Qadhafi's Overhead Kick

Qadhafi's Overhead Kick

The chief of Libya, Mr. Muamar el Qadhafi, is a grand man. Like the Ayatollah of Persia, his prior aim in power was to take back the nation (from the parasitic state) to the citizens. And he did it.
He took Libya back to Libyans and gave them pride of citizenship. Libyans inside and outside Libya exhude a measure of confidence in their nation rarely found in other peoples. But Qadhafi is in love with power. He is so used to being in command, nowadays, he often excercises his influence with some dose of arrogance and rashness. Every music he enters, he causes to assume his tune and tone.
Recently, he added some faggots to a fire he had always kept: he wanted to unite the states of Africa.
A union of African states was conceieved in modern time by late Mr. Kwame Nkrumah. He wanted an Africa that is united in outlook even if diverse in looks. This had been an attempt at doing the work of Hercules.

But Qadhafi is not a conventional gentleman. His unconventionality is too abrasive. And he is beginning this project at the ending.

Qadhafi should re-examine his intention, and question himself if he is actually pro-African. He should do his best to see Africa(ns) through African scope, not through arab scope. Unless he wanted to achieve only ceremonial unity; or at most, organisational unity; or even another direct enslavement of Africa. But a unity without relational meaning is meaningless, even harmful.



Africa is like a live broken bone; live but in pieces. She cannot be united by haphazardly shovelling the pieces into a bag. They must first be scanned and sorted well according to which piece is fitting rightly with which.

Unlike in other places, most of the states in Africa { now} were neither products of unity nor do they nurse it. In Africa, many of the peoples, on their own, are alright, progressive, according to their endowment and and world view. They have deeply internalized religio-social ways that work for them. When mixed with other peoples in externally engineered statehood or nationhood, this well-doing people assumes the posture of victims or victimizers. In otherwords, people who would certainly be better neighbours were packaged into bitterly disharmonious room-mates. Oraganisational unity without relational unity. This is the state of many African states and nations. There are democratic structures; but those in power use them in practicing tyrannical monarchies and kleptocratic presidencies.



If Africans are to be united, and not just to be in a union, the 'Uniter' must go, rearward or for(e)ward, from this colonial-Africa to Africa. Africa is even deeper in colo'slavery now than She was during the so-called colo-' era. Because of the incompatibility of African room-mates (nation-mates). ...They expend their energies in keeping one another down instead of striding forward as a nation.

What is the meaning of the sparking frictions in Guinea between Peulh people and Susu and Malinke peoples? What about the conflagrations in Congo-Kinsh'? The explosive furnace in Sudan? The smouldering furnace in Nigeria (a country not at any defined war, yet thousands of its citizens and others are will-fully destroyed annually by their fellow citizens...justice is dispensed on the basis of ethnicity, religion or political-party affiliation…)? And Angola? Rwanda (between Hutu and Tutsi and Twas)? SierraLeone? Liberia? The slavery nations of Mauritania and Morrocco? What will a united African States mean to the ordinary Somalians? How does a US of Africa harmonize with the heartbeat of Sahrawi people of Western-Sahara?

Whereas many religio-cultural ethnicities, each on their own fare well in individual and national life, they become victimizers or victims when mingled into a nationship with other peoples without their consented agreement.



Anyone who wants to unite Africa should begin at Africa, not at AU (African Union), otherwise it will be a contraband unity. Unless AU can effectuate this: I suggest: the releasing of peoples from state victimization by disbanding the present nation-states, excepting harmonious ones or ones who of their own Will would agree. Let people return to their primordial nations and establish their own states, even if a thousand nations would emerge. Then those of these groups who wish to belong in the larger group such as US-of-Africa, would do so from their Will and perception of world realities.

To how many Africans is the AU (L'Union Africain) a reality? Even among city dwellers where literacy is highest, Au is a distant thing. Among villagers, it is Kalmomin Turawa ne (vocabulary of Europeans).

Unlike EU (European union), AU is not a practical, living reality among ordinary Africans. EU regulates (moderates or commands) many elements in the life of its constituency. It even affects the prices of goods and services among the people and peoples of Europe. It also intervenes for social and inter-state justice.



Perhaps, Qadhafi wanted to do something genuine. But he is kicking it over the head of Africa; he is not participating with Africa; he is commandeeringly off-touch with the heartbeat of Africans.

