A True Sociocultural Igala Based Magazine
Synonyms are closed words or words with same meaning.
Aduwa - Adua is not Igala Word.
Aduwa is wrong pronounciattion of 'Adua' in Hausa Language by the Igalas who travel far north then or before now.
It was migration that brought it into Igala as a word.
Raw meaning of Prayer (request) in Igala is Ebi/Ule.
Yes, Igala is a Unique Kingdom being rule by a King called Ata Igala.
THE MEANING AND ORIGIN OF ITALO
Italo is a corruption of the Hausa word "taro" which means
assembly, gathering event, rally, convention, conference.
Italo is a Loanword taken from Hausa language and then incorporated into Igala language's vocabulary. Like other loanwords "Italo" is translated from the original Hausa language and remains the same, but is altered slightly in pronunciation and spelling to synchronise with the phonetic peculiarities of Igala language. As it is usual with phonetic tradition of Igala language most words, especially the loan ones are introduced with vowel sounds. e.g., Torch = itochi; Photo = iboto; Peter = ipita; Martin = imatini; Solomon = icholomoni; Simon = ichamoni; and so on. This is what makes "Taro" to become ITALO.
Why Do We Have Loanwords?
Loanwords exist as a result of different communities of people coming into contact with other languages and cultures. This often happens due to migration and/or trade between them as the Igala have with Hausas.
Certain languages may have words for things, feelings, or experiences that others don't have, so these words get borrowed and integrated into new languages and cultures. Or, there may already be an existing word in one language, but another word from a different language could be more specific, have a slightly different meaning or perspective, or be easier/catchier to pronounce. So long for loanwords.
According to Igala historians, the late Igala royal sage, His Royal Eminence, Ameh Oboni, Ata Igala (May His soul rest in peace) originated a meeting of District Heads and prominent Igala leaders of thought at Anyigba for deliberations on the development of Igala Kingdom. He was said to have personally tagged the meeting "Taro" perhaps because of his perception that Hausa word could be more specific to the objectives of the gathering or have a slightly different meaning from the generic Igala word "Ujeju" which suited the subject of the assembly. By this time Hausa language had gained traction in Igala lingual bearing.
According the historians, Gabaidu Ameh Oboni chose Anyigba to host the gathering because of its centrality of location to Igala Kingdom. He sustained this annual gathering usually held in December when most Igala people would have less to do on their farms and much to do in commercial engagements until his death in 1956.
Along the line the name "Taro" was domesticated into Igala phonetic reference and became "Italo" which now enjoys grammatical function in Igala language. Italo has added more to its original package and has therefore, morphed into an annual festival for both Igala and non Igala people across Nigeria and beyond.
BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER
There is this story a nephew of mine shared with me some years back. Its material facets align with fiction, but it projects some imports that speak to the needs of the day.
Two uterine brothers moved to a distant countryside settlement after they lost their parents in their natal village to some horrible circumstances. The younger of the two took to hunting and was very successful doing it. But he had unbearable attitude issues which his elder brother could not cope with. Quarrels, fights, altercations marked their relationship so much their home started sheltering constant juries and assizes. After much warning and caution went unheeded, his elder brother drove him away.
This recalcitrant heckler moved to a friend and put up with him. He continued his hunting and after a few months, struck a big luck. He killed a buffalo. It was a massive game he could not hurl home all alone, he therefore, sheared some shrubs and concealed it with them. His journey back to the village was a fair distance and therefore, arrived home at night.
His host friend welcomed him with banters and offered him his meal, but the young man demurred it. He looked troubled and dejected. His friend asked to know what the matter was. He slurringly responded with a story of how he mistook a man for a game and shot and killed him. He implored his friend to help him cover the manslaughter, but his host jolted and instantly ordered him to pack out of his house. He would not want to incur the wrath of the villagers and kinsman slayer.
The young man packed bag and baggage and returned to his elder brother he had not seen for well over three months. His brother asked to know why he had come to him at such unearthly hour, and he narrated how he shot and killed a man he mistook for an animal, and upon disclosing it to his friend, was chased out by him. The elder brother was instantly seized with fear and empathy and quickly received him into his house and stealthily took him to an inner room where he offered him meal and assured him of his resolve to protect him.
