When you put your childrens education in the hands of a stranger, how do they learn of their lineage and heritage. Generations down the line, your descendants would go to war amongst themselves while adopt the stranger as family. This is the sad state of Original indigenous Africans whose forefathers allowed colonists to miseducate them. Instead of education, the colonists committed epistemicide, the killing of the traditional knowledge of our origins, linkages and philosophies. Oyinbo turned the world upside down for the African.
We are no tribes but a continuum of dialects that spread from Ife all the way to South Africa. The word Yoruba doesn’t exist in Ifa, instead Yoruba, Igbos, Ijaw, Igala are all children of Ifa, and woe be unto an Ifa-Afa-Iha-Fa-Efa descendant that attacks or deprives any other child of Ifa. Every single Yoruba, Igbo, Igala and other Original African town was established based on Ifa. No one can point to exactly where Yoruba land or Igboland starts or stops. It was the European colonists that balkanized the Original African civilization into competing divisive tribes by derailing the 16 sector knowledge bank that we all had accumulated knowledge from observation of natural and social phenomena over 89,000 years. We were one people that evolved from Ife and spread across Africa.
There is now genetic and cultural anthropological evidence to back surviving oral histories initially ridiculed by Western academia that Igbos migrated out of Ife. Not only the Igbos, but Ijaws claim that their progenitor named, Ojo, later corrupted into Ijo and Ijaw, was the first born of Oduduwa who migrated with Ogun out of Ife Ooyelagbo, to investigate, navigate and habitate the swamps and delta. The Igala are the genetically closest to Yoruba followed by Igbo. The Jukun of Kwararafa, the Middlebelt Confederacy of Middlebelt groups have historical accounts of splitting with Yorubas. None of us Waka alone into South and Middlebelt.
Ooni of Ife is recognized by the Nigerian nationstate as the head of the Original African civilization of South and Middlebelt, while the Sultan of Sokoto is the recognized head of the Northern Afroasiatic civilization, which is why Ooni of Ife and Sultan of Sokoto are the co-chairman of Nigerian Traditional Council. Unfortunately, while the Sultan of Sokoto can unite the Northwest Sokoto Caliphate with the Northeast Bornu Empire to establish a successful Afroasiatic powerbase, the miseducated academic and political rascals continue to sabotage our paramount cultural leader, Ooni of Ife, Oonrisa Adeyeye Ogunwusi that has stated clearly, backed with Odu Ifas, cultural and genetic anthropological evidence, that the South and Middlebelt peoples share the same origins. Unlike the Afroasiatic civilizations that came in different waves just a little over a thousand years but have attacked and conquered our lands from South Kaduna to Oyo Ile, there is no record of war between Yoruba and Igbos in tens of thousands years of coexistence. The Oba of Benin respects Arole Oduduwa of Ife, the Obi of Onitsha respects the Oba of Benin because they know we are one family, but the Oyinbo educated push the divisive tribal rhetoric and bickering.
Southern and Middlebelt psuedo elites whose education and relevance is tied to our colonists resorted to disrespecting our cultural leadership. They are quick to bask in the pride of calling Ile Ife the origin of humanity, but can’t accept that Igbos, Ijaw and other indigenous Africans also came from there. Instead of listening to their cultural father that wants to unite and uplift their civilizational powerbase, they push Pan Tribalistic perspectives fed them by colonists, and go begging for political power from those of the Afroasiatic North that listen to their uniting civilizational leader, Sultan of Sokoto, to create their own powerbase. This is why the North don’t respect our Western miseducated cultural almajiri.
Our inability to recognize the obvious fact that Yoruba, Igbos and others are close genetic and cultural relations all stems from the denigration and departure from our culture. If all Southerners and Middlebelters had retained their Ifa-Afa-Iha-Fa-Efa, it would have been obvious even to the illiterate that we are all related, just like illiterate Christians and Muslims identify their co-believers. No matter how Western educated, Afroasiatic scholars hold their own civilization as superior. Unlike our own Professors, academic and opinion leaders that become pompous, believing that their Western education that couldn’t teach them their genetic and cultural origins, or effectively transfer technology to them, was superior to their own traditional knowledge bank. The irony was the Original African knowledge bank was the source of Western philosophy, medicine, history and other disciplines up to the computer technology based on the 256 electromagnetic pulses of Ifa.
