By
Obododimma Oha
Igbo and Yoruba are relatives by virtue of their belonging to the Volta-Niger family, according to a recent classification by Roger Blench. But apart from this linguistic classification, some semiotic similarities between both languages are amazing. That suggests that the idea of a “Handshake across the Niger” which was recently made an important ideological expression in the current relationship between Ndiigbo and Oduduwa children west of the Niger in a ceremony at Awka did neither start with Nzuko Umunna, the frontline Igbo organisation that hosted it, nor by Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu who recommends it in his book, Because I Am Involved. Indeed, Ojukwu was a great Igbo leader who read the indelible ancient signs of the closeness of two brothers and emphasized the need for them to put back their differences in their goatskin-bags and embrace each other. Similarly, Nzuko Umunna, through its studied and mature discourse based on Igbo Onye Kwue Uche Ya, heard the ancient voice of truth and re-engineered it on the path to mutual understanding.
As one commends Nzuko Umunna for being the new voice for this eternal truth, one would like to make a journey to a Yoruba village to see and listen to one’s kinsman. I do not mean the current Igbo person who left his local community (like the one who went to work in the cocoa plantation in Ondo in those days) and maybe bought a parcel of land and built a house, becoming a landlord in a Yoruba village! He feels comfortable there and, if you go to his house, it is possible that the language of communication among family members is Yoruba. Maybe one Yoruba man has even taken one of his daughters in marriage and one of her children is called Arinze Segun Ayo Olapade. No; I am rather referring to the Igbo person that is defined as the child of Oduduwa and whose cultural home is the South-west! Does that sound like an abduction? Does that sound like a cultural assimilation, an attempt by one forest dweller to devour another? It can as well be a child of Oduduwa that is defined as onye Igbo and whose space is the South-East. Whatever may be the case, what is very important to this essay is that onye Igbo and omo Yoruba are possibly relatives that have forgotten where it all started. These days that there is a great emphasis on identity as what is invented, one runs the risk of being called an inventor of relationship that has always been a fiction!
All right, then; guilty as charged. Watch out for interesting semiotic evidence in that inventive act! Let us start from Ekiti. Do you think my choice of Ekiti is informed by the likelihood that I may be invited home for a sumptuous meal of pounded yam and meat from the hunter’s stable? No qualms if that happens before the end of our excursion. By the way, doesn’t the name “Ekiti” sound like “Etiti” in Igbo? Actually, some Igbo towns are called “Ekiti,” with a different tone-mark but sharing a similar meaning, “middle.” Indeed, “Ekiti” is an Igbo variant of “Etiti.” And who is bothered much about the difference in the tones in the Igbo “Ekiti” and that of the Yoruba? Don’t we have tonal variations from one Igbo dialect to another?
You recall that I mentioned meat from game and pounded yam. My village has that as a favourite course for industrious souls, too. Then, fresh palm-wine. One must drink down this handshake across the Niger! But, let’s wait for the master hunter, the person who knows the smell of the forest, to return in the evening. He went on “ndide” (stalking, targeting, and trying to get a clean shot at the “anumanu”). I hear the Yoruba prefer to call the master hunter “ode” (I suspect “ode” literally means “One who stalks, targets, and kills the game, too). Just imagine that! The verb and morpheme, “de” is the same sound and meaning in Igbo, “stalking and targeting”). Do you see why I have to welcome the “ode” who went for “ndide” back with open hands and look into his bag?
You should not be surprised; it is a long story. Do you see those rocks, “okuta, “in Ekiti, which the Igbo call “okwute” ("okwuta") or just “okute” in some dialects? They hold the mysteries of my encounter with the master hunter from Ekiti called “Olosunta” which travels back to 3000 years! That “ode” is also one interesting statement about the handshake across the Niger. You doubt it? The name of the “ode” is just clipped in Igbo as “Ochunta” or “Oshunta” (O’chunta)! Ochunta means “One who hunts game” or “master hunter”! Olosunta or Oloshunta in Yoruba is also “One who hunts.” Don’t mind that “Olo” that is prefixed. The Yoruba sometimes identify what one does as a profession with that prefix. Now, don’t I deserve to peep into his bag?
Oloshunta is my kinsman in an Ekiti village. Honestly, that “ode” knows the smell of the forest! I strongly suspect that H.E. Ayo Fayose is his son, skin and blood. Did you see how he put those grazers of free-range cattle destroying crops in their place? I suspect that the name “Fayose” in Igbo means “Put pepper in the eyes (of your enemy))! No further explanation is necessary.
Now that my invention of relationship is done, can I have my pounded and bush meat, to be sent on an errand to my stomach with fresh palm-wine, “ike-emetu-ala”?
