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The Igbo People Of Nigeria-jews Of Africa? by Nobody: 6:45am On Sep 21, 2015 |
In a White House memo dated Tuesday,
January 28, 1969 to President Nixon,
former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger
describes the Igbos as “the wandering
Jews of West Africa-gifted, aggressive,
westernized, at best envied and resented,
but mostly despised by their neighbors in
the federation”(foreign relations document,
volume E-5, documents on Africa
1969-1972).
Kissinger's description aptly portrays the
Christian Igbos and their experience in
Nigeria. Over the years, the Igbos have
been the victims of numerous massacres,
that they have lost count. Most of the
violence directed against the Igbos have
been state sponsored. One can say that the
Igbos knew how to spell “state sponsored
terrorism” before the rest of the world did.
The state sponsored terrorism directed
against the Igbos in 1966, led to the
declaration of the Republic of Biafra by the
Igbos and subsequent civil war. Over two
million Igbos died in the civil war, primarily
by starvation. One will not be wrong, if
they call the Igbos the “Tutsis” of Nigeria.
Today, an Islamic terrorist Conglomerate led
by the dreaded Boko Haram are still
slaughtering Igbos and other Christians in
Northen Nigeria. Igbos have always seen
themselves as a bulwark against the spread
of Islam to Southern Nigeria, and as a
result, a perennial target of Islamic zealots.
However, the Igbos are one of the largest
and most distinctive of all African ethnic
groups. Predominantly found in
Southeastern Nigeria, they number about
40 million worldwide, with about 30 million
in Nigeria. They constitute about 18% of
Nigeria's population, with significant Igbo
populations in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea,
Gabon and the Ivory Coast. Igbos
predominate in five states in Nigeria-Imo,
Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Abia. In three
other states- Rivers, Lagos and Delta, they
constitute almost 25% of the population.
During the slave trade, Igbo slaves were
known to be the most rebellious. Most of
the slave rebellions in the United States,
Haiti, Jamaica, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago,
Barbados and Guyana were led by Igbo
slaves. In South Carolina, Igbo slaves were
reported to have drowned themselves,
rather than be kept as slaves. Today that
place is called Ebo Island in commemoration
of the slaves who died there. The Gullahs
are Igbo. Igbos were one of the 13 African
ethnic groups that provided the bulk of the
slaves who were brought to the Americas.
Majority of the slaves who ended up in
Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee, Maryland,
Arkansas, Mississippi, South and North
Carolina and Georgia were Igbo. An Igbo
museum has been built in Virginia to honor
the contribution of Igbo slaves to the state.
One of the Igbo slaves who was sent to
Liberia by the American Colonization
Society-Edward Roye- became the fourth
president of Liberia. Another Igbo slave,
Olaiduah Equiano wrote the famous slave
chronicles.
During the colonial period, the British
disliked the Igbos, because of their
supposedly uppitiness and
argumentativeness. During military service
in Burma and India, the pride of Igbo
soldiers amongst other African soldiers was
proverbial. In the company offices and
orderly rooms, the first few words from
the White officer speaking to an Igbo
soldier was followed by “don't argue, you!
Or “you want to be too clever”, and similar
expressions. Their expressive and
aggressive mentality which they enjoy in
their culture at home, does not always
allow them to accept false charges or
accusations without responding. The late
famous writer, Langston Hughes, observed
“the Igbo looks proud because he is bred in
a free atmosphere where everyone is
equal. He hates to depend on anyone for
his life's need. He does not mind if others
look proud. He has much to be proud of in
his land. Nature has provided for him. He is
strong and able to work or fight. He is well
formed. He is generally happy in his society
where no ruler overrides his conscience. He
likes to advance and he is quick to learn. He
likes to give rather than take”.
Culturally, the Igbos are a very diverse
group with different clans, families,
subcultures, and subgroups. However, the
customs are similar with local varieties.
Although there are disagreements about
the origins of the Igbos, there is a
consensus that they originated from Nri in
Anambra State of Nigeria. The language of
the Igbos is Igbo or Ibo. It is one of the
largest spoken languages in Africa, with
Hausa and Yoruba. Igbo speaking people
are divided into five geographically based
subcultures-Northern Igbo, Western Igbo,
Southern Igbo, Eastern Igbo and
Northeastern Igbo. Not as urbanized as the
Yoruba, they live in multitudinous villages,
fragmented into small family groups. They
do not have hereditary chiefs like the the
Yoruba or Hausa/Fulani. Every Igbo more
or less is his or her own master. The Igbos
operate the “Umunna System”, which
emphasizes the patrilineal heritage, rather
than the matrilineal. Some of the important
Igbo cities include, Onitsha, Enugu,
Umuahia, Aba, Asaba, Abakaliki, Owerri,
Nsukka.
In commerce, the Igbos are a mobile,
vividly industrious people who have
spread all over Nigeria and Africa as traders
and small merchants. In countries like
Gabon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea,
Sierra Leone, Togo, and Gambia, Igbo
traders predominate in retail trade. Most
Igbos are clannish, despite their
individualism and hold closely together in
non Igbo communities. They are often very
unpopular in the communities they live in,
because they push very hard to make
money and often dominate the retail
business in alien communities. In his book,
the Brutality of Nations, Dan Jacobs
describes the Igbos “as ambitious, dynamic
and progressive people whose education
and abilities did not endear them to those
among whom they lived. Even during
British rule, there were massacres of Igbos
in Northern Nigeria-in Jos in 1945 and in
Kano in 1953. The Igbos have acquired the
sobriquet, Jews of Africa”. |
Re: The Igbo People Of Nigeria-jews Of Africa? by Nobody: 6:47am On Sep 21, 2015 |
Education is highly emphasized and given
priority in Igboland. Converted to
Christianity by Catholic, Anglican and
Presbyterian missionaries, they took up self
improvement with such enthusiasm, that
by the 1960's, the Igbos had the highest
percentage of doctors, lawyers, engineers,
physicists, and teachers than any other
ethnic group in Africa. Because of the
abundant educational talent in Igboland
many newly independent African nations
recruited them to fill vacancies in their civil
service. The first American style university
built in Africa was in Igboland-the
University of Nigeria at Nsukka. Its
founder, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was a
graduate of Lincoln University in
Pennsylvania. The Igbos and the Yorubas
are the most educated ethnic group in
Africa.
Politically, the Igbos are very effervescent
and volatile. According to author Dan
Jacobs “for Britain and for the British civil
servants who continued to work in the
Northern Region, the Igbos have always
been a troublesome element in the
federation, a people with a democratic
tradition who are not easily controlled.
Many British were glad to see them out of a
central position in the federation, as were
those who had driven them back to their
homeland and those who now held the civil
service and other jobs they had left”. The
Igbos had been the most ardent advocates
of a united Nigeria. Upon independence in
1960, an Igbo, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe-
American educated- became the first
President and Governor General, while
another Igbo, Aguiyi Ironsi became the first
indigenous military chief. Leadership of
most of the elite universities in Nigeria
were also occupied by the Igbos.
Following the military coup of January
1966, which the Igbos were accused of
initiating, Aguiyi Ironsi, an Igbo, became
President and Supreme Commander of the
armed forces. Tensions rose very high in
the country resulting in the massacre of
Igbos in May 1966. In July 1966, a Hausa/
Fulani/Tiv inspired military coup overthrew
Ironsi's regime and a terrible massacre of
the Igbos began in earnest. This led to the
secession of the former Eastern Nigeria and
the declaration of the Republic of Biafra.
This eventually led to the civil war.
According to George Orick, an American
businessman and consultant to UNICEF who
was in Nigeria at the time, one million Igbos
were to be killed in order to avenge the
death of a man called Ahmadu Bello, who
was the Sardauna of Sokoto-Prince of the
Islamic Sokoto Caliphate. He reported that
“one could hear on Northern Nigerian radio
the reading of long lists of Igbos who were
targeted for extinction”.-see Goddell team
report, congressional Record of February
15, 1969, pp51976-7. The Igbos believe,
and rightfully so, that had they not fought
back, their fate would have been worse
than that of the Tutsis in Rwanda. The same
way Northern Nigerian radio was
exhorting the Hausa/Fulanis to kill the
Igbos, was the same way Radio Milles
Collines was exhorting the Hutus to
slaughter the Tutsis in Rwanda.
Similarly, Heinrich Jiggs, a Swiss
businessman in Nigeria who later became
the chief Red Cross delegate in Biafra,
reports seeing one of the circular letters in
Northern Nigeria which stated that every
Igbo down to the age of six would be
killed. A Canadian Journalist, Alan Grossman,
who had been West African Bureau Chief of
Time Life News Service in Lagos from May
1966 to June 1968, testified before the
External Affairs Committee of the Canadian
House of Commons on what he saw. He told
the committee “many thousands of Igbos
were slaughtered in towns and villages
across the north, and hundreds of
thousands of others were blinded, crippled
or maimed or in majority of cases, simply
left destitute as they attempted to flee to
the Igbo homeland in Eastern Nigeria. Some
of the fleeing refugees did not make it
home. On one train that arrived in the East,
there was the corpse of a male passenger
whose head had been chopped off
somewhere along the line. Another group
of Igbo refugees men, women and children
whom I happened to see-I would say 100
or more of them-were waiting in the
railway station in the city of Kano, the
largest city in Northern Nigeria, for about
three days, with no security guards, for the
arrival of a refugee train, and a land rover
full of government soldiers came and
mowed them down with automatic
weapons. Igbo shops and Igbo hotels were
ransacked and looted, while blocks of non
Igbo businesses were carefully left
untouched”. (see minutes of Canadian
House of Commons proceeding, external
Affairs Ref. 7 pp. 239-40).
In the final analysis, Dan Jacobs, in the
Brutality of Nations, summarizes the plight
of the Igbos in the following way, “to the
other Nigerians, the Igbos were not only
leaving Nigeria, they were departing with
the oil under the lands with which they are
seceding. Here lay the explanation of the
paradox that the Nigerians had driven the
Biafrans out, yet seemed to be fighting to
keep them in the federation. What they
actually wanted was the land the Igbos
were on and what lay under it-without the
Igbos”.
Some internationally recognized Igbo
personalities include former president
Nnamdi Azikiwe, former military ruler
Aguiyi Ironsi, writer Chinua Achebe, former
Biafran leader Odumegwu Ojukwu, former
justice at the World Court Daddy Onyeama,
former commonwealth secretary general
Emeka Anyoku, former middleweight and
lightheavyweight champion of the world
Dick Tiger and Cardinal Francis Arinze-Pope
in waiting.. Some African Americans of Igbo
ancestry include evangelist T.D. Jakes, actor,
scholar and athlete Paul Robeson, actors
Forrest Whitaker and Blair Underwood.
*Dr. Leonard Madu is President of the
African Caribbean Institute and African
Chamber of Commerce in Nashville,
Tennessee. |
Re: The Igbo People Of Nigeria-jews Of Africa? by Nobody: 6:47am On Sep 21, 2015 |
Re: The Igbo People Of Nigeria-jews Of Africa? by Nobody: 7:06am On Sep 21, 2015 |
The truth about the Igbos is slowly coming out. There has been strong effort to obfuscate their true identity and hold them down. For how long? More on Igbo-hebrew connection as the genuine black jews. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71HhAeV7cUk |
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