Nigeria before, today and tomorrow (2025)

16/03/2023

THE STORY OF OYOTUNJI: A YORUBA KINGDOM IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Oyotunji African Village is a village located near Sheldon, Beaufort County, South Carolina that was founded by Oba Efuntola Oseijeman Adelabu Adefunmi I in 1970. Oyotunji village is named after the Oyo empire, a pre-colonial Yoruba kingdom lasting from the 1300s until the early 1800s in what is now southwestern Nigeria. The name literally means “O̩yo̩ returns” or “O̩yo̩ rises again” or “O̩yo̩ resurrects” referring to the African Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, now rising in a new form near the South Carolina seashore.

Oyotunji village covers 27 acres (11 ha) and has a Yoruba temple which was moved from Harlem, New York to its present location in 1960. It was originally intended to be located in Savannah, Georgia, but was eventually settled into its current position after disputes with neighbors in Sheldon proper, over drumming and tourists.

HOW OBA EFUNTOLA ADEFUNMI I FOUNDED OYOTUNJI

During the slave trade era, many Africans were taken as slaves abroad. While going, some left with their culture and tradition which they continued within the foreign land where they found themselves. They continued with the culture and tradition of their fathers so as to maintain their identity.

The Yorubas in slavery are among the Africans that maintained their culture in the strange land and it was handed down to their children from generation to generation.

Many of their children, after the abolition of the slave trade, have married children of their former masters thus having children of mixed blood, that notwithstanding, they still carry on with their African culture in the foreign land since most of them cannot trace their root back to Africa.

The Yoruba culture has been one of the prominent and most celebrated one throughout the world till date. In the faraway United States of America, there is a Yoruba community named O̩yo̩tunji African Village. It is located near Sheldon, Beaufort County, South Carolina.

O̩yo̩tunji is regarded as North America’s oldest authentic African village. It was founded in 1970 and is the first intentional community in North America, based on the culture of the Yoruba and Benin tribes of West Africa.

It has survived 51years of sustaining the Yoruba traditional sociology and values in the diaspora. The village is named after the O̩yo̩ Empire, and the name literally means “O̩yo̩ returns” or “O̩yo̩ rises again” or “O̩yo̩ resurrects”. The village occupies 27 acres of land.

O̩yo̩tunji was founded by His Royal Highness O̩ba (King) Waja, O̩funto̩la Oseijeman Adelabu Adefunmi I.

Born Walter Eugene King on October 5, 1928, Oba O̩funto̩la Oseijeman Adelabu Adefunmi I, a Detroit native, began studying Afro-Haitian and ancient Egyptian traditions as a teenager. He was further influenced by his contact with the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe in New York City at the age of 20, an African American modern dance troupe that drew from many cultures within the African Diaspora.

August 26, 1959, O̩ba Waja became the first African born in America to become fully initiated into the Oris̩a-Vodoo African priesthood by African Cubans in Matanzas, Cuba, and became known as Efuntola Osejiman Adefunmi. After his return to the United States, he formed the Yoruba Temple in Harlem in 1960. The temple, committed to preserving African traditions within an American context, was the cultural and religious forerunner of Oyotunji Village.

He later traveled to Haiti where he discovered more about the Yoruba culture. Armed with a new understanding of the African culture, he found the order of Damballah Hwedo, Ancestor Priests in Harlem New York.

This marked the beginning of the spread of the Yoruba religion and culture among African-Americans. He later founded the Sàngó Temple in New York and incorporated the African Theological Arch Ministry in 1960. The Sàngó Temple was relocated and renamed the Yoruba Temple.

With the rise of black nationalism in the 1960s, King began to envision the construction of a separate African American nation that would institutionalize and commemorate ancestral traditions. In June of 1970, he fulfilled this vision with the creation of Oyotunji African Village.

It was during this time that he also established a new lineage of the priesthood, Orisha Vodoo, to emphasize the tradition’s African roots. Today, over 300 priests have been initiated into this lineage and the African Theological Archministry, founded by Oba O̩funto̩la Oseijeman Adelabu Adefunmi I in 1966, now serves as the umbrella organization for the Village.

To further his knowledge of Yoruba culture, he traveled to Abeokuta in Nigeria in 1972 where he was initiated into the Ifa priesthood by the Oluwo of Ije̩un at Abeokuta, Ogun state, in August of 1972. He was later proclaimed Alase̩ (Oba-King) of the Yoruba of North America at O̩yo̩tunji Village in 1972.