At cockcrow he went to his younger brother, woke him up, and asked him to get prepared for he was set to sneak him out of the village to their mother's homeland - a three-day journey from their location.
His younger brother, in a low confident voice, asked him not to panic for his story of killing a man was a hoax. As a matter of fact, it was a buffalo he killed. He invented the story to test where real filial love resides and he had found it in the blood of a brother. They set out for the forest and brought the big game to the village where he was lionised for his hunting fame.
This story may be mythical, but it holds practical lesson for us in this dispensation. Elections are here with us again. Ambitions are flaring like sparks of fire from a fodge. Elective positions are being driven at with frenzy. This time it is Igala versus Igala. But it is not wholly so. Some contestants are products of the contraptions that advocated preference for alien interests to Igala interests. They secured their parties tickets through the machinery that whiffed off the gains of Igala's demographic strength at the polls.
By next year, the game could pitch an Igala governorship candidate against others. The build up to the 2019 election war started with the doctrine of "An alien is preferable" and culminated in turning Igala land into a killing field so the preferred alien could steal his way to power and turn Igala land into an Eldorado.
But has it worked out that way? Those who took up arms to fight fellow Igala electorate at the polls have burnt their fingers. Some are no longer alive. Some have been turfed out of their exalted political posts. The dreams of others have gone awry. Spilling Igala blood to gain political positions has a price tag. Cremating a living Igala woman to celebrate sordid ambition withers such ambition to smithereens.
The question now is: where are the gains of preferring an alien to one's own kinsman? Is it the inconsequential appointments sprinkled on a few masterminds of the anti-Igala advocacy? Is it the de-Igalanisation of Kogi State civil service? Is it the re-configuration of the state owned tertiary institutions' leadership to spite the Igala? Is it the audio award of contracts for the construction of Ankpa - Abejukolo road or Anyigba - Dekina - Shintaku road? Ok. We should shout our voices hoarse for the rehabilitation of Umomi - Idah road!
It should be clear to all that a friend's love as shown in our story is only expedient. There is no how a strong man cedes his power to an impotent bloke without being rendered ineffectual. Igala land and people are in a fight for recovery. Let no one rest in the delusion that there will be no attempt to re-introduce the bloodletting machinery of 2019 to 2023 elections.
The guns may be quiet for now especially on Anyigba front, but the criminals surreptitiously released from prison in the state and deployed to the election battlefield are still very much here. They have morphed into kidnap gangs and are having a field day in Igala land. The boys are still going from opposition parties meetings to party stalwarts homes and killing and maiming them. Cabinet members of the state government are threatening to kill anyone at the polls who vote against their party. Even the chief security officer of the state has made it clear that he is a better marksman than the green beret. And a presidential candidate of a party has announced that with gunshots voters will be scared away from polling units to pave way for his party to win.
These are alien attributes that must not be preferred this time around. Let the sellouts who treated their land and people with treachery return home with penitence and embrace Igala brotherhood. Igala nation must explore all means available including negation, diplomacy, accommodation and force where necessary to win this fight of recovery.
Crude Oil Wealth and The Throes of Its Paradox
Niger Delta - that low triangular area of alluvial deposits where the amalgam of the Rivers Niger and Benue divides before entering the Atlantic Ocean - is the economic life wire of Nigeria, at least for now. For now, because the world economy is being re-engineered on the driveway of renewable energy which seeks to relieve crude oil of its grip on the levers of most nations of the world economy.
Niger Delta is this strategic to Nigeria's existence for the sole and known reason that it produces the crude oil the sale of which tubes in copious flow of hard currency to the nation's coffers. The surfeit of the crude oil inspired national wealth is the core of the paradox Nigeria keeps contending with. It does not help rehashing the features of this paradox since we live with them daily.
But a very significant distinguishing characteristic of this contradiction is the ravaging poverty, deprivation, social disruption, and disillusionment that the force of our oil wealth has biffed our faces with and bloodied our noses.
