 1200. A whopping 521 years difference.

In 2018, President Buhari travelled to London for 103 days and nothing happened. In fact, he came back in triumph welcomed by his non-performing governors. Oranmiyan travelled to Ile-Ife, reportedly, for less than 100 days. Even though he left his son as acting Alaafin, he was eased out of office when on his return to the kingdom, he heard the sound of the Kaakaki, which meant a new King had come to power. You know what happened to him next. I don't need to talk about that.

We had our own diplomats and an embassy in Portugal when Alaafin Obalokun sent over 80 emissaries to King John of Portugal in 1580. He was believed to have even spoken Portuguese. Don't let us even talk about America, Abiodun was Alaafin when the immigrant settlers in America started their revolution in 1774 and then became a nation in 1776.

Alaafin Abiodun had his royal courts who could read and write in Arabic. So, we are not unlettered.Lest I forget, as recently as 1949, a woman caused a king in Abeokuta to abdicate and go on exile. It was  unprecedented in Egba history. We practised democracy. We obeyed court orders (Ifa) and there were checks and balances.We had the military, led by the Aare Ona Kakanfo. You didn't need connections to join.

So, if you think we are practising democracy in this present dispensation, think again. If you think this country will prosper based on the 1999 Military Constitution, relocate from Utopia.

A country where the police can kill citizens and still roam the streets as freemen? Oh, gosh. So, until we return to the real democracy, we would just continue to demonstrate craziness in our governance.....

By Aremo Adepoju

SEASON'S GREETINGS!!! BEST WISHES IN 2021

As the UN declares 2021 as International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development and the African Union declaration of 2021 as the Year of the Arts, Culture And Heritage, the future of Global Tourism is currently anchored on the development and deployment of smart Virtual Mobile Tourism Marketplace Programs and Festivals that create a ‘business unusual approach’ to the New Normal for a COVID-19 resilient tomorrow.

We are leveraging on the Cultural Diversity of 26 ethnic groups to create a vista of 260 Destination Heritage Festivals which can be merchandised to grow a Rivers Beyond Oil with the right Economic-Impact Investment Model.

It is worthy of note that at Rivers State Tourism Development Agency exercised foresight in executing a Strategic E-Tourism Insight to position the future of Rivers Tourism Economy through the development of an E-nnovation framework for the first Digital-Mobile Tourism Money Marketplace tagged the TouRiverian app.

The Tourism Marketplace app is engineered to aggregate 260 Culture-Heritage commodities, connect over 2.6M Heritage Citizens and monetize Creative Arts and Culture products to create over 230,000 jobs while generating over N26Bn monthly when fully deployed.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in advance!

GRATITUDE FOR SLAVERY AND COLONIZATION

If Oyinbo didn't come to educate us, we will be running around in bush with only leaves covering our private parts, speaking to one another in sign languages and completely lacking in every knowledge of God and social decency.

But thank God they came, now I have a God, clothes to wear, I can speak in English language and I can even use a computer. What an advancement.

We should forget that there was a textile industry before the Whiteman came. We should forget that he wasn't the one who taught us how to make dresses and cover nakedness. But years after we received his benevolent intervention in our lives, we still have to import clothes from him because we can't build a textile industry. We are too primitive to be able to do that. So, we decide to suspend our own brain, refuse to create our own textile industry from what he has taught us. We allow him to sell to us, I guess, as a means of thanking him for helping us to discover that we were naked. If not for him, we wouldn't be wearing clothes, so why should we complain that we don't have a textile industry today?

Some of the benefits that the Whiteman brought to us is to help us to know that there is a river that passed through our land. He discovered the River and called it River Niger. Before he came, those dwelling in the area didn't know that there was a river there. They were probably just walking on dry ground until Mungo Park saw it and told them "here, this is a river". Yoruba called it Odò Oya before Mungo Park mind you.

We should forget that there was a social order, system of economy and social philosophy when they came. 

We should forget that we had a language and a form of wisdom. 

We should just assume that we were primitive, we were just giving birth and growing and dying with absolutely no understanding of our environment. We knew nothing but witchcraft and bloody human sacrifices and killing of twins. We were completely evil. 

This is the comfortable posture to take in order to sustain the argument that we must thank the Whiteman for coming to our aid.

And when we take that posture, anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is passing a known boundary. We need to remind him of our history so that we can collectively be grateful to the Whiteman.

How dare you not accept with happiness the grace of the Whiteman considering the wretchedness and darkness that he has brought up from.

How do you speak with a person who sees himself from this lens? What can you say to him about evolving our native wisdom for our common good in this 21st century, when according to him, there is nothing behind to go back to and evolve. Everything behind should be completely abandoned, in fact, we should run far from it. We should keep learning from the Whiteman how he built his society so that we can build our own too after his pattern.

But I tried to learn from history how the Whiteman built his own society and I discovered that it is by going from place to place asserting his dominance under the authority of his own God (religion). 

I discovered that his drive for economic imperialism can make him go to whatever height of in his desire to be rich.

The person who thinks we should be like the Whiteman will therefore be suggesting that we (Africans) should look for a race to colonize and feed on their resources.

How does he propose that we should learn from the Whiteman (himself) who doesn't want us to grow to be an economic competition for him?

Copyrights: © 2020

Bakare Didn’t Defend Tinubu; He Defanged Him

Still on Bakare's Defence of Tinubu:

Pastor Tunde Bakare’s trending video on Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for which he is receiving caustic flak from the Nigerian online commentariat, isn’t the deodorization of Tinubu’s smelly underbelly that many people say it is. It is, on the contrary, an effective denunciation of Tinubu and a deep, lasting, strategic delegitimization of his “omo Eko” bona fides.

In the video, Bakare essentially mainstreamed reputationally deleterious information about Tinubu that had flourished on the fringes of Yoruba society, that people avoided to talk about openly in polite company, and that most people outside Yorubaland didn’t have the faintest familiarity with.

That information is that everything about Tinubu— from his very name to his claims of being from Lagos State, from his source of income to his parentage and many things in-between— is an elaborately fraudulent scheme.

Let me narrate an anecdote to illustrate what I mean. In the over two years that my column has appeared on the back page of the Saturday Tribune, I have cultivated a vast, engaged readership in the Southwest who reach out to me to share ideas with— and confide in— me.

One of the persistent requests I’ve received from readers of my column in the Southwest has been the invitation to delve into Tinubu’s well-layered, labyrinthine network of duplicity about his origins and identity.

A few people from his hometown of Iragbiji in Osun State offered to provide me with evidence that he is not from Lagos, that he is not from the Tinubu family in Lagos, that he was never named Bola Ahmed at birth, that he has avoided public association with his natal family in Iragbiji to sustain the fraud that he is from Lagos, and so on.

I told a particularly persistent interlocutor who wanted me to publicize what he thought was a scoop on Tinubu that I was already familiar with the information he had shared with me because I’d read most of it in Yinka Odumakin’s March 19, 2019 column titled “Dear Chief Tinubu.” Although the article went viral last year, the Iragbiji man said he hadn’t read it.

There were clearly several angles to explore about Tinubu’s vast and varied deception following Odumakin’s column, but I didn’t hop on it because, being a media law teacher, I knew it was a slippery legal slope. Although people of Iragbiji said Tinubu was born and raised in their town and has no connection with either Lagos or the Tinubu family, I can’t prove this in a court.