In its early years, Oyotunji Village was home to as many as two hundred people. Today, its residential community consists of few African American families, governed by an oba (king) and the community’s appointed council.

Each family is committed to the teachings of the Yoruba tradition, which include a religious understanding of the world as comprised primarily of the “energies” of the Supreme Being Olodumare, the orisha deities, and the ancestral spirits. This religious world is maintained spiritually through rituals, chants, music, sacrifice, and annual ceremonies.

Oba Efuntola Osejiman Adefunmi passed away on Thursday, February 10th, 2005 at O̩yo̩tunji African Village in Beaufort County, South Carolina. Since Adefunmi’s death in 2005, the village has been led by his son, the fourteenth of twenty-two children of Oba Efuntola Osejiman Adefunmi, till date.

The O̩ba title is referred to as “O̩lo̩yotunji” of O̩yo̩tunji.

Gossip House

Please follow us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/gossiphousepage8?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

02/03/2023

BRIEF HISTORY OF ABEOKUTA

ABEOKUTA WAS FOUNDED in 1830 after the intertribal wars ravaged refugees in Egba forest from their original homes between 1817 and 1830. The name of the town "ABEOKUTA" was derived from the protection which the fleeing settlers sought under the Olumo Rock, now a tourist center in the town. Abeokuta means 'the refugees under a rock', signifying the protection which the Olumo Rock offered the refugees from possible attacks. The first and major of these series of internecine wars was the one which broke out as a result of an incident at Apomu Market, now in the Irewolede Local Government area of Osun State. In 1821, an Owu man who sold alligator peppers was at Apomu Market selling his wares. He laid them out in piles containing 200 peppers each. An Ijebu woman came to the market and purchased a pile. She did not verify on the spot the correctness of the number of peppers in the pile she selected, but found it convenient to do counting on reaching home. She claimed to find only 199, which meant that one was missing.

The Ijebu woman went back to the market to accost the Owu man over the one pepper by which the portion she selected was less, and demanded restitution of the missing one. But the Owu man objected, maintaining that he was sure of his own count. The argument over this single pepper developed into an open quarrell between the two of them. Later, it blew out into a fracas in which people of Owu and Ijebu clans in the market took sides with their kith and kin. Sectional sentiments soon became whipped up into open confrontation in which a life was lost and several people were injured.

Each side went home to narrate to their Oba, chiefs and townsmen the events of the day. As would be expected, each group took umbrage over what it considered to be a raw deal from the opposing camp. Within a matter of days, the fight over a single alligator pepper had resulted into a total war in which the Owu and Ijebu peoples threw caution to the winds and restored to open arms. Before this incident, the people of Ife had suffered defeats in the hands of the Owu people, and the Ijebu had similarly been routed by the Owu in a war fought over the slave trading.

Now, both the Ife and Ijebu saw the opportunity to settle scores with the Owu by joining forces to face the Owu. Even the remnants of the Oyo forces, just returned from their mission to repel a Fulani invasion, and who were by then mere lay-about, teamed up with Ife and Ijebu forces. The combined attack of the Ife-Ijebu-Oyo coalition forced the Owu homeland to fall after a long siege, and the events following this catastrophe gave birth to the founding of Abeokuta a few years after.
The fall of the Owu homeland was quickly followed by the fall of some other Egba towns, each being sacked in succession by the alliance of the Ife-Ijebu-Oyo forces.

The Egba towns which had folded their arms while the Owu people fought alone, now became victims of the ravening wolves represented by these rallies. The only pity of it was that among the first to fall was Ikija. Ikija was attacked because its people stood by the Owu people in the war of 'Alligator Pepper'. Before long, many Egba towns also fell and all the survivors eventually sought refuge in Abeokuta after a few years, and thus made Abeokuta their permanent place of sojourn.
Their decision to leave Ibadan for Abeokuta was nowever informed by the hostility of the Oyo, Ife and Ijebu, with whom they shared sojourn in Ibadan. Lamodi, a warrior of note, was credited with the initiative for the migration to Abeokuta, although he himself never saw the Promised Land because he died on the way. He was at the time the Balogun of the Egba people. Sodeke, who was then the Seriki of the Egba, took over and led the first wave of immigration to Abeokuta in 1830. Bringing up the rear of the migrants to Abeokuta were the Owu people in about the year 1834. Some others also came later.

