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13/07/2022

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MODAKEKE TOWN IN OSUN STATE

One such story is the common Ife and Modakeke war of 1835–2000, which according to history was one of the longest intra-ethnic wars in Yorubaland. According to legend, Ifes and Modakekes are the sons and daughters of the same parents. Their ancestors can be traced back to Oduduwa, the Yoruba race’s progenitor.

Modakeke is a town in Osun State, South-West Nigeria, with nearly 300,000 inhabitants who are predominantly farmers and warriors. The town is about 45 kilometres from Osogbo, capital of Osun State and 90 kilometres from Ibadan in Oyo a state. Modakeke came into existence in 1945 after the fall of the Oyo Empire, below is a brief history of Modakeke town.

The whole of Yorubaland was thrown into chaos and confusion after the Oyo Empire fell to the Fulanis in 1835. The inhabitants of Oyo ran for safety and therefore were dispersed across Yorubaland, some founding new settlements and others, joining existing settlements like Ile-Ife. A group of Oyo refugees settled in Ile-Ife to begin a new life which unknowing to them will later birth the town called Modakeke.

On getting to Ile-Ife, they have already lost all their possessions and then took up menial jobs in the town. They also got recruited in the Ife army and it was through their bravery that Ife had its territory extended to Alakowe, its present boundary with Ilesa. They started growing and producing different types of food crops on farmlands given to them by their Ife people.

The then reigning Ooni of Ife, Oba Akinmoyero, received the Oyo refugees well and later gave them an expanse of land to live. The name Modakeke was adopted after consultation with the oracle which directed them to go to Ebu-Alako near Oke-Owu where they met a swarm of Ako (Stork) birds. The name was derived from the cries of the storks (Mo-da-ke-ke-ke-ke). This is also the origin of the appellation Akoraye (the stork has a place) and since the founding of Modakeke, eighteen traditional heads known as ‘Ogunsua’ had ruled the town.

Ife and Modekeke Crisis
There have been controversies about the conflict between these two parties, which to date has remained a discussion in the Yoruba lineage. Historians believe that the major causes of their conflict (Ife and Modakeke) were land ownership, payment of land rent (Isakole), the establishment of local government, and the placement of its headquarters, all of which are reflected in cultural identity, economics, and politics. The most prominent causes were the creation of local government and the location of its headquarters.

The Yoruba see Ife as their source, and they regard the Modakekes as their ‘landlords.’ Following the collapse of the Old Oyo empire in the 19th century, the latter migrated to the area. This was the underlying element in the Yoruba ethnic conflict that resulted in the deaths of thousands of people.

How was the Ife-Modakeke Conflict resolved?
In March 2000, Nigerian former President Olusegun Obasanjo announced a government-brokered truce and the formation of a 27-member peace committee in an effort to settle the long fight over land rights. In addition, the two towns were subjected to a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and hundreds of armed riot police were sent to enforce the truce.

A peace accord was also struck in February 2009 between Ife and Modakeke. The Ogunsua of Modakeke was elevated to the rank of Oba as a result of this peace deal. Also, the Osun State Government, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, Olubuse II, and the Ogunsua of Modakeke, Francis Adedoyin, signed the deal.

13/07/2022

Prof Adebayo Adedeji, an Ijebu Ode-born economist and diplomat, was born on December 21, 1930. He was the founder and pioneer Chairman of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).

In the early 1970s, as Nigeria’s Federal Commissioner for Economic Development and Reconstruction, he took a leading part in the negotiations that brought the establishment of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Then, as Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) from 1975 through 1993, he actively promoted the creation of other regional groupings, including the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA), which subsequently became the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).

He was Director of the African Centre for Development and Strategic Studies, a think-tank based in Ijebu Ode, Nigeria. He was also the founding Executive Director of the African Centre for Development and Strategic Studies (ACDESS).

Adedeji was involved in community issues in Ijebu-Ode and became the Asiwaju of Ijebuland. He was also the chief adviser of the Ijebu Ode monarch, Oba Sikiru Adetona.

He was a senior colleague before he went to join General Yakubu Gowon’s cabinet and later on joined the United Nations. He served Nigeria in several capacities as a scholar, teacher, minister and international civil servant. We must not forget that he was also appointed by the Murtala Muhammed regime to chair a panel to prepare a report and review Nigeria’s foreign policy. So his talent was used considerably, ”.