Similarly, although many people who knew Tinubu when he grew up in Iragbiji said he was known as Amoda Lamidi Sangodele, I can’t prove this in court. (Amoda is the Yoruba Muslim domestication of Ahmad and Lamidi is the Yoruba Muslim domestication of Abdulhamid.) And even though the current governor of Osun State, Gboyega Oyetola, is the son of Tinubu’s older sister—which calls to question Tinubu’s claims to being 69 years old since Oyetola is 67 years old—I have no DNA evidence to prove anything.

 Of course, Tinubu can’t sue anyone who brings up his forfeiture of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the US government in the early 1990s in the aftermath of circumstantial evidence that he amassed tremendous wealth from trafficking in drugs. The court document of the forfeiture is in the public domain in the U.S. and was published by Sahara Reporters on September 15, 2008.

Nor can he sue anyone for saying that all the schools he claimed to have attended in his INEC his form in 1999—from primary school to university—are false because the late Gani Fawehinmi proved that in court and risked the social ostracism of the hegemonic political elites of the Southwest who now hypocritically valorize him posthumously.

Tunde Bakare has helped to not only centralize these and other odious aspects of Tinubu’s personality; he has also (unwittingly) granted public commentators the latitude to discuss them without fear of legal consequences. In media law, opinion writers have legal cover to comment on otherwise libelous subject matters if the subject matters are in the news and are of public interest. It’s called the fair comment privilege.

In Bakare’s political homily, he basically affirmed all the hitherto fringy whispers about Tinubu: that he is from Iragbiji in Osun State; that his current name is not his original name; that he has disowned his biological parents and “adopted” the Tinubu family of Lagos with whom he has zero consanguineal affiliation; that the late legendary Alhaja Abibat Mojaji of Lagos is not Tinubu’s biological mother; that he has an odious “past”; that he is corruptly “making money from taxation” by “exploiting the system to his advantage”; and that he is “transparently corrupt.”

These are not the sorts of issues Tinubu wants Nigerians to be discussing about him as he stealthily campaigns to be Nigeria’s next president and works to fend off ferocious, multifarious challenges to his grip on Lagos and Southwest politics.

He would much rather that people think of him as a Lagosian who is a scion of the famous Tinubu family, who has always been known as Bola Ahmed, and whose biological mother was the late Alhaja Abibat Mogaji.

Even though Bakare appears to be wracked by a dissociative identity disorder (which probably explains why he says and embodies mutually contradictory positions), megalomania (recall his boast that he would succeed Buhari because he is “number 16” while Buhari is “number 15”), delusion (anyone who claims God communicates with him is delusional), and compulsive mendacity, he is also a skilled rhetorician who is artfully defanging Tinubu, his political opponent, using a clever rhetorical tactic.

In rhetorical studies, there is a technique we call synchoresis, which is the intentional concession of an alternate point of view for the sake of refuting it. As rhetorical scholar Miles Coleman put it, synchoresis is the art of “conceding one point for the sake of another.”

Bakare intentionally disclosed and popularized unflattering facts about Tinubu’s life putatively to undermine them but, in reality, to mainstream them so they can be invoked to delegitimize him.

Notice that Bakare was stronger in channeling anonymous people’s claims that Tinubu is a fraud than in defending Tinubu’s fraud. For instance, his only defense against Tinubu’s fraudulent Lagos identity claim is that the truth of the claim won’t “put food on the table of the hungry or create jobs for the unemployed or the unemployable.”

 That’s a weak strawman argument. No one said it would. The self-evident implication of that fraud, of course, is that if Tinubu isn’t straight with something as basic as his origins— and even his name and ancestral pedigree— why should he be trusted with something as grave as the presidency of a country of 200 million people? Anyone who can disown his parents, his name, his hometown, etc. for power and influence can sell anyone.

Bakare’s defense for Tinubu’s false claim to being the late Abibat Mogaji’s biological son (Bakare insisted on calling him her “adopted son”) was simply to state that no one is a “self-made” man and that given what the woman did for Tinubu, it was “not only proper, it is also honorable” for Tinubu to call her his mother. “Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu did not and could not choose his biological parents, yet no one can forbid him from choosing his role models or stop him from changing his name,” he added for emphasis.

Then Bakare brought Tinubu’s legendary corruption to the center of his congregants’—and, by implication, Nigerians’ consciousness— but feebly “defended” him by quoting him as saying he learned how to be “transparently corrupt” from Olusegun Obasanjo. How is that a defense, especially given that Tinubu and Obasanjo are not political associates, and Obasanjo, being a retired two-term president, isn’t hurt by any association with corruption?

In sum, every indication points to the conclusion that Bakare wanted to put Tinubu’s sordid deception about his origins—which people talked about in hushed tones in Yorubaland and about which most people outside Yorubaland are ignorant— in the forefront of the prevailing current of thought about him in Nigeria. The best way to do that without backlash was to appear to be censorious of the narrative while giving it publicity and currency.

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.


BACK TO ÌṢẸ̀ṢE FOR YORUBA/AFRICA DEVELOPMENT

If Africans can see how their affiliations with Christianity and Islam is further improving Europe and Saudi Arabia and stagnating them through the influences these religions have on their government (social organization), then maybe they will begin to see the need to develop (evolve) their own spiritual system to contemporary taste and then begin to export same.

Christianity is simply a religious name for European culture wound around a mythology. Christianity is a part of European culture. Islam is a part of Arabian culture. Ifa/Òrìṣà is a part of African culture.

If you neglect your Culture and embrace a foreign culture and then complain that your home country is not progressing, the question you should ask yourself is this "if you neglect your own father's house to build another person's father's house, does it still make sense for you to complain that your own father's house is not fine?"

For example, Yoruba spirituality includes marital procedures, burial procedures, children raising procedures, community organizational procedures and most importantly, justice system. It also includes our medicine and it serves as our means of education - passing down of productive knowledge from generation to generation.

This simply means that the neglect of Ifá/Òrìṣà Tradition is a neglect of the above important social structure. 

We took a foreign culture and hope to adapt it to our African nature. We are trying to imitate Europe and Saudi Arabia, we can never be the best of ourselves like that. We must be authentic. Tẹni ń Tẹni.

The truth is that we didn't take these foreign cultures willingly (contrary to what many will like you to believe), it was forced upon us by the guns of the colonizers. 

The remaining part of our struggle against this beast therefore is the complete rejection of his culture and the embracing of our own culture.

Many people run away from the culture because it is not so attractive now. We love places decked in gold and silver. We are scared (or put off) of the mixing together of leaves and natural elements. Abandoning it is not the way forward rather to Embrace it no matter how crude it looks. To own it and then evolve it to what you think it should be. There is a lot of room for improvement in the spirituality. It has suffered stagnation due to over 200 years of neglect. Those who are educated amongst us are too proud to associate with the system, we prefer to sit in the church of the Whiteman or the Mosque of the brown desert man. 

This is not good enough. You are doing yourself and your generation a great disservice by neglecting the blessings that Olódùmarè gave to your own forefathers.

WE WILL GO BACK TO OUR ROOTS AND WE (YORUBA/AFRICA) WILL RISE. 

THIS IS THE MISSION WE ARE ABOUT TAKE.

Dear Followers of Christianity, Let's take this discussion on repentance

Luke 19:8 And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.

Christianity will become revived when it turns this Bible verse as a tool to advance the discussion of reparations for slave trade. This is not about Africa wanting vengeance, this is about Europe demonstrating repentance. But it has not repented because it still loots Africa till present date.