Lagos City In 2009

Nigerian Lagos has improved. It has become cleaner and, a bit less disorderly...Many obstructive structures have been dismantled. Formally barren patches of land and brief bushes used as ad hoc toilets have become beautifully en-flowered.
Some of the centres of stench in Lagos, such as Oshodi and Mile-12 markets have become freer from squalor than they had been a couple of years previously.
Okada (commercial transporters with motorcycles) and Danfo (Second-hand commercial town-service bus) drivers have started showing signs of reformability. Many things were gaining some appearance of sanity.

But these might be an expensive painting on the face of Nigeria; not an actual change of her texture.




There is an Ideo-nomenclatural singsong flooding radio waves and pages of newsbooks: Lagos to be made into a megacity. This sounds somewhat queer in the context of Nigeria. Whatever the propounders meant...

In socio-political transactions, often, words (names) define concepts and shape expectations; even when they did not affect basic reality.

If the quantific title "mega", when grafted to the word "city" evokes the concept of a large and expansive conglomeration of towns under one municipal authority; if it means a place where people of all technics and creed live; where more and more markets and set in excercise; where more and more commerce takes place; where social, cultural and even scientific projects are undertaken; if megacity is a large, large, city where all categories of good (harmless) people are allowed to come and live rightfully and responsibly, then Lagos is not transmuting into a megacity ! The proper word for the 'new Lagos' project, I think, is decongestation. Lagos is being decongested.


But the financial names attached to the project (dozens of millions of Dollars, and hundreds of billions of Naira) are too jumbo for de-congestation only.


The Seamy Side Of Ii: Mega-City For mega People
With regard to the geography and topography of Lagos, the appelation "megaCity" seems a ruse to set Lagos city as a place where only people of certain heights of income and ruling-class connection will live as standard citizens.
Which do people need: cities or a mega-city? A true mega-city in Nigeria...in this nation of concentrated dirty, hungry, semi-literate souls? It is expensive. The project is too costly, not only in construction fees but also in its displacemental effects. Hundreds times thousands of people, many of them having legitimate, government-authorized rights of occupancy have been displaced. Plural categories of artisans have been strongly affected. Many of them are being driven out of the city or out of business. And many other woes apparently not fore-considered.
Of course, this is inevitable. Lagos is nearly fully saturated, though not so fully occupied (in Magodo and Lekki areas are many un-occupied buildings...). Any significant new structures would have to displace old ones, or entail a resource-draining preliminary of land reclamation.
I think there is more need for more moderate cities than there is for a ten-lane-highway megacity.
But the gravest threat to this and such projects is the attitude of the Nigerian Lagosian, the contracors. They charge ten dollars for a piece of one-dollar work and use one cent in actually doing it. Even untrained eyes could see that they are not developing the city. They are setting the stage for more and more contracts for the same projects in short intervals. Plus the thugs who rob people in the cover of enforcing Lagos State law.
In Relation To All NigeriaTo me, however the authorities came by that concept, they seemed not to have opened their minds' sight to the diverse inevitable and probable consequences of, and alternative to it. Re-cleaning the city of Lagos, any city, is a worthy venture. But without buffer arrangements, it defeats itself. The miseries are too much.

Whenever I think of how Brasilia (Brazil) was born from Rio de Janeiro; New Delhi (India) from Old Delhi; how Moscow (Russia)grew; some towns in northern Italy; some big towns in Sweden; even the two nearest neighbours: Ouagadougou (BurkinaFaso) and Accra (Ghana) which are in similar processes of expansion and modernization, I feel that there is some dumbness in this mega city thing. The legislative interaction that approved it as it is being done bore some shortness of sight. Building a jumbo-city now in the midst of languishing villages is like writing a good sentence in big, bold, letters on a tiny piece of paper. The intended mark cannot be complete, comprehensive or comprehensible. And it cannot be enduringly viable.

Supercities such as Cairo, London, Moscow, Tokyo et cetera naturally grew. Or were planned far-sightedly, developed (and modified) into maga status, gradually. Smaller towns in those countries grew too, both in infrastructure and population. Mega-cityhood was not imposed on them. They did not borrow to enjoy luxury.