The rigors of living in the Niger Delta today exacerbated by the devastation of the farmlands and rivers of the immediate oil production communities, signify in practical terms the entrenchment of evil in preference for development which the oil wealth should originally instigate.
How did we get to this point? The Nigerian elite - the crop of Nigerians enjoying superior intellectual, social, political, and economic status. Many arguments have been advanced to locate Nigeria's crumpled existence in the amalgamation of 1914, and bad leadership, but that appears a bit diversionary. What that argument seeks to overlook is the anima of the average Nigerian elite that is implicated by expedience, greediness, voraciousness, opportunism, rapaciousness, self-interest, self-seeking, and stinginess.
These demerits are the midpoints of every wrong foot Nigeria has put forward in running its affairs.
The cheating that colours certificates, the deceit that harangues interpersonal relationships, the naughtiness that stultifies family authority, the rebellion that defines responses to order, the sharp practices that hold sway at unions leadership, the compromises and abuses that deface our institutions of learning, etc., say much about the pool from which the nation hauls in her leadership catch.
Evidently, Nigerians are organically diseased and it is from this premise we field arguments and decisions to push out infected causes to spite good order and sane perception. This is what has brought Nigeria to its knees and lengthened the days of sorrow for the Niger Deltans.
But there is fun in all this. The Golden Egg is no longer the exclusive reserve of the Niger Delta. Anambra, Kogi, Bauchi and Gombe states have morphed into oil producing regions courtesy of their locations at the lower and upper basins of the Rivers Niger and Benue. The fun here is that four additional states have been dragged into the coven of destruction that oil wealth foists on Nigeria.
The redesignation of these states as crude oil breeders is a death knell for the people rather than a recipe for life. The Niger Delta experience says it all.
Oloibiri where Nigeria drilled its first crude oil in 1956 is desiccated. Ogoni land is an environmental degradation enclave. Oil spill has turned the rainforest, rivers, ponds, lands, and creeks into swamps of hell for living organisms and made the land repulsive to agricultural production.
Protests naturally bred by this existential tragedy from the people to draw attention to their plight were misread by the powers that be who were feeding fat from the proceeds of crude oil mercantilism and went bile and berserk with force of arm.
The boys dissolved into the creeks and militarised their resistance. People died. Warlords emerged. Camps went after camps. Economic sabotage ensued. Government capitulated and conceded amnesty to the militants, including Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and Ministry of Niger Delta. Nothing changed thereafter, except that it initiated a buoying up of the wealthy class of men and women in the region.
The four additional states that received the "death sentence"
have a lifeline that may extend their ex*****on; and that is Derivation - a palliative pill prescribed for the harangued dispensers of the nation's wealth. They can now league together with the original nine states to net in extra slices from the federation accounts allocation. What a treasure trove for the governors!
They can now flourish in the euphoria of their states' enhanced earnings with their eyes fixed on greedy enlargement of their personal wealth coasts.
The game for this franchise is already afoot in Kogi State. It's two or three months now that the derivation allocation has been streaming into the state coffers, but no mention has been made of the collectable amount. Ibaji Local Government Area that supplies the 20 oil wells which draw in the earning is left in the lurch. One only prays that the Niger Delta scenario is not replicated in Kogi State seeing that Ibaji people are war-tested and have a liaison with the Niger Delta militants!
Dearth of Industries in Igala Land and Fear of the Unknown
Igala people arguably are distinct, outlined folks. One thing that goes for them is superlative intelligence. They are also daring and courageous. In any discipline where Igala register presence, it takes a turn for vivacity, thoroughness, forthrightness, and cognitive strength.
In commerce and industry, no ethnic nationality outclasses Igala in growing a trade or stitching connections to achieve business excellence. It's not surprising therefore, that in the business world today Igala have vaulting per capita representation. They enjoy powerful membership of Nigeria's millionaires, billionaires and trillionaires' clubs as eminent business personalities, distinguished industrialists, and
brilliantly thriving tycoons.
Despite this impressive check stub of Igala concourse of entrepreneural aces, Igala land is still barren and bereft of industrial stakes and insurable business interests that can speed up development. And there is much to undergird this.