Obododimma Oha
Igbo and Yoruba are relatives by virtue of their belonging to the Volta-Niger family, according to a recent classification by Roger Blench. But apart from this linguistic classification, some semiotic similarities between both languages are amazing. That suggests that the idea of a “Handshake across the Niger” which was recently made an important ideological expression in the current relationship between Ndiigbo and Oduduwa children west of the Niger in a ceremony at Awka did neither start with Nzuko Umunna, the frontline Igbo organisation that hosted it, nor by Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu who recommends it in his book, Because I Am Involved. Indeed, Ojukwu was a great Igbo leader who read the indelible ancient signs of the closeness of two brothers and emphasized the need for them to put back their differences in their goatskin-bags and embrace each other. Similarly, Nzuko Umunna, through its studied and mature discourse based on Igbo Onye Kwue Uche Ya, heard the ancient voice of truth and re-engineered it on the path to mutual understanding.
As one commends Nzuko Umunna for being the new voice for this eternal truth, one would like to make a journey to a Yoruba village to see and listen to one’s kinsman. I do not mean the current Igbo person who left his local community (like the one who went to work in the cocoa plantation in Ondo in those days) and maybe bought a parcel of land and built a house, becoming a landlord in a Yoruba village! He feels comfortable there and, if you go to his house, it is possible that the language of communication among family members is Yoruba. Maybe one Yoruba man has even taken one of his daughters in marriage and one of her children is called Arinze Segun Ayo Olapade. No; I am rather referring to the Igbo person that is defined as the child of Oduduwa and whose cultural home is the South-west! Does that sound like an abduction? Does that sound like a cultural assimilation, an attempt by one forest dweller to devour another? It can as well be a child of Oduduwa that is defined as onye Igbo and whose space is the South-East. Whatever may be the case, what is very important to this essay is that onye Igbo and omo Yoruba are possibly relatives that have forgotten where it all started. These days that there is a great emphasis on identity as what is invented, one runs the risk of being called an inventor of relationship that has always been a fiction!
All right, then; guilty as charged. Watch out for interesting semiotic evidence in that inventive act! Let us start from Ekiti. Do you think my choice of Ekiti is informed by the likelihood that I may be invited home for a sumptuous meal of pounded yam and meat from the hunter’s stable? No qualms if that happens before the end of our excursion. By the way, doesn’t the name “Ekiti” sound like “Etiti” in Igbo? Actually, some Igbo towns are called “Ekiti,” with a different tone-mark but sharing a similar meaning, “middle.” Indeed, “Ekiti” is an Igbo variant of “Etiti.” And who is bothered much about the difference in the tones in the Igbo “Ekiti” and that of the Yoruba? Don’t we have tonal variations from one Igbo dialect to another?
You recall that I mentioned meat from game and pounded yam. My village has that as a favourite course for industrious souls, too. Then, fresh palm-wine. One must drink down this handshake across the Niger! But, let’s wait for the master hunter, the person who knows the smell of the forest, to return in the evening. He went on “ndide” (stalking, targeting, and trying to get a clean shot at the “anumanu”). I hear the Yoruba prefer to call the master hunter “ode” (I suspect “ode” literally means “One who stalks, targets, and kills the game, too). Just imagine that! The verb and morpheme, “de” is the same sound and meaning in Igbo, “stalking and targeting”). Do you see why I have to welcome the “ode” who went for “ndide” back with open hands and look into his bag?
You should not be surprised; it is a long story. Do you see those rocks, “okuta, “in Ekiti, which the Igbo call “okwute” ("okwuta") or just “okute” in some dialects? They hold the mysteries of my encounter with the master hunter from Ekiti called “Olosunta” which travels back to 3000 years! That “ode” is also one interesting statement about the handshake across the Niger. You doubt it? The name of the “ode” is just clipped in Igbo as “Ochunta” or “Oshunta” (O’chunta)! Ochunta means “One who hunts game” or “master hunter”! Olosunta or Oloshunta in Yoruba is also “One who hunts.” Don’t mind that “Olo” that is prefixed. The Yoruba sometimes identify what one does as a profession with that prefix. Now, don’t I deserve to peep into his bag?
Oloshunta is my kinsman in an Ekiti village. Honestly, that “ode” knows the smell of the forest! I strongly suspect that H.E. Ayo Fayose is his son, skin and blood. Did you see how he put those grazers of free-range cattle destroying crops in their place? I suspect that the name “Fayose” in Igbo means “Put pepper in the eyes (of your enemy))! No further explanation is necessary.
Now that my invention of relationship is done, can I have my pounded and bush meat, to be sent on an errand to my stomach with fresh palm-wine, “ike-emetu-ala”?
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