*Lagos can only be renovated; it cannot be expanded...unless by ignoring state boundaries.
*Within the perimeter of the geographic enclave that is called Nigeria, there are many "town-worthy" or "city-worthy" expanses.
*Most villages in Nigeria are forgotten of government, except in tax collection, done by the rapacious entities called Local Government Authority.
*Most young people are continuing to think of the cities, especially Lagos, as their best destination in the search for better living; which is a grand illusion.
Most of the displaced in Lagos may not stay away. They may return, probably not as artisans (block-makers, mechanics, keepers of livestock including topiary men...) that they had been but as jobless people, unsupported by the village and unaccommodated by the city.

Were villages not in government's oblivion, or new towns being set up from time to time with facilities that enhance creativity and productivity in human endeavours, those obstructive, "illegal" structures demolished might not have arisen. Lagos would have naturally got de-congested. Or its "overcrowdedness" would not have been as it had.


Mr. 'Tunde Fashola, the political chief of Lagos, may be doing his best. There are palpable, verifiable facts. But the gentleman might be writing his name in big, bold letters on a very tiny scraplet of paper.
Certainly, the jumbo project is not entirely inapproprate. But more certainly, it would not amount to significant advancement in the development of Nigeria...

I think the legislators, leasers and renters of contracts, would be more blame-worthy if this capital-intensive updatement of Lagos gives some big, undesirable, consequence...on smaller, neglected towns in the country. Of course, it is already potentiating migrtaory imbalances. Large proportions of the city would still be forced back to slumminess...


May be, one of the assumptions that nag me is a fact: that a nation in decomposition (disintegration) usually embarks on bombastic, peaceful or peaceless, unedifying, projects. USSR, Jugoslavia...


So, without building mega-villages along, we will have to go for giga-city and other titles of jumboism.


Beyond 40 kilometres, the metropolitan aura of development of Lagos peters out into neglected settlements, some which are larger than Lagos .
Meanwhile, it is like digging up earth from the floor of the house to beautify the frontyard. A nice, if not glorious, deception.

That's how I feel from 40 kilometres inland away from Lagos city.

The Igbo Before Christ

This piece is not a new 'expedition'. I am mainly searching among the things other people have found. Searching for the origin of Ndi-Igbo, that is, for the first person or small group of of persons characteristically identifiable as Igbo, and their ab original abode, is a tough pleasure to me. But it is like seaching for a raw grain of rice in a sack of chaff. Every piece looks like it; yet nearly none of the pieces is it. Unlike Jews who point to a man from ancient Iran, Abraham, as the first Jew, the Hebrewman at the beginning of the Jewish branch, Igbo's genesis is beclouded by a plurality of legends and passionate sentiments.

I am sometimes tempted to believe that Ndi-Igbo did not immigrate from anywhere; that they originated where they are now. But some Senegalese documents relate that as recent as the 16th century, Cape Verde had no native inhabitants. And in some other documents, the 13th century is estimated to be the earliest time the region of Rwanda (now teeming with people) began being peopled. So, time there must have been, when most of Africa, including the present Ala-Igbo, was un-peopled.

Among the available works touching on the subject, Mr. Ogbukagu's (The Igbo and the Riddles of their Jewish Origins) is the most definedly assertive. But many of the assertions are incongruent with real-world facts. Other works especially the ones by Cheik Anta Diop (Senegalese) and Kwame Osepetetrekou (Ghanaian) dealt indirectly but heavily on the subject. Diop tracked the cultures of African societies back to some 8000BC (estimate).

Now, let me speculate from the era Before the birth of the Christ.
Within the last 2 to 3 millennia, great migrations happened around the globe: of the Bantu of the Namib region; of the Tamils of south-central Asia; of the forebears of Malagasi people, the non-Negroid population of Madagascar; of the forebears of the Ab-Origins of Australia, believed to have sailed from our continent; et sequens.
Of all these ancient migrants, the Bantu is the closest to the Igbo in racial and cultural dimensions. But, culture-wise, the Igbo is considerably unconnected with the Bantu, unlike Tiv and Itulu ethnic groups of Middle Nigeria who still bear some of their Bantu cultural stamps noticeably.
So I take the speculative search to ancient Egypt and Ethiopiya.
The Biblic book of Chronicles 1 : 7 - 16 tells of the first group of human villages in Africa.
Ancient Egypt, according to Anta Diop and Osepetetrekou was slightly different from the present one geographically. Socio-culturally, it was very, very, different!
Ancient Egypt was originally two kingdoms: Upper and Lower Egypt, spread along the river that is today called Nile. It included large parts of Sudan, parts of Ethiopiya and large parts of the present Arab Egypt. Upper Egyptians were a people slighter in frame, taller and less fair (darker) in complexion than Lower Egyptians of Nile delta (An egyptologist, probably a Senegalese, studied the mummies and their skin pigments). Upper Egyptians conquered their counterparts and unified the kingdom about 3000BC. There was also a sub-Egyptian kingdom, Kush, in the south of Sudan.

