Olaudah Equiano

01/16/2025

Homecoming means alot to ndi Igbo

01/16/2025

Boundaries are made, but a people are created. We are Igbo where ever we are, no boundary can stop it.

01/07/2025

Olaudah Equiano was the first black abolitionist and a renowned writer.

At the age of 11, He was captured by slave traders from his hometown in Isseke, present day Anambra State and sold into bo***ge to the British colony of Virginia.

He was given the name Gustavus Vassa by one of his many owners, and was forced to serve several masters, among them was a British Naval officer
Whom he traveled between four continents with.

These journies helped him to produce the most popular and vivid slave narrative of his era.

He purchased his freedom in the year 1777 at the age of 32, after having mastered reading, writing and arithmetic.

He settled in England, and soon became a leader of the emerging anti-slavery movement.

He presented one of the first petitions to the British Parliament calling for the abolition of slavery.

In 1787, He became the first person of African ancestry to hold a post in the British Government when he was appointed to the post of Commissary for Stores to the Expedition for Freed Slaves. This venture created the country, “Sierra Leone”.

He worked with leading British abolitionists to see that the Parliament abolish Slave Trade.

In 1789 he wrote and published his autobiography titled The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African.
His narrative soon became the first “best seller” written by a black Briton. Among those who purchased copies of his narrative were the Prince of Wales and eight dukes. He also embarked on a lecture tour of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland to promote his book particularly among the growing number of abolition committees it spawned.

He married an Englishwoman, Susanna Cullen, in 1792. The couple had two daughters.

Equiano died in 1797, ten years before the slave trade was abolished and 36 years before Parliament outlawed slavery throughout the British Empire.

May he continue to rest in power 🙏🏿

12/29/2024

A documentary of Olaudah Equiano by the BBC

12/05/2024

12/05/2024

Igbo people are everywhere, our DNA has flowed into every race there is.

11/21/2024

This is nice, everyone of us forcefully carried away from our motherland should have the right to call Africa a home. Having a citizenship of an African country is just the first step towards reconnection.

God bless the people of Ghana.
Could Nigeria do the same?

11/12/2024

Resignation is a noble path in times like this.

Having sought the gracious permission of His Majesty The King, I have decided to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Makin Review has exposed the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth.

When I was informed in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow.

It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024.

It is my duty to honour my Constitutional and church responsibilities, so exact timings will be decided once a review of necessary obligations has been completed, including those in England and in the Anglican Communion.

I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church. As I step down I do so in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse.

The last few days have renewed my long felt and profound sense of shame at the historic safeguarding failures of the Church of England. For nearly twelve years I have struggled to introduce improvements. It is for others to judge what has been done.

In the meantime, I will follow through on my commitment to meet victims. I will delegate all my other current responsibilities for safeguarding until the necessary risk assessment process is complete.

I ask everyone to keep my wife Caroline and my children in their prayers. They have been my most important support throughout my ministry, and I am eternally grateful for their sacrifice. Caroline led the spouses’ programme during the Lambeth Conference and has travelled tirelessly in areas of conflict supporting the most vulnerable, the women, and those who care for them locally.

I believe that stepping aside is in the best interests of the Church of England, which I dearly love and which I have been honoured to serve. I pray that this decision points us back towards the love that Jesus Christ has for every one of us.

For above all else, my deepest commitment is to the person of Jesus Christ, my saviour and my God; the bearer of the sins and burdens of the world, and the hope of every person.

11/09/2024

If you have ever heard a Spaniard pronounce “Espanol”, especially the uneducated Spaniard, even with all your education, you would appreciate, and also understand how my people got confused along the way.

All you may probably hear is “Panyo”. Interestingly, Spain has the “ny” sound as the Igbo, so….

It could be recalled that the Igbo people first arrived what is presently known as Equatorial Guinea in the 18th and 19th centuries mostly as workers in the plantation fields.

The first Igbo large diaspora community in Africa, outside the geographical enclave known today as Nigeria was in “Panya.” It was so popular that almost every family has somebody in that country.

Later they moved to Fernanda Po, which is present day Sao Tome e Principe. To work in the sugarcane plantations owned by the Portuguese.

Most of those who first arrived there were from Arochukwu, some were labour hands, and later traders, and they settled in the islands. That opened the doors for more Igbo from different parts of Igboland as the Japa syndrome caught up and their neighboring Efik, and Ibibio joined them and today they have fused into the Igbo community in that country.

Those who went in the 20th century went as farm hands. It was basically slave type labour. Tough work that was excruciating with low wages. It was exploitation at its best. Add to that, they introduced women of easy virtues, and liquor to deaden their humanity.

That's why most of our people who returned from there came home empty. And many never found their feet. That's an aspect of our untold history of pain and tears.

But many refused to return especially those who were second generation Igbo, whose fathers went there earlier. They lived and naturalised there fusing into the local population.

This is not about Ebanga.

This is history and Geography class.

Kelechi Deca

08/10/2024

These are three things our people should not deny: kidnapping and selling their kins to slavery, banishing their kins as outcasts for life, and throwing away their twins at birth.

08/10/2024

Olaudah Equiano was the first black abolitionist and a renowned writer.

At the age of 11, He was captured by slave traders from his hometown in Isseke, present day Anambra State and sold into bo***ge to the British colony of Virginia.

He was given the name Gustavus Vassa by one of his many owners, and was forced to serve several masters, among them was a British Naval officer
Whom he traveled between four continents with.

These journies helped him to produce the most popular and vivid slave narrative of his era.

He purchased his freedom in the year 1777 at the age of 32, after having mastered reading, writing and arithmetic.

He settled in England, and soon became a leader of the emerging anti-slavery movement.

He presented one of the first petitions to the British Parliament calling for the abolition of slavery.

In 1787, He became the first person of African ancestry to hold a post in the British Government when he was appointed to the post of Commissary for Stores to the Expedition for Freed Slaves. This venture created the country, "Sierra Leone".

He worked with leading British abolitionists to see that the Parliament abolish Slave Trade.

In 1789 he wrote and published his autobiography titled The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African.
His narrative soon became the first “best seller” written by a black Briton. Among those who purchased copies of his narrative were the Prince of Wales and eight dukes. He also embarked on a lecture tour of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland to promote his book particularly among the growing number of abolition committees it spawned.

He married an Englishwoman, Susanna Cullen, in 1792. The couple had two daughters.

Equiano died in 1797, ten years before the slave trade was abolished and 36 years before Parliament outlawed slavery throughout the British Empire.

08/10/2024

Todaay we are invited to remember three men who were hugely influential in the abolition of the slave trade in this country: Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano. Clarkson was a local man with connections in Wisbech, Wilberforce is perhaps best known of the three. Equiano certainly had the closest personal connection to the horrors of slavery: he was himself a freed slave. He wrote about his experiences in his biography The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, a work which has been continuously in print since it first appeared in 1789. In his own life he was known by the name of his former owner, Gustavus Vasa. He was born in Africa (in modern Nigeria) and worked for years on a ship. His owner was considered an enlightened slaver because he allowed Equiano to buy his freedom.
There is a local connection with Equiano too: he was married in 1792 in Soham, near Ely, to a local girl, Susannah Clarke. They moved to London where Equiano campaigned fearlessly to end the evils of slavery; a campaign which culminated in the abolition of slavery bill in 1807, though sadly he died a decade before it was passed. It is a shocking fact that modern-day slavery still exists and it is good to be reminded about those early campaigners who worked to ensure human dignity for all people.