"His roles in ECOWAS, as well as the Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) which later became the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), were demonstrations of his zeal for the advancement of Africa.

"He also did not relent in his determination to ensure the growth of his home town, Ijebu Ode, through his remarkable contributions as the Director of the African Centre for Development and Strategic Studies, a think-tank NGO based in the community".

Prof Adebayo Adedeji died on Wednesday, April 25, 2018 in Lagos after a protracted illness. He was aged 87.

Rest In Peace...

05/07/2022

with

03/07/2022

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03/07/2022

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30/06/2022

“Exercise Damisa”: That’s the name of the clandestine training exercise Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu used in getting the soldiers ready for the January 16, 1966 coup. As a chief instructor at NMTC, Kaduna as he was fondly called had to come with a veiled way in getting the boys ready for what would become the 1st Military coup in Nigeria. 6 years after the country’s Independence

Unknown to the soldiers, Kaduna was prepping them for a “Military Exercise” to overthrow the government then.

Born on 26 February 1937 in the city of Kaduna to an Igbo family He spoke Hausa fluently, even too fluently than most Northerns. A devoted catholic and a very Disciplined man, a strong- willed and incorruptible too. The idea of saving Nigeria from the corrupt politicians of the day has been a source of concern for him way before 1966.

On the Night of the D-Day, “Exercise Damisa” was a good to go. The soldiers were moved into position, and they have no idea that their actions was about to change the course of the country forever. The Premier Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto house has been on surveillance for weeks.

The attack started, an anti-tank weapon was used on the Sardauna’s residence and it set the entire building on fire. Nzeogwu finally saw the Sardauna hiding among his wives. In anger and rage, he shot him and one of wives who used her body to protect her husband. The Sardauna’s personal faithful bodyguard “Zarunmi” was also killed. He died fighting and protecting his master.

The coup was repressed. Nzeogwu was later arrested in Lagos on 18 January 1966. He was held in Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison in Lagos before being transferred to Aba Prison in the Eastern Region where he was released in March 1967 by Ojukwu.

On 29 July 1967, Nzeogwu - who had been promoted to the rank of a Biafran Lt. Colonel - was trapped in an ambush near Nsukka while conducting a night reconnaissance operation against federal troops of the 21st battalion under Captain Mohammed Inuwa Wushishi

He was killed in action and his co**se was subsequently identified, however his sister insisted he killed himself to avoid being humiliated by the federal troops. He was buried at the military cemetery in Kaduna with full military honours

He was 30 years old!

Gossip House

25/06/2022

....know your history

HOW BANNISHED BENIN PRINCE BECAME THE KING OF ILE-IFE

EDO KINGDOM

Benin Was first Igodomigodo and Greater than Ife(Oduduwa) Igodomigodo kingdom Was the greatest Ogiso and first King in West Africa Region to receive foreign traders.The Last Ogiso Son who was to succeed his Father was banished from Edo and arrived Yoruba kingdom and was crowned as the king of Ile Ife. Izoduwa in Edo Language which is corrupted to Oduduwa in Yoruba understanding. The Powerful Kingdom in Nigeria and first Empire recognized by foreign traders was (Ubini) Edo Kingdom. Edo King capture many towns such as Eko which is now Lagos and also capture Ijebu and Edo Kingdom were stretch from Ijebu and Lagos to Republic of Darhomey which is now change to Republic of Benin. Respect for the priestly functions of the oni of Ife was a crucial factor in the evolution of Yoruba ethnicity. The Ife model of government was adept and derived its military strength from its cavalry forces, which established hegemony over the adjacent Nupe and the Borgu kingdoms and thereby developed trade routes farther to the north.

Edoland established a community in the Yoruba-speaking area east of Ubini before becoming a dependency of Benin Kingdom at the beginning of the 14th century. By the 15th century it became an independent trading power, blocking Ife's access to the coastal ports as Oyo had cut off the mother city from the savanna. Political and religious authority resided in the oba (king) who according to tradition was descended from the Ogiso dynasty in Benin Kingdom. Benin, which may have housed much inhabitants at its height, spread over large square km that were enclosed by concentric rings of earthworks. By the late 15th century Edo Kingdom was in contact with Portugal (see Atlantic slave trade). At its apogee in the 16th and 17th centuries, Edo encompassed parts of southeastern Yorubaland,and the western parts of the present Delta state.

