The greatest mental blockage of an Original African is the definition of his identity by foreign cultural platforms.
Yoruba, the word that defines the largest original African group, is an Afro-Arabic word. The Yoruba word for Black, Dudu, has been equated to excreta in English.
Jukun is an Hausa word meaning person, while the great multicultural empire, Kwararafa was a Hausa collective term for a coalition of Original African ethnicities that extended from Cross River to Southern Kaduna.
The Kwararafa peoples united under the cultural and spiritual leadership of the Aku Uka of Wukari, to challenge the advance of Islamic imperialists and slavery raids by attacking Zaria, Kano, Katsina and Bornu Islamic citystates.
Before the advent of Afro-Asiatic cultural platforms, Black Africans shared the same cultural foundations and identity.
The world’s first family evolved in the Ife Forest Reserves, as those now labelled Yoruba diverged into Igala, who diverged into Nupe, Igbo and Idoma to form the Volta-Niger linguistic family, whose social organization was articulated by the same Original African information retrieval system aka Afa-Ifa-Iha-Efa.
Over time around the Niger and Benue Rivers confluence, the original Africans cultural melting pot evolved into the Benue-Congo ethnolinguistic family. Jukun, whose Original African name is Apa, is a combination of the Yoruba, Igala, Idoma, Nupe, Igbo and others during the Nok civilization.
This lingua franca, the Jukuniod family that covered Cross River to Southern Kaduna and Bornu, spread up the Benue River into Cameroon to form the Beti-Pahuin family, then down River Sangha through Gabon into Ugbangi-Kongo River basins, to spread to the Rift Valley area, where they became the Marshariki Bantus that spread throughout East and Southern Africa.
The Original African cultural platform that spread out of Ife and the Southern rainforests into Nok grassland civilization continued to Lake Chad’s Sao civilization that connected to the Lower Nile civilizations of Egypt and Ethiopia into Southern Asia.
However, original African geopolitical experience changed from around 2000BC when Euro-Asians came out of the Central Asian mountains caves with metal weapons to overwhelm and rollback Original African cultural platforms through Egypt down to Lake Chad Sao civilization.
The Sao civilization of the Sara people, overwhelmed by the influx of Northern Berber immigrants, withered and transformed into the Kanem, which later expanded further to the west of Lake Chad into Bornu empire, forcing Original Africans southwards.
The insidious advance of Afro-Asian cultural imperialism that destroyed and obscured Original African cultural and sociopolitical structures was a slow process best highlighted with 250yr Oya trends.
Arabic cultural imperialism starts with a mosque thats created to cater to foreigners, but insidiously spreads over the first 250yrs (Bornu 750AD, Hausa 1000AD, Oyo 1500AD) after which it takes over political leadership and discards Original African institutions (Bornu 1000AD, Hausa 1250, Oyo/Ilorin 1770), then lastly leads a local brand of Islamic imperialism (Bornu 1250, Hausa/Nupe 1500, Oyo/Tinubu 2007 Northern Alliances?). Every 250yrs original African structures not well rooted and protected were blown further afield by the winds of Oya.
The primary motivation for the Afro-Asiatic imperialists is economic – Original African resources and slaves. Starting from a single mosque, overlooked due to the traditional Original African tenets of freedom of worship, Afro-Arabic cultural imperialism spreads till it reaches a critical mass of the population that can be influenced with moralist propaganda to overthrow the true leadership.
The Afro-Asiatic influences were to infiltrate the Northwestern population center through Daura to capture the Hausa citystates that practiced and was organized around Bori, the Original African state religion.
This is captured in the Bayajidda myth whereby the Sakin, snake, is killed and the Daurama, the Hausa Bori queen is married to an Afro-Arabic conqueror.
The Original African cultural and sociopolitical leadership is demonized and a new creed is instituted against cultural norms, rights and liberties painted as evil. The original African history is whitewashed and a new Afro-Asiatic version of history that devalues the essence of the Original African is institutionalized and imbued into the collective consciousness.
Daura, being on the Northern caravan route between Upper Niger (Mali/Songhai empires) and Bornu empire, became the source of the new Hausa Afro-Asiatic cultural identity, while Gobir to its West was the Hausa boundary citystate against Songhai. Kano was a major caravan junction, where goods from Lower and Upper Niger met, while Zaria launched slave raids into original African territories of central Nigeria.
The unconverted Hausa called the Maguzawa and other Original Africans of the former Nok civilization fled from the Islamized centers of Bornu, Kano and Katsina. The Islamists were to ransack Oyo on River Niger and Kwararafa in the Benue Valley in the early 1500s, which required new strategies to counter and stop the advance of Islamic imperialism.
The Oyo Royal court that moved to Igboho after the Nupe invasion, was to return to Oyo Ile with a more militarist approach that saw the creation of Aare Ona Kakanfo military structure and use of Calvary.
The Original Africans along the River Benue tributaries and rivers that rise from the Jos highlands to water the vast central Nigerian grasslands, collectively known as the Kwararafa, moved their capital to Wukari, a better strategic fort.
In addition to the leopard totem used across Southern and Central Nigeria, the crocodile was a totem from Adamawa to River Kaduna. The word Kaduna means crocodile.
The Benue-Congo family under the cultural leadership of Aku Uka waged war against the Islamists, but unfortunately the older Volta-Niger family lost its way with questionable alliances and waged war within itself. Oyo was to strike alliances for the supply of horses for its new cavalry army from the North, while ignoring the insidious effect of Islamic cultural imperialism within its territory.
Ooni of Ife is the spiritual leader of the Volta Benue family, as Oranmiyan an Ife Prince had set up the royal lineages of Benin and Oyo, while the Igala that diverged into Nupe and Igbo accept Yoruba linkages.
However, the cultural unity and identity of the world’s first family, the Volta-Benue ethnolinguistic family began to unravel due to growth of the sister empires, Oyo and Benin, and their questionable alliances.
The first Church was established around 1506 in Benin, the greatest rainforest Black empire, and around 1506 the first mosque was setup in Oyo, Yorubas frontier empire, resulting over the next 250yrs sociopolitical and cultural implosion.
The Benin amicable welcome of European Jesuits and traders in 1480s, took a drastic turn when demand for slaves increased with Colombus ‘discovery’ of the Americas. Though Benin expelled and banned Europeans for 100yrs, the Volta-Niger subregion was plunged into slaves for arms anarchy, which made Oyo to expand towards the sea, contesting with Dahomey, Allada, Benin and others.
Instead of Oyo Empire pushing northwards to curtail Afro-asiatic imperialists, it ignored the insidious Islamization of its territories as mosques spread to Iwo and beyond. Although Afro-Asiatic influences also took root in Kwararafa, the original African focus was to wage retaliatory attacks on foreign strongholds of the Islamists.
The neglect of the insidious Afro-Asiatic influences in Oyo led to the corruption of the Aare Ona Kakanfo military structure and the fall of Oyo to Jihadists in Oyo Ile and Ilorin. Though Yorubas briefly united to defeat and stop the advance of Fulani Jihadists around Oshogbo, Yorubas fell into greater disunity as the fight for political supremacy continued instead of retaliatory attacks against the North like the Kwararafa.
Kwararafa eventually fell and was broken apart after continuous pressure from Bornu and later Fulani Jihadists. Adamawa and the Gongola riverbasin was taken and placed under a new Fulani inspired emirate, Muri. Kwararafa also faced pressure from Tiv, new migrants from the Cameroun mountains, probably caused by the European inspired slave trade on the Calabar coast.
With hindsight, the original African heartland would have stood a better chance if the Ife Volta-Benue family had joined the Kwararafa peoples in repelling the advance of Afro-Arabic imperialism. It was the Original African alliance that prevented the Bornu Islamic empire and Fulani Jihadist from crossing river Benue to the South to create an emirate like it was done in Ilorin.
Despite Oyos military machinations and alliances with the Islamists and White colonists, it became the greatest loser of people and land, allowing the Fulani Jihadists take more original African territory in just a few centuries than Bornu could in the East over a thousand years. The Yoruba infighting led to the longest Civil War, stopped only by the British colonization.
Unfortunately, the lessons have not been learnt in the new British colonial design, Nigeria.
The African independence movement was fought on two platforms – Pan Africanist and Pan Arabic. Though the Pan Africanist movement was made up mainly by Original Africans (Niger-Congo ethnolinguistic) groups and was more effective than the Pan Arabic movement, the Pan Africanist movement broke up with infighting among the Volta-Benue groups – Yorubas and Igbos, while the Pan Arabic group remained united and favorites of the British colonists aiming for indirect rule.
The Pan Arabic group was to win power and control Nigeria because the Original African pan Africanists that accounted for 70% didn’t have a well articulated cultural identity and platform.
The Yorubas, Edo and Igbos basically lost their original African cultural identity and need to trace their last common ancestors to Ife and unify their knowledge banks and cultural platforms. The Igalas, the Original African crossroads, must strive to unite the Yoruba, Nupe, Igbo, Idoma and Jukuns, while Jukuns, the gateway to Africa, must strive to reignite the Kwararafa spirit, especially across the Middlebelt, first by restarting the Puje, the annual celebrations of all Kwararafa monarchs.
The paramount kings must lead the movement, cultural revolution, by clearly stating our cultural origins and linkages, tallying them with genetic and other scientific evidence.
To free Original Africans from mental and cultural slavery, original African monarchs, our cultural custodians, must spell out a well articulated original African cultural platform on which politicians, economists, doctors, engineers and other professionals can build an original African perspective in their professional sphere.
The lack of an original African cultural platform has led to the waste of our traditional knowledge banks and inability to adopt foreign technologies properly. It has led to our poor work ethic,anti social attitudes and feelings of alienation in existing political systems. It is said, ‘Give me a place to stand, (a platform) and I will move the world’. This applies to every aspect of our existence although the political and economic realms are the more obvious.
An original African platform is lacking at the national negotiations table dominated by Fulani Islamists and Western colonists, because the cultural leadership and intelligentsia have failed to provide an original African platform to arm our politicians with a narrative tying origins, linkages and aspirations, in the absence of which they operate as selfish free agents.
The same appies in the medical field, where the lack of a robust Original African platform on herbs and medical procedures is absent. Also, we fall for propaganda and mental slavery because we don’t understand the original African concept on information confused with the wrong equation with Esu and Devil.
So the Ooni, Obi, Attah, Jaja, Aku Uka, Ochi’Idoma and others need to come together as fathers of our cultural identities and teach us the truth of our cultural origins and linkages, instead of leaving us to be labelled by jaundiced foreign perspectives as bastards, Banza Bakwai, Niggers or whatever name given to those who lack home training of their culture.
This spirit of cultural information, unity and direction is aptly known as the Ife Kwararafa spirit. This is the spirit that will take over the destiny of Nigeria and the Black Race and steer us to global Black ascendancy.
Charity they say begins at home.
