Egbé Omo Yorùbá of Jackson Mississippi

04/28/2023

Story of Ayinla Omowura : A Yoruba music legend
Waidi Ayinla Yusuf Gbogbolowo better known as Ayinla Omowura (1933 – 6 May 1980) was a Nigerian Apala musician born in Itoko, Abeokuta in 1933
Omowura was the son of Yusuff Gbogbolowo, a blacksmith, and Wuramotu Morenike.
He did not have formal education and started out working at his father's smithy but left and went on to working several jobs as a driver, butcher, carpenter and bus park boy.
He was however discovered by Adewole Alao Oniluola, who later became his lead drummer and started an apprenticeship in Olalomi, an Apala variant.
Omowura was known for feuding with other musicians including his superiors such as Haruna Ishola, whom he later acknowledged to be his superior. He also feuded with Ayinde Barrister, Fatai Olowonyo, Yesufu Olatunji and Dauda Epo Akara.
These feuds coloured his music over his discography. He was noted to have a quick temper and engaged in ma*****na use and in physical altercations.
Despite being unlettered, Omowura was enlightened about current events and had a command of puns, proverbs innuendos and metaphors. He was a social commentator, critic as well as a moral instructor.
He often served as a mouthpiece for passing on government policies to the masses and was also a messenger of the masses back to the government. In his 1976 album, Owo Udoji he hailed the government for salary increment but however demanded for same increment in the private sector In Orin Owo Ile Eko, He explained the Lagos rent edict to his listeners and also praised the Mobolaji Johnson-led Lagos State government for the masses-oriented programme.
He influenced the response of the people to the policy and also explained the National Census of 1973 in his album National Census.
the 1973 album, Challenge Cup '73 he explained the change in driving from the left to the right hand side and the change of the Nigerian Currency from the colonial Pound Sterling to the Naira and Kobo during the General Yakubu Gowon-led military government.
Asides current affairs, he used his albums to extol the importance of sporting activities. His music also preached positive change in society and portrayed both mourning and celebration.
He was also a critic of women who bleached their skin and promiscuous women.
He had many aliases and earned the moniker, Hadji Costly because of his flamboyant dressing in agbadas made of high quality Swiss lace and gold jewellery.
His other aliases include Egunmogaji, Anigilaje and Alujannu Elere which demonstrated his status as the enfant terrible in music of the time.
Omowura was a muslim by birth, he practiced the religion and performed the Hajj in 1975. He however also engaged in traditional religion practices.He was married to Afusatu of the Ile Eleni clan and Tawakalitu Owonikoko.
Omowura was killed in a bar room brawl on May 6, 1980 aged 47. He died from a cerebral haemorrhage after being struck on the head with a beer mug by Bayewu, his manager at the time.
Bayewu was taken to court and sentenced to death a few years later.On the day he died, EMI Records recorded at least 50,000 copies sale on each of his albums.
Following the death of Omowura in 1980 and Haruna Ishola in 1983, the popularity of Apala music waned and has been largely replaced by Fuji music. New school Nigerian musicians, Terry Apala and Q-dot Alagbe have made music influenced by Omowura's style.
Credit : Nigeria Stories

09/24/2022

Harriet Tubman was around twelve years old, enslaved, when a fellow enslaved man attempted to run away. After being found and brought back, Harriet and a few others were instructed to help tie him up to be whipped. She refused, and when the man attempted to run again, she blocked the doorway to help him escape. An overseer threw a two-pound weight at the man but hit Harriet instead, fracturing her skull. Throughout her life, she suffered from severe headaches and narcolepsy from this incident.

A petite woman of only about five feet, Harriet was strong-willed and courageous, and as she grew older, she became determined to escape to the North. Upon learning in 1849 that she would be sold, Harriet, now in her mid-20s, decided the time was right. One night, she, along with two of her brothers, ran away. Her brothers soon turned back, and for the rest of her journey, Harriet was alone without friends. She walked at night, hid during the day, didn't know who to trust, where to eat, at times she had shelter, often she slept outside on the ground overlooked by the stars. After about ninety miles of travel, she crossed into the North to freedom.