The site they choose for Abeokuta was originally the farmland of an Itoko farmer whose name was Adagba. Adagba had no choice but to receive the Egba refugees with both hands and the credit he got was that Abeokuta became known by another name - 'OKO ADAGBA', meaning Adagba's Farmstead. On setting in Abeokuta, each community continued its main occupation of farming, cultivating mainly food crops and cash crops, notably cotton, palm-trees, and kola-nuts. A few did pretty trading and some practiced itinerant merchandising. There were also craftsmen, hunters, drummers, weavers and dryers; some practiced traditional healing, mingling it with some form of divination. They were very religious and each adhered to a belief in one God or another. They specialized in a genre of oral traditional poetry known as Ege which is both musical and philosophical in content and forms.

The first few years immediately following the settling in Abeokuta were fraught with difficulties - social, political and economic. But for the fact that they lived simple lives, they would have found the problems overwhelming. The problems of each group findings and selecting appropriate land to farm was enough to daunt them. And the quick succession of the waves of settlers posed problems with extra dimensions. The new pottage represented by the many group of settlers needed time to simmer and mellow down to attain acceptable taste. Then there were the need for food supply. Being new settlers, they needed a year or two to be able to plant enough food to feed themselves. So it was largely a question of scrounging for food on in the first two years by a people who had escaped from unsettling ravages of war.

Between 1830 and the turn of the century, the settlers in Abeokuta were forced into fighting several wars. In these wars, they creditably proved their mettle. In 1832, the Ijebu Remo people provoked the new settlers into taking arms against several Ijebu Remo towns in a war called - Owiwi war. In 1834, the Ibadan people also challenged them to a war which resulted in the defeat of the Ibadan army in what was known as the Battle of Arakanga.

In 1842, the settlers took the initiative of a war with the Ota people in order to ensure free movement through Ota territory each time they needed to get to Lagos to buy fi****ms. This led to another war in 1844 when they attacked Ado for assisting the Ota people two years before. The same year, the Dahomeans, under King Gezo, waged war against Abeokuta but were repulsed. The Dahomey army repeated the invasion in 1851 and suffered a similar defeat.

In 1849, Abeokuta attacked Ibarapa for waylaying the Egba in their territory. Among other wars fought by Abeokuta were the Ijebu-Ere War in 1851, and the Ijaye War of 1860-1862, and the Makun War of 1862-1864, as well as a few others. In most of these encounters, they emerged victorious - although they suffered their own reverses in some as well. Among Egba war leaders were Sodeke, Ogunbona, Apati, Seriki Akoodu, Ogundipe Alatise, Sokenu, Basorun Somoye, Olufakun, Agbo, Lumloye, Iyalode Tinubu, Majekodunmi, and a host of others.

Gossip House

30/01/2023

AFRICAN COUNTRIES AND THEIR OLD NAMES:
🇧🇯Benin (Dahomey)
🇧🇼Botswana (Bechuanaland)
🇧🇫Burkina Faso (Upper Volta)
🇧🇮Burundi (Rwanda-Urundi)
🇨🇫Central African Republic (Ubangi-Shari)
🇨🇬Congo Brazzaville (Middle Congo, French Congo)
🇨🇲 Cameroon ( German Cameroon)
🇨🇩DR Congo (Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Léopodville)
🇩🇯Djibouti (French Somaliland, Afars and Issas)
🇸🇿Eswatini (Swaziland)
🇪🇹Ethiopia (Damot, Abyssinia)
🇬🇲 The Gambia (Senegambia, Kaabu, British Gambia)
🇬🇭Ghana (Gold Coast)
🇬🇳Guinea (Conarky, French Guinea, French Guinea)
🇬🇼Guinea-Bissau (Portuguese Guinea)
🇰🇪Kenya (British East Africa)
🇱🇸Lesotho (Basutoland)
🇲🇼Malawi (Nyasaland)
🇲🇱Mali (French Sudan)
🇲🇺Mauritius (Prins Mauritius van Nassaueiland)
🇲🇦Morocco (Al-Maghrib)
🇳🇦Namibia (Island Nawodo, Onawero)
🇷🇼Rwanda (Kinyarwanda)
🇸🇳 Senegal ( Senegambia)
🇹🇿Tanzania (Tanganyika)
🇺🇬Uganda (Buganda)
🇿🇲Zambia (Northern Rhodesia)
🇿🇼Zimbabwe (Rhodesia)