IGBO STATES

The Nri Kingdom in the Awka area was founded in about 900 AD in North Central Igboland. The Nsukka-Awka-Orlu axis is said to be the oldest area of Igbo settlement and therefore, homeland of the Igbo people. This ancient kingdom is still considered the cradle of Igbo culture. The Nri people are children of the historical and mythical divine king Eri (founder of Aguleri of the Umueri clan on the Anambra river valley). It was a center of spirituality, learning, and commerce. They were agents of peace and harmony whose influence stretched beyond Igboland. The Nri people's influence in neighboring lands was especially in Southern Igalaland and Benin kingdom in the 12th to 15th centuries. As great travelers, they were also business people involved in the long distant Tran Saharan trade. The development and sophistication of this civilization is evident in the bronze castings found in Igbo Ukwu, an area of Nri influence. The Benin kingdom became a threat in the 15th century under Oba Ewuare. Since they were against slaves and slavery, their power took a downturn when the slave trade was at its peak in the 18nth century. The Benin and Igala slave raiding empires became the main influence in their relationship with Western and Northern Igbos their former main areas of influence and operation. Upper Northwest Cross River Igbo groups like the Aro Confederacy and Ohafia peoples, as well as the Awka and Umunoha people used oracular activities and other trading opportunities after Nri's decline in the 18th century to become the major influences in Igboland and all adjacent areas. This includes parts of Igalaland and places west of the Niger river indirectly affected by the Benin kingdom.

YORUBA KINGDOM

Historically the Yoruba have been the dominant group on the west bank of the Niger. Of mixed origin, they were the product of periodic waves of migrants. The Yoruba were organized in patrilineal groups that occupied village communities and subsisted on agriculture. From about the 8th century adjacent village compounds, called ile, coalesced into numerous territorial city-states in which clan loyalties became subordinate to dynastic chieftains. The earliest known of these city states formed at Ife and Ijebu. The latter city was fortified by a wall and ditch known today as Sungbo's Eredo around 800 AD. Urbanization was accompanied by high levels of artistic achievement, particularly in terracotta and ivory sculpture and in the sophisticated metal casting produced at Ife. The Yoruba placated a luxuriant pantheon headed by an impersonal deity, Olorun, and included lesser deities who performed various tasks. Oduduwa was regarded as the creator of the earth and the ancestor of the Yoruba kings. According to myth Oduduwa founded Ife and dispatched his sons to establish other cities, where they reigned as priest-kings. Ife was the center of as many as 400 religious cults whose traditions were manipulated to political advantage by the oni (king).

THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS OF THE SAVANA
Trade was the key to the emergence of organized communities in the savanna portions of Nigeria. Prehistoric inhabitants adjusting to the encroaching desert were widely scattered by the third millennium BC, when the desiccation of the Sahara began. Trans-Saharan trade routes linked the western Sudan with the Mediterranean since the time of Carthage and with the Upper Nile from a much earlier date, establishing avenues of communication and cultural influence that remained open until the end of the 19th century. By these same routes, Islam made its way south into West Africa after the 9th century AD.

By then a string of dynastic states, including the earliest Hausa states, stretched across the western and central Sudan. The most powerful of these states were Ghana, Gao, and Kanem, which were not within the boundaries of modern Nigeria but indirectly influenced the history of the Nigerian savanna. Ghana declined in the 11th century but was succeeded by Mali Empire which consolidated much of the western Sudan in the 13th century. Following the breakup of Mali a local leader named Sonni Ali (1464-1492) founded the Songhai Empire in the region of middle Niger and the western Sudan and took control of the trans-Saharan trade. Sunni Ali seized Timbuktu in 1468 and Jenne in 1473, building his regime on trade revenues and the cooperation of Muslim merchants. His successor Askiya Mohammad Ture (1493-1528) made Islam the official religion, built mosques, and brought Muslim scholars, including al-Maghili (died c. 1505), the founder of an important tradition of Sudanic African Muslim scholarship, to Gao. Although these western empires had little political influence on the Nigerian savanna before 1500, they had a strong cultural and economic impact that became more pronounced in the 16th century, especially because these states became associated with the spread of Islam and trade. Throughout the 16th century much of northern Nigeria paid homage to Songhai in the west or to Bornu, a rival empire in the east.

