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Oduduwa:
Saving History From Ethnic Propaganda By Chukwu Eke I
do not know why the Yorubas are so unsettled by the recent claim made by the Oba of Benin to the effect that Oduduwa was a felon
expelled from Benin kingdom. The story is not new. The Binis have known
and told it before now. I know because I heard it two years ago from a
Bini friend of mine. My friendship with the Bini prince has been oiled
by my interest in the history of his people. On
that day I had asked him if, as the Yorubas claim, Eweka, the first Oba
of Bini after the dethronement of Ogiso, was indeed a grandson of
Oduduwa. The story he told me varied a little from the Oba's. In that
conceit typical of the Binis, he chuckled sardonically before telling me
that Oduduwa escaped from Bini prison and went to found the Ife dynasty.
Is it possible that the Yorubas have not heard this Bini version of
Oduduwa story before now? Or
is it a case of being rattled because the almighty Oba of Benin has lent
his voice to it, raising it high to the bookshelves from mere mumbling
of village folks. Even if the story is `revisionist' as they claim, is
it so difficult to swallow a little dose of their own pill of historical
propaganda from the Binis? On
the face of it, one can easily pitch one's tent with the Binis in this
Oduduwa saga as Oba Akiolu of Lagos. Besides having lesser of the Yoruba
sin of making spurious historical claims, the Binis have at least
identified Oduduwa with a real name, Ekalederhan, while the Yoruba
Oduduwa remains a mythical entity without real name except the
descriptive words used for him by the autochthon Igbos he invaded and
colonised. But the Bini version also fails to achieve a clear
historical perspective on the man and how he became the overlord over
the natives of Southwest. As the Yoruba version, it is exclusionist. It
then follows that to know, not just the true Oduduwa but the
ethno-cultural circumstances of Southwest before him, we must set aside
the contending stories of the Binis and the Yorubas and go to reliable
oral traditions and books written without tribe in mind. What
indeed is the fact about Oduduwa? To answer this question we need to
acquaint ourselves with the political development in Southwest Nigeria
at about A.D. 1100. According to Yoruba oral tradition, the
aboriginal inhabitants of Southwest were Igbos. One
morning, when the dews were still heavy on the leaves because the sun
had not ascended their sky, they woke up to discover that their land had
been invaded by a foreign army. The fight that ensued was fierce. The
Igbos were brave but the invaders had more sophisticated weapon of war.
The Oyo and Ife areas which, it seems, did not have dense population of
the Igbos, were the first to fall to the enemy army. Here, in Ife to be
exact, they established their headquarters, installed their leader as
king and, as the Fulanis, used the natives against their own in other
parts. In
the Ekiti areas, where the Igbos were large, coherent and strong, the
invaders were given a good sum for their money. They were held back for
a long time by the `Igbo warriors who masqued themselves with raffia,'
until they too capitulated, not to the superior fire power of the
invaders, but to the bottom power of a certain Moremi, who was to the `Yorubas'
what Delila was to the Philistines. Oduduwa was the leader of the
invaders. Having
conquered the native Igbos of Southwest, he appointed his lieutenant as
Oba in all the towns and became the overlord of the Southwest. And `the
defeat and conquest of the Igbo in Southwest Nigeria was celebrated by
the Yoruba at the annual Eid festival' (The kingdom of the Yoruba-Robert
Smith, 3rd edition, University of Wisconsin Press). Writing
under the heading, `The Igbo origin of Egba Yoruba,'
Ishaq Al-Sulaiman, an African American researcher, had this to say:
Southwest Nigeria marks the location of the present day Igbo tribe.
However initially the Igbo were the rulers of the entire South including
Southwest which is currently classified as Yoruba territory. The Yoruba
first entered the Southwest part of Nigeria as invaders and coloniser of
the original Igbo inhabitants. On
the spread of the Igbos, Dr. Fadipe N. A. wrote in his book, 'The
Sociology of The Yoruba,' thus: “It is tolerable certain that
the Ekiti people, the greater bulk of Ijesa people and to some extent
Ondo belong to this older culture group. It is possible that the group
comprises much larger number of tribes that those just specified, which
is to be regarded as minimum denotation term for the early wave of
immigrant……” What
is the meaning of Oduduwa? As I said earlier, the name Oduduwa or Odua
for short is an Igbo phrase - Odudu wa or Odu wa, all
meaning 'their leader.' `Odudu'
in Igbo is `one who leads' or `leader.'