Reflecting about making it into the North, she said, "I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now that I was free. There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven."

Soon after her escape, Harriet went back into the South to help some family members to escape. After getting them North, she went back to the South to help more family members. Then she went to help others. Harriet would make many trips over the years, rescuing approximately seventy people. Of the experience, she would say, "I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."

—
Sources: http://www.harriet-tubman.org / Women of Achievement by Benjamin Brawley, 1919, Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society / Portrait of Harriet taken circa 1868 by Benjamin F. Powelson / Wikimedia Commons / https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman / Women's Words : The Columbia Book of Quotations by Women (1996) by Mary Biggs, p. 2

To join our mailing list: https://historicalsnapshots.substack.com

09/23/2022

On this day in 1957, 65 years ago today, Louis Armstrong blew his top in his hotel room in Grand Forks, North Dakota over the Little Rock Central High School integration crisis, blasting Governor Orval Faubus for being "two-faced" and President Dwight Eisenhower for having "no guts" to let Faubus call in the National Guard in to prevent black students from integrating the high school. "The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell," he vented. "It's getting so bad a colored man hasn't got any country."

Armstrong put his entire career on the line to speak out against injustice as his September 17 North Dakota comments made headlines around the world. However, a recently discovered private reel-to-reel tape owned by Armstrong found the trumpeter venting about Faubus and the Little Rock situation to interviewers on September 8 and September 10. He had spent over a week telling anyone who would listen about the injustice going on in Little Rock but it wasn't until reporter Larry Lubenow of North Dakota ran with Armstrong's September 17 comments that the story blew up.

Armstrong received little support at the time, instead getting more criticism from both the white and black press. Today, his stance is celebrated as a landmark moment in Civil Rights. He knew what he had done. He cut out various clipping about the incident, wrapped them in Scotch tape and stuck them in a scrapbook. This is Armstrong's copy of a Pittsburgh Courier story about his Little Rock comments, containing some of his fiercest statements on the subject. We're glad he saved it and we're glad he spoke out. Thanks, Pops.

09/04/2022

WHO SOLD NIGERIA TO THE BRITISH FOR £865K IN 1899?

This is the story of the first oil war, which was fought in the 19th century, in the area that became Nigeria.

All through the 19th century, palm oil was highly sought-after by the British, for use as an industrial lubricant for machinery. Remember that Britain was the world’s first industrialised nation, so they needed resources such as palm oil to maintain that.

Palm oil, of course, is a tropical plant, which is native to the Niger Delta. Malaysia’s dominance came a century later. By 1870, palm oil had replaced slaves as the main export of the Niger Delta, the area which was once known as the Slave Coast. At first, most of the trade in the oil palm was uncoordinated, with natives selling to those who gave them the best deals. Native chiefs such as former slave, Jaja of Opobo became immensely wealthy because of oil palm. With this wealth came influence.

However, among the Europeans, there was competition for who would get preferential access to the lucrative oil palm trade. In 1879, George Goldie formed the United African Company (UAC), which was modelled on the former East India Company. Goldie effectively took control of the Lower Niger River. By 1884, his company had 30 trading posts along the Lower Niger. This monopoly gave the British a strong hand against the French and Germans in the 1884 Berlin Conference. The British got the area that the UAC operated in, included in their sphere of influence after the Berlin Conference.

When the Brits got the terms they wanted from other Europeans, they began to deal with the African chiefs. Within two years of 1886, Goldie had signed treaties with tribal chiefs along the Benue and Niger Rivers whilst also penetrating inland. This move inland was against the spirit of verbal agreements that had been made to restrict the organisation’s activities to coastal regions.

By 1886, the company name changed to The National Africa Company and was granted a royal charter (incorporated). The charter authorised the company to administer the Niger Delta and all lands around the banks of the Benue and Niger Rivers. Soon after, the company was again renamed. The new name was Royal Niger Company, which survives, as Unilever, till this day.