Guys please kindly click this link below to subscribe to our youtube channel

https://youtube.com/

15/08/2022

On Haile Selassie I Mission

Reggae Artists and Their Real Names

1 - Peter Tosh ( Peter Hubbert MClnTosh )

2 - Bob Marley ( Robert Nesta Marley )

3 - Ziggy Marley ( David Nesta Marley )

4 - Julian Marley ( Julian Ricardo Marley )

5 - Bambata Marley ( Daniel Marley )

6 - Bunny Wailer ( Neville O'riel Livingston Wailer )

7 - U Roy ( Ewert Beckford )

8 - I Roy ( Roy Raide )

9 - Mutabaruka ( Allan Hope )

10 - Mutabazuki ( David Sinclair )

11 - Burning Spear ( Winston Rodney )

12 - LKJ ( Linton Kwesi Johnson )

13 - Gregory Isaacs ( Gregory Anthony Isaacs )

14 - Jambo ( Sipho Johnson Shange )

15 - Lucky Dube ( Lucky Philip Dube )

16 - Radical Dread Radical-Dread Sadiki ( Avhapfani Sadiki)

17 - Prince Far I ( Michael James Williams )

18 - Jimmy Cliff ( James Chambers )

19 - T***s ( Frederick Nathaniel T***s Hibbert )

20 - Shaggy ( Orville Richard Burrell )

21 - YellowMan ( Winston Foster )

22 - Don Carlos ( Urvin Spence )

23 - Augustus Pablo ( Horrace Swaby )

24 - Mikey Dread ( Michael George Campbell )

25 - Anthony B ( Keith Blaire )

26 - Sizzla Kalonji ( Miquel Orlando Collins )

27 - Capleton ( Clifton George Bailey )

28 - Frankie Paul ( Paul Black )

29 - Drup Lion ( Andrew Brown )

United We Take RasTafari To The Front

31/07/2022

158 years ago today in 1864, 4 tons of TNT is detonated in a mine beneath the fortifications of Petersburg, Virginia and Union troops are beaten back in The Battle of the Crater.

The goal of the Federal army over the last 4 years was to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Defending the capital was The Army of Northern Virginia led by Robert E Lee, and Lee would defeat multiple invasions over the course of the war. Abraham Lincoln placed his hopes on another new commander, Ulysses S Grant, to take the fight to Lee. Grant would be the 6th commanding general to face Lee. And he began his Overland campaign in early May 1864, but after over a month of hard fighting he was stalled and could not reach Richmond. Unlike previous commanders, Grant would not give up after taking heavy casualties and would continually pivot his army around the flank of Lee’s. Grant would skillfully move his army south across the James River and go for a town that was critical to the supplying and defense of Richmond called Petersburg.

On June 9th Grant had a smaller portion of his army attempt to take the town while it was lightly defended, but they were beaten back. Lee quickly sent his army to Petersburg to fortify the town just in time for another engagement that lasted from June 15th – June 18th. Grant’s army had not stopped fighting and maneuvering over the last 45 days and was exhausted. He had also sustained over 50,000 casualties in that short amount of time which drew the ire of Northern politicians and newspapers. Understanding that his army had superior numbers and supplies, he would settle with waiting out the stubborn southerners in a siege. And every day more Federal troops would be dying of disease. U.S. Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs began to turn Lee’s estate Arlington into what eventually would become Arlington National Cemetery.

Minor engagements and raids would occur for over a month, but the siege remained monotonous. Lt. Col. Henry Pleasants, commanding the 48th Pennsylvania of Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside's IX Corps was a mining engineer in his civilian life and offered a solution to break the siege. He would build a large mine underneath the Confederate fortifications, fill it with gunpowder, then detonate it. Digging of the mine began in late June, but Grant and Burnside were not impressed with the project and simply saw it as a way to keep the men occupied. Burnside also saw an opportunity to use African-American soldiers in the project, and he had an entire division trained specifically to carry out the assault after the mine was detonated. The mine was ready on July 27th and the Union launched a feigned attack on another location to draw the rebel’s attention away from it while it was filled with gunpowder.

On July 29th, the day before the planned attack, Burnside was ordered by his superiors to not use his specially trained African-American soldiers in the operation. The reasoning for this was political, because if the operation failed they did not want it to seem that they were using the black soldiers as cannon-fodder. Another brigade that wasn’t prepared or given adequate instructions was chosen to lead the attack.