KANEM BORNU EMPIRE

Bornu's history is closely associated with Kanem, which had achieved imperial status in the Lake Chad basin by the 13th century. Kanem expanded westward to include the area that became Bornu. The mai (king) of Kanem and his court accepted Islam in the 11th century, as the western empires also had done. Islam was used to reinforce the political and social structures of the state although many established customs were maintained. Women, for example, continued to exercise considerable political influence.

The mai employed his mounted bodyguard and an inchoate army of nobles to extend Kanem's authority into Bornu. By tradition the territory was conferred on the heir to the throne to govern during his apprenticeship. In the 14th century, however, dynastic conflict forced the then-ruling group and its followers to relocate in Bornu, where as a result the Kanuri emerged as an ethnic group in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The civil war that disrupted Kanem in the second half of the 14th century resulted in the independence of Bornu.

Bornu's prosperity depended on the trans-Sudanic slave trade and the desert trade in salt and livestock. The need to protect its commercial interests compelled Bornu to intervene in Kanem, which continued to be a theater of war throughout the fifteenth and into the sixteenth centuries. Despite its relative political weakness in this period, Bornu's court and mosques under the patronage of a line of scholarly kings earned fame as centers of Islamic culture and learning.

THE HAUSA STATES.

By the 11th century some Hausa states - such as Kano, Katsina, and Gobir - had developed into walled towns engaging in trade, servicing caravans, and the manufacture of various goods. Until the 15th century these small states were on the periphery of the major Sudanic empires of the era. They were constantly pressured by Songhai to the west and Kanem-Bornu to the east, to which they paid tribute. Armed conflict was usually motivated by economic concerns, as coalitions of Hausa states mounted wars against the Jukun and Nupe in the middle belt to collect slaves or against one another for control of trade.

Islam arrived to Hausaland along the caravan routes. The famous Kano Chronicle records the conversion of Kano's ruling dynasty by clerics from Mali, demonstrating that the imperial influence of Mali extended far to the east. Acceptance of Islam was gradual and was often nominal in the countryside where folk religion continued to exert a strong influence. Nonetheless, Kano and Katsina, with their famous mosques and schools, came to participate fully in the cultural and intellectual life of the Islamic world. The Fulani began to enter the Hausa country in the 13th century and by the 15th century they were tending cattle, sheep, and goats in Bornu as well. The Fulani came from the Senegal River valley, where their ancestors had developed a method of livestock management based on transhumance. Gradually they moved eastward, first into the centers of the Mali and Songhai empires and eventually into Hausaland and Bornu. Some Fulbe converted to Islam as early as the 11th century and settled among the Hausa, from whom they became racially indistinguishable. There they constituted a devoutly religious, educated elite who made themselves indispensable to the Hausa kings as state advisers, Islamic tribunes, and teachers.

Essan People Blog.

22/06/2022

Thailand has given away one million c@nnabis plants to encourage cultivation. 📷 Getty, Ctto / BBC

21/06/2022

An audience with his Majesty Oba Ovonramwem Nogbaisi before he joined his ancestors.

Interview notes

Q: Thank you for having us today. Your Majesty how are you feeling?

A: Very frail from my illness.

Q: Your Majesty, it is exactly 17 years to the day today that the British put together a naval squadron of 1200 Royal marines to capture Your Majesty and burn down your city. We apologise for their cruelty but we would just like to get your views on what happened and on life for you after that punitive expedition.

Q: The British claimed that they were acting in response to your soldiers eliminating a peaceful party they had sent to bring you presents at Christmas, what would you like to say in response to that?

A: What is Christmas? My people had no idea about Christmas, we had our sacred ancestral ceremony during that period (the Igue Festival) and the British Party led by Lawyer Phillips knew that and was told to wait for just two days for me to complete my fasting but he said he was too big and too busy to wait for us to complete our ceremonies. He decided to invade our private ceremonies during my fasting and prayer period and when no one was allowed to talk to or disturb me; putting together a party of over 270 officials and soldiers , he set out to march on our city against all advice that this was an unwise move. My Chief of Army Staff saw this as a deliberate act of unprovoked war declaration and acted accordingly to defend our city. What would you have done if you had been in his position?

