Reading through African history, you can’t but marvel how a section in every Black African ethnolinguistic group tries to justify their existence by claiming foreign origins – Mecca (Yoruba), Jerusalem (Igbo), Yemen (Jukun), Baghdad (Hausa) etc. Yet there is no single genetic, linguistic or cultural trait to justify these outlandish claims.
Original Africans aka Niger-Congo ethnolinguistic family are a continuum of dialects, so there is no way a group jumped over others to get to its current location.
Yoruba/Igbo have no linguistic evidence of ever living outside Nigeria since they speak tonal languages. There are no original African local words for grassland grains and food like rice.
Their DNA is 99percent Niger-Kongo unlike Fulani with only 47% and the rest being Asiatic. Yoruba and Igbos are the epicentre of Sickle cell because it developed as a natural resistance to Southern Nigeria malaria infested swamps at the beginning of humanity. There is no way a group could have migrated into Southern Nigeria without the sickle gene and not be annihilated. This was why our coasts were labeled the Whitemans Grave.
Apart from a few leaders and traders that followed the migratory roots to Nile and returned, the general population has always been locally rooted like the hills and forests.
This social phenomenon is not only historic but still prevalent in contemporary Black societies. Nowadays, it’s called the Bintu (Been to) syndrome – I have been to London, been to NYC. We take pride in every other land and people but ourselves.
Either for ghetto fabulousness or corporate acceptance, the Negro must show some foreign links – Alhaji, Americanah, London trained Barber etc. Little wonder there can be no Black unity when majority are claiming Bintu foreign.
This syndrome is not only limited to continental Africans, but also the Black African Diaspora. Many African Americans and Afro Brazillians will hold onto minute traces of other races in their makeup. “My great great grandfather was quarter Cherokee.” Even when it is obvious they came from West Africa, many would argue for Ethiopian and ancient Egyptian origins. Instead of being full original Black African, some will say they were Afro-Arabic Moors.
There is now a whole movement claiming they were on the American continent shelf when it broke away from Africa 66million years ago, despite 100% certainty that the modern human didn’t evolve till about 200,000yrs ago. That’s how deep the self hatred goes.
Some observers attribute this cultural anomaly to global White supremacy dogma and imperialism that imbued racial inferiority complex through the ages. The initial brute force of Asiatic imperialism made it compulsory to adopt the conquerors way or die. Euro-Asian imperialism graduated into using religion as the tool of cultural imperialism and wrote religious books that bastardised and discarded true Black history. You either believe and claim to be a descendant of their God, or you a pagan, unbeliever that deserves to be enslaved and killed.
The Afro-Asiatic imperialists over the last 1000yrs have waged a war of cultural imperialism against Original African identity, the Niger-Congo ethnolinguistic family. Starting in Bornu around 800AD, it spread to the Sahel population center known as Hausaland through Daura. Hausa, the largest Afro-Asiatic language after Arabic in Africa, had its history changed to one which labelled its Original African cousins as Banza Bakwai – bastard peoples. A classic case of cultural disorientation and racial inferiority complex.
True to the proverb that a river that forgets its source will run dry, the Hausa are about the poorest Black Africans in the world with an extreme poverty rate of over 80%. Culture is the way you do things, politics is the way you organize to do things, while economics is the means to achieve things. The Hausa loss of culture has not only made them the poorest Black Africans, they are also the most political disenfranchised as every single town or unit of theirs is ruled by Fulanis that invaded and tool over their traditional institutions.
The Fulanis advanced to the core of the Original African homeland in Southern Nigeria that housed the oldest and two most populous Original African (Niger-Kongo) ethnolinguistic groups – Yoruba and Igbo, but were held back at the edges of the rainforest until the arrival of the British colonists.
The British brought their own cultural imperialism to complicate Original African cultural disorientation. Knowing the value of cultural imperialism, the British broke ranks with Roman Catholic and King James wrote the Bible in his own language and God in his own image.
With colonization, the British adopted the incorrect Afro-asiatic labelling of some original African groups called tribes and history. Instead of studying the Original African sphere a little deeper to understand that we were a bona-fide cultural sphere that basically developed the first knowledge bank and religion, which we still shared, the foreign interlopers regarded them as disparate tribes with no advanced sociopolitical organization.
The rot at the core of the original Black African heartland had started before British colonization, since the Benin had adopted the Portuguese church around 1506 while Oyo Empire allowed it’s first mosque in 1550, discarding and later challenging their spiritual and cultural headquarters, Ile Ife where Oranmiyan that created their ruling dynasties came from.
With colonization and sharecropping implemented after slavery across the Black Race and the Church being the only sociopolitical organization that provided education and acceptance into the colonial system, the more Eurocentric in history and outlook the greater the chances of upward social mobility. The highest Prizes were given to professionals, at core of original African culture, based on colonial parameters, like Prof Soyinka, an English literature professor.
So, Original Africans in the South learnt how to speak, dress, eat and tie their cultural origins to the English gentleman. The cultural disorientation was so total that the left hand believed by African ancestors to be closest to the heart and therefore the clean and good hand of social grace, became the bad rude hand, while the right hand used by our ancestors to clean their asses became the one to eat and shake.
In the North, where the British had left the newcomer Jihadists in control of the huge swathe of territory composed of both Afro-Asians and Original Africans, the Original Africans of the Middlebelt had no choice but to undergo a process of Hausanization/Afro-Asiatic integration to enjoy social mobility and acceptance. No jobs, no love or anything for pagans and cultural bastards.
The cultural disorientation at the heart of the Original African Black heartland, not only made it nearly impossible for cultural unity and nationalism to propel Nigeria, it had ramifications across Black Africa and Diaspora. Without a strong Original African leadership platform to articulate and disseminate a proud robust Original African image, Blacks across the world became attachees to other cultural platforms. And the whole Black Race became Bintus.
Many cultural and sociopolitical Original African leaders are aware of the problem, but do nothing due to lack of ideas, money and short termism. Many are scared by the immerse scale of the job required to rollback centuries of cultural imperialism and brainwashing, while some want to keep the status quo because their social status and prosperity is tied to it.
Unless the leadership garner resources and time to articulate and proactively push an Original African identity, the Black Race will continue to lag behind. In Nigeria, there would be no original African unity across the Southbelt, so Afro-Asiatic and Western interests will continue to divide and rule, exploit and relegate. Without a unified cultural identity of Niger Kongo ethnolinguistic groups, even the largest groups, Yoruba and Igbo, won’t have the effective numbers for their separatist movements, restructuring or any tangible political aspiration.
If Yorubas and Igbos don’t shun their sibling rivalry and wake up to their global responsibility to articulate Original African cultural identity, linkages and aspirations in Nigeria, Africa and the Blackworld, the Black Race would not rise. Instead of improving, we shall retrograde under ultra-conservative governments as witnessed in Nigeria, Brazil, USA etc.
We shall continue to be ghetto fabulous Bintus, been nowhere and going nowhere.