The Head of the Anglican Church is the government of England, the Monarchy. It was the head of the Church of England (Anglican Church) that launched slave expedition into Africa.

This is not the time to say that Africans partook in the trade and sold their brothers, the point is that Christians at some point have obtained something by false accusation.

In the RCCG where I was a Sunday school teacher, where I served with all true heart to inform the people in the will of the Lord and no alterior motive or inclination to take money off the people in God's name or to please any man, we taught the story of Zaccheus as the story of Restitution, an act which the Lord finds pleasing. It is a general RCCG consensus.

Would England and America therefore atone for the sins of their forefathers? Would Christians atone for the sins of their fellows past? Or would they be proud as to not acknowledge the sins of their forebears? 

Leviticus 6:4 Then it shall be, because he hath sinned, and is guilty, that he shall restore that which he took violently away, or the thing which he hath deceitfully gotten, or that which was delivered him to keep, or the lost thing which he found.

I only think of one thing, How Africa will be liberated?

Christians can use their religion to create the sentiment that creates the argument that God wants Africa to rise and be dominant in world affairs. And it can begin to stir its people into the dominant consciousness. 

It must be used to create a people who will stand against all forms of oppression and face all forms of unholy intimidation with a righteous fury. 

All that Christianity does is create sentiments around what it wants to achieve. For instance, when people want to discuss on why you must pay Tithes, they know how to create the sentiment and when they want to justify no need to pay Tithes, they know how to use the same document to create that sentiment.

Conscious Africans should also develop/evolve the understanding of the Bible for Africans in order to lead them (us) in the 21st  century into a positive righteous global influence in the 22nd century.

But that can't be possible for now:

The wisdom to create the science needed for that advancement is presently hidden from the black race. There are libraries containing several information that are considered "classified". 

Knowledge of science, history, astrology and complex engineering that are being worked out and worked on to generate the social realities we have, are kept very secret. Tonnes of information presently in the Vatican Bank in Rome, the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church. Top Secret, they are.

But whatever the Pope might be hiding in the Vatican Bank, it is evident that there is an unchristly attitude that had been demonstrated by the white ancestors of the Christian faith which placed the Whiteman as a master over the Blackman who was used as a slave and upon the abolition of slave trade was called 3/5 (Three Fifth) of a human. 

This unlike Christ judgment and action set a tone that places Africa at a disadvantage today in its ability to cater for itself and its native people who despite all odds are multiplying and thriving and peace loving.

Will the Christian faith restitute for the sins of their brothers past? Or would they assume that we should keep moving on like nothing happened and is happening?

What would the prophecies for the future look like? 

Who will not be able to predict accurately that calamity is at the end of non repentance?

Woe unto him that says peace when it has not been commanded.

Let us repent and embrace peace!

FREE AFRICA. COMPENSATE AFRICA. APOLOGIZE TO AFRICA. GROW AFRICA.

By Ayobami Ogedengbe

Who is Yoruba between Itsekiri & Bini in Edo state, Nigeria?

There has been mixed up as to know which tribe is Yoruba between Itsekiri and Bini. If it's about language, itsekiri language is a mix of Ìjẹ̀bú /Ilaje/Ikale (Yoruba). If it's by origin, Itsekiris came from ilé ìfẹ́ like other Yoruba people.

If it's by monarchy. The title of itsekiri monarch is OLÚ (of Warri) like many other Yoruba tribes. So by all criteria itsekiri are Yorùbá.

One of the most popular Itsekiri born-pastor and a former CAN president AYO ORITSEJAFOR said in 2018 that Itsekiri migrated from Ile-Ife and are yoruba after confirming so many reports.

Also in 2014 National Confab, the Itsekiri leaders make it known to the public that should Nigeria breakup, itsekiri must be merged to Yoruba which is their source. Till today, we have OPC in all itsekiri domain in warri, delta state. Anywhere you see OPC is a sign that it is a Yoruba Territory.

How About the Bini?

If it's by language, the bini spoke a different language that no yoruba could speak or even understands. Yoruba dont speak or understand anything about bini language. If you travelled from Nigeria to Togo, Benin Republic, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast where we have yoruba people, they hear themselves and understand. No matter how the dialect could be, a Yoruba man from any of these countries will hear or understand what the person is saying, but the bini city in Nigeria is different. They speak a different language from Yoruba. Bini in Edo state Nigeria and Yoruba has a different lifestyles and actually different views about life.

The only connection between the Bini and Yoruba is their palace. The royal palace is the only connection between the Bini and Yoruba where we have Yoruba Descendants controlling bini palace. The history of Oba rulership in bini was established by a Yoruba prince from Ile-Ife.

Therefore, binis are not yoruba, but their royal house is Yoruba.. Also, there are some yoruba people in bini who are Descendants of the palace and those who lives in boundary side and those who bears yoruba names like Akoko-Edo, these are the Yorubas. But the bini itself are not Yoruba, their title is Ogiso/Ogiamen, but Yoruba title is Oba.

Apart from this, the itsekiri has never for once denied the fact that they are yorubas or migrated from Ile-Ife, but the bini has contrary opinion even among their kinsmen in Edo state so much that they dragged themselves to court.

In view of the above, itsekiri are yoruba while bini are not yoruba but bini palace is yoruba. Because of this, there are OPC in Edo state!  Dont forget that anywhere you see OPC shows that's yoruba Territory. The bini palace and Yoruba Descendants in bini are yoruba..

This is so clear so much that the itsekiri Territory is listed among the Oduduwa Republic agitators Map. The map of Oduduwa Republic shows itsekiri, but bini was clean off, as some yoruba agrees that they will follow the wish of Oba of bini if its Territory should be included in Oduduwa map or not.

Meanwhile some yoruba disagree, but the said bini has been clean off on Oduduwa map. Any Oduduwa map showing bini on its list is a fake Oduduwa map. Only Oba of bini will decide if its Territory should be included or not.

Note that Yoruba is an Ethnic (Nation) not a tribe.. Yoruba is an Ethnic that compries of many tribes.. Itsekiri, Okun, igbomina, ilaje, Awori, ijebu, oyo, ife, ekiti, ondo, ijesha, egba, Owu, offa, Ibadan etc are all tribes under Yoruba Ethnic. YORUBA IS A NATION!

By Oritsegbemi Akinola

Warri, Delta State, Nigeria.

Wednesday, 30 December 2020

Yoruba Indigenous People of Togo

The Yoruba Territory in Togo is called Atakpame. These are the ones whose ancestors migrated to the West African country when tribal wars raged in the 17th century.

"The majority of these Ife settlers migrated from Ija-Oku in former Dahomey into the Togolese territory and subsequently founded the city of Atapkame all of who migrated from Ile-Ife.

The Battle of Atakpamé was an armed confrontation between the Ashanti Empire and neighboring Akan Allies under the leadership of the Kingdom of Akyem who joined up with the Oyo Empire and the Kingdom of Dahomey in and around Atakpamé in Togo in 1764 which was a sever defeat on the Ashanti.

The indigenous yoruba language in Atakpame is Ewe or Ife. Ewe is an indigenous yoruba dialect that Is also spoken in neighbouring Ghana. Ife another indigenous and independent Yoruba dialect spoken by the majority of Atakpame indigenes, who trace their origins to Ile-ife.

In terms of landmark, Atakpame shares some similarities with Ibadan and Abeokuta. While the capital cities of Oyo and Ogun States flaunt the Olumo Rock and Oke Ibadan as their ancestral symbols.