The land is endowed with abundant alluvial deposit along the basins of the two rivers hedging the kingdom, lush brushes, forested vegetation, impressive expanse of land, mountain ranges seething with mineral deposits, geological phenomenon such as belts of limestone, iron ore, coal, tantalite, and pools of crude oil, etc.
The land is also blessed with cash crops such as maize, rice, cassava, beniseed, cotton, yam, sorghum, guinea corn, as well as economic trees like cashew, palm trees, cocoa, coffee, plantain, banana, locust bean trees, iroko, mahogany, obeche, etc.
These are raw materials that can feed assorted industries, but Igala industrialists seem not to bother about them. They look the other way as the commercially endowed populace joggle through known pressures to tag on trading in primitive style.
A worried group of young men once took this matter up with an industrialist, trying to persuade him to look back home. He responded by asking this question: "Do industries thrive in Igala land?"
The perplexed young men demanded explanation. The Igala industrialist went rhetorical.
"Where is Okura Sawmill?" "Where is Idah Sanitary Ware?" "What happened to the multi million Naira Anyigba Agricultural Development Project?" Did it not fold up before we left Benue State?" "What has happened to Ofejiji Hydropower project initiated by Late Dr. Jacob Abdullahi?"
He ended by pontificating that having met the criteria for running a business, no industrialist ignores the forces that guide operations in
the choice location of intended business. He said any keen observer of events in Igala land would readily admit that ventures that helped other lands to progress have very short span of life in Igala land.
Awe-striken and brow-baited the young men acquiesced to the rather sweeping generalisation and went to town to spread the tiding of intractable fate of industry development in Igala land shading it off with metaphysical garb.
As it is with unfortified standpoint, isolated events or happenstance are often perceived as or rammed into a brand that is generally known or commonly encountered. The industrialist's treaties served at best to provide cover for his disdain and disloyalty to Igala land and people. The failure of the ventures he cited as avoidance incentives could not have been the exclusive reserve of Igala land. The collapse of textile industries in Kaduna, coal mining industry in Enugu, Michelin tyres in Ibadan or Lagos, and countless other moribund concerns across several cities of Nigeria should have driven investors from such cities which today are industrial hubs, if we go by his argument.
There is getting to be too much of over glorification of the esoteric among our people. Every contradiction observable in the interactive sequences of life must find its resolution in witchcraft. For this many homes are ripped apart; siblings sever bond of affinity; fathers and mothers who nurtured their children from infancy suddenly morphed into wizards and witches to shun; a lady misused her growing year and got stuck on the shelf of the unmarried, witches are to blame; accidents, no matter the immediate link to recklessness, cannot miss its remote link with witchcraft. This perception has ruled our psyche so much our tertiary knowledge acquisition does little to minify it.
It must be stated, however, that there are noticeable influences of the metaphysical world in human transactions all around us. But attempting to make it assume peculiarity among our people does not add up. This is the fear of the unknown that is still holding at bay the industrialisation of Igala land. Those still nursing the perception of the industrialist should endeavour to observe the unending successes recorded in hospitality industry, medical industry, transport business, education industry, etc all in Igala land to see the porosity of his tirades against the Igala people. If there are witches and wizards in Igala land, the land does not wear this crown alone. There are some societies in Nigeria that have them in surfeit and celebrate their exploits. Yet investors troop in to do business.
So let Igala henchmen of business turn their attention to the land and do away with their fears.
The Diluvian Woes
By Martins Haruna
The months of August and September 2022 gave to Nigeria a specimen of the elements' potential for annihilating life on the planet earth. It was the period fury of the deep rolled its billows ferociously against human habitations located on the banks of the major rivers and their tributaries in Nigeria. Not even desert locations in the Northern part of Nigeria escaped the visitation. In essence, a bit of Noah's flood was almost replicated here, albeit with differing scope, depth, and scale of destruction.
The year's raining season came with benevolent downpour. The rain came down in torrents at sustained frequency, rubbishing the retention capacity of the Nigerian soil variegated into sandy, loamy, clayey, and marshy crusts. The excess water volume sped their way into the river channels which in turn lost their containment capacity and turned the volume into flood waters.