News International 101: We are very sorry, Your Majesty. We will move on to another question.

Q: The British reported that you were the last person to evacuate your city when it was being burnt to the ground; it must have been very painful for you to watch centuries of your ancestors’ hard work burnt to cinders. Why did you wait till the bitter end?

A: You just imagine this, I had recently in the new year, blessed all my peoples’ households and prayed for their prosperity this year; then one month on, the city is burning and I flee with the people, how would that have made us look as Divine King of the people? My duty was to watch over their houses and the city until there was nothing left, my ancestors would have expected this of us.

Q: The papers reported widely about the treasure trove in your storerooms, the British reported finding intricate bronze plaques, ivory and terracotta artwork ‘of the highest quality covered in the dust of age’. What was the idea behind this?
A: We were renovating the palace and put these away for safe keeping. I must add that most of the works the British found there had been in the storerooms for centuries; my ancestors wanted to record and preserve their history in expensive and durable forms, it is one’s duty to uphold this desire.

Q: Your Majesty, you now live in Calabar, how have things been with you?

A: Traumatic. Losing one’s place in the world is never easy. Having to cope with being a nobody after being a king in charge of a proud and industrious people and of a country is very humiliating but one has to do all one can to survive, even a once upon a time king like me. One lesson we made sure we taught our people was; ‘when the going gets tough, the tough must get going’; this mindset sets superior stock apart from ordinary stock and I am made of a superior stock, this trying period attests to this fact.

Q: Has it been difficult adjusting to your new position?

A: You have no idea just how difficult it has been. Some people deliberately scorn you with impunity for the sake of just being able to do so.

Q: What one incident stands out for you?

A: One day, one of my children was playing with other children, one of them deliberately head butted her, injuring her badly. She suffered a fractured jaw and eye inflammation and was in pain for months. When her mother complained to the local chiefs here, all they did was to ask that child to apologise whereas in my custom back home, the child’s parents would have been fined heavily for not having their child under control. It was painful for me as a father knowing that I cannot even protect my own family when others want to deliberately hurt or harm them.

Q: What would you like to say to the British?

A: I have this message for the British; congratulations, now that you have opened up your trade routes on our soil, but make no mistake about this; this is not the end of the Kingdom of Benin.

Q: Your Majesty, thinking back about it all, is there anything that you would have done differently?

A: NO. I was trained from an early age to defend my people’s interests and to safeguard our history. I performed that duty to the best of my ability even in the face of bribery with presents from British officials to abandon my people and to pursue my own riches. My ancestors would have turned in their graves if we had behaved any differently. Anyhow, history will be the judge of whether we should have done anything differently.

Q: Your Majesty, have you any final words?

A: Yes, tell all peoples everywhere in the world, that whenever they come across a Benin artwork, they should look deeply at the composition and use the narrative it tells to pass on the history of a great Rain-forest Kingdom that existed on the West African Coast from 40BC till the British sacked it in 1897. The world should tell our story well.

News International 101: Your Majesty, thank you for giving us so much of your time today. We hope you get better soon so you can leave the hospital and return home.

End of interview.

News International 101, received news the following day that his Majesty passed away in hospital; he never recovered from his illness and never returned home.

His Majesty Ovonramwen Nogbaisi died on Wednesday 14th January 1914.

Tuesday 14th January 2022, marked his 108 years death anniversary.

His Majesty Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi was never informed that his captor and judge Ralph Moor who put him in chains and exiled him from his kingdom, on return to England after his African duties suffered insanity and committed su***de on September 14th 1909; 'The coroner's jury determined that "the poison was deliberately taken whilst temporarily insane after suffering acutely from insomnia", they had heard evidence that Moor had suffered for the last four years on his return from Africa with malarial and backwater fever that induced insomnia.'

Credit: Uwafiokun Stephen Obakpee

19/06/2022

Zulu descendants of the lost tribes of Israel:

In 1844 the British annexed Natal. The largely British settlers were acutely aware that to the north there was a powerful Zulus state, and as a result considerable interest in Zulu customs and traditions was generated.