Ancient Egyptians lived in clans and worshipped many gods. Some of the gods were Ra (sun god); Asar or Asari ((Oshiris) land god); Ainu (sea god); Kha or Ka (god of the empire of living things = god of life); Amen; Atn or Aton; Yahw or Yawh; et cetera.
The name 'Africa' probably originated from Egyptians' slogan of pride and confidence: a-phi-Ra-Kha (born of, or produced in, the household of Ra and Kha). The presence of a god of the name Yahw in the Egyptian pantheon tempts a belief that Yehovah, the Only true God, was also worshipped by some sections of that ancient society.
Ancient Egypt was a stratified society. Tribes and ethnicities existed specialised in different arts and services.There were the regal clan which was actually the highest cadre of the priestly tribe. Apart from producing kings and queens, priests were guardians and cultivators of literacy and numeracy. Letters (pictograms, signs and hieroglyph) were oracular and divine. There were martial clans, closely allied to the priests; Mosheh (Moses) was of them. There were farmers, artisans, slaves, et cetera.
Later socities seem to have copied this pattern (1 Samuel 22: 19).
Whereas Old Egypt's kings believed they were born of the household of Ra, hence phi-Ra-Ohwo (translated 'pharaoh'), each had his favourite god which he nationalised. Amenhoteppe (Amen is immaculate or 'immaculate Amen') nationalised Amen, also called Amon. King AkNatn nationalized Aton, the most spartan deity in Egypt with some charcteristics of the holy One of Ysrael. Sometimes a king nationalized two or more gods. One of the kings withe name Thuthmose instituted a national cult for the dual deity Amen-Ra (Amon-Ra). Each ethnic group had its own chief god apart from the national one.

Many years before the Hebrew exodus, there was a widespread civil strife in Egypt, similar to the one at th time of the Exodus. Probaly during AkNatn's regime. This king lived by the principles of Satyagraha: he refused to go to war or do anything that shed blood or torture conscience. ome groups inside and outside Egypt took advantage of this and revolted, rebelled or attacked. the result was a massive multi-direction, far-flung immigrations.
Ainu Dhu, a clan whose chief deity was Ainu, migrated to the area between the rivers Indus and Ganga Ma (Ganges). There had always been migratory and commercial dealings between there and Egypt. Ainu Dhu were probaly the earliest human settlers there. Yahw-Bu-Si (... a people intimate with Yahw ), a clan whose chief god was Yahw, migrated to Palestine. They were very probably the Jebus(ites) of the Bible, later assaulted and ousted by Israelites. Kha-na-an (people from the land of Kha, alternatively pronounced Kha-an-na;this is a peculiarity of Ancient Egypt's pronunciation system), migrated to Palestine. Their name is translated 'Canaan'.

There was a town, a microcosmopolis, called On (also pronounced No or nO) that was a potpourri of class and activities, a hybrid but harmonious population. On harboured scientists (astrologers), technologists (experts in smithery), artisans, agriculturists, magicians, papyrus processors et cetera. Most of these deserted Egypt too, apparently (approximately) during the years of the sufferings inflicted on Egypt by Yehovah to compel the new pharaoh to let Ysrael go.

I am believing that the first Igbo were a group Egyptians from On. Perhaps, Phoenician Egyptians who migrated from On about this time.

Different groups in the South-of-Sahara Africa are retaining different measures of their ancient cultures. So far, the Dogon people of Mali are the most conspicuous. Their cosmogony, burial rites, native medical practices, music...are still thickly spiced with elements of the culture that made the mummies, the pyramids and the earliest hieroglyphics.