`Wa' in Asaba Igbo and some other Igbos of Delta,
Abia and the Wawa area of Enugu and Ebonyi States is `them.' The
`defeated Igbo of Southwest Nigeria' could have, on identifying the
leader of their tormentors, say among themselves: `Nkaa bu
onye odudu wa or `Nkaa bu Odu wa' (That is
their leader). Anybody
whose mind has not been foreclosed by ethnic bias must see this meaning
more tenable than `knowledge of how to behave,' which some Yoruba
meta-historians postulated as the meaning of Oduduwa. The
next question to consider is whether the Igbos colonised by Oduduwa and
his people in the Southwest were of the same stock as the Igbos of
Southeast and Southsouth. I was asked this question by the writer, Akin
Adesokan, who is now living in The United States of America. He traced his ancestry to the authocton Igbos of Southwest but asked me if I thought his Igbo ancestor were of the same ethno-cultural make up as my own Igbo of Southeast. My answer was `Yes,' `because in the first place in the absence of written records going back to the childhood of the world when the Igbo emerged as a culture, scholars have been persuaded to treat linguistic relationships as providing by far the most dependable evidence of historical connection……' Thus wrote the erudite professor of history and the first indigenous awardee of doctorate degree by the University of Ibadan, Professor A. E. Afigbo.
I am convinced that I have been able to provide such linguistic
connection between the Igbo of Southwest and the Igbo of Southaest and
Southsouth. But
if the Yorubas think otherwise, I will still refer them to their friend,
the poet and philosopher, Odia Ofeimum. In a thought provoking article
he wrote recently, he had said among other things that `the Igbos and
the Yorubas speak the same language apart from the borrowed words' (the
words brought in by Oduduwa). Unless they think also that the poet lied. In
addition, the Igbominas who are among the Southwest towns that retain
their Igbo name, have another name - Omu Ara. They say it is in honour
of their founder, a woman named Omu. `Omu' in Igbo means `one who gives
birth' and by implication `woman'. In Ekiti State, there is still a town
that celebrates New Yam Festival like their brothers in Southeast. These
are besides the fact that the Igbo and the `Yoruba belong to the same
language group - kwa. Even
the word 'Yoruba' metamorphosed from a derogatory phrase
the Igbos had used for the Oyo people. Before Oduduwa and his Obas
put the whole Southwest to rout, the Oyos, who thought they were
enjoying Oduduwa's civilisation, would call the Igbos 'bush people.'
The Igbos, to pay them back their insult, would call them
'Oyo Oru Oba' (Oyo, slaves of the Oba). That is how the name Yoruba came
about. From
the foregoing it is clear that the Oduduwa children have deliberatly
revised and falsified the history of Southwest Nigeria for the sole aim
of covering the Igbo root of most Southwesterners, thereby denying
Nigeria the long-sought-for unity. What unity could we not achieve if
the Oduduwa people had not denied a larger population of Southwest
people the knowledge of their blood affinity with the Igbos of the
Southeast. Would we not be having a real handshake across the Niger? But
truth is like smoke which nobody buries and celebrate victory for a long
time. It must surely show itself indomitable. It
is on this understanding that I think the The Comet
Newspaper deserves our pity for the editorial they wrote on Monday, May
11, 2004. That editorial epitomised how lowly a people could go to
falsify and revise history without recourse to any oral or written
evidence. The writer must be one of the die-hard Yoruba Igbo-phobist
whose education has not purged them of the fear of the Igbo. Besides its
glaring Igbo-phobia, the editorial was empty. For
instance, while it conjured up all the ancient city states under the sun
and even those in Mars and claimed Yoruba affinity with them, it never
mentioned Igbo. The only place it mentioned Igbo in bracket was as a
disclaimer. It said that those the Oduduwa people invaded were 'Ugbo
(not be able to discover that Igbo Ukwu arts had existed for more than
four centuries before Ife/Benin, that Ife/Benin difused from Igbo Ukwu
and not the other way round. My
last words: history is no longer ““myths that have no
proofs but only can be believed by those who wish to believe them.””
History, oral or written, must be back up by related disciplines of
archeology,
linguistic and anthropology.
Yours Faithfully
Chukwu Eke
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