Respectively, Atakpame, a settlement town that is about 160 kilometres away from Lome, the Togolese capital, defines its origin by seven mountains that surround it.

Just like many other towns in Yorubaland, where myths are explored to trace the people’s roots, Atakpame’s history is not complete without reference to the mountains. According to some elders of the town, the rocks played supernatural roles when the natives were engaged in battles with other ethnic groups.

This is how Atakpame also shares topographical and historical similarities with Idanre, Ondo State, a town famed for the huge and acrobatic mountains that surround it.

Ife Togo is widely used in Atakpame because the people, who trace their descent to ile-Ife, are the dominant group there.

As a result of the entrenched cross-fertilisation that Ife Togo has had with French, Ewe, et cetera, it is easier for the Yoruba in Lome, Cotonou and Ajase, among others, to understand one another than for the immigrant Yorubas in Lome to understand Ife Togo speakers in Atakpame – and vice versa.


A Yoruba scholar, Dr. Felix Fabunmi, notes that a language that is spoken by many people, such as Yoruba, usually has dialects that may differ from one another. Denisef Fantchede call the attention of Yoruba Worldwide to continue speaking yoruba language because our language represent us.

One of the Popular Yoruba Actress from Togo is Liz Da Sliva, and also one of the popular Yoruba Fothballer from Togo is Emmanuel Seyi Adebayor (Baba Tunde).

By Denisef Fantchede

A Native of Atakpame, Lome Togo, interviewed by Lasisi Akeem(Nigeria)

Punch Newspapers 2015

Monday, 28 December 2020

A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

By Carl Sagan

Tags: earth, perspective, space

Source: www.goodreads.com


MANY CALENDARS, ONE EARTH

The Earth


1. Yorùbá calendar

2. Igbo calendar

3. Gregorian Calendar

4. Pawukon Calendar (Bali, Indonesia)

5. Ethiopian Calendar

5. Jewish Calendar

6. Chinese Calendar

7. Hijirah Calendar

8. Persian Calendar

9. Japanese Calendar

10. Julian Calendar

11. Buddhist Calendar

12. Hindu Calendar (Vikram Samvat, Shaka Samvat, and Kali Yuga) 

13. Mayan Calendar

14. Egyptian Calendar

15. French Revolutionary Calendar

16. Sumerian Calendar

17. Zoroastrian Calendar

18. Celtic Calendar

19. Cappadocian Calendar

20. Achaemenid Calendar

21. Attic Calendar

22. Ancient Greek Calendars.

Up there👆👆👆👆 you have over 20 different calendars in use or once in use in the world. I decided to dig into this to let you know that the Gregorian Calendar in use in most part of the world, Nigeria inclusive, is not the only regulator of man and his activities on earth. In other words, while we're in a mad rush to make it before December 31st, 2020, some persons in another part of the world are less concerned about our death-race hustling. This is because these Calendars do not begin and end the same time.

I want you to take it easy with yourself. Man invented calendar and over the years adjusted it, abandoned it or reinvented it to suit his purpose. You must know January 1st is not the beginning of the year for everyone on earth. Likewise, December 31st isn't the end of the year for everybody on earth. Instead of killing yourself for not achieving your goals for the year, try to draw up a broad plan for yourself and pursue it throughout the days of your sojourn on earth.

You're created for great things. Pursue these things!

Season's Greetings to all and sundry!!!

The leopoldic descendants: Exterminating Sankara and anathematizing Arikana for a recolonized Africa

The subjugation of the black race, the source of life to mankind, remains a hard pill to swallow; it is inexplicably bitter and too harsh to comfortably go down the throat. It was the desecration of the people we were, the rape of our mothers and motherland, the molestation and dehumanization of our ancestral heritage, the mesmerization of our spirituality, the contamination of our serene environment and shameless attempts to excommunicate us from the class of higher animals.

Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Those who will not reason are bigots, those who cannot are fools and those who dare not are slaves.

The Caucasian blood have succeeded in breeding these three categories of humans, to a very large extent in Africa, to keep us as perpetual slaves even to their generations to come.

But for the fact that a very few of us, Africans, have escaped from the dungeon of these three categories, we will push and push till we make a headway in resetting the minds of our brothers and sisters already lost in a world that has never been ours.

The subjugation of the black race, the source of life to mankind, remains a hard pill to swallow; it is inexplicably bitter and too harsh to comfortably go down the throat. It was the desecration of the people we were, the rape of our mothers and motherland, the molestation and dehumanization of our ancestral heritage, the mesmerization of our spirituality, the contamination of our serene environment and shameless attempts to excommunicate us from the class of higher animals.

In their bid to make us non-persons; members of a race of nobodies, they continuously engage in frantic efforts to prove that we have never had significant histories as a people. A generation of mental dwarfs blackmailing the great generation of the people of the Nubia, Kemete , Kerma, Kush, Blemmyes, Numidia, Nekor, Alodia, Makuria, and Ife, to mention but a few. What an irony of life; the world isn’t truly balanced and a fair place!

However, having stepped out free from a brainwashed mechanism, we have come to identify our land as the cradle of life to mankind, and will not trade away the truth for whatever value or worth.

The ancient Africa setting, before the Atlantic slave trade, was characterized by well organised societies around the family unit, and the strength of every society was determined by the amount of gold held. Leadership and followership were premised on mutual understanding and love.

The ancient Africa traded in tobacco, gold, copper, spices, ebony, ivory and skins. So, trade was and has been an integral part of the people from time immemorial. Religion was integrated into all aspects of life. The supernatural was involved in virtually everything, and the efficacy of the deities kept crime rate under check while peace reigned supreme. Crimes were punished to serve as deterrent to potential culprits of one crime or another.

Hospitality was embedded in the blood of our ancestors to accommodate others. They opened a trade path to the Caucasians believing they were a people of good intentions. Alas, the opposite was the case! They came in and destabilized our societal structure through their infiltration from the West African coastline.

They drew people from the center of the continent and sold them into slavery. We were a people; content with life and opened to humanity. We were happy and wanted the same for others. It is, however, quite unfortunate that our ancestors were short of the knowledge that the “devil could come in white colour.”

The slave trade was brutal and horrific, and the enslavement of Africans was cruel, exploitative and dehumanizing. Nothing less than 11 million Africans were bought as slaves by Europeans between 1450 and 1870. The estimates for the total number of Africans lost to the slave trade ranges from 25m to 50m.

In the middle of this evil to humanity and the land of the cradle of life stood “Leopold the 2nd of Belgium.” He made the entire world believe that he was going to help Congo. But under his watch, over 500,000 died of diseases and many died of starvation as well. He murdered over 10m Congolese and earned himself a title of one of the most wicked souls that ever lived.

“So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the slave trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: “I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition” —William Wilberforce.

So much was the evil of slave trade that William Wilberforce, one of the main actors and beneficiaries of slave trade, became tired and haunted by the inhumane displays of man to humanity. The guilt was so heavy on his mind that he fervently fought for the abolition of slave trade.

Although slave trade was abolished, slavery was never abolished. The black race was immediately recolonized under “the mechanism of mental slavery” as noted by Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Mental slavery is the worst form of slavery. It gives you the illusion of freedom, makes you trust, love and defend your oppressors while making an enemy of those who are trying to free you or open your mind and eyes.

The death sentence melted out to our ancestors, by the slave masters, for kicking against being enslaved has not stopped. This time, it is technically done using the black men with low mentality.

