I am starting with the expression of gratitude to Chief Ibitoye Ogunshuyi, the Life Patron of the Yorubas in Plateau State and the President of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa in the 19 Northern States, who phoned on Saturday from Jos to commend my column which he said he had just come across. Not only did he describe last week’s piece as fantastic, he also requested that I send him all the seven articles he had missed on the Yoruba/Benin topic and advised me to turn my articles on the issue into a book. He is the third reader to make the suggestion. I am also grateful to Mr. A. Kingsley (080-9556-8332), who phoned from Abuja on Friday with words of praise for my column especially the series I am doing on Professor Douglas Anele’s antichrist articlexs. And who said that Femi Fani-Kayode, Mike Ozekhome and myself were his favourite columnists in Nigeria, because of our objectivity, candour and depth of the research we do on the issue we write about.
Back to the Yoruba/Benin matter, the practical experience I have with people whose fathers and mothers are from Akure and Benin and who are known in Akure as Ado – Akure and in Benin as Edo-ne’kue, is that they see themselves more as people from their dad’s town than from their mother’s place of origin. They are only more loyal to their mother’s town if their parents were divorced or separated and were brought up by their mum in her town or village. I got to know this because I spent the last two years of my elementary education at St. Paul’s Primary School, Evboneka, a village near Benin City, living with an Ado – Akure man, Mr. Edopkayi Imadiyi, a teacher, who later changed his name to Olusola Ojo. His father was from Benin and mother from Akure, but he was born and bred in Akure. During the period I stayed with him, we used to spend some weekends with his cousin, Mr. Lawal in Benin City.
Mr. Ojo who later became the Editor of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s West African Pilot newspaper during the Nigerian – Biafran civil war of 1967-70 and ended up as an officer in the Federal Ministry of Information, Ikoyi, Lagos was more loyal to Akure than Benin. While Mr. Lawal, his wives and children saw themselves as Benin people than Akures. Indeed, Mr. Ojo was the candidate of the Dr. Azikiwe – led National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) during the elections into the Federal House of Representatives in 1959. So, how could he have been more loyal or see himself more as a Benin man than an Akure citizen?
Although Chief Jacob Egharevba’s mother was from Akure, he was born and bred in Benin, his father’s town and lived there all his life. So, how could he, therefore, have been more loyal to Akure, his mother’s town, that he would in his book, A Short History of Benin published in 1953, have claimed that Benin was founded by Obagodo, a son of Oduduwa?
As stated in last week’s column, he came up with the account because that was what he found out during his research interviewing the elderly ones in ‘Benin’. When opposition to his book made him change his story, what he had in the new one published in the 1970s was that Benin was founded by a people from Saudi Arabia or Egypt who stayed in the Sudan and Ile-Ife for some time during their journey. It was because Oba Erediauwa was not still pleased with the story linking the Binis to Ile-Ife that made him come up in his autobiography in 2004 that Odududwa was a Benin prince called Ekhaladeran who migrated to Ile-Ife and changed his name.
It is true that as from 1966 when the crisis that led to the civil war in 1970 began through the 1980s that Yoruba lecturers dominated the Department of History, University of Ibadan. But the impression Oba Erediauwa gave in his autobiography that Yoruba dons edited Egharevba’s script and influenced his coming out in his book published in 1953 that Benin was founded by Oduduwa’s son is wrong.
Continues next week
Professor Anele’s Antichrist views (4)
Any columnist who writes on sensitive issues or topics such as religion, race, ethnicity or homosexuality is bound to receive caustic or virulent reactions from some of those opposed to his or her views. So, Professor Douglas Anele should understand this and not react angrily to criticism. Many of the people who respond to his articles may be students, young ones of the ages of his children or junior staff in their working places. He should therefore not reduce himself to the level of such readers replying them abusively. By so doing, he only tarnishes his own image and that of the University of Lagos where he teaches as people will wonder why someone of his academic status in such prestigious institution could behave the way he does, since the logo of his column shows that he has a Ph.D. degree and he’s a don at the institution.
To be sure, Professor Anele is free to hold an opinion on any issue and criticize people, but he must also deal with facts and not dish out false stories. Like he did with his claim that the 27 Books in the New Testament in the Holy Bible were written by authors who did not witness the events they wrote about and that Emperor Constantine I The Great was responsible for their publication. The books in the New Testament were written between 49 and 100 AD while Constantine I reigned from 306 until he died in 337, which were 206 – 257 years before he ascended the throne.
I have been working on a book on the Popes of the Catholic Church in the last three years and read all about Constantine I. I have been so painstaking with my research that in three years, I am still on Chapter 4 of a book that will have more than 20 chapters. The only correct thing Anele wrote about the Emperor is that he was responsible for calling the meetings of the Council of the Church. Nothing more!
Continues next week