The flood waters moved forcefully into farmlands, snaked into homes, submerging houses, cars, motorcycles, and displaced the occupants.
Not discounting the devastation in many riverine states, our experience in Kogi State was horrendous. Lokoja, the capital city fell. Shintaku fell. Mozum fell. Bagana fell. Ecewu fell. Ajaokuta fell. Idah fell. And Ibaji fell. Ibaji, a Local Government Area consisting of 45 very large communities was swallowed up by the flood.
Human empathy, sympathy, commiseration, pathos, compassion, concern, pity, and ruth rose to the occasion. These maintenance tools were exercised to help the displaced find temporary shelter, the hungry to find food, the drowning to access rescue, and the naked to find coverlet.
Now the rains are over. The flood has receded and submerged buildings are drained of their illegal aqueous occupants. But the damage to their existence is incalculable. Building collapse, farm products destruction, starvation, and many more have been the attendant consequences of the flood devastation.
Mitigating these consequences have met its match in the various humanitarian gestures that have been decanting in since the disaster struck.
But attention should now engross measures to prevent the flood. Taking advantage of the hapless flood victims to launder philanthropic spirit, create outlet for expending stolen public fund to harvest accolades, and dispense goods to establish partisan presence and identification do not answer to the preventive needs of the moment. UNDP has already volunteered recommendations on how to prevent flood in Nigeria. It now behoves the government to avail themselves of these recommendations and save Nigerians further rounds of Diluvian Woes.
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The Diluvian Woes
The months of August and September 2022 gave to Nigeria a specimen of the elements' potential for annihilating life on the planet earth. It was the period fury of the deep rolled its billows ferociously against human habitations located on the banks of the major rivers and their tributaries in Nigeria. Not even desert locations in the Northern part of Nigeria escaped the visitation. In essence, a bit of Noah's flood was almost replicated here, albeit with differing scope, depth, and scale of destruction.
The year's raining season came with benevolent downpour. The rain came down in torrents at sustained frequency, rubbishing the retention capacity of the Nigerian soil variegated into sandy, loamy, clayey, and marshy crusts. The excess water volume sped their way into the river channels which in turn lost their containment capacity and turned the volume into flood waters.
The flood waters moved forcefully into farmlands, snaked into homes, submerging houses, cars, motorcycles, and displaced the occupants.
Not discounting the devastation in many riverine states, our experience in Kogi State was horrendous. Lokoja, the capital city fell. Shintaku fell. Mozum fell. Bagana fell. Ecewu fell. Ajaokuta fell. Idah fell. And Ibaji fell. Ibaji, a Local Government Area consisting of 45 very large communities was swallowed up by the flood.
Human empathy, sympathy, commiseration, pathos, compassion, concern, pity, and ruth rose to the occasion. These maintenance tools were exercised to help the displaced find temporary shelter, the hungry to find food, the drowning to access rescue, and the naked to find coverlet.
Now the rains are over. The flood has receded and submerged buildings are drained of their illegal aqueous occupants. But the damage to their existence is incalculable. Building collapse, farm products destruction, starvation, and many more have been the attendant consequences of the flood devastation.
Mitigating these consequences have met its match in the various humanitarian gestures that have been decanting in since the disaster struck.
But attention should now engross measures to prevent the flood. Taking advantage of the hapless flood victims to launder philanthropic spirit, create outlet for expending stolen public fund to harvest accolades, and dispense goods to establish partisan presence and identification do not answer to the preventive needs of the moment. UNDP has already volunteered recommendations on how to prevent flood in Nigeria. It now behoves the government to avail themselves of these recommendations and save Nigerians further rounds of Diluvian Woes.
Resuscitation of Igala Language
By Frank Festus
A friend posted on my WhatsApp box about last week a video clip in which two young Igala men engaged each other at a game of consonantal alliteration which involves the use of the same consonant at the beginning of each stressed syllable in a line of verse.
Their display presented a perfect control of the tongue twisting verses that made me recoil with remonstration at my failures in the moonlight game during my childhood. A notable consonantal alliteration game which prevented me from assuming the leadership of my peer group went like this: Ukebe kebe ufopata opia febe kpa! Even as I write it could still not get it!