The elimination of Martin Luther King Junior, Malcolm X, Harry and Harriette Moore, Fred Hampton, Medgar Evers , George W. Lee, Leon Jordan, Sammy Younge Jr., James E. Chaney , Vernon Dahmer, all black activists to mention a few, were carried out by white supremacists and mentally enslaved black men and backed by racist authorities and the police.

Imperialism as a system of exploitation occurs not only in brutal forms of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms; a loan, food , aid and blackmail. We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on earth to rule all of humanity”—these were the very words of Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara. He talked-the-talk and did the deed to liberate his people and set Africa on the path of total freedom and greatness.

A Marxist-Leninist and pan-Africanist to the core appointed as the Prime Minister of the Upper Volta in 1983. He was incarcerated for having disputes with the sitting government. While under house arrest, a group of revolutionaries hijacked power on his behalf to become the President in a popularly—supported coup later that year.

He launched programmes for social, ecological and economic change and renamed the country from the French colonial name “Upper Volta” to “Burkina Faso (land of incorruptible People)” his foreign policies were centred on anti-imperialism, with his government boycotting all foreign aids, pushing for debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (IBRD) for he believed that “he who feeds you controls you.”

His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nation wide literacy campaign and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5m children against measles, yellow-fever and meningitis.

The policies of Sankara alienated and antagonised several groups, which included the small but powerful Burkinabe middle class; the tribal leaders who were stripped of their long-held traditional privileges of forced labour and tribute payments, and the governments of France and its ally, the Ivory Coast, though Isidore was setting Africa on a path of total liberation and greatness.

On 15 October, 1987, our very own Noel- the voice of the voiceless Africans, was brutally murdered by an armed group with twelve other officials in a coup d’ etat organised by his former colleague, Blaise Compaore ( a man with a low mentality and a puppet in the hands of the French government). In his narratives for the reasons for his action.

Judas Compaore alleged that Sankara jeopardized foreign relations with former colonial power France (the descendants of Leopold) and neighbouring Ivory Coast (France’s puppet) and an unproven allegation of Isidore wanting to eliminate his opponents.

Having taken our hero ‘SANKARA’ out. Africa was reset to a backward mode of the 18th century of the “scramble for Africa.” Today, the continent of Africa remains at the mercy of the world power and even China; a bridge we would have crossed if our Wakanda Prince ‘Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara’ had lived longer..

From time to time, our ancestors reincarnate in the chosen ones among us to see to our total liberation from foreign shackles, in Dr Arikana Chihombori—Quao I see one of the recent reincarnations of our ancestors. Dr Arikana, a doctor, activist, public speaker, educator, diplomat, entrepreneur and founder of medical clinics, was appointed the AU Permanent Representative to the US in December, 2016.

Just like our darling and daring son “Isidore” she fearlessly hit hard on the French government for their atrocious neo-colonial exploitation nearly 50years after the Francophone countries under them were granted independence.

She revealed that the French government forced 14 Francophone countries to sign a pact for the continuation of colonization. These countries were to keep 85% of their bank reserve with French Central Bank under the watch of the French Finance Minister.

These countries are allowed to borrow up to 20% of their 85% reserve kept in the previous year as a loan with interest.” Over $500b goes out of Africa every year to France, yet France had the guts to call Africans poor” were her fervent submission. In her very words: “We are the original people and we have every reason to stand up on the tallest mountains to proclaim who we are……. we are beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated, highly adaptable and totally indestructible-the Africans.”

“Any other race that would have gone through what we have been subjected to would have been extinct and that’s the truth.”

“Consequences…… for Africa to take its rightful place on the world stage, the gutter of mind we have lived in for centuries must be cleared out.” Now or never.

"EVERYBODY IS TALKING ABOUT THE MONKEYS AND SQUIRRELS IN THE ROOM (AFRICANS), BUT NO ONE WANTS TO TOUCH THE 10000-POUND GORILLA IN THE ROOM (THE LEOPOLDIC DESCENDANTS), AND THAT IS OUR THINKING OF THE AFRICAN PEOPLE.”

Our Wakanda queen was too tough for them, she made the stage uncomfortable and unbearable for them. Her voice subdued that of hundreds of the slave masters.

She couldn’t be handled directly; and as usual, another African with a low mentality-the AU Commission Chairman for 2019, the Chad President Moussa Faki Mahama, was used to relieve Dr Arikana of her position through baseless allegations.

A great Wakanda Prince and Warrior-John Jerry RAWLINGS (MAY HIS SOUL CONTINUE TO REST IN POWER), tagged the action shameful.

It is time to emancipate ourselves from “mental slavery.” There is no “Wilberforce” to lead on our behalf for none but ourselves can free our minds!

FIGHT ON DR ARIKANA, OUR DISTINGUISHED WAKANDA QUEEN!

HAPPY POSTHUMOUS BIRTHDAY, OUR KEMETIC KING, THOMAS ISIDORE NOEL SANKARA!!

THE WAKANDA PRINCE! WE WILL FOREVER LOVE YOU; CONTINUE TO REST IN POWER!!!

By Richard Odusanya

Source: www.standarddailytimes.com








Sunday, 27 December 2020

The Relevance of Humanities/Social Sciences in National Development

The debate about the relevance of History and other courses in social sciences and humanities is not new. But Buhari's address to the rescued Kankara Boys where he said that students should read science related courses and ignore others in humanities like History and English, has elicited a lot of reactions from professionals in those disciplines and scholars in the natural sciences who thought that the President didn't get his thoughts right.

Recently, for cultural reason, I developed interest in the history of modern information and communication technology in Nigeria. My friend teaching in a Computer Science Dept. and I began talking, reading and even writing about it. In the course of our research, I observed that the influence of modern ICT on our culture was immense.

This led me to learn that, ICT and its development has cultural content embedded in it, depending on the culture that first develops it. Whichever culture creates a technology, you find its values, environment, and idea of development(of that particular area) being incorporated. Look at how Africans invented their technology, like hoe, for example. They did it having in mind Africa's idea of cultivation, of the type of soil they have, and available raw materials. So, if another culture is to use it even after modifying it, is to see that culture relatively resembling African culture in some ways, at least in cultivation. This means that the technological development was first imagined, before it was developed.

The same thing applies to modern technology. You look at Facebook and other social media platforms created from the West, and despite development of global culture, you can see western liberal ideas of community formation, of freedom of thought, of materialism, among other western isms, incorporated. This is so because of where they were created, and the problem they intend to solve.

Therefore, when Hausa people are to use any of the platforms to achieve an end for example, they will be subconsciously adapting to some of the above mentioned ideas which are "inherently" western. That's why a young man on the platform can insult an elderly person without feeling any remorse, but can't dare do same in real life. Technology is created for a particular purpose, and it will have to achieve that end. If the end is to better the life of the human race, history and other courses will forever remain relevant because development is first imagined, as shown above, and when actualized, it affects humanity.

Fast forward, while we hail the material developments, on the other hand, clamour for climate discipline, data privacy, proliferation of arms in the hands of non-state actors is also high, and the corporate organisations responsible for those anomalies spend huge amounts of money to contain the mess they created. Within this range, the relevance of SS and arts becomes more apparent.

When you review the development of modern technology in our region, you will see it making us behave half way western without realising it in the first place. Review the gaye culture in the North. Or football culture. Or hip-hop culture. Or improvising of india-hausa soyayya variant. All these have social implications and they are the same implications that even our religious scholars complain about regularly. The reason why we see that, is because the technologies have cultural contents or serve as agency for cultural transmission. If you want to understand the problem in the changing behaviour of the people as a result of using the technology, you don't first and foremost create another technology. Your duty now is to understand the problem and then imagine a solution. This is what social sciences and humanities do, social engineering.