To local chiefs, the Royal Niger Company negotiators had pledged free trade in the region. Behind, they entered private contracts on their terms. Because the (deceitful) private contracts were often written in English and signed by the local chiefs, the British government enforced them. So for example, Jaja of Opobo, when he tried to export palm oil on his own, was forced into exile for “obstructing commerce”. As an aside, Jaja was “forgiven” in 1891 and allowed to return home, but he died on the way back, poisoned with a cup of tea.

Seeing what happened to Jaja, some other native rulers began to look more closely at the deals they were getting from the Royal Nigeria Company. One of such kingdoms was Nembe, whose king, Koko Mingi VIII, ascended the throne in 1889 after being a Christian schoolteacher. Koko Mingi VIII, King Koko for short, like most rulers in the yard, was faced with the Royal Nigeria Company encroachment. He also resented the monopoly enjoyed by the Royal Nigeria Company and tried to seek out favourable trading terms, with particularly the Germans in Kamerun (Cameroon).

By 1894, the Royal Nigeria Company increasingly dictated whom the natives could trade with, and denied them direct access to their former markets. In late 1894, King Koko renounced Christianity and tried to form an alliance with Bonny and Okpoma against the Royal Nigeria Company to take back the trade. This is significant because while Okpoma joined up, Bonny refused. A harbinger of the successful “divide and rule” tactic.

On 29 January 1895, King Koko led an attack on the Royal Niger Company’s headquarters, which was in Akassa in today’s Bayelsa state. The pre-dawn raid had more than a thousand men involved. King Koko’s attack succeeded in capturing the base. Losing 40 of his men, King Koko captured 60 white men as hostages, as well as a lot of goods, ammunition and a Maxim gun. Koko then attempted to negotiate a release of the hostages in exchange for being allowed to chose his trading partners. The British refused to negotiate with Koko, and he had forty of the hostages killed. A British report claimed that the Nembe people ate them. On 20 February 1895, Britain’s Royal Navy, under Admiral Bedford attacked Brass and burned it to the ground. Many Nembe people died and smallpox finished off a lot of others.

By April 1895, business had returned to “normal”, normal being the conditions that the British wanted, and King Koko was on the run. Brass was fined £500 by the British, £62,494 (NGN29 million) in today’s money, and the looted weapons were returned as well as the surviving prisoners. After a British Parliamentary Commission sat, King Koko was offered terms of settlement by the British, which he rejected and disappeared. The British promptly declared him an outlaw and offered a reward of £200 (£26,000; NGN12 million today) for him. He committed su***de in exile in 1898.

About that time, another “recalcitrant King”, the Oba of Benin, was run out of town. The pacification of the Lower Niger was well and truly underway. The immediate effect of the Brass Oil War was that public opinion in Britain turned against the Royal Nigeria Company, so its charter was revoked in 1899. Following the revoking of its charter, the Royal Niger Company sold its holdings to the British government for £865,000 (£108 million today). That amount, £46,407,250 (NGN 50,386,455,032,400, at today’s exchange rate) was effectively the price Britain paid, to buy the territory which was to become known as Nigeria.

Gossip House

08/12/2022

The biggest country in Africa that the United Kingdom colonized is Nigeria. The biggest country that the United Kingdom colonized in Asia is India (which then comprised the present Pakistan and Bangladesh). When the UK came into Nigeria and India, like all other countries they colonized, they brought along their technology, religion (Christianity), and culture: names, dressing, food, language, etc.

Try as hard as the British did, India rejected the British religion, names, dressing, food, and even language, but they did not reject the British technology. Today, 80.5% of Indians are Hindus; 13.4% Muslims; 2.3% Christians; 1.9% Sikhs; 0.8% Buddhists, etc. Hindi is the official language of the government of India, but English is used extensively in business and administration and has the status of a “subsidiary official language.” It is rare to find an Indian with an English name or dressed in suit.

On the other hand, Nigeria embraced, to a large extent, the British religion, British culture – names, dressing, foods, and language – but rejected the British technology. The difference between the Nigerian and the Indian experiences is that while India is proud of its heritage, Nigeria takes little pride in its heritage, a situation that has affected the nationalism of Nigerians and our development as a nation. Before the advent of Christianity, the Arabs had brought Islam into Nigeria through the North. Islam also wiped away much of the culture of Northern Nigeria. Today, the North has only Sharia Courts but no Customary Courts. So from the North to the South of Nigeria, the Western World and the Eastern World have shaped our lives to be like theirs and we have lost much or all of our identity.