I was thrilled at the resuscitation of this speech developing exercise which guided the mastery of our natal language in our growing years.
More thrilling is the information I got about a plan in the works to establish a studio in Abuja where some of these moribund mechanics of Igala language can be annotated.
The relevance of such venture can be appreciated in the light of the fast receding rate at which the current generation of Igala youths lose the mastery of Igala language. A notable feature reflects in the trend of interspersing spoken Igala with English expressions thereby adulterating the mother tongue. Tragically some cannot even speak Igala language now; but the English language they substitute their native tongue with is not even spoken well.
Where did we get it all wrong? From the home, of course. We have a situation on hand where full-blooded Igala parents raised in typical Igala village setting adopt the use of English language as medium of communication in their homes. Regrettably, the English they train their children with is fraught with all known grammatical errors.
Language experts say the more languages a child speaks the merrier. When a child is taught the language of his nativity properly, he stands a perfect chance of learning fast other languages with ease.
Let Igala parents return to the basics and check the erosion of our cultural identity.
*Options Available To Igala*
By Frank Festus
Some opinions have run across socio-political spectrum highlighting the loss of Igala fortunes in Kogi political landscape. The so-called lost political fortunes are weighed against the forceful alienation of their hold on the state governance. Such opinion remains isolated in view of the fact that governance of a state does not solely constitute all that there is to project a people's political bearing.
That notwithstanding, there is no denying the fact that governance privileges accruing from ethnic cleavages which they enjoyed previously could have dwindled or extirpated in deference to some prejudices. That in itself is social equilibrium that fixes the course of life. It flows on ebbs and tides.
But it must be admitted that Igala people have a diseased political bearing. The dynamics that play out at every point of political engineering do not sympathise with projections that derive from articulate orientation that characterises the thinking of a traumatized people who badly need agenda based coordination.
It's this disease that exposed the fissures in Igala fabric which eventually aggregated the blemishes that weakened their cohesion at the last election outings. And the end is not in sight for its cure since we are still running in the same circuit.
What appears to be the known agendum of notable Igala politicians is the appropriation of Kogi governorship seat. Very few among them, if at all there is any, conceptualise the design of providing leadership for the people as an ultimate adaptable force in the first instance before pulling through their ambition to secure the governorship seat. That explains why every Igala man that ever ruled the state had always faced virulent attacks from his kinsmen. The ultimate came in 2019, when Igala youths were armed and drugged to unleash violence on Igala electorate just to make sure the Igala contestant for the governorship seat did not realize his dream.
To conduct, direct, guide, and take a people to self actualisation and realisation specifies the leadership that the Igala people badly need. The arbitrary mode as we have now which conditions the rich, the wealthy, the intimidator, to throw themselves up for the governorship race cannot take the Igala people out of the woods for now. At best we would have a repeat of the scenario where any Igala that emerges as the governor personalizes the governorship seat, lives for his nuclear family, disdains constructive advice from anyone outside the league of acolytes he surrounds himself with, panics subordinates, inflicts casualties on Igala people, enlarges his coast of pecuniary acquisition, and leaves the rest of his kinsmen to receive the butt of resentment from their fellow Kogians.
While not discounting the socio-economic gains occasioned for Igala land by those that had emerged as governors so far from among the people, it is equally important to underscore the imperatives of evolving a leadership among the Igala people to forestall the tragedies of our immediate past.
Leadership may be hard to come by in a politician who shows up to canvass for people's votes at elections and recedes to his comfort zone thereafter. The Igala people cannot be favoured with leadership from a politician who, after winning election, turns into a demi-god and shuts down all routes to his abode. Leadership cannot be obtained from a politician who takes much for the people and doles out a little to them. These and many more offend the youths to fly the handle.
To get the leadership we need, the option available is to develop agenda for the people. What do the Igala people need? What do they want? What is their development agendum? What paradigms suits its achievement? Where do they project to be? How do they get there? These are pathfinders to the recovery of Igala essence, raising the hope of finding a cure to their disease.
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