Coming back to the main point. The problems that limit Nigeria's progress and which if tackled, we all agree, can get the country to begin marching towards the promised land, are corruption, broken economy, high rate of voilent crimes, leadership failure, depreciating national values, among others. These problems are not only social in outlook, but have deep roots in history and sociology. To fix them therefore, we need to acquire, understand, and apply knowledges in humanities and social sciences in the first place. I will, at this point, request you to study the concept of social capital and its place in human (economic) progress. Francis Fukuyama has done an excellent job about that. That's if we think social sciences have little to do with human material progress. Rather, they provide the basis.

Come to think of it, if you train these students only to get high paying jobs, or use the skills acquired to invent a fighter jet which security forces can use to kill all the bandits and Boko Haram insurgents for peace to reign in Nigeria, Nigeria will continue to face the problems of unemployment, poverty, violent crimes, hunger, out of school children etc. Because the problems are deeply social and have their own historical contexts, which must be understood.

However, the students may need to study the basics in humanities and SS for their invention to have human face since they are meant for human use. This goes to mean that if they study those courses without basic knowledge in humanities and SS, there will be problem. This is the philosophy behind the introduction of General Study courses such as History and Philosophy of Science, Nigerian Peoples and Culture, English and Communication Skills etc, in tertiary institutions for all students regardless of their course of study.

Besides, we all agree that a graduate doesn't only need to acquire knowledge of science and technology to succeed in the job market or even in entrepreneurship. She/he also needs communication skill, cultural intelligence, social intelligence, a grasp on human behaviour, the nature, patterns and structure of the market, and then study people's reactions to development. This is why you would see world telecom giants' CEOs engaged in reading books on these subjects and consistently engaging scholars in the said fields -- creating platforms where such ideas are discussed. Because they know that, for them to keep floating at the top in the market and maintain world dominance, they need to study those things you think are irrelevant. If you think human agency will no longer be relevant because of rise in Artificial Intelligence and biotech, think again. The issue is, except human race cease to exist on earth, history, languages and others will continue to be relevant.

If an economy is broken as is Nigeria's, these students will not get the high paying jobs as we think. If it's only to train them for the job market as the end in our philosophy of knowledge acquisition, with time, we will produce a number of them that the relevant sectors in the country could not absorb. We will have nurses, pharmacists, engineers struggling to get job or something to do with their skill but with little success. They will join arts and social science graduates in the job market. We can cite the example of Kano which sponsored students to study these courses abroad with some having no job after their return (this doesn't mean the program is bad). We all know that in our towns there are graduates of engineering and science related courses who are jobless years after their NYSC. How many computer science graduates do you know selling fura by the roadside today? But the question is why would they join the redundant job seekers in the labour market despite reading science related courses? The answer is, because the country's economy is broken.

National economy is a philosophy, of History, sociology, anthropology...

With knowledge, STATE, SOCIETY and NATIONAL ECONOMY are fashioned. Nigeria is not lacking IT to begin thinking of development, but application of knowledge derived from all fileds of study.

Baba-Bala Katsina 

Tsangayar Malam Dan Malam

Minister Mourns Death of Veteran Film Producer, Chico Ejiro

Late Chico Ejiro

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has described the shocking death of veteran film producer Chico Ejiro as a huge blow to the nation's Creative Industry in general and to Nollywood in particular.

In a statement issued in Lagos on Saturday, the Minister expressed his condolences to the family and friends of the deceased, and indeed to the entire Creative Industry.

He described the late Ejiro as a prolific movie director and a shining star of Nollywood, which has - through its movies - stamped Nigeria's creative presence all over the world.

Alhaji Mohammed urged Mr. Ejiro's family and friends to take solace in the fact that his legacy will live on through the excellent works of the actors and actresses he helped to nurture over the years, and indeed in the progressive success of Nollywood.

''Thanks to the pace-setting work of Mr. Ejiro and his contemporaries. Nollywood is today one of the biggest movie industries in the world, which is providing employment for many Nigerians and creating wealth for the nation.

''May God grant repose to the soul of the departed and comfort his family and friends,'' he said.

Segun Adeyemi

Special Assistant To The President (Media)

Office of the Minister of Information and Culture

Lagos

26 Dec. 2020

I'M SORRY SIR, I USUALLY DON'T USE APPETITE TO EAT

I turned down the first candlelight Christmas dinner I was invited to.

It was my girlfriend who invited me. Well, I was 9-10 years old, so it is better if I call her just my friend who is a girl. She was about the same age and was my classmate in Primary 4A of Government Primary School, Abakpa, Ogoja.

Why did I refuse Ijeoma's invitation to a candlelight dinner? The answer to this question is embedded in my home training, my ignorance and how I actually met and became friends with Ijeoma and her brother Emeka.

Government Primary School was one of the two ordinary primary schools in an ordinary town, peopled by ordinary men and women. We knew ourselves, we knew our parents; we were poor but we didn't know or we didn't care. We felt no shame for going to school barefooted and with our buttocks peeping from holes in the backside of school shorts.

Most days we ate fufu at night, then we will eat the leftovers in the morning before going to school. We were not ashamed of eating fufu to school every morning until Ijeoma and Emeka came.

The headmaster brought them to our class one cold Thursday morning in early October. They were introduced to our teacher and us. They have just joined the school, they are now in our class, they will be going home today and resuming fully on Monday.

They appeared and left like the apparition of our deepest fantasies. There was something about those two. They were beautiful in a way that made me want to stay far from them. They looked like well iron clothes that I didn't want to rumple, like a dream I didn't want fulfilled just yet.

They resumed on Monday decked in the neatest uniform in the world. They looked like answered prayers and smelt like prosperity. They stayed away from us. They were shy, not proud. On our part, we stayed away because we didn't want to dirty them and get into any problem.

When our teacher stepped in that morning, he began by asking us to "stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Alright, each of you will tell me what you ate this morning." Normal question. Normal answers everywhere.

Fufu and groundnut soup.

Fufu and beeniseed soup.

Fufu and eruru soup.

Yam.

Fufu.

Yam.

Fufu.

Yam and beans.

Alright. Our new student, Ijeoma, what did you eat this morning.

"Noodles and omelette."

Her voice. So fine. Fine English too. Wow.

But wait, what is noodles and omelette?

I thought our teacher will ask her to explain that thing she said she ate. But he didn't. He just said "Alright. Sit down."

We sat.

But what the hell is noodles and omelette?

Well, I don't care anyway. I don't think I can even eat that kind of thing. Noodles and omelette: the way that thing sound eh, e no go ever bellyful me.

Emeka and Ijeoma kept eating very strange and irregular things to school. They kept eating their noodles. We were not answering them. Some days they will drink tea or pap with fried plantain or akara. Like seriously? Nobody prepares that nonsense in our house unless someone is sick.

One day they said they ate scrambled eggs. We were shocked. Scrambled eggs how? Which animal use to lay that one? The one we know is egg o, we don't know any scrambled eggs.

I started noticing something. All of a sudden, my classmates started drinking tea and eating fried plantain. One day two of them even had the guts to eat noodles. Even Odey, my main gee, ate noodles one day. Ah, ah, Odey! When did you know noodles?