Captain Francis Gardiner (1794-1851), a commander in the Royal Navy and a devoted missionary, who was later to die of starvation along with missionary companions on a desert island in Tierra del Fuego, went on a journey traveling east from the Cape to Natl. Upon his first encounter with the Zulus, he took their customs to be “apparently of Jewish origin” and the Zulus themselves to be of Jewish extraction. The Zulu customs that led him to this conclusion included circumcision, levirate marriage, the festival of the first fruits, and a number of others. In 1835 Gardiner was sent to negotiate a peace with the Zulu chief Dingane at his winter home, Kwa-khangela, near present-day Eshowe. Upon his return after lengthy and detailed talks about every aspect of Zulu life, Gardiner reported that Zulu religious beliefs were quite simply “a remnant of pre-Christian Judaism.” As British power was extended farther east, the same discourse continued.

Throughout the 1850s Zulus continued to be racially constructed as Jews. Their settled, pastoral life and their religious and social customs were evidence enough of this. G. R. Peppercorne, the magistrate of Pafana Location, observed to the Native Affairs Commission that “a general type of the customs and laws of the Ama-Zulu may be found in the early history of the Hebrews.” Zulu polygamy, marriage customs, even attitudes toward work were all described in the appropriate biblical passage. He suggested that any European who wanted to understand Zulu customs had only to read the Old Testament. Henry Francis Fynn (1803-1861), an English traveler, trader, and an acknowledged expert on Zulu customs, left behind a diary that is one of the best sources on the history of the Zulus. The diary covers the period from 1824 to 1036, when Fynn was living much of the time with the Zulus. “I was surprised,” he wrote, “to find a considerable resemblance between many of the Zulu customs and those of the Jews.” These included “war offerings, sin offerings, propitiatory offerings, Festival of first fruits… periods of uncleanness, on the decease of relatives and touching the dead, Circumcision; Rules regarding chastity, rejection of swine’s flesh.” Fynn concluded in the usual way of the Hamitic hypothesis that in view of “the nature of semblance of many of their customs to those of the ancient Jews, as prescribed under the Levitical priesthood I am led to form the opinion that the Zulu tribes have been very superior to what they are at the present time.”

A similar analysis was made by John Colenso (1814-1883), the famous Cambridge-educated biblical scholar, mathematician, and Christian socialist who was ordained bishop of Natal in 1853. He arrived in Natal the following year and quickly became fluent in Zulu (he went on to publish a grammar and dictionary of the language). Colenso was convinced that the two Zulu names for God embraced perfectly the notions of the divine “contained in Hebrew words Elohim and Yahweh.” So close indeed were the resemblances, according to Colenso, that frequently he suggested that anyone who wanted to really understand the Bible had best study Zulu customs. Zulu “habits and even the nature of their country so nearly correspond to those of the ancient Israelites, that the very scenes are brought continually, as it were, before their eyes, and vividly realized in a practical point of view.” Practically everything about the Zulus, from their lunar calendar to the order of religious feasts, seemed to reflect an Israelite past.” The Zulu keep his annual feasts, and observes the New Moons as the old Hebrew did. From the book “Black Jews In Africa And The Americas,” (2013) by Tudor Parfitt pp. 61-64

Black Hebrew, Wentworth Arthur Mathew; founder of the Commandment Keepers,holding a Sefer Torah.

19/06/2022

Before Ghana's independence in 1957, these were the 4 major and separate territories of the country.

Gold Coast Colony: Refers to the areas of present-day Central, Western, Eastern, Greater Accra Regions, and some parts of the present-day Volta Region. Formerly called the British Protectorate, because, they were being protected by the British. And in 1874, they were formally proclaimed a British colony, under the name Gold Coast because, they have submitted their freedom to be colonized by the British. Their administrative government was the British Governors, who was in charge of all their administrative works.

Ashanti Crown: Refers to the areas of present-day Ashanti Region, Ahafo Region, Bono, and Bono East Regions. The head of government of the Ashanti Crown was the Asantehene,..... at the time (1874) the British had easily colonised the Southern part of Ghana, it took another three decades before the Ashanti kingdom and its dependencies in the north were finally brought under British control. It was after Asante's defeat in Yaa Asantewaa War that the British got access to the North to colonize them as well. In 1935, the Ashanti Kingdom had its independence as a separate government and independent territory. The Asante Confederacy was restored and the Asantehene again became the head of government for the Kingdom.