On July 30th around 5:00am a massive explosion erupted on the rebel fortifications stunning the defenders. The poorly trained Federal troops ran into the crater instead of around it. The rebels gathered men for a counter-attack and rushed to the scene to find the Federals unable to scale the crater’s walls. Burnside would double down on the disaster and send in his colored troops to the slaughter. The battle was described by those who participated in it as a “turkey shoot” as thousands of Federals would be shot and captured. The battle was noted for exceptional brutality between the rebel and black soldiers. Union Brigadier General James H. Ledlie who was in charge of the first two brigades that were sent in was found drunk away from the fighting and dismissed from the army.

After the battle, Grant wrote to Chief of Staff Henry W. Halleck, "It was the saddest affair I have witnessed in this war." The siege of Petersburg would continue until April 1865…

[Online References]
(https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/union-forces-stopped-at-the-battle-of-the-crater )

(https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/crater_battle_of_the )

(https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/crater)

Siege of Petersburg:
(https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/10-facts-petersburg-campaign )

Artwork: Battle of The Crater by Tom Lovell

Authored by R.E. Foy

12/07/2022

Speech by H.I.M. HAILE SELASSIE I
that stumbled the world
that until the philosophy which holds one race superior
and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited Read More 👇

California 28th February 1968

Emperor Selassie's of Ethiopia 🇪🇹 Address to the United Nations
(1963)
by Haile Selassie
Spoken to the United Nations General
Assembly on October 4, 1963. This
speech is typically credited as the
inspiration for Bob Marley's hit song
"War ". The translation is that provided
by the United Nations, running concurrent with his speech.

"Last May, in Addis Ababa there was convened meeting
of Heads of African States and Governments. In three
days, the thirty-two nations represented at that
Conference demonstrated to the world that when the will
and the determination exist, nations and people of diverse
backgrounds can and will work together in unity for the
achievement of common goals and the assurance of that
equality and brotherhood which we desirre"
"Although our position vis-a-vis the power-blocs is
identified with the policy of non-alignment, our past
history testifies to the fact that we have always
endeavored to cooperate with all nations, without
exception.

Thus, one of the fundamental principles we
have agreed upon at the Addis Ababa Summit Conference
give expression to our fundamental desire to live in
harmony and cooperation with all States"
"On the question of racial discrimination, the Addis Ababa
Conference taught, to those who will learn, this further
lesson:"
"that until the philosophy which holds one race superior
and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited
and abandoned; that untill there is no longer any first-
class and second-class citizens of any nation; that until
the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than
the color of his eyes; that until the basic human rights are
equally guaranteed to all, without regard to race -- until
that day, the dreams of lasting peace and world
citizenship and the rule of international morality will
remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never
attained.

And also, that until the ignoble and unhappy
regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique
and South Africa in subhuman bondages have been
toppled and destroyed; until bigotry and prejudice and
malicious and inhuman self-interest have been replaced
by understanding, tolerance and good-will; until all
Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes
of all men as they are in Heaven -- until that day the
African continent will not know peace. We Africans will
fight, if necessary and we know that we shall win, as we
are confident in the victory of good over evil."
"The United Nations has done much, both directly and
indirectly, to speed the disappearance of discrimination
and oppression from the earth. Without the opportunity to
focus world opinion on Africa and Asia which this
Organization provides, the goal might, for many, still lie
ahead, and the struggle would have taken far longer.
For this we are truly grateful."

Support us
¶ ¶ Subscribe to our YouTube Channel ( AFRICAN REPORT FILES TV) 👇
https://youtu.be/beuXYyG3C14

Follow our Blog Page : African Report files for more updates.
::::::::::::::::::::::::

04/07/2022

Oba Ladapo Ademola(1872- 1962) with his entourage in Abeokuta, 1946.

He reigned as Alake of Egba from 1920- 1962. He was famously driven into exile in 1948 by the Abeokuta womenfolk led by Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. He returned from exile in 1950.

His son, Sir Adetokunbo Ademola became Nigeria’s first indigenous Chief Justice in 1958.

Grab your NIGERIA HISTORICAL HANDBOOK [E-book] Text https://wa.me/message/DUDEA35CZOFXM1 or call +234 814 463 8341.

Gossip House

Nigeria before, today and tomorrow

16/03/2023

02/03/2023

30/01/2023

15/08/2022

31/07/2022

12/07/2022

04/07/2022

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share