Akan peoples ( in Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Togo) are believd to have left the north (some Ghanaian scholars say directly from Middle East; some say via the British Isle, where they, under queen BodiKa, first lost a war to Romans) for the south about 50 AD. They lodged in an area intersecting present Mauritania and Mali. About 1400 AD they moved again, southward. Before 1700AD, they: Fante, Ashante, Mossi, Fra-fra et cetera had reached their present locus. These peoples have something in common with the Igbo, such as smithery, native calendar (the way they reckoned their years before the gregorian calendar). Even the Igbo name for 'year', "Afo", is nearly the same in one Twi dialect.

From the work of European archeologists who once toured Igboland, it is believed that Ndi-Igbo were already at their present location by the time of Muhammad (the light of Islam). But it seems also that there were minor exoduses. Early foreign missionaries noted that the peole most receptice to the gospel among West Central Africans had just moved further hinterland. An old convert said that the reference was to the area south of Arochukwu and Ikwerre. In otherwods, Igbo folks vacated the area before non-Igbo folks living there now settled.

I base my faith that Ndi-Igbo came from On on their diversity, industry, cultural significance of the moon to them, absence of islamic or christianic elements in the pristine Igbo cultures, and the fact that no large sections of Ndi-Igbo in Ala-Igbo was ever subdued and ruled by non-Igbo powers to warrant any radical transmutation in cultural character. The section closest to Bini is the only exception. The natives of Obosi and Onicha comprise ab-oroginal natives and descendants of invaders (Bini??) who got neutralized after crossing the Naija eastward.

*Ndi-Igbo are very diverse yet very one. 10 to 14, or more dialectical groupings are identifiable. In fact, some Igbo dialects are close to being distinct languages. This is a characteristic shared even more profoundly by Jukun, another rather even-headed people.

*The Igbo are almost never at ease with the way things are. They are ever actively in search of improvement or better alternatives. Unlike some nearby peoples who relinquish huge human responsibilities to God, the Igbo believe in the supernatural but also, innately, in the active human factor: ability and probability of human beings engineering and driving some events according to their colletcive will, temperament and passion. This has always been the case even before the brazen dollarization of Igbo life, a money-worship trend that has almost de-culturated Ndi-Igbo both at home and in the Diaspora. This is vividly echoed by the apostolic musician, Patrice Obasi, who sang: "Eluigwe o, nyere anyi akao"; and the near-legendary social musician of the pseudonym Oliver de Coque, who chanted: "Onye chi na-azo na-azo onwe ya; onye kwe chi ya ekwe".

*Whereas the Igbo are extra-venturous, they do not colonize other places by force of arms. Fula, Bini, Oduduwa did or still do. Instead, Ndi-Igbo colonize by the force of trading. This is an indiscountable characteristic of ancient Phoenicians.

*I believe that Ndi-Igbo came from Afi-Ri-Kha n side of the Middle East. I believe that the pre-Igbo Igbo traversed the Sudan (Bilad as Soudan), with many members of the conglomeration of emigrants settling along their route, towards the tropical forests of Central and west Africa, before bellingerent Arabian murderers began subduing and enslaving peasant Africans.
The Arabians dominated east and parts of southern Africa, from al-Khaira (Cairo) to Maputo. Only Ethiopia was partly excepted. So the histories of the peoples in this region, including some Ethiopian ethnicities, bear scars of Arab molestation, unlike Igbo history. In fact, the name 'Mozambique' was a standardized mispronunciation. When Portuguese expansionists took the kingdom from Arabian rulers after many hundreds of years of rulership and lordship, they could not pronounce the local chief's name well. So 'Musa bin Ba*i*que' became 'Musambique'.

*Ndi-Igbo, like their India-ward counterparts, must have departed before Christianity emerged. Otherwise, they would have been affected by the Coptic and Amharic versions of christianism that thrived in Egypt and Ethiopiya (Abyssinia) in the first half of the first millennium After-the-birth-of-the-Christ.
Detractingly, mummification and pyramid building, even in diluted or miniaturized forms, are absent and unknown in Igbo Pristine cultures. These are the two most prominent techno-cultural brands of Ancient Egypt.

Being a pleasure, the search for the definite origin of Ndi-Igbo continues...