Northern Territories: The Northern Territories was a British protectorate from 1901 until 1957. The protectorate was administered by the Governor of the Gold Coast under a Chief Commissioner residing at Gambaga. Several treaties were concluded in the name of Her Britannic Majesty with the Chiefs of Bona, Dagarti, Wa, and Mamprusi at Gambaga. These treaties were made in 1896. Under the treaties, the Chiefs agreed not to conclude treaties with any other Power or to cede territory, or to accept protectorates without the consent of Her Britannic Majesty. The Northern Territories were constituted as a district in 1897. The Northern Territories were formally established as a protectorate in 1901 under the Northern Territories Order in Council 1901 made on 26 September 1901. The Northern Territories remained a protectorate until the Ghana Independence Act 1957 annexed the Northern Territories by providing that the territories included immediately before 6 March 1957 in the Gold Coast should, as from that day, form part of Her Majesty's dominions by the name of Ghana.


Trans-Volta Togoland: British Togoland, officially the Mandate Territory of Togoland and later officially the Trust Territory of Togoland, under the administration of the United Kingdom, which subsequently entered into union with Ghana, part becoming its Volta Region. It was effectively formed in 1916 by the splitting of the German protectorate of Togoland into two territories, French Togoland and British Togoland, during the First World War. Initially, it was a League of Nations Class B mandate. In 1922, British Togoland was formally placed under British rule while French Togoland, now Togo, was placed under French rule.

This is the history and the territories of Ghana, before the Gold Coast Colony, Northern Territories, and British Mandated Togoland were merged as one, later the already Independent Ashanti Kingdom agreed to form part of the new union to help fight for the independence of the country.

Ashanti participation in the Gold Coast independence struggle increased sharply with the coming of the Coussey Constitution and the holding, for the first time, of elections in the entire Gold Coast territory (the Colony, Asante, and Northern Territories) to elect members to a unitary national assembly. That is when the Gold Coast began its real struggle for independence as one unit. And when that time came, most young Asante politicians (including RR Amponsah and Victor Owusu) initially joined the CPP.

As we posted on Sunday evening that, If you don't count any Asante, Northern, or Voltarian elite in the Big Six, it was because the 1948 Riots were largely a Gold Coast Colony palaver, and especially an Accra-centered one. If you weren't in Accra, you weren't likely to have been arrested. And in any case, what kind of historiography reckons a nation's historical founders based on the arrest record of the colonial police in relation to one specific event?

So if you evaded arrest that day, as Nii Kwabena Bonnie III, the Ga Chief, who organized a boycott of all European goods in response to their high prices which was having a toll on the living conditions of the people of Gold Coast and many others more involved in the 1948 Riots did that week, and therefore did not make newspaper headlines as one of the "Big Six" that means you, or your people, didn't fight for independence as much as the arrested six did? That view cannot be taken seriously!

The shooting of the ex-servicemen, Sergeant Adjetey, Corporal Attipoe, and Private Odartey Lamptey who were agitating against their colonial government efforts are not recognised because they were not arrested like the big six? or they were not Akyem Abuakwafuo so they didn't fight for independence as well?

As explained by the Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo in his leaked audio that, it was only Akyem people who fought for the independence of Ghana and no other tribe was part, so what happened to:

1. Kwame Nkrumah, an Nzema from the Western region who was at the forefront of the whole struggle?

2. What happened to Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, a Ga man who forms part of the big six?

2. What happened to Edward Akufo Addo, an Akuapem man who also forms part of the big six?.

Ghana's independence was fought by the whole country and not a particular tribe and group of people. So Osafo Marfo as old as he is should spare the ears of the young ones with his constant and ignorant tribal comments each and every day.

This is the same Osafo Maafo who said in 2015 that: All the natural resources in the country are located only in the Akan Regions. Therefore, why should Akans sit there for the then president who was from the North rule over Akans.

This is the same Osafo Marfo who said in Koforidua some time ago that, Kwahus are a minority group in the Akans, just to belittle Kwahus among their tribal Akyem counterparts in the East.

UNITE don't DIVIDE!!!