It got so bad that by early November, about one month after Ijeoma and Emeka joined us, I was about the only one still eating fufu to school, as far as answering the teacher's question was concerned. What's happening na?

One Monday morning.

"Alright. Ijeoma, what did you eat this morning."

"I didn't have appetite sir. So I couldn't eat."

Emeka too.

Hmmmmm. This girl has brought another one again o. So they use appetite to eat in their house?

The next day, Ijeoma again didn't eat. No appetite. Emeka too. 

I was just thinking: this girl's parents must be very wicked. They should go and buy their children appetite to use and eat na. But what even happened to the one they have been using?

I was dazed when most of my friends said they didn't eat too. They said they didn't have appetite. Wow.

"Isa, what did you eat?"

Yam, sir.

"I guess you had a good appetite?"

The class laughed. I didn't even know why they were laughing. Maybe eating in the morning has become infra dig. To lose appetite is now a status symbol; because the celebrities of the class lost their appetites.

I tried to ignore them as I answered our teacher, "I'm sorry sir, I usually don't use appetite to eat. We don't have it in our house."

I saw a shiver of shock dance on the teacher's face before he roared with laughter.

"Isa", still laughing "appetite is not something like a plate you use to eat. It's a feeling. Like a feeling to eat." 

I was more confused. Feeling? How? As in they use feeling to eat? Me I don't use feeling abeg. If I see food I chop, if I don't see food I leave am. Which one is feeling again?

"I know you must have had this feeling to eat or not to eat before. You must have lost appetite sometime."

Now my eyes were misty, "No sir. I have never lost appetite since I was born sir. Please help me sir, I don't want to die."

"No. You won't die. If you have never lost appetite, that means you are actually very healthy. Ok. Sit down all of you, let's learn about appetite."

That day, I and many others who were claiming they didn't have appetite, learnt about appetite for the first time.

I and Ijeoma became friends after that day too.

However, when she invited me that December for what she called her family Christmas candlelight dinner, I turned it down. I was afraid to go because I didn't know what a candlelight dinner was and I didn't want to find out the way I found out about noodles and appetite.

I stayed home to eat Mama's rice and chicken under the sunlight in the day and moonlight in the night. Contented.

- Written by First Baba Isa (FBI)

YORUBA LESSONS

#repost @yorubalessons @downloader_

The earliest depictions of women (of every culture and race) giving birth depict them in upright positions, not lying down. Women began to lie down because they were, at some point, convinced that doing so supports their back, when in actual fact, it defies gravity and is dangerous for the mother and baby. The only persons that it helps are the helpers - the doctors and nurses - not the baby, and definitely not the mother. Lying down during childbirth was promoted for perversion and control. Babies could be killed or exchanged out of the mother’s view this way. 

___________

The ancestral Yorùbá women’s history in that regard is what I’m being asked to discuss next, and I will, as soon as I am calm and confident enough to tap into that energy. 

___________

I eventually had to be born through Caesarean Section after a long and distressing experience. My left cheek was slit during the CS moment too, so that was even more distressing because the scar is still there. Talking about easing childbirth will be a good thing for those unborn, and a healing experience for me.

Source @yorubalesson http://youtube.com/yorubalessons

Music in Eritrea has a Profound Background

All the nine ethnic groups possess different musical instruments, beats and rhythms. Through history, music in Eritrea, like many other parts of the world, was confined in regional premises. With the advent of media technology however, the sound of the beats and the ingenuity of folkloric music Eritrea possesses started spreading its rhythm to the rest of the country and the region. Although there is no specific time as to when and how music became a part of the Eritrean cultures, it is however definite that the history of music goes as far as centuries when it comes to folkloric music and original cultural rhythms that represent the true identity of the Eritrean cultures.

The one thing which was common between the music from the ages and those sang during the 20th century is that most of the artistic works of music played in Eritrea narrate stories of tribal heroes as well as religious and cultural holidays. The background of music in Eritrea lies deep and goes as far as centuries, but the organized and composed blast of Eritrea’s real musical talent was yet to be unfolded in the late fifties and sixties.

The First Eritrean Marching Band – 1890

Those were the times Eritrea was under consecutive colonialism and with the coming of musical instruments; recording studious as well as the mixing of traditional instruments with the imported ones, music in Eritrea had its rebirth in a more professional manner. Maintaining the cultural originality of music and infusing a strong sense of nationalism amongst citizens were the core elements of musical works during those times.  All the classic songs sang and the music played during those times is a reflection of the original Eritrean music summed up with the then state of the art instruments.

The lyrics were all written in a way to aspire the idea of nationalism and why the foreign colonizers should not be lords of our own land. Yet, all the songs were sung openly with no lyrical mischief.

With the coming of missionaries and the Italian colonization in general, the advent of music and composed musical performances set its beginning in Eritrea. Nonetheless, it took almost half a century to transform and lay grounds for the Eritrean music to a composed and more professional musical play. Hence the beginning of modern music in Eritrea had its beginning in the late 1950s where a handful of indigenous Eritrean musical talents started appearing in an organized manner, which they then called the Asmara Theatrical Association. Indeed, the music they played then and the songs they sang laid the foundation for the contemporary works of art in Eritrea. As its name implies however, the Asmara Theatrical Association mainly incorporated talents from Asmara and some from the city corners of the country.

It was a good beginning, yet music in Eritrea had another long way to go to explore the unique rhythms and beats from different corners of the country. The songs played back then mainly focused love contents metaphorically exposing their strong sense of nationalism and the need for an independent Eritrea which was then under federation with Ethiopia. All the songs sang during those times still possess a classic effect not only to the elders but to the young generation as well.

When Eritrea was put under full Ethiopian occupation in 1961, proud Eritrean fathers started an armed revolution against the Ethiopian colonizers under Emperor Haileselasie. Parallel with the armed resistance, musical revolution also became an asset to raise the awareness and build an unshakable strong sense of nationalism within the Eritrean population.

MATA – Asmara 1961

Especially with the start of the Eritrean voice of the masses in 1979, all the revolutionary songs made and composed in the terrains of armed resistance front made their way to the ears of the entire Eritrean population. The songs then had no hidden meanings as opposed to those sang from the colonized parts of Eritrea, they were fresh and liberally composed from the freed corners of Eritrea. The valiant freedom fighters had their weapons aimed against the colonizers and the musical front had another weapon that spread messages of freedom and resistance, where many fighters as they say had acquired their spirit from.  The best part of the revolutionary music was that the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front housed all the nine Eritrean ethnic groups under its wings. This freedom and bringing together of all citizens for one purpose exposed the untamed riches of beats and rhythms of all cultures. Apart from entertaining the valiant fighters, music during the revolution played a leading role in boosting the will of the perseverant fighters, raised the inclination of the local population to join the armed struggle while on the other hand terrorized and killed the spirit of the enemy.

Their composition was so strong that no one would believe they were recorded under trees or hideouts of the revolution under foothills. Indeed, those were the times all the cultures of Eritrea got their opportunity to get acquainted with modern musical instruments and spread messages of vision, courage and freedom.

Maintaining the cultural values of Eritrea was also among the major elements which were worked upon during the revolution. Maintaining the originality of the true Eritrean rhythm and modifying the folkloric musical works of all cultures into modern music without loosing their originality was amongst the major achievements. With the wake of independence in 1991, all the songs focused on the legacies of independence and the heroism of the martyred heroes during the 30 years of struggle. Sounds of independence and the developmental vision started coming from different directions including the legendary singers from the late fifties and sixties who were exiled due to colonialism.