Long after the British and Arabs left Nigeria, Nigeria has waxed strong in religion to the extent that Nigerians now set up religious branches of their home-grown churches in Europe, the Americas, Asia and other African countries. Just like the Whites brought the gospel to us, Nigerians now take the gospel back to the Whites. In Islam, we are also very vibrant to the extent that if there is a blasphemous comment against Islam in Denmark or the US, even if there is no violent reaction in Saudi Arabia, the Islamic headquarters of the world, there will be loss of lives and destruction of property in Nigeria.

If the United Arab Emirates, a country with 75% Muslims, is erecting the tallest building in the world and encouraging the world to come and invest in its country by providing a friendly environment, Boko Haram ensures that the economy of the North (and by extension that of Nigeria) is crippled with bombs and bullets unless every Nigerian converts to Boko Haram’s brand of Islam. We are indeed a very religious people. Meanwhile, while we are building the biggest churches and mosques, the Indians, South Africans, Chinese, Europeans and Americans have taken over our key markets: telecoms, satellite TV, multinationals, banking, oil and gas, automobile, aviation, shopping malls, hospitality, etc.

Ironically, despite our exploits in religion, we are a people with little godliness, a people without scruples. It is rare to do business with a Nigerian pastor, deacon, knight, elder, brother, sister, imam, mullah, mallam, alhaji or alhaja without the person laying landmines of bribes and deception on your path. We call it PR, facilitation fee, processing fee, transport money, financial engineering, deal, or whatever. But if it does not change hands, nothing gets done. And when it is amassed, we say it is “God’s blessings.” Some people assume that sleaze is a problem of public functionaries, but the private sector seems to be worse than the public sector these days.

One would have assumed that the more churches and mosques that spring up in every nook and cranny of Nigeria, the higher the morals in our society. But it is not so. The situation is that the more religious we get, the baser we become. Our land never knew the type of bloodshed experienced from religious extremists, political desperadoes, ritual killers, armed robbers, kidnappers, internet scammers, university cultists, and lynch mobs. Life has become so cheap and brutish that everyday seems to be a bonanza.

We import the petroleum that we have in abundance, rice and beans that our land can produce in abundance, and even toothpicks that primary school children can produce with little or no effort. Yet we drive the best of cars and live in the best of edifices, visit the best places in the world for holidays and use the most expensive electronic and telecoms gadgets. It is now a sign of poverty for a Nigerian to ride a saloon car. Four-wheel drive is it! Even government officials, who were known to use only Peugeot cars as official cars as a sign of modesty, have upgraded to Toyota Prado, without any iota of shame, in a country where about 70 per cent live below poverty. Private jets have become as common as cars. A nation that imports toothpicks and pins, flaunts wealth and wallows in ostentation at a time its children are trooping to Ghana, South Africa and the UK for university education and its sick people are running to India for treatment.

India produces automobile and exports it to the world. India’s medical care is second to none, with even Americans and Europeans travelling to the country for medical treatment. India has joined the nuclear powers. India has launched a successful mission to the moon. Yet bicycles and tricycles are common sights in India. But in Nigeria, only the wretched of the earth ride bicycles.

I have intentionally chosen to compare Nigeria with India rather than China, South Korea, Brazil, Malaysia, or Singapore, because of the similarities between India and Nigeria. But these countries were not as promising as Nigeria at the time of our independence.

Some would say that our undoing is our size: the 2012 United Nations estimate puts Nigeria’s population at 166 million, while India has a population of 1.2 billion. Some would blame it on the multiplicity of ethnic groups: we have 250 ethnic groups; India has more than 2000 ethnic groups. Some would hang it on the diversity in religion: we have two major religions – Christianity and Islam; but India has many. Some would say it is because we are young as an independent nation: we have 52 years of independence; India has 65 years, while apartheid ended in South Africa only in 1994.

07/30/2022

07/20/2022

Talent..... Just for fun

07/20/2022

Hope is alive