Some scholars argue that the disunity and degradation of the Original African civilization started not with European colonists that wrote the ‘tribal’ Bibles that institutionalized the divisive Pan Tribalistic worldviews, but when from 1400s some kingdoms dropped the 80,000yr Osun brotherhood philosophy that united all of us at the source, replacing it with the Ogun gangster Paradise philosophy 500 years ago that embolden them to run shod over their neighbors and challenge the Source for supremacy. Bringing about an unsustainable Might is Right philosophy to replace our original Right is Might mantra
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Another issue was the adulteration and killing of the economic foundations of our Original African Civilization. Every civilization is buoyed by the economics that enables all adherents to profit. Kolanuts and beads were at the heart of our Original African Civilization upon which huge trade was conducted between Yoruba, Edos, Igbos and others. The Ife Segilola beads were to indigenous Africans like what the rosary and cross was to Christians. To destablize our civilization, the imperialists began to make fake imitations of our beads, kolanuts and clothing. Our sacred kolanuts were turned to multi billion dollar Coca Cola and soft drink industry. Our beads economy was faked and the huge income to Ife was diverted to England through new beads industries. Our clothing Aso Oke industry was destroyed and it’s income diverted to USA where Cotton became king used to industrialize. So with the economic foundation of our civilization destroyed, our people became economically reliant on the Abrahamic civilizations, that demanded that they left Original African civilizational knowledge for the colonists knowledge. Our rich and elites were made and dictated by the West, our scholars and leaders were ennobled by the West, and therefore denigrated our cultural leadership and prevented it’s leadership from reuniting our civilization as Ooni of Ife wanted.
To gain riches, recognition and power from the external civilizations, they were made to denigrate and disunite their own African civilization. Instead of identifying as Original indigenous Africans based on Ifa-Afa-Iha-Fa-Efa and African spiritual sciences, they identified as Southern and Northern Christians which couldn’t bring about unity or full support of the Christian powers that were genetic cousins of the Islamists. Yorubas were mainly Anglicans while Igbos were Catholics, transferring the schism between the two Abrahamic sects to their tribal interrelationships. With the waning of European colonial influence, they both opted for the Christian prosperity sects of the new American Pentecostalism. It was only after long suffering under the North hegemony, which had produced a flawed constitution and political economy, that our true leaders united the South and Middlebelt with our common aspirations of Justice, Equity and Freedom, not knowing that we shared the same aspirations because we shared the same civilizational origins and attributes.
However to breakup the recent crystallization of an Original African powerbase, the North played an unfair game of divide and rule by backing Tinubu against Peter Obi, who was backed by the South and Middlebelt sociopolitical leadership alliance based on merit, equity and justice through rotational presidency. Yorubas had already earned their turn through Obasanjo, and the Afroasiatic North knew backing Tinubu would drive a wedge among the two oldest, most populous and prosperous Original African groups whose unity was pivotal to the uplifting of the Black Race. To drive the division, even after the flawed election they increased anti-Igbo rhetoric which won’t only drive away Igbos but all other Southern groups from Yorubaland. To an average Yoruba, the North starts from Ilorin and Igboland starts from Edo.
The painful part is that ignorant Yorubas pushing this xenophobic rhetoric can’t think deep enough to know they are endangering Lagos prosperity by driving away investors, employers and workers. They can’t see that if any tribal war starts, it would only occur in Yorubaland and give us the tag of being inhospitable wicked people. This is how bad our miseducation is and it is not only limited to Yorubas. If Lagos was in Igboland, the Igbos would do the same thing because that is how colonial mentality makes you hate your reflections. Yorubas versus Igbo, Jukun versus Tiv and all across Africa. But the most disheartening is the miseducation between Yoruba and Igbo, being the largest and oldest that should unite their civilization.
Unfortunately, Ooni of Ife no longer issues curses on those that sabotage our civilizational collective. But enough is enough, especially in this new 2000yr Age of Shango, and I, Prince Justice of the oldest surviving palace in Black Africa, who has worked for decades for Original African civilizational unity calls on our ancestors that Any Yoruba that unfairly targets Igbos or any other Original African in Yorubaland, may Shango the essence of Justice strike them with thunder, may Oya, the essence of revolutionary change sweep them into the dustbin of History, and Obaluaye, the essence of structure trouble their generational structure for preventing or harassing Ifa sons that return to Odua land for any positive reason. Just as for selfish economic and political reasons, they break the Indigenous African family structure and Orunmila civilization so shall their descendants be spilt with rancor by outsiders. Ase! Ise! Every Original African that comes in peace and for prosperity has the right to return to our collective origins without harassment. A united family is the only way to prosperity.