The bonding of the revolutionary artists and the legendary ones produced an extraordinary blend and opened yet a bigger opportunity to the growth of music in Eritrea and the upbringing of young talents. The legacies of independence opened a way for the Eritrean artists to sing of any topic or idea they could come up with. The foundation of modern music laid during the sixties and the revolution saw their start go all the way to the top. Nonetheless, like every other aspect in the country, music also had to redirect its way and become the main tool of strength for Eritreans when the TPLF attempted invasion of Eritrea in 1998. The new artists who sprang with independence formed an amazing mix with the revolutionary singers in fighting the enemy with their ever strong lyrics and rhythm. Those times were the stage which really attested to the strong sense of nationalism and unity Eritrea ever boasts, and that resistance against invaders was written all over Eritreans. The resistance through music nurtured by Eritrean fathers of music was well maintained by the young artists who passionately wrote and effectively rebuffed the enemy ordeals.

Yet, music in Eritrea is not only related with revolution and resistance, although that can be mentioned as the unique Eritrea’s artistic gift, but lots of musical works were eloquently written over the years narrating stories of love, social activities, culture and beauty.

Source: www.qienit.com





Saturday, 26 December 2020

Why is Esu not Satan but Jesus!

Satan or the Devil doesn’t exist in Original African culture, so stop equating it to Esu/Ekwensu.

Yoruba, Igbo, Igala and all other Original African philosophies are based on natural duality. Meaning everything has a good and bad side even Almighty God, so you can never have a wholly evil or good figure.

African spirituality and beliefs are based on universal science and not just impossible myths, so just as you can’t separate negative from positive in an atom, the smallest particle, you can not separate it in all life and the universe. Even if we had a figure called devil, he will be both good and bad.

The African philosophy is that there is good and bad in everybody and heart, and it is up to the person to choose whatever he does, and will be paid back. This is based on the cycle of life, the laws of retributive justice. And it is the highest moral standard known to Man.

Unlike Abrahamic dogma that allows a person to abdicate responsibility for their actions by claiming it was the devil temptations or machinations. No, you are the God and Devil!

So who is Esu and other African spiritual entities misconstrued as Satan or Devil? In a ploy to mentally enslave us, they labelled Esu, our spiritual entity, that carries our messages to God as Satan/Devil, while Jesus their spiritual entity that carries their own messages to God as son of God.

The irony of it all is that the letter J didn’t exist until after 100yrs the Catholics had landed and started slavery in West Africa. The name of the Jewish messiah/messenger of God was Yeshua before 1624, which after the introduction of J became Joshua.

So why the change especially when considering that this name had existed for 1500yrs. Was it a case that on getting to the true Garden of Eden in West Africa, where they relished and wanted to copy its sugarcane, gold and people, they converted to Esu, Yorubas messenger to God, who had blessed us with more than jedi jedi milk and honey of Joshua’s God?

The similarity between Esu and Jesus can’t be ignored because the Mediterranean peoples don’t pronounce J as a first letter in a word nor S as a last letter of a word, so Jesus is Esu.

Astrologically, they are both represented by the planet Mercury, the planet next to the Sun which represents God, and there is no way to God(Sun) without passing through the first planet Mercury or bitting around it.

The most annoying thing is our people that adopted Abrahamic beliefs couldn’t look for good comparisons like Jesus is Esu, and their racial inferiority complex had to make them match our best with the Abrahamic worst.

Ultimately, it is up to you to free yourself from mental slavery as Esu is the key to our information Retrieval system, the oldest knowledge bank also known as Ifa-Afa-Iha-Eha-Fa, shared by all Indigenous Original African groups in South and Middlebelt Nigeria, as well as across the Africa. From it came modern medicine and other technologies including the 256 pulses used to create the first computer.

As long as you are miseducated to call Esu, your own messenger to God, a wholly evil figure, you can never do well. No be curse my people. God can’t answer your prayers as the Oyinbo that changed Yeshua to Jesus realized. You will continue to be fooled with propaganda and selective justice that makes you choose the wrong leaders. Esu’s most important lesson was to acknowledge that all information is from a specific perspective. Give yourself brain.

We move…. with cultural Enlightenment because if you don’t know where you are coming from, you won’t know where you are going.

The writer is Esu because he was born in Virgo like all other prophets, or artists like Michael Jackson, Beyonce etc.

Source: http://aumedia.info/aumedia/?p=3259

WHENCE COMETH MY HELP?

The fact is, at some point in life we all need help. No one can successfully climb the ladder of success by himself without a helping hand from some quarters.

So many people are looking for help today and they do not know where that help is coming from. To some, those they see as their helper are in reality their mocker who is waiting to take advantage of their slightest mistake or weakness. Many placed their trusts in friends and families as their helper. Providence may not however design it to be so.

Consanguinity has no correlation with mercy, only the appointed will be benevolent to you. Look up to Olodumare, He alone knows who your helper is and with appropriate sacrifice, will direct his paths to meet yours.

Listen to what Ifa says in Idi Osa:

Ìdin sàá, ìdin sòó; the consultant Awo for Orí cast Ifá for the Orí; and gave a part to barber's Knife – the clipper. Ori was crying of having no helper. Ori was asked to offer two cocks and a hen as sacrifice, so he can find a helper. The barber's Knife was also asked to offer two cocks, a whetstone and a bowl of water as sacrifice; because he was to be given an assignment, so he will complete it successfully.

Ori offered his sacrifice without wasting time. But the Knife, refused to offer his, on time. By divine arrangement, the Knife was called upon to come to come and assist in beautifying Orí.

The Knife did a perfect job halfway, and became blunt. He went back to the Priests. He was told his sacrifice remains unchanged from what was listed yesterday; it is only the Priests rewards that have multiplied.  The Knife also brought items for sacrifice and offered the prescribed sacrifices.

Then he went back to the Ori and was able to perfectly complete his assignment.

Orí was singing and the Knife, rejoicing. They praised their Awo, Awo praised Ifa. Ifa praised Olodumare the most High.

Ìdin sàá, ìdin sòó; the consultant Awo for Orí cast Ifá for the Orí; and gave a part to barber's Knife – the clipper. Ori was crying of having no helper. He was asked to offer sacrifice.

For making the prescribed sacrifice. For giving the necessary offering to Esu, come and meet us at the port of blessing. The port of blessing is the lot of the Sacred Palm in Ife.

When the hair is overgrown, send an emissary to the Knife.

LESSONS:

1. Cry out for help! Do not be too arrogant or too shy to sincerely ask for help when you need one. No matter how big the head is, he humbles himself before the barber’s knife.  

Be humble.

2. Pray for divine direction. How and where you pray matters. There are many wolves in sheep's skin today who will only add to your burden. 

Be careful.

3. Offer the needful sacrifices – may be in terms of taking steps. Example as in making necessary calls, keeping productive appointments. 

Be proactive.

4. Make the work of your helper simpler by helping yourself first and play to the rules. Give accurate information and abide by instructions. Be diligent.

5. No matter what, your divine helper will never get tired or frustrated, as to abandon your project halfway. He will put even his life on the line to accomplish his divine assignment. 

Be hopeful.

6. Always show appreciation: to God and all those you meet on your way to success. Everyone have one or two contributions to your success. Even your enemies, they teach you to be on guard. 

Be appreciative.

May Oba Aseda send to you all, the Divine helpers of your destiny.

Aboru aboye.

By Oluwo Wande Akọmolafe 

First written in 2017.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...