0bjpmb:


I know that guy, she used to be my girlfriend. Abeg give me her number.

Ebubu3 come oh.

Ebubu3:
I am from Ebonyi and we will never be part of Biafra.

Has any Ebonyi politician even in the opposition party come out to warn Dave after Dave said Ebonyi is not part of Biafra?


Silence is consent.

Understandable. Shameful thing is that segregation is almost everywhere even within local governments and the OSU caste system hasn't fully been abolished in many parts of the east

I guess segregation is human nature

Hahaha
Have you seen na my kind of person fits you people. I don't take prisoners, I treat fck up. Your children will be ashamed of you for seeing how you are embarrassing yourself on nairaland since 2009 to 2022. Tufia, you are cursed.

You have wasted your time on nairaland from 2009 to 2022. Tufia

Tellwhat:

Chai. This na possibly person father or husbandNna eh from 2010 to 2022 this is the sort of thing that gives this matured dude a hard onThis is as good as a curse like how do you feel superior to a people yet dedicate a good number of time towards trolling them and spitting bilerom 2010 to 2022. Boy seek help because your case no normal again

oneeast:
Hahaha
Have you seen na my kind of person fits you people. I don't take prisoners, I treat fck up. Your children will be ashamed of you for seeing how you are embarrassing yourself on nairaland since 2009 to 2022. Tufia, you are cursed.

You have wasted your time on nairaland from 2009 to 2022. Tufia

Lol. Treat which people fuckup. Dude you're just making a caricature of yourself

Your delusion grandeur is something else. You really mumu no be small. U dey rate all this shiit you've been saying for more than 10 years and god knows how long

I haven't spent this kind of time on nairaland but there's evidence to show that since 2012 you've been a self hating Igbo self acclaimed supremacists. And you've even give reason for us to believe this thing wey dey do you for head started since or before 2010

The funny part is how you seem to overrate your very existence and downplay just how much of an anuofia that you are

I really pity your existence mehn. I'm basically feeding a troll which you are. Like the only way for you to get a hard on is when you display your sankolo mentality

10 years on nairaland being a nuisance. Wow. Well no point going back and forth with you because na jonsing make man go dey drag dirt with piig

Them suppose offer u to the gods. I just hope more people learn to not give u reason to feed. Ignore the troll and even if it doesn't end e go atleast starve. But your own type go still find way because this is like the very air you breathe.

May the gods of your papa have mercy on you and maybe release you from the shackles of bondage. I wish you well

Tellwhat:

I just dey wonder how you look in real life and the state of your mental health the consistency is wild I just can't imagine it from 2010 to 2022 you've been this frustrated and on the same vibe almost like you no dey grow up. Nna kudos to you despite how negative your existence is

But hope you realize you're matured man

So na from 2010 you begin behave like this

I just checked your profile and saw 2012 and then checked your post by going to your first post and then saw all this bile

No wonder your first post in 2012 is still similar to your post in 2022

With attitude like yours its a good thing umahi said his people won't be joining Biafra. Hopefully other ebonyi people join that school of thought and focus on Nigeria and improving their state

Because Igbo people have shown that we are not ready

I notice you're singing from the same hymn sheet as that Igbo wannabe fool i quoted yesterday! You're either one of the alternate monikers he uses to make it look like he's not alone in his stupidity...and that other 'Igbo' think like him, or you're actually a very daft and naive Igbo! How can you assert definitively that the person you quoted is Igbo....that's if you're not all in cahoots and/or answering yourselves with alternate monikers?

I don't get why Igbo haters would rather take to subterfuge and deceit to try and derail the Biafra agitation for secession....camping on Igbo-themed threads for years, pretending to be Igbo! When a much easier and quicker way to kill the agitation would be for you and yours to speak up and campaign for a just and equitable society, and for Ndigbo to be recognised as the invaluable 3rd leg of the tripod on which Nigeria stands!

To call a major part of Onitsha “Otu” (“Waterside”) recognizes that this entire space owes its expansive complexity to the ancient link of the uplands (whose people were and are sometimes called Ndi-Ani-Ocha, “People of the White lands”) with Ndi-Olu, “People of the floodplains”. Moving slowly along the river on the massive government ferry, one can see some Ndi-Olu streaking past heading downriver (presumably toward one of the Onitsha marketplaces further south)

Much of the produce we see moving this way is coming from the Anambra River floodplain directly north of Onitsha, with its extensive plantations of Guinea yam and rice (but much also comes from Northern Nigeria ). Trade of this kind along the Niger can be traced back at least to the 14th century C.E. (and is probably much older). ((For example, see Nwabuani 1999: 95-6.))

PROUDIGBO:


I notice you're singing from the same hymn sheet as that Igbo wannabe fool i quoted yesterday! You're either one of the alternate monikers he uses to make it look like he's not alone in his stupidity...and that other 'Igbo' think like him, or you're actually a very daft and naive Igbo! How can you assert definitively that the person you quoted is Igbo....that's if you're not all in cahoots and/or answering yourselves with alternate monikers?

I don't get why Igbo haters would rather take to subterfuge and deceit to try and derail the Biafra agitation for secession....camping on Igbo-themed threads for years, pretending to be Igbo! When a much easier and quicker way to kill the agitation would be for you and yours to speak up and campaign for a just and equitable society, and for Ndigbo to be recognised as the invaluable 3rd leg of the tripod on which Nigeria stands!

Do you know what's more daft?. You thinking that every Igbo man is expected to behave in the same manner and think a certain way. Like it or not there are spoilt people in every tribe that brings embarrassment to the tribe. When I came across that guys oneeast fellow handle I decided to check his post before replying and I have no doubt in my mind that's he's most likely Igbo

Also what have people like you done to ensure sanity in this thread and caution such people? Why don't you call on the mods?

I don't even understand what you're talking about

This is my only active moniker. Are you implying that I must be part of your clique or something?

So someone new can't come across some new information and voice out their opinion

Nna it's like most of you are already use to yourselves on here and Una done know unaselves.

I will leave you people to revel in your filth on here and embarrassing ndigbo. I won't be replying you or the oneeast guy henceforth

Took me less than 5 mins to realise that oneeast and proudigbo are either cohorts or the same person with some twisted imagination and replies himself yet the guy had the effontery to accuse his generation. This is as far back as 2012

https://www.nairaland.com/oneeast/posts/89

I have derailed this thread too much already. I rest my case

the elegant Haulk suspension bridge spanning Nkisi Stream was built by the newly-established Colonial Government early in the 20th century, to link the Onitsha Marina Road with more remote portions of the government preserve. Beyond it downstream the Marine Offices and the Public Works Department (PWD) headquarters are visible. (Photo taken by Peter Brigham in 1963.)

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The suspension bridge shown in the pic was built at the turn of the 20th century and could possibly be the first suspension bridge built in Nigeria. It's noticeable the upward socio-economic trajectory Onitsha was witnessing before that evil Nzeogwu coup occured and allowed envious outsiders to derail the progress of this great city!

You see more clearly the Marina Landing Ramp, and a zig-zag road above it, leading to and from the Marina office. The two government motor-vehicular ferries dock at this location. Placing cross-River motor traffic here separated it from the dense congestion of the main marketplace further south and brought it close to colonial officials involved in managing road transport (particularly the P.W.D., whose primary task is the building of roadways infrastructure here).

A note here regarding this part of the Waterside: when the British Government installed its power into Onitsha in 1900, this northern area was its prime initial focus. Below, photographs from 1906-1911: at left, the Public Works Department, already a complex engineering and construction facility; at center, the grand suspension bridge (Onitsha’s Modernistic “Eiffel Tower” for 1910, definitely an Icon for the New Age); below right, the European “Guest House”, a massive building for accommodating this new influx of humanity (variously labelled “Ndi-Ocha“, White Persons, “Ndi-mmuo“, Ghosts, etc., by local inhabitants). This building was gone by 1960.

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The pics may not appear in the order they are discussed. Bear with me!

From the river looking southeastward, the Cathedral is partially obscured behind the many trees, but it provides a major landmark for ferry travelers coming from Asaba. The visual prominence of Holy Trinity here barely reflects its importance as an icon of the Roman Catholic Mission in the history of Onitsha, which began in 1885 when Obi Anazonwu granted French Mission Fathers this substantial block of land

We look now more closely toward the white array of UAC warehouses and embankment-dominating cranes. Note, first, the large river craft docked beside the cranes. This marks the landing of the Niger Transport and Trading Co. Ltd (NTTC, a subsidiary of U.A.C.). The riverside cliff here provides a crucial deep-water port for river craft coursing the Niger-Benue watershed. In the 1950s and 60s (prior to the construction of Kainji Dam, which radically altered the flow of the Niger) the least depth of the River in the dry season at this point was 8 feet, so river shipping with drafts of 7’6″ could reach Onitsha year-round ((At the time, NTTC operated 26 powered units and 66 barges, the largest with a 7’6″ draft.))

One fine product of the local motor-body construction operation heads away from the lorry park and passes Nottidge Street, up Old Market road in the direction of places east of Onitsha. The newly-constructed, self-consciously-Modern Barclays Bank building stands behind it (filled, during business hours, with multiple waiting-lines of local businessmen holding their cash in trays and boxes, waiting for their chance to make their deposit). ((This photo was taken from the same viewpoint, from the house of Madame Azadi, a very important trader here early in the twentieth century. The trees of Ani Onicha are just visible here at far right.))

A closer view of this particular lorry shows more details of the wooden body. Note also its iconic label, “Clear Conscience”. Since a pioneering study by Margaret Field in 1960, It has become clear that inscriptions on commercial vehicles of this kind (operating throughout West Africa and beyond) provide fascinating clues to the preoccupations of their drivers and/or owners, as well as specific, identifying labels for others operating in these social fields. One researcher nicely summarized them as “windows through which to view their life-situations” ((See Date-Bah 1980. Field’s earlier analysis emphasized the paranoid mind-set of many owners/drivers, seeing that as a function of the very substantial dangers of this business. Among other insightful studies of the phenomenon, see also for example Jordan 1978; Lewis, 1998, and van der Geest, 2009.)) My Onitsha favorites in the early 1960s are the one below (“Clear Conscience”), “Tomorrow” (as in “Who Knows…”), and “No Condition is Parmanent”(sic). “Windows into life situations” is an apt metaphor for this kind of identity statement.

The Way-bill System worked at this time roughly as follows. A trader would have a partner (not usually in the formal-legal sense of that term) in a particular distant source center, with whom he agreed to transact business via “way-bills” that were passed through established lorry transporters (owners/drivers). A transporter coming to Onitsha would keep record-books of consignments, checked by the driver as goods were off-loaded, and he would then send a way-bill letter to the consignee via a truck-pusher who worked for him. The consignee (say a Main-Market stall-holder) would confirm the order through the truck-pusher and await delivery of the goods, then later in the day the driver or an assistant would go round to all consignees to collect charges outstanding. A large amount of credit was involved in this process: as Onyemelukwe observed:

“In pre-war Onitsha market trade capital in both money and stock was very frequently borrowed interest-free and without formal documentation . Traders transmitted substantial sums of money through lorry drivers and fellow traders without the slightest precautionary measures either by receipting or by the formal witnessing of a third party. And it was apparent that trade business in that market was succeeding partly because of, rather than in spite of, the pervading spirit of trust and the practice of non- legal sanctions.”

Street scene in Onitsha. 1963.

A reminder that Ndi-Olu bringing their produce to its primary marketplace typically have many stairs to climb (especially in the dry season when the Niger River is low). But very happily, these stairs are made of solid concrete rather than (as before the mid-1950s) mud-slippery slopes (which must have been very difficult to climb during the rainy season)..

Viewing the entryway at left from the Bida Road connection (which is not one-way), the S.C.O.A. French import company building at far right dominates the inner pivot of the curve.

Morris Minors are everywhere in Onitsha. Anyone with the money to buy one can open a taxi service, and we see these out at all hours. This is an important source of occupation for local young men, and judging by their driving skills almost no driver-training is needed.

A view of Old Market Road showing the three most common means of human transport in Onitsha: walking, bicycling, and motor car (with the ubiquitous Morris Minor making its way at lower right). New vehicles from elsewhere than England are also appearing: the sign advertising “UTC Motors Sales” on the blue building at left indicates they deal in Opel, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and GMC (car insurance is also listed), and some of these new types are visible in the parking lot. (More substantial services are offered further east along Awka Road.)

In fact, by 1960 the new rage for wealthy car owners in Onitsha (especially among Ndi-Onicha) is the 1960 Chevrolet Impala with its prominent, horizontal-running fins, especially in convertible style. Below, we see (barely) this type of vehicle (which may however be a Pontiac) nearly obscured by the Enu-Onicha crowd celebrating the royal rites being performed by Igwe Enwezor in November of 1961, as he bestows holy white clay powder (nzu) among his supporters near the ancient Sacred Grove of the Kings. The car is on loan from one of his wealthy supporters; its hired driver almost obscured by the falling powder. (Traditionally, the new Obi would be carried home from this particular shrine visitation on the shoulders of his men, but this candidate’s supporters feel that a shiny new convertible is more fit to convey him.)

Kingsway store, Onisha. 1960.

At several locations in Onitsha, we encounter extremely massive “houses”, built in the early 1900s and associatied with early Court Clerks who amassed sufficient wealth to construct them. This example toward riigh- image was one such building , following the pattern of a downstairs circumscribing archway and upstairs living quarters. This is the largest one I saw, but I neglected to identify its builder.

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Are Court Clerks the ones we know called Kortuma?

I typically did not photograph the Palmwine Bars I saw in Onitsha, but I was visiting Ogbe-Umu-Onicha one Sunday and encountered this very active one, right near Ononenyi Emejulu’s house, where we were visiting at the time. You can see it’s a successful one from the many empty palmwine pots strewn about the entryway (and also from the evidence of people present).

The “Easy Life Hotel and Bar on Old Market Road, where women may also be seen pensively gazing out the upper-floor windows.

One afternoon, Obiekwe Aniweta (always an active admirer of female social forms), invited me to take a beer in this place. We went in, and sat near a number of women there, all of them quite corpulent to my eyes.. (This was definitely the preferred female form for women from the perspective of most local men in the early 1960s.) I displayed no interest — and indeed had I felt any would have had to decline any active attention, since such an action would have spread my reputation quickly everywhere in the Inland Town – as Aniweta Observed to nobody in particular,, “Mr. Henderson is not Serious!” So we left very soon thereafter, and nobody raised the issue to me again.

At left, the Bolingo Hotel, a large pink-colored building on New Market Road, located three substantial houses up-hill from the UAC Headquarters building.

This “Eastern Nigeria Hotel”, located further up New Market Road near its apex meeting with Old Market Road, is a much smaller operation than the others shown here, but it displays an appealing boldness. Under the name logo are the Igbo words “Anyi Nwe” (“We have”), below that, “Motto Quality First”, and below that, “We Maintain Classical Restaurant”. The two beautiful women/hostesses are obviously very stylishly dressed.

one more important point relating to these businesses: a brief and slightly blurred image of people congregating around a large hotel in Fegge, the “A.P.Z. Hotel”, taken on a Sunday afternoon in June of 1962. The picture is blurry because we took it from a moving vehicle and didn’t want to stop and gawk on that occasion. What is noteworthy here (if one takes the time to look carefully, and to compare it from other better images taken the same day) is the overwhelming presence of men, young men. A few women are present scattered about among them. Census counts for Onitsha were dubious in those times, but it is safe to estimate that more than 75% of the immigrant, Igbo-speaking residents in Otu in 1962 are men, by far most of them young men. (As we shall see, the Enu-Onicha, the Inland Town, is a very different matter.) For a typical young Onye-Igbo man in Onitsha, women are “hard to find”.

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1) Easylife hotel
2)Bolingo hotel
3)Eastern Nigeria hotel
4)A.P.Z hotel, Fegge.

Interesting to note Bolingo hotel has been in existence right from the early 60s?

I actually know the Aniweta family home at Umuaroli, Onitsha! Looks like our grandfathers were quite randy back in the day!

In May 1961 , the recently-established, Yoruba-Action-Group-supported newspaper presented an “expose” of sorts regaarding Onitsha Hotels:

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Hehehehehe

No be today these people start to dey troll us!

Bridge building in 1963.

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See, Igbos have been 'building